Publisher Health

The 9/11 Commission prompted a national reckoning over the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. A bipartisan bill would create an independent panel to investigate the pandemic response, but the measure is in limbo.WASHINGTON — The nation was reeling from an unfathomable number of deaths. Politicians were pointing fingers, asking why the United States had been so ill-prepared for a lethal threat. Congress, defying the White House, ordered an independent investigation.That was 20 years ago, and what came of it was a national reckoning. A bipartisan panel investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks held televised hearings, developed 41 recommendations for how to improve national security and produced a best-selling book — a gripping historical narrative about what had gone wrong.Now the United States is climbing out of a different crisis, the coronavirus pandemic, which has killed vastly more people than the Sept. 11 attacks and set off a global economic crisis. But some experts in biodefense and public health fear that the opportunity for a national reckoning with Covid-19 is slipping away — and with it, a chance to build on lessons learned during the pandemic.Bipartisan legislation to create a Sept. 11-style independent panel to investigate the government’s pandemic response appears stalled on Capitol Hill, despite a 20-to-2 vote in favor of the measure by the Senate health committee. Backers say their last hope for passage is to tack it onto an upcoming spending bill, the final major must-pass piece of legislation of the current Congress.The commission would be created as part of a sprawling bill called the PREVENT Pandemics Act. The measure would also make the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention a Senate-confirmed position and take other steps to improve pandemic preparedness, including increasing coordination among public health agencies and addressing supply chain deficiencies.There has been no vocal opposition to the bill, but it has been in limbo since it passed the health committee in March — a victim of inertia and other legislative priorities.There is no companion measure in the House, where Republicans are planning their own pandemic-related investigations once they take control of the chamber next month. Perhaps more significantly, President Biden has not taken a position on the bill. Senator Chuck Schumer of New York, the majority leader, who has focused his efforts on judicial nominations and the president’s agenda, has not brought it up for a floor vote. Mr. Schumer’s office and the White House declined to comment.A medical assistant gathered information at a testing site in Sacramento in 2020.Max Whittaker for The New York TimesPresident Donald J. Trump held coronavirus news briefings early in the pandemic. A commission would be charged with examining the response by the Trump and Biden administrations.Doug Mills/The New York TimesOne of the bill’s two chief sponsors, Senator Patty Murray, Democrat of Washington and the chairwoman of the health committee, made an impassioned appeal for it on the Senate floor last week. In an interview, she said the White House was “well aware” of her efforts.“This is a bill that we needed both Republicans and Democrats on,” she said. “They understand that.”A New U.S. Congress Takes ShapeFollowing the 2022 midterm elections, Democrats maintained control of the Senate while Republicans flipped the House.Divided Government: What does a split Congress mean for the next two years? Most likely a return to gridlock that could lead to government shutdowns and economic turmoil.Kyrsten Sinema: The Arizona senator said that she would leave the Democratic Party and register as an independent, just days after the Democrats secured an expanded majority in the Senate.A Looming Clash: Congressional leaders have all but abandoned the idea of acting to raise the debt ceiling before Democrats lose control of the House, punting the issue to a new Congress.First Gen Z Congressman: In the weeks after his election, Representative-elect Maxwell Frost of Florida, a Democrat, has learned just how different his perspective is from that of his older colleagues.More than a million Americans have died of Covid-19 — over 300 times the number that perished on Sept. 11. With cases and hospitalizations once again rising, more than 450 Americans are still dying of Covid each day. Over 200,000 children have lost a parent or a caregiver, and the C.D.C. estimates that millions of adults have long Covid, a constellation of lasting symptoms.The idea for a commission has been percolating for nearly two years, backed by members of Congress, advocacy groups representing the bereaved and the former executive director of the 9/11 Commission. Experts say that beyond charting a blueprint for confronting future pandemics, an independent panel — with the power to issue subpoenas and convene public hearings — would serve as a form of catharsis for the country and a way to comfort those who lost loved ones.It might also answer a pressing question: Why does the United States have a higher death rate from Covid-19 than other wealthy nations?“Although much of the country is acting like the pandemic is over, the hurt and the anger and the pain and the way lives have changed is still with people every day,” said Dr. Nicole Lurie, a top official with the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, a global nonprofit. “If a commission can really start to grapple with questions about how does our country heal, and what do leaders do to get on a path to that healing, that would be an important contribution.”Waiting to get tested in New York in 2020. Cases and hospitalizations are once again rising in the United States.Hiroko Masuike/The New York TimesAny investigation of the pandemic would necessarily be vast and complex, encompassing topics such as better detection of new pathogens, improvements to the public health system’s antiquated data collection apparatus, supply chain vulnerabilities, the harmful effect of lockdowns on many schoolchildren, the spread of misinformation and a lack of public trust in agencies like the C.D.C.Members of Congress have tried to examine the crisis. On Friday, the House subcommittee on the coronavirus crisis released its final report, which was sharply critical of the Trump administration. On Thursday, Democrats on the Senate homeland security committee issued a study of the pandemic’s early months. In October, Republicans on the Senate health committee released an examination of the pandemic’s origins that suggested it was the result of a lab leak — a view most scientists disagree with.But those inquiries are partisan. The bill to create the independent commission would establish a 12-member expert panel of “highly qualified citizens” appointed by congressional leaders from both parties. Like the Sept. 11 panel, it would have subpoena power and hold public hearings. It would be charged with examining the origins of the pandemic as well as the response by the Trump and Biden administrations.“There’s no substitute for showing the vision that we showed in the early 2000s at creating an architecture that fixes things that we got wrong then, that addresses things that we didn’t think of then that we’ve learned, having gone through it,” said Senator Richard M. Burr of North Carolina, the health committee’s top Republican, who is sponsoring the measure with Ms. Murray.Some experts see a broad-based examination of the pandemic as too daunting. And even if a commission were established, it might have difficulty overcoming the intense partisanship surrounding Covid-19. The nation was so deeply divided after Sept. 11 that “partisan pressures almost tore apart our commission,” said Philip D. Zelikow, a University of Virginia historian and former government official who was the executive director of the Sept. 11 panel. The problem is even worse today, he said.Mr. Zelikow now leads the Covid Commission Planning Group, a privately funded effort involving about three dozen independent experts who have spent the better part of the past two years conducting research to lay the groundwork for a national inquiry. The group, which has held several hundred interviews, grew tired of waiting for Congress and plans to publish its findings in a book this spring, Mr. Zelikow said. He declined to discuss details.Infectious disease experts predict that pandemics will occur with increasing frequency, fueled by global travel, climate change and humans moving into closer proximity with animals. Biodefense experts say that pandemics are every bit as big a threat to national security as terrorist attacks. But the public may not see it that way.“Nine-eleven was a national convulsion that was shared with varying intensity across the country, and everybody basically agreed it was shocking and terrible,” said Tara O’Toole, a former official in the Homeland Security Department who is a senior fellow at In-Q-Tel, a venture fund backed by the C.I.A. “Epidemics are not lights-and-sirens events.”Covid-19 has killed vastly more people than the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.Adria Malcolm for The New York TimesShortages of personal protective equipment posed major problems at the outset of the pandemic, forcing health workers to scramble.Alex Welsh for The New York TimesAdvocacy groups like Marked by Covid and Covid Survivors for Change have been lobbying Congress to create an investigative commission, just as the Sept. 11 families did in the aftermath of the attacks. To some people grieving losses from Covid-19, the notion that Congress may fail to act feels like a slap in the face.“I am not looking for a commission to blame people,” said Pamela Addison, who has been raising two young children alone since her husband, a health care worker, died early in the pandemic. “I just want a commission to look into what went wrong so this can be prevented, and I feel it would give me some closure knowing what happened and why.”Various organizations, including the Commonwealth Fund and the Center for Strategic and International Studies, have also tried to issue blueprints for pandemic prevention. The Biden White House recently published an updated national biodefense strategy and is asking Congress for $88 billion over five years to fund pandemic prevention, but there has been no movement on that request.But those efforts are not the same as a high-profile panel that has “the imprimatur of Congress and the White House,” said Joseph I. Lieberman, the former Connecticut senator who sponsored the bill that created the Sept. 11 panel, which passed in November 2002. Mr. Lieberman, who is now a chairman of a nonprofit devoted to biodefense, called on Mr. Biden to back the effort.Some lessons from the pandemic are already clear. Scientists figured out how to fast-track the development of tests and vaccines. The C.D.C. established a new program to detect the coronavirus in wastewater. Public health officials learned how to use masks and better air quality systems to control the spread of respiratory viruses.Experts are trying to build on those lessons. The Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations is seeking to raise $3.5 billion for a plan to create and scale up manufacturing of a vaccine within 100 days of the emergence of a new pathogen, a goal shared by the Biden administration. The C.D.C. is reorganizing in response to what its director, Dr. Rochelle Walensky, has described as “some pretty dramatic, pretty public mistakes” in its pandemic response.But no one is putting it all together, and Mr. Zelikow says time is growing short. The pandemic is already three years old. Important facts may be lost with the passage of time — in part, he surmises, because politicians and the public mistakenly believe that nothing can be done to avert a future crisis.“People in both parties, and Americans in general, have no idea what to do about pandemic danger, and therefore they become naturally resigned to thinking about it fatalistically, as a condition they have to bear,” he said. “This is the giant hole, the gaping crater in our discourse about the pandemic.”Among the lessons of the coronavirus pandemic: Scientists figured out how to fast-track the development of tests and vaccines.Emily Elconin for The New York TimesEmily Cochrane

Extremely hot and cold temperatures both increased the risk of death among people with cardiovascular diseases, such as ischemic heart disease (heart problems caused by narrowed heart arteries), stroke, heart failure and arrhythmia, according to new research published today in the American Heart Association’s flagship journal Circulation.
Among the cardiovascular diseases examined in this study, heart failure was linked to the highest excess deaths from extreme hot and cold temperatures.
“The decline in cardiovascular death rates since the 1960s is a huge public health success story as cardiologists identified and addressed individual risk factors such as tobacco, physical inactivity, Type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and others. The current challenge now is the environment and what climate change might hold for us,” said Barrak Alahmad, M.D., M.P.H., Ph.D., research fellow at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University in Boston and a faculty member at the College of Public Health at Kuwait University in Kuwait City.
Researchers explored how extreme temperatures may affect heart diseases — the leading cause of death globally. They analyzed health data for more than 32 million cardiovascular deaths that occurred in 567 cities in 27 countries on 5 continents between 1979 and 2019. The global data came from the Multi-Country Multi-City (MCC) Collaborative Research Network, a consortium of epidemiologists, biostatisticians and climate scientists studying the health impacts of climate and related environmental stressors on death rates.
Climate change is associated with substantial swings in extreme hot and cold temperatures, so the researchers examined both in the current study. For this analysis, researchers compared cardiovascular deaths on the hottest and the coldest 2.5% of days for each city with cardiovascular deaths on the days that had optimal temperature (the temperature associated with the least rates of deaths) in the same city.
For every 1,000 cardiovascular deaths, the researchers found that: Extreme hot days accounted for 2.2 additional deaths. Extreme cold days accounted for 9.1 additional deaths. Of the types of heart diseases, the greatest number of additional deaths was found for people with heart failure (2.6 additional deaths on extreme hot days and 12.8 on extreme cold days).”One in every 100 cardiovascular deaths may be attributed to extreme temperature days, and temperature effects were more pronounced when looking at heart failure deaths,” said Haitham Khraishah, M.D., co-author of the study and a cardiovascular disease fellow at the University of Maryland School of Medicine and the University of Maryland Medical Center in Baltimore. “While we do not know the reason, this may be explained by the progressive nature of heart failure as a disease, rendering patients susceptible to temperature effects. This is an important finding since one out of four people with heart failure are readmitted to the hospital within 30 days of discharge, and only 20% of patients with heart failure survive 10 years after diagnosis.”

An international research team has provided valuable new information about what drives the global spread of genes responsible for antimicrobial resistance (AMR) in bacteria.
The collaborative study, led by researchers at the Quadram Institute and the University of East Anglia, brought together experts from France, Canada, Germany and the UK and will provide new information to combat the global challenge of AMR.
By examining the whole genome sequences of around two thousand resistant bacteria, predominantly Escherichia coli collected between 2008 and 2016, the team found that different types of AMR genes varied in their temporal dynamics. For example, some were initially found in North America and spread to Europe, while for others the spread was from Europe to North America.
Not only did the study look at bacteria from different geographic regions but also from diverse hosts including humans, animals, food (meat) and the environment (wastewater), to define how these separate but interconnected factors influenced the development and spread of AMR. Understanding this interconnectivity embodies the One Health approach and is vital for understanding transmission dynamics and the mechanisms by which resistance genes are transmitted.
The study, published in the journal Nature Communications, was supported by the Joint Programming Initiative on Antimicrobial Resistance (JPIAMR), a global collaboration spanning 29 countries and the European Commission that is tasked with turning the tide on AMR. Without concerted efforts on a global scale, AMR will undoubtedly make millions more people vulnerable to infections from bacteria and other microorganisms that can currently be tackled with antimicrobials.
The team focussed on resistance to one particularly important group of antimicrobials, the Extended-Spectrum Cephalosporins (ESCs). These antimicrobials have been classed as critically important by the World Health Organization because they are a ‘last resort’ treatment for multidrug resistant bacteria; despite this, since their introduction, efficacy has declined as bacteria have developed resistance.

The “super grain” quinoa has the potential to make a super cookie, according to research by Washington State University.
In a study published in the Journal of Food Science, WSU researchers show that two types of quinoa, bred specifically to grow in Washington state, had great functionality as a potential high-fiber, high-protein additive flour for commercial cookies. This means when baked, the cookies had good “spreadability” and texture.
Taste tests are still underway, but preliminary results show that people preferred sugar cookies with 10% of the quinoa flour over a traditional all-wheat flour cookie.
“It’s the Holy Grail for food scientists: we want to develop something that people love to eat and want to go buy and buy again — and now we’re adding some fiber in without them even knowing it,” said Girish Ganjyal, a WSU food scientist and the study’s corresponding author.
Originating in South America, quinoa has a host of nutritional benefits: it is high in fiber, protein, vitamins and minerals. It is also gluten-free. While the grain is popular with health enthusiasts, it has yet to take off with many mainstream consumers. WSU researchers are working to change that.
While no official counts are available, WSU plant breeder Kevin Murphy estimates that quinoa is grown on more than 5,000 acres in the Pacific Northwest currently, and more farmers are interested.

Researchers at Lund University in Sweden have discovered an antibody with the potential to protect against Strep A infection, as well as a rare form of antibody binding, that leads to an effective immune response against bacteria. The discovery could explain why so many Group A strep vaccines have failed.
The results are published in EMBO Molecular Medicine.
Group A streptococci have several ways in which they evade the body’s immune system and, when they infect us, can cause both common throat infections (strep throat), scarlet fever, sepsis, swine pox and skin infections. So far, antibiotics work against these bacteria, but should they become resistant, they will pose a major public health threat.
One strategy that the scientific community uses to find new ways of fighting bacterial infections is to create target-seeking antibodies. First, the antibodies that the body’s immune system produces in the event of an infection are mapped, and then their effect on the immune system is studied. In this way, antibodies can be identified that can be used both for preventive treatment and for treatment during an ongoing infection. However, it’s a challenging process, and many attempts to develop antibody-based treatments against Strep A have failed.
The current study shows an unexpected way that antibodies interact with group A streptococci and, more specifically, how they hook onto the probably most important bacterial protein, the M protein, on the cell surface.
“We found that it happens in a way that has never been described before. Normally, an antibody binds via one of its two Y arms to its target protein at a single site, regardless of which of the two arms is used for binding. But what we have seen- and this is vital information — is that the two Y arms can recognize and hook on to two different places on the same target protein,” explains Pontus Nordenfelt, one of the authors behind the study.
This means that the two arms of the antibody — which are identical — can bind to two different sites on a target protein. It turns out that it is precisely this type of binding that is required for effective protection, and since it is probably rare, the researchers believe, it could explain why so many vaccine attempts have been unsuccessful. It could also be a reason why the bacteria manage to escape the immune system.
It has long been known that the streptococcal bacteria’s M protein is of great importance for how disease occurs and develops in the body. Finding an antibody that attaches to this protein, thereby flagging it up to the immune system, can prevent the bacteria from infecting the body’s cells. Since we know that the human body can fight the infection, such antibodies exist, but it is hard to locate them.
The researchers therefore focused on examining antibodies in patients who had recovered from group A streptococcal infection. They managed to identify three so-called monoclonal antibodies from a patient who recovered from a Strep A infection. Monoclonal antibodies are identical copies of each other, and in this case target a single protein (the M protein) of the group A streptococci. The researchers then investigated in animal studies whether it is possible to use the antibodies to strengthen the immune system in its fight against group A streptococcus. It turned out that the antibody with the newly discovered binding mechanism produced a strong immune response against the bacteria. The researchers have now applied for a patent based on the findings in the article, and will continue to study the antibody.
“This opens up possibilities where previous vaccine attempts have failed and means that the monoclonal antibody we used has the potential to protect against infection,” concludes Wael Bahnan, one of the authors behind the study.
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A study measuring the sleep patterns of students at the University of Washington has turned up some surprises about how and when our bodies tell us to sleep — and illustrates the importance of getting outside during the day, even when it’s cloudy.
Published online Dec. 7 in the Journal of Pineal Research, the study found that UW students fell asleep later in the evening and woke up later in the morning during — of all seasons — winter, when daylight hours on the UW’s Seattle campus are limited and the skies are notoriously overcast.
The team behind this study believes it has an explanation: The data showed that in winter students received less light exposure during the day. Other research has indicated that getting insufficient light during the day leads to problems at night, when it’s time for bed.
“Our bodies have a natural circadian clock that tells us when to go to sleep at night,” said senior author Horacio de la Iglesia, a UW professor of biology. “If you do not get enough exposure to light during the day when the sun is out, that ‘delays’ your clock and pushes back the onset of sleep at night.”
The study used wrist monitors to measure sleep patterns and light exposure for 507 UW undergraduate students from 2015 to 2018. Data indicated that students were getting roughly the same amount of sleep each night regardless of season. But, on school days during the winter, students were going to bed on average 35 minutes later and waking up 27 minutes later than summer school days. This finding surprised the team, since Seattle — a high-latitude city — receives nearly 16 hours of sunlight on the summer solstice, with plenty evening light for social life, and just over eight hours of sunlight on the winter solstice.
“We were expecting that in the summer students would be up later due to all the light that’s available during that season,” said de la Iglesia.

There are about 64 million cases of heart failure worldwide. According to the American Heart Association, 6.2 million adults in the United States have heart failure and that number is estimated to increase to 8 million by 2030. Heart failure is a progressive clinical syndrome characterized by a structural abnormality of the heart, in which the heart is unable to pump sufficient blood to meet the body’s requirements.
There are currently two heart failure monitoring systems available. However, they are costly and pose risks because they are surgically implanted under the skin. Moreover, about half of patients with heart failure do not need an implantable device or do not qualify for the thoracic (area between the neck and abdomen) monitoring these devices provide. There is a critical need for non-invasive solutions to monitor heart failure progression around the clock.
Researchers from Florida Atlantic University’s College of Engineering and Computer Science in collaboration with FAU’s Christine E. Lynn College of Nursing have developed a prototype of novel wearable device that can continuously monitor all of the physiological parameters associated with heart failure in real time.
The technology is based on sensors embedded in a lightweight belt conveniently worn around the waist to monitor thoracic impedance, electrocardiogram (ECG), heart rate and motion activity detection. The system uses different sensors for sensing these parameters. Thoracic impedance is a critical bio-signal to monitor heart failure progression. Similarly, ECG is a vital bio-signal to diagnose and predict cardiovascular diseases. ECG measures electrical signals through the heart using a Holter monitor, which is not suitable for point-of-care use.
For the study, published in Scientific Reports, researchers tested the wearable device in different conditions including sitting, standing, lying down and walking. For each condition, results were obtained for each of the sensors sequentially. The physiological parameters selected are significant in determining heart failure symptoms.
Findings showed that all of sensors kept track of the changes for all of the different conditions. The position sensor correctly highlighted the change in position in different conditions and could be used to identify different states of the wearer of the device. In addition, the heart rate sensor continually kept track of the heart rate. Importantly, the device correctly highlighted minute changes in thoracic impedance.

A good night’s sleep can work wonders for both mind and body. But what is it that determines how much we need to sleep, and what can cause us to sleep more deeply? In a new study, researchers from the University of Tsukuba have now provided some answers, revealing a signaling pathway within brain cells that regulates the length and depth of sleep.
“We examined genetic mutations in mice and how these affect their patterns of sleep,” says senior author of the study, Professor Hiromasa Funato. “We identified a mutation that led to the mice sleeping much longer and more deeply than usual.” The researchers found that this was caused by low levels of an enzyme called histone deacetylase 4 (HDAC4), which is known to suppress the expression of target genes.
Previous studies on HDAC4 have shown that it is greatly affected by the attachment of phosphate molecules in a process known as phosphorylation. When this occurs, HDAC4 tends to move away from the cell nucleus, and the suppression of certain proteins is reduced. The researchers were interested in whether this phosphorylation of HDAC4 would affect sleep.
“We focused on a protein called salt-inducible kinase 3, otherwise known as SIK3, which phosphorylates HDAC4,” says Professor Funato. “We previously found that this protein has strong effects on sleep.” The team found that when there was a lack of SIK3 or when HDAC4 was modified to prevent phosphorylation, the mice slept less. In contrast, when the mice had a more active version of SIK3, which increased the phosphorylation of HDAC4, they slept a lot more. They also identified a further protein, LKB1, which phosphorylates SIK3, and has similar sleep-suppressing effects when deficient.
“Our findings indicate that there is a signaling pathway within brain cells from LKB1 to SIK3 and then to HDAC4,” says study co-senior author, Professor Masashi Yanagisawa. “This pathway leads to the phosphorylation of HDAC4, which promotes sleep, most probably because it affects the expression of sleep-promoting genes.”
The team carried out further experiments to identify the brain cells in which these pathways regulate sleep. This involved altering the amounts of SIK3 and HDAC4 in different cell types and brain regions. The results indicated that signaling within the cells of the cortex regulates the depth of sleep, while signaling within the hypothalamus regulates the amount of deep sleep. For both brain regions, the excitatory neurons, which can activate other neurons, were identified as playing a key role.
These results provide an important insight into how sleep is regulated, which could potentially lead to a greater understanding of sleep disorders as well as the development of new treatments.
This work was supported by the World Premier International Research Center Initiative from MEXT, JSPS KAKENHI, JST CREST, AMED, JSPS DC2, University of Tsukuba Basic Research Support Program Type A, Funding Program for World-Leading Innovative R&D on Science and Technology (FIRST Program).
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Problems with managing anger can have severe consequences for the afflicted individual and their loved ones. A new study from the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet in Sweden shows that four weeks of therapy delivered over the internet can help people with anger and aggression. The results have been published in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.
The study, which the researchers have chosen to call the “anger study,” is the first to compare different internet-mediated emotion regulation strategies against anger. The results are expected to be important for understanding emotion regulation and for the dissemination of evidence-based methods.
Easy to recruit participants
“It is usually very difficult to recruit participants for treatment studies. For the anger study, however, it was very easy, and we had to close the recruitment site after a few weeks due to the high number of applicants. This suggests that there is a pent-up need for the psychological treatment of anger. Many people who have problems with anger feel ashamed, and we think the internet format suits this group particularly well because they don’t have to wait in a reception room or sit face-to-face with a therapist and talk about their anger,” says Johan Bjureberg, assistant professor at the Centre for Psychiatry Research at Karolinska Institutet and researcher responsible for the study, which was carried out in collaboration with researchers at Örebro University in Sweden.
The anger study has evaluated the effect of two emotion regulation strategies: mindful emotion awareness; and cognitive reappraisal. Mindful emotion awareness focuses on the ability to notice and accept one’s feelings and thoughts without judging or acting on them. Cognitive reappraisal, on the other hand, focuses on the ability to reinterpret thoughts and situations and identify alternative thoughts that do not trigger difficult feelings.
The 234 participants, all with significant anger problems, were randomly assigned to four weeks of either mindful emotion awareness, cognitive reappraisal, or a combination of these two strategies. All treatments were of approximately the same length and were associated with decreased self-reported anger and aggressiveness at the end of the treatment.
Combination therapy most effective
The combined treatment resulted in significantly lower levels of outward anger expression, aggression, and anger rumination, but not anger suppression, compared to mindful emotion awareness or cognitive reappraisal alone. The combination was particularly effective for participants who were experiencing very high levels of anger at the start of the study. The results strengthen research and theories suggesting that difficulties in regulating emotions and interpreting events and situations can be a major contributing factor to problems in managing anger.
“Our results suggest that a very short treatment of only four weeks administered over the internet with minimal therapist support is effective in reducing anger problems. Our hope is that follow-up studies support this finding and that the treatment can be offered broadly within regular care,” explains Johan Bjureberg.
The study was funded by the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation.
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Scientists at Johns Hopkins Medicine say they have developed a computer model — dubbed quantitative fate mapping — that looks back in the developmental timeline to trace the origin of cells in a fully grown organism. The new model, they say, can help researchers more precisely spot which cells acquire alterations during development that change an organism’s fate from healthy to disease states, including cancer and dementia.
The achievement, described in the Nov. 23 issue of Cell, uses mathematical algorithms that take into account the general speed with which cells divide and differentiate, the rate at which mutations naturally accumulate and other known factors of organism development.
“We can use this method to examine the development of organisms from cell samples, including those from non-model organisms such as humpback whales that we don’t ordinarily study,” says Reza Kalhor, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering, genetic medicine, molecular biology and genetics and neuroscience at The Johns Hopkins University and School of Medicine. “For example, with a cell sample from the carcass of a humpback whale, we can understand how it developed as an embryo.”
The new computer model is based on the fact that every complex living organism comes from a single, fertilized cell, or zygote. That cell divides, and the daughter cells continue dividing, eventually differentiating into specialized cells in tissues. Humans, for example, have about 70 trillion individual cells and several thousand types of cells.
Each time a cell divides, a mutation can occur, and that alteration gets passed on to the daughter cells, which divide again, perhaps acquiring a second mutation, both of which are passed to their daughter cells, and so on. The mutations act as a kind of barcode that is detectable with genomic sequencing equipment. Scientists can track these mutations in reverse order to construct a cell’s lineage, they say.
The quantitative fate mapping program has two parts. One is a computer program called Phylotime, which reads cell mutations as barcodes to infer the timescale associated with cell divisions. The name Phylotime stands for Phylogeny Reconstruction Using Likelihood of Time. In biology, phylogeny describes and depicts lines of evolutionary development. The second part developed by the Johns Hopkins team is a computer algorithm called ICE-FASE, which creates a model of the hierarchy and lineages of cells within an organism based on the timescales of cell divisions.