Nils Reinton

"What the researchers observed during that second recall test was quite amazing. Repeating the words as distractors did not affect how well the young people remembered the words on the list. However, older adults rarely or never forgot the words that had appeared as distractors." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"The new guidelines on clinical DNA sequencing present a starting point for handling what our genomes are telling us, focusing first on revelations that we can do something with, under the care of trained medical professionals. So by the time that devices the size of a dorm fridge are sequencing patients’ DNA and spitting out risks, diagnoses, and suggested courses of action in the average internist’s office, we’ll be able to make the most of the information in our genomes." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Results: The impact of diagnostic testing did not seem to vary according to whether or not genetic information was used. More generally, being given a positive or negative diagnosis of FH had minimal discernible impact on people's lives as they maintained the continuity of their beliefs and behaviour. Conclusions: The results suggest that concerns about the use of genetic testing in this context are unfounded, a conclusion that echoes findings from studies in this and other health contexts." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Finally, as Erlich and Kramer have shown, de-identification is increasingly difficult. Privacy and confidentiality are important principles. But being identifiable has some benefits, and being anonymous has some costs; science will be better off when it acknowledges this reality." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Dr. Jha's team found that people who quit smoking between ages 35 and 44 gained about nine years and those who quit between ages 45-54 and 55-64 gained six and four years of life, respectively." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"People are smarter and more resilient than ethics debates give them credit for." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Voting Republican? Oh, that’s brain chemistry. Success on the job? Fortuitous neurochemistry! Neuroscience has joined company with other totalizing worldviews — Marxism, Freudianism, critical theory — that have been victim to overuse and misapplication." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Loke is already conducting a clinical trial of whipworms for people with ulcerative colitis. Other worm trials involve multiple sclerosis, Crohn’s disease and even autism, some cases of which may be triggered by immune malfunction. If the clinical trials succeed, worms could become a standard autoimmune disease treatment, or even be used in children to prevent disease — a strange thought, at first, but there’s precedent. After all, many vaccines are made with live viruses." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

Link to paper: http://www.plospathogens.org/article... - Nils Reinton

"Take diet composition for example. The best studies continue to say that all diets work equally well at taking off weight to the extent they reduce calories, and that macro-nutrient composition (carbs vs. protein vs. fat) doesn’t matter for weight loss. So I just got a calorie tracker app for my phone, focused on achieving a steady targeted reduction every day, and ate what I wanted until I hit the mark. Well, that’s not totally true — I did spend some time trying to understand which foods made me feel fuller for the fewest calories, and as a result focused on foods that: had more fibre, which I found more filling. So while I still ate some refined flour and sweets, most of my carbs came from whole grain foods. were less nutritionally dense, i.e. lower calories by volume, which again I found more filling. In practice, this meant a lot more fruits and vegetables. included protein, because many obesity researchers and clinicians believe that regular hits of protein throughout the day aid satiety." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Most people will find that a rather utilitarian view of animals. They feel it looks at animals as though they were just kind of tools for humans. But that is the way to actually convince people who are not convinced—people in developed countries, people who don't have enough food for themselves, to take them seriously, we need to link animal welfare into what's good for humans." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Talking20 is a biotechnology company driven to create an ecosystem of health awareness and discovery by offering low-cost biomarker testing directly to everyone. From a single drop of blood sent in the mail, your Talking20 test provides a window for you to view and interact with biological events as they happen in your body." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"“There is a growing recognition that a clinical lab may see a mutation once or never, so it’s better if all those data could be pooled,” explains James Ostell, chief of the information engineering branch at the NCBI and a member of the ClinVar team. Such information could not only help laboratories to improve quality, it could also prompt research on new variants." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"You were told you had brain cancer and your response was to hack open your medical records and publish them online. Why? When I was diagnosed I was a bit unsatisfied with what took place at the hospital: it was almost as if I had nothing to do with it. The doctor comes up, he tells you that you have a tumour, and it's like you disappear and only your clinical records remain. I didn't want to disappear. I'm not just a patient, I am a human being. I stepped out of the hospital with a copy of my digital medical records, but I found they were in a peculiar format which takes a lot of skill to open. So I hacked this format to make that data really accessible." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"I also believe that this sort of fiat paternalism on the part of the medical community is frankly going to make enemies of exactly the sort of engaged high-information patients who can be their allies in staving off public hysteria about vaccination and the like" - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Bumaschny et al. made another important finding by showing that although Pomc restoration is effective in normalizing food intake, it does not correct the defects in energy expenditure after obesity is established. This finding raises the possibility that obesity may induce maladaptive and irreversible changes that selectively affect neural circuits that regulate energy expenditure and is consistent with previous findings that food intake and energy expenditure are regulated by distinct neural pathways downstream of hypothalamic Pomc neurons (20)." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Transhumanists will tell you that the enhancements they propose for the human race will always be "optional." Freedom and choice are their mantra. Freedom to enhance ourselves and our offspring, or not. That is our choice. In contrast, I have continually argued that transhumanism is by nature coercive. Once we begin to radically change our bodies and our genetics, everyone will have to follow suit or be left behind. Environmentalist Bill McKibben called it a"biological arms race" where no one will win and he points out that once we start upgrading our biology, some of us will naturally become outdated." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"The approach showed that the androgen receptor is both expressed and functional during the early stages of fat cell differentiation. "Activation of the androgen receptor can inhibit the early stages of human fat maturation," says first author Dr. Sean Hartig, also from Baylor College of Medicine. The finding makes sense because androgens such as testosterone, which bind to androgen receptors, are known to favorably direct muscle differentiation, regulate muscle mass, and increase lean body mass as humans age." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

Link to paper (open access ?): http://www.cell.com/chemist... - Nils Reinton

"Publish Today! Immediate Open Access publication followed by Open Peer Review. F1000 Research, a new service from Faculty of 1000, is an Open Access publishing program in biology and medicine. It challenges traditional scholarly publishing models by defining new standards for speed, peer review, data sharing, and publishing good science. Join us as we refine our service: all articles published free of charge until the end of 2012. To submit, see our author guidelines, and then e-mail your article to research@f1000.com. See About for more information." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

""Assessment of HPV DNA using polymerase chain reaction methods as a biomarker in individual head and neck cancers is a poor predictor of outcome and is also poorly associated with antibody response indicative of exposure and/or infection by HPV," said study author Karl T. Kelsey, M.D., professor in the department of epidemiology and the department of pathology and laboratory medicine at Brown University in Providence, R.I. "We may not be diagnosing these tumors as accurately and precisely as we need to for adjusting treatments."" - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"Lipkin says the National Institutes of Health wanted conclusive answers about the possible link. "We went ahead and set up a study to test this thing once and for all and determine whether we could find footprints of these viruses in people with chronic fatigue syndrome or in healthy controls," says Lipkin. The study in mBio® puts the speculation to rest, he says. Scientists were wrong about a potential link between chronic fatigue syndrome and these viruses." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet

"The Lightning can cruise at 50 mph all day long as smooth as a scooter. There’s no surging or lunging, and the lack of engine noise means all I’m hearing is a whirl from the electric motor and the wind blowing past. Power is delivered in a progressive, linear fashion, and when I decided to open her up, the Lightning unleashed a fury unlike anything I’ve ever experienced." - Nils Reinton from Bookmarklet