Genetic variation increases risk of metabolic side effects in children on some antipsychotics

Researchers have found a genetic variation predisposing children to six-times greater risk of developing metabolic syndrome when taking second-generation anti-psychotic medications. Metabolic syndrome is a cluster of conditions that are risk factors for cardiovascular disease. The study showed a close association with two conditions in particular: high blood pressure and elevated fasting blood sugar levels, which is a precursor to diabetes. The research is published today in the medical research journal Translational Psychiatry.
"This is the first report of an underlying biological factor predisposing children to complications associated with second-generation anti-psychotic medication use," says Dr Dina Panagiotopoulos, study co-author, clinician scientist at the Child & Family Research Institute (CFRI), pediatric endocrinologist at BC Children's Hospital, and assistant professor, Department of Pediatrics, University of British Columbia (UBC).
"It's concerning because these children take medications to treat a chronic disease – mental illness – and then develop risk factors for a second chronic disease," says Dr. Angela Devlin, study co-author, CFRI scientist and assistant professor in the UBC Department of Pediatrics.
Second-generation anti-psychotics are prescribed to approximately 5500 children and youth in British Columbia for psychotic disorders, mood and anxiety disorders, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism spectrum disorders, adjustment disorders and substance abuse. Of these medications, the two most commonly prescribed in B.C. are quetiapine (Seroquel) and risperidone (Risperdal).
For the study, researchers assessed 209 children who were inpatients between April 2008 and June 2011 at the Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Department at BC Children's Hospital, an agency of the Provincial Health Services Authority. Their average age was 13 years, and 105 of the children were treated with second-generation anti-psychotics while 112 did not use these drugs. DNA analysis showed that eight per cent of children from both groups had a genetic variation called C677T on the MTHFR gene. Children with the MTHFR C677T variant who used these medications were six-times more likely to have metabolic syndrome.
The researchers targeted the MTHFR C677T variant because it is known to be associated with metabolic syndrome in adults who have schizophrenia, and with cardiovascular disease in adults who don't have psychiatric illness.

Dr. Devlin and Dr. Panagiotopoulos say their discovery is an important step to preventing and managing metabolic complications associated with second-generation antipsychotic medications. It is critical to reduce these risks in childhood because adults with mental illness have a 19 per cent increased mortality rate that is largely due to cardiovascular disease risk.

The MTHFR gene is involved in metabolizing the B-vitamin folate.
"We now plan to assess B vitamin status and dietary intake in children who take these medications to gain a better understanding of this association," says Dr. Panagiotopoulos.
More information: This study was funded by CFRI and the Canadian Diabetes Association. Dr. Panagiotopoulos's previous research on the metabolic side effects of anti-psychotics in children led to national recommendations for clinicians on monitoring and managing the care of children who take these medications. The recommendations were published in the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in August 2011 and in Pediatrics and Child Health in November 2011.
Provided by Child & Family Research Institute
"Genetic variation increases risk of metabolic side effects in children on some antipsychotics." January 24th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-genetic-variation-metabolic-side-effects.html
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Robert Karl Stonjek

The impact of deleting 5 personality disorders in the new DSM-5

A newly published paper from Rhode Island Hospital reports on the impact to patients if five personality disorders are removed from the upcoming revision to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, 5th edition (DSM-5). Based on their study, the researchers believe these changes could result in false-negative diagnoses for patients. The paper is published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry and is now available online in advance of print.
The DSM-5 Personality and Personality Disorders work group made several recommendations to change the approach toward diagnosing personality disorders. One of those recommendations is to delete five personality disorders as a way to reduce the level of comorbidity among the disorders. The ones originally slated to be removed include paranoid, schizoid, histrionic, narcissistic and dependent personality disorders. More recently, the Work Group recommended that narcissistic be retained. Lead author Mark Zimmerman, M.D., director of outpatient psychiatry at Rhode Island Hospital, points out, however, that no data were cited describing the impact this deletion had, or might have, on the overall prevalence of personality disorders. Likewise, no research was cited for the Work Group's reversal in deciding to retain narcissistic personality disorder.
"When it comes to revising the official diagnostic classification system, the guiding principle should be that criteria should not be changed in the absence of research demonstrating that the new approach is superior to the old in either validity or clinical utility, preferably both," Zimmerman states. "Despite assurances that only data-driven modification would be made, with each new edition of the DSM, we have witnessed repeated instances of changes being made in the absence of sufficient data demonstrating the new criteria is superior."
To evaluate the proposed changes of deleting five personality disorders from the DSM-5, Zimmerman and his colleagues evaluated 2,150 psychiatric outpatients, more than one-quarter of whom were diagnosed with one of the 10 DSM-IV personality disorders. When removing the proposed deleted disorders, 59 patients who were diagnosed with a personality disorder according to the DSM-IV criteria would no longer be so diagnosed. Thus, the findings suggest that patients will have false-negative diagnoses based on the proposed revisions to the DSM-IV.
Zimmerman comments, "The findings of the present study highlight our concerns about adopting changes in the diagnostic manual without adequate empirical evaluation beforehand. To be sure, there are problems with the classification of personality disorders, however, the identification of a problem is only the first step of a process resulting in a change to diagnostic criteria."
He concludes, "The classification of personality disorders would not be improved if the new criteria or diagnostic material were more clinically useful but less reliable and valid."
Provided by Lifespan

"The impact of deleting 5 personality disorders in the new DSM-5." January 24th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-impact-deleting-personality-disorders-dsm-.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Study finds religion helps us gain self-control

Thinking about religion gives people more self-control on later, unrelated tasks; according to results from a series of recent Queen's University study.
"After unscrambling sentences containing religiously oriented words, participants in our studies exercised significantly more self-control," says psychology graduate student and lead researcher on the study, Kevin Rounding.
Study participants were given a sentence containing five words to unscramble. Some contained religious themes and others did not. After unscrambling the sentences, participants were asked to complete a number of tasks that required self-control – enduring discomfort, delaying gratification, exerting patience, and refraining from impulsive responses.
Participants who had unscrambled the sentences containing religious themes had more self-control in completing their tasks.
"Our most interesting finding was that religious concepts were able to refuel self-control after it had been depleted by another unrelated task," says Mr. Rounding. "In other words, even when we would predict people to be unable to exert self-control, after completing the religiously themed task they defied logic and were able to muster self-control."
"Until now, I believed religion was a matter of faith; people had little 'practical' use for religion," Mr. Rounding explains. "This research actually suggests that religion can serve a very useful function in society. People can turn to religion not just for transcendence and fears regarding death and an after-life but also for practical purposes."
Other members of the research team include psychology graduate student Albert Lee and Queen's professors Jill Jacobson and Li-Jun Ji. The study was published in Psychological Science.
Provided by Queen's University

"Study finds religion helps us gain self-control." January 24th, 2012. http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-01-religion-gain-self-control.html

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Robert Karl Stonjek

Did Global Warming Destroy My Hometown?

Last May, a massive tornado leveled Joplin, Missouri. Was it chance, or a warning of things to come?

By Seth Fletcher

Pre-Tornado The Joplin, Missouri neighborhood where the author grew up. Google Maps

The tornado that destroyed my hometown was born in an otherwise unremarkable atmospheric collision over the American Central Plains. On May 22, 2011, a geostationary satellite 22,300 miles overhead recorded an extensive collection of cloud lines drifting over southeastern Kansas. At around 2 p.m., one of the cloud lines exploded like a cartographic-scale dry-ice bomb. Dense white vapours poured from nothing, and over the next five hours, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration monitored the growing supercell thunderstorm as it drifted toward a three-letter abbreviation on the map: “JLN.”

Just after 5 p.m., two storm chasers driving toward the western edge of Joplin, Missouri, spotted a translucent set of tendrils reaching down from the storm’s low black thunderhead. Almost as quickly as they formed, the tendrils disappeared. And then things took a turn. A dark blob half a mile wide congealed and dropped from the clouds. As it touched the ground, it filled with sparks from ruptured power lines, like a jar of fireflies. At 5:41, the National Weather Service office in Springfield, Missouri, issued this alert: NUMEROUS REPORTS OF TORNADO ON THE GROUND WEST OF JOPLIN AND POWER FLASHES.

"The tornado, as if it had been fueled by manmade structures and was now depleted, vanished."

The tornado intensified as it strafed the roofs and treetops of Joplin’s western suburbs. By the time it reached the city limits, where 49,000 people lived, it had evolved into an EF-5, the most destructive type of tornado on the Enhanced Fujita scale. Unlike EF-4s, which are merely “devastating,” EF-5s produce “incredible” damage. An EF-4 is powerful enough to scrape civilisation off the planet in minutes. An EF-5 is more powerful still.

When the storm hit Joplin, the winds inside the funnel were spinning faster than 200 mph—yet the whole column was crawling forward at less than 10 mph, giving it time to wood-chip everything beneath it. The tornado produced great incredible EF-5-worthy damage in the office park surrounding St. John’s Hospital, one of the region’s major medical centres. In 45 seconds, it shifted the nine-story structure four inches off its foundation.

By then, the tornado was three-quarters of a mile wide. It tacked slightly to the north, flattened a downtrodden swath of old Main Street. After gnawing through half a dozen intervening residential blocks, the tornado hit Joplin High School, a recently refurbished brick complex at the town’s middle-class core. Security cameras intended to monitor lunch-hour skippers now recorded surges of water that rendered the parking lot indistinguishable from a harbour in a hurricane. Inside, chairs and papers swarmed as the walls began to collapse.

May 23, 2011: The exact same neighbourhood, pictured the day after the deadliest single tornado in modern history. Most of the damaged areas were unrecognisable even to lifelong residents. 

The tornado churned on to the east, tagging its path with bizarre signatures—wood-piercing asphalt, rubber-piercing wood. It shaved away the neighborhood just east of the high school, including the little white one-story house where I spent my teenage years. It continued toward the main thoroughfare, Range Line Road, and destroyed a Home Depot, an Academy Sports & Outdoors, a Wal-Mart and a Pizza Hut, shotgunning shoppers with glass and metal and wood, burying some beneath cinder blocks, and needling others with blades of grass.

Meteorologists watching radar screens at a safe remove now saw a white-pink blob representing the tornado’s swirl of debris swing through the rest of the city like a wrecking ball. But when it reached the open pasture at Joplin’s eastern edge, the tornado—as if it had been fueled by manmade structures and was now depleted—delivered a few dying spasms and vanished.

* * *

When we heard the news, my wife and I were eating dinner at home in Brooklyn. Her sister called: There had been a tornado, and it sounded bad. Growing up in Joplin means growing up with tornado warnings, so I was certain this was yet another false alarm. Still, we moved to the couch and turned on the Weather Channel. Mike Bettes, one of the network’s on-camera meteorologists, was standing in a field of debris, talking to dazed Joplinites whose homes had just been levelled. At first, we thought the crew was filming outside of town, in the country. A couple of houses down? Not so bad for late May in southwest Missouri. Then the camera turned and landed on St. John’s Hospital. Windows blasted out, and every surrounding structure was demolished; it looked like the backdrop from a high-budget zombie movie. The hospital is in the middle of town. It’s also about half a mile from my dad’s house. On camera, Bettes choked up, turned his head, and cried.That’s when we freaked out.

We started calling, texting, posting urgent Facebook messages, asking family and friends for information. I haven’t lived in Joplin since leaving for college, but my parents, grandparents, and plenty of aunts, uncles, cousins and old friends still live there. The same goes for my wife, another Joplin native. No phone calls were getting through, but our parents texted back quickly: They were fine, and so were their homes. Throughout the evening, it became obvious that the storm was extraordinarily severe. Nonetheless, it wasn’t until the morning that we realized the damage reports streaming in over Facebook weren’t isolated. One continuous stream of demolition connected them all.

The tornado destroyed 20 per cent of the property in Joplin, killed 161 people, and injured 1,150 more, all in a town with just 49,000 residents. That doesn’t quite make it the deadliest tornado in history. The worst was the Tri-State tornado of March 18, 1925, which, in three and a half hours, killed 695 people in Missouri, Illinois and Indiana. But because the Tri-State tornado (and the other five storms responsible for more deaths than the Joplin tornado) happened before the invention of modern weather-monitoring instruments, it’s unclear whether they involved single funnel clouds or entire swarms. As a result, the Joplin tornado is the deadliest single tornado on record.

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How Flies Somersault to Safety Just Before You Swat Them

 

By Clay Dillow

Somersaulting to the Wing via New Scientist

Ever wonder why flies always get away when you try to swat them? It turns out they’re extremely acrobatic. Like, Neo-in-the-Matrix acrobatic. And New Scientist has captured one in near bullet-time to prove it.

This video is one of the winners in a contest held by the Flight Artists group at the Wageningen University in the Netherlands in which amateur filmmakers were taught how to use very high-speed cameras to shoot flying animals and plant seeds. The video captured here was taken by two biologists from the University of Washington and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute who study fruit flies in flight.

What they captured is a maneuver that takes place so quickly that it can’t really be observed in real time. It’s an evasive maneuver, undertaken when the fly is startled by something. As you can see, it goes into a quick and graceful forward somersault from its perch and catches air as it starts to fall, allowing it to regain control and fly away. Not bad for a fruit fly.

Samsung's Smart Window

Part-window, part-touch screen. Cue the Minority Report references.

DAVID ZAX 

A “smart window” from Samsung took away the award for innovation at CES this year. What’s a smart window, and why do you need one right away?

There’s a bit of uncertainty around the term, it seems. When we introduced to you “smart windows” from Soladigm in August of 2010, we were referring to “tunable” windows that ran an electric current to adjust the amount of light that was let in. Here was a smart window like a smart meter, designed to save energy.

Samsung’s concept of a smart window is very different: basically, it would turn your window into something a lot more like an iPad. If windows and touchs creens had offspring, Samsung’s product would be it. The inevitable references to Minority Report abound.

The device is really a transparent touch screen LCD that can be fitted to any window, so long as it’s no longer than some 46 inches. Resolution is 1366 x 768 pixels, reportedly. During the day, illumination is provided from outside. At night, built-in lights kick in. A video from Samsung video gives a nice overview:

At first glance, the window, while cool, isn’t necessarily innovative: it just brings all the apps and widgets we’ve come to love to your window. But Samsung has included a few unique touches. My favorite is the “blinds” feature, where with the swipe of your finger, you can open and close virtual blinds that will actually blot out the light. 

A video report from MobileNations says that mass production will begin “in the coming months.” Samsung has indicated an intention to put the thing out by the end of the year. No word on price yet.

Aren’t there privacy concerns, as windows become devices for browsing, tweeting, and watching TV? Samsung assures that your neighbors won’t be able to see what you’re doing; the glassworks like a one-way mirror when viewed from the outside.

Here’s the main problem with Samsung’s “smart window” concept, though: touch screens, as Steve Jobs said, “don’t want to be vertical”—holding your arm out to fiddle with them just plain doesn’t feel nice, as I addressed in a post earlier in the week. Does that mean the only suitable market for a Samsung smart window is a glass-bottom boat?

Maybe the "smarter" windows are Soladigm's after all.

Startup Makes Peel-Off Solar Cells

Solar peel: This 25-micrometer film of crystalline silicon, deposited on a layer of metal, was produced using a new technique.
Astrowatt

ENERGY

Astrowatt's wafer-making method could mean cheaper solar power.

• BY KEVIN BULLIS

Audio »

Today, most solar cells are made with a process that turns almost half of the raw material—highly refined and processed crystalline silicon—into sawdust. A new process developed by startup Astrowatt aims to eliminate most of this waste while making solar cells more efficient.

Conventional solar manufacturing requires sawing a block of crystalline silicon into wafers about 180 micrometers thick. As the saw cuts through the silicon, it turns almost the same amount of silicon (a layer 100 to 150 micrometers thick) into sawdust that can't typically be reused.

With the conventional process, a millimeter of silicon can produce about three solar-cell wafers. Astrowatt says it can make five or more wafers from the same amount of material by mostly replacing the sawing with a technique that allows it to peel thin layers of silicon away from a thick silicon wafer.

Astrowatt is one of several companies hoping to substantially reduce the amount of silicon needed to make solar cells. Although the price of silicon has dropped in recent years, it's still the most expensive item in solar-panel manufacturing.

The Astrowatt process begins by sawing a block of silicon into relatively thick wafers, each nearly a millimeter thick. The company then modifies the top of each wafer so that it can act as the back of a solar cell—a process that ends with depositing a layer of metal onto the wafer.

Next, the wafer is heated, causing stress within the material because the metal and silicon expand at different rates. Applying a wedge to the edge of the stressed silicon starts a crack that propagates from one edge to the other, allowing the engineers to finally peel away the metal film along with a thin, 25-micrometer layer of silicon. Crucially, the crystalline structure of silicon allows the crack to propagate evenly across the entire wafer, and the silicon is flexible, so it won't shatter as it's peeled off.

The resulting metal-silicon film is then further processed to form the front of a solar cell. The entire process is repeated, with successive 25-micrometer layers being peeled off the original thick wafer. Once this is finished, what's left is a wafer that's still relatively thick, ranging from 180 micrometers to a few hundred. It can either be used to make a conventional solar cell, or it can be recycled by dropping it back into the furnace that produces blocks of silicon. (Unlike the sawdust, the wafer remains of high enough quality to be recycled.)

Other companies have made thin wafers of silicon using new sawing techniques or other methods. But other approaches tend to produce fragile wafers, and they can't be used with existing cell manufacturing equipment. Rajesh Rao, the company's director of technology, says the metal backing on Astrowatt's cells makes them more durable.
The company has demonstrated the technology in the lab, making large, eight-inch-wide wafers and small solar cells that are nearly 15 percent efficient. That's slightly less efficient than conventional crystalline silicon solar cells, but the researchers haven't yet applied all of the known methods for increasing solar-cell efficiency. In fact, the cells could theoretically reach higher efficiencies than conventional silicon solar cells because they're thinner, which makes it easier for electrons to exit the cell to generate electricity.
The next step is to demonstrate the process on commercial-scale equipment. Almost all of the steps in the process can be done on machines already found in solar-cell factories.
So far, Astrowatt has raised an undisclosed amount in an initial round of venture capital investment, along with $1.5 million under the U.S. Department of Energy's Sunshot initiative, which aims to make solar power competitive with electricity from fossil fuels.
The approach does have some drawbacks. The metal-silicon films curl up slightly, which makes them somewhat difficult to handle on a conventional production line. Also, unlike some other approaches, this one doesn't completely eliminate the need to make a block of crystalline silicon and saw into it, although it does greatly reduce the amount of sawing needed.
Other approaches, such as one being developed by startup 1366 Technologies, aim to eliminate these steps altogether, which could further reduce manufacturing costs. That technology, however, has challenges of its own, including achieving high yields and producing high-quality silicon.

Chinese Solar Companies Sell Below Cost

The conclusion could kick off a trade war between the U.S. and China, and harm solar innovation.

KEVIN BULLIS 

It looks likely that a U.S. government investigation into the pricing of solar panels by companies in China will find that they are selling below cost, perhaps aided by government support.

A source involved in the investigation, which is part of a trade dispute initiated by a complaint from seven U.S. solar panel makers, says that analysis of available data suggests that the costs of making the solar panels are higher than the prices companies in China are selling them for. They're able to survive, he says, because they have better balance sheets than their competitors, and can afford to sell at a loss, at least temporarily.

The results of the study are being prepared for publication, and could be out next month. The U.S. solar panel makers who asked for the investigation have asked the U.S. government to impose tariffs that would double the price of solar panels imported from China, saying that unfair pricing has hurt their ability to be profitable. The U.S. Department of Commerce is expected to announce its initial findings, and its decision about imposing a tariff, as early as this month. The top solar panel manufacturers in China have denied any wrong-doing, and the Chinese government is threatening to apply tariffs of its own on solar panel related materials and equipment imported from the U.S..

Whatever the facts of the case prove to be, if large tariffs are applied to solar panels from China, what will this mean for innovation in solar power, and the ultimate goal of achieving affordable solar power?

Some, including the prominent solar researcher Martin Green, have argued that trade barriers will stymie innovation. He says that remarkable reductions in the cost of solar panels have been the result of innovations coming from countries around the world. Cheap solar, he says, depends on taking advantage of what each country has done best, whether that be making solar cell materials, the equipment for manufacturing solar panels, or actually manufacturing the solar panels themselves.

Other experts have argued that unfair pricing is hurting some of the most innovative solar panel manufacturers, forcing them out of business.

While tariffs could help keep solar panel makers afloat in the United States, they could hurt other U.S. companies. China currently imports large amounts of solar cell materials and manufacturing equipment from the U.S.. If China imposes retaliatory tariffs, it could hurt the companies that sell to China. These include innovative companies such as GT Advanced Technologies, which is lowering the cost of solar power by inventing better ways to make the crystalline silicon used in most solar panels.

The impact on innovation could also depend upon the extent to which companies in China are themselves innovating. Most of their success so far has had to do with their ability to finance, and quickly build, solar cells that use the latest available equipment. But some have started to makesignificant improvements to solar cell manufacturing and solar cell design. Many Chinese solar companies are themselves going out of business due to the difficult market for solar panels, and the tariffs could hurt those that depend on the U.S. market.