linkstream2 microblog

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“This shift has been having profound impacts on mental-health research in the United States, but the magnitude of the transformation is only now coming to light. An analysis by Nature suggests that the number of clinical trials funded by the NIMH dropped by 45% between 2009 and 2015 (see ‘’). This coincides with the agency’s launch, in 2011, of the Research Domain Criteria (RDoC) — a framework for research on the mechanisms of mental illness. The NIMH’s roll-out of RDoC included asking researchers to focus more on the biological bases of behaviour — such as brain circuitry and genetics — than on the broader symptoms that clinicians typically use to define and classify mental illness.

The NIMH’s embrace of fundamental research has infuriated many clinical researchers, who see it as an attempt to invalidate their methods — and say that there is scant evidence to support the idea that using RDoC will lead to greater insight or better treatments for mental illness.”
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US mental-health agency’s push for basic research has slashed support for clinical trials
http://www.nature.com/news/us-mental-health-agency-s-push-for-basic-research-has-slashed-support-for-clinical-trials-1.22145

The lost genius of the @USPS http://Politi.co/2rOqSGM Innovator (which once pioneered pneumatics & even missile delivery), now sclerotic

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“The first half of the 20th century was a dynamic time for the Post Office. It immensely improved mail receipt and delivery by adopting innovations from the private sector and abroad. Train cars were designed to mesh two separate aspects of mail delivery: mail sorting and delivery. Rather than have mail delivered to a post office in a jumble and then sorted by postal clerks, clerks on rail cars sorted the mail while it was en route. Bags of sorted mail were hung on posts outside train stations and post offices without the train even needing to stop.
…

The agency even toyed with moving mail by missile. Why schlep over ground when letters could be launched through the air at 600 miles per hour? “Before man reaches the moon,” Postmaster General Arthur A. Summerfield proclaimed in 1959, “mail will be delivered within hours from New York to California, to England, to India or to Australia by guided missiles.”
…
OVERSHADOWING ALL THE invention, however, was the creeping sclerosis of the Post Office as an institution. As a monopoly, it was insulated from competitive pressures, allowing inefficiency to creep into its operations and management.
…
Things began to change in the 1960s. Postal workers unionized, and President John F. Kennedy authorized them to bargain collectively in 1962. Despite growing mail volume, the Post Office ran perennial deficits, and its investment in the guts of the system—mail receipt and sortation—lagged. The system broke down in Chicago in 1966, and 10 million pieces of mail were backlogged for days.”
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You Look Familiar. Now Scientists Know Why
https://www.NYTmes.com/2017/06/01/science/facial-recognition-brain-neurons.html #Privacy implications: determining whether a suspect recognizes a face

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“One day, the authors suggested, it might even be possible to render a face seen by, say, a crime witness just by analyzing his brain activity.

“Cracking the code for faces would definitely be a big deal,” said Brad Duchaine, an expert on face recognition at Dartmouth.

Human and monkey brains have evolved dedicated systems for recognizing faces, presumably because, as social animals, survival depends on identifying members of one’s own social group and distinguishing them from strangers.”
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QT:{{”
“…ports it’s packing; comparable Windows laptops typically go for less.

But it is well-made, and with the Mac becoming less and less relevant to Apple’s bottom line, the company’s laptop business seems to be focusing exclusively on the high-end.”
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How important the Mac is to $AAPL’s revenue? Not much: now 11% from 86% in ’00. Why MacBook users are irrelevant!
http://www.BusinessInsider.com/apple-mac-new-yearly-revenue-chart-2017-4

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This chart from Statista helps explain why Apple may be so slow to update Mac hardware in recent years, though. Put simply, it’s just not as big a deal anymore: With the iPhone and iPad helping to change the way we use computers, the Mac now makes up just 11% of Apple’s yearly revenue. It is a phone company, first and foremost.
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.@Nest cams back from the dead with new…monitoring device
https://www.theVerge.com/2017/5/31/15716830/nest-cam-iq-announced-specs-features-release-date-price Creepy: it can distinguish family members from strangers

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“Using some deep-learning tech from Google, the Cam IQ can accurately detect what’s moving within its field of vision — whether it’s just your pet, for instance, or a shadow cast by the changing light. If it’s something more sinister, like a person, the camera can then automatically zoom in and track that person as they move around the room. Should you opt to subscribe to the Nest Aware service ($10 per month or $100 per year), the Cam IQ will also offer a facial recognition facility that will sort between known friends or family members and any strangers, and alert you accordingly. Additionally, making use of those extra mics, Nest Aware can now also pick up audio cues for alarm, whether it be a dog barking, humans talking, or a window being smashed.”
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Gr8 Low-carb #Veggies http://www.HealthCentral.com/diabetes/c/17/20167/good-veggies Top: collards, spinach, #kale, chard, red peppers; Bottom: cukes, eggplant, mushrooms, alfalfa

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“In fact, the healthiest of all vegetables, according to "Nutrition Action Health Letter," is one that I had never prepared before: collard greens, with a score of 461.
…
The number 2 vegetable, spinach, with a score of 424, is one that I eat both raw and cooked. Like collards, and number 3 kale (score 410) and number 4 Swiss chard (322) all of these green leafy vegetables pair extraordinarily well with ham or bacon or other smoked meat and vinegar (a tip I picked up from Ruth Reichl’s Gourmet Cookbook).
Then comes red pepper (score 309), which I usually add to my salad but is also great cooked. Skipping a couple of high-carb veggies, the list then goes to broccoli at 179.
Next in order are okra, 165; Brussels sprouts, 143; lettuce, 141; and asparagus, 84. I was surprised that tomatoes and avocados, two honorary vegetables (technically fruit), ranked at 76 and 71 respectively. Wonderful cauliflower ranked even lower at 64, cabbage at 44. Near the bottom of the list are cucumber, eggplant, mushrooms, and alfalfa sprouts.
…
My attention went in that direction anyway after reading Michael Pollan’s He notes there that when we largely switched from eating leaves to seeds (as in grain), the problems with the so-called "Western Diet" began. It is indeed striking how many of the top veggies are leaves.”

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Common SNPs explain a large proportion (45%) of heritability for…height (85%)
http://www.Nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n7/abs/ng.608.html Cf 2010 GWASes could only explain 5%

Jian Yang,
Beben Benyamin,
Brian P McEvoy,
Scott Gordon,
Anjali K Henders,
Dale R Nyholt,
Pamela A Madden,
Andrew C Heath,
Nicholas G Martin,
Grant W Montgomery,
Michael E Goddard
& Peter M Visscher

Nature Genetics 42, 565–569 (2010) doi:10.1038/ng.608

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…conveniently implemented with a mathematically equivalent model that uses the SNPs to calculate the genomic relationship between pairs of subjects). Using this approach, we estimated the proportion of pheno­typic variance explained by the SNPs as 0.45 (s.e. = 0.08, Table 1), a nearly tenfold increase relative to the 5% explained by published and validated individual SNPs
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http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n7/abs/ng.608.html

Common SNPs explain a large proportion of the heritability for human height

Jian Yang,
Beben Benyamin,
Brian P McEvoy,
Scott Gordon,
Anjali K Henders,
Dale R Nyholt,
Pamela A Madden,
Andrew C Heath,
Nicholas G Martin,
Grant W Montgomery,
Michael E Goddard
& Peter M Visscher

Nature Genetics 42, 565–569 (2010) doi:10.1038/ng.608

QT:{{"
…conveniently implemented with a mathematically equivalent model
that uses the SNPs to calculate the genomic relationship between
pairs of subjects). Using this approach, we estimated the proportion
of pheno­typic variance explained by the SNPs as 0.45 (s.e. = 0.08,
Table 1), a nearly tenfold increase relative to the 5% explained by
published and validated individual SNPs
"}}

Common SNPs explain a large proportion (45%) of heritability for…height (80%) http://www.Nature.com/ng/journal/v42/n7/abs/ng.608.html Vs ’10 GWAS SNPs could only expl. 5%

#VitaminD on Trial
http://the-Scientist.com/2012/03/01/vitamin-d-on-trial Interesting mail the med. trial where participants aren’t explicitly checked for compliance

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“Once a month for the next 5 years, 20,000 people across the United States will find a package containing 62 pills in their mailboxes. As participants in a clinical trial, the recipients agreed to swallow two of the pills daily. But inevitably as the years pass, some pill packets will become buried under a stack of letters, or forgotten in a drawer. After all, these pills contain only vitamin D, fish oil, or an inert placebo—a person doesn’t need them to make it through the day. Plus, no one monitors who takes the pills daily and who does not.”

….

Scientists critical of the VITAL study question whether the daily dose of 2,000 IU is enough to distinguish the treatment group from the controls. If this were a drug trial, the placebo group would go without the drug completely. But it’s unethical to ask anyone to go without vitamin D. Doctors inform all participants that they can take up to 800 IU of vitamin D daily (the national recommendation for people over 70 years old) in addition to the pills they receive in the mail. If they do, the control group will sustain more than adequate levels. But some participants might decide to break the rules and head to the nearest corner store for high-dose supplements after being told that vitamin D may help prevent cancer and other diseases. And of course, many participants won’t follow through with taking the pills they’ve been sent in the mail. “You hope drop-ins and drop-outs will be equal on both sides, but they may not be,” warns biostatistician Gary Cutter at the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

A higher dose of vitamin D would widen the gap between the treatment and the control group, but Manson isn’t swayed. She says 2,000 IU will lift the treatment arm well above the level suggested to help protect against nonskeletal diseases, while she expects the controls to stabilize at levels sufficient for healthy bones. “Sure, we could have tested higher doses, but then right off the bat, we might have had safety issues,” Manson says.
…

Nonetheless, in other disease-prevention trials, investigators are gunning for better compliance and a fighting chance of showing an effect by doling out large, periodic doses of vitamin D. In the United Kingdom, a trial looking at the effect of vitamin D on respiratory infections (including the flu) is giving participants 120,000 IU of the vitamin every 2 months. And participants in the treatment arm of a vitamin D trial for type 2 diabetes prevention take an average dose of 89,684 IU once per week.
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