Those who can better detect bitter flavors may also be better equipped to fight off upper respiratory tract bacterial infections. Mary Harris reports
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'Tis the season when bacterial sinus infections run rampant. But some people are better able to ward off that malady. And they can be identified by their taste buds. Because those of us who can better detect bitter flavors may also be better equipped to fight off upper respiratory tract infections. The finding is in the Journal of Clinical Investigation. [Robert J. Lee et al., T2R38 taste receptor polymorphisms underlie susceptibility to upper respiratory infection]
It turns out that those bitter taste receptors aren?t just in our mouths. They?re also in our noses. Being better able to sense bitterness may be a first line of defense against bacteria. That?s because those bacteria actually taste bitter to us. So when taste receptors in our airways sense a bitter flavor they roll out the defenses. Cilia lining our sinuses beat faster, to sweep away germs. And bacteria-killing nitric oxide gets released into our nasal cavities. Better bitter sensing means a bigger response.
It?s one reason researchers at the Monell Chemical Senses Center are trying to come up with a universal taste test?a standardized measurement of how well we sense flavors. Because one key to living healthier could be on the tip of your tongue.
At one time, the novelist, critic, feminist, and troublemaker Rebecca West, whose birthday incidentally is on Friday, was considered one of the greatest writers of the 20th century. In 1947, her picture was on the cover of Time and her dazzling, ferocious prose was admired across the world; but now she is largely overlooked, underread, and out of print. Here, then, are 10 reasons to drop everything and read Rebecca West (and rather than her best known book, Black Lamb and Grey Falcon, I would suggest her stylish, innovative essays).
1) She was an ardent feminist (as she put it, ?I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is: I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute?) but also a spirited and independent thinker. She was not afraid to attack or mock the suffragist movement when necessary, but she was also one of its most vivid voices. (She once made fun of one of the feminists from the the New Freewoman ?who was always jumping up and asking us to be kind to illegitimate children, as if we all made a habit of seeking out illegitimate children and insulting them!?)
2) Her fierce feminist inquiries were original and inflammatory; she was not content with slogans and bromides, and went deeper than other politically progressive women of her time, and in fact, our time. She wrote, for instance, a provocative attack on women, herself included, for devoting too much of their energy to love and relationships in the New Republic, denouncing them for ?keeping themselves apart from the high purposes of life for an emotion that, schemed and planned for, was no better than the made excitement of drunkenness.? And later in a novel, The Judge, she elaborated the thought: ?Since men don?t love us nearly as much as we love them that leaves them much more spare vitality to be wonderful with.?
3) She used her famously fierce wit to deflate male pompousness. In a lively attack on the formidable Great Male Novelist of the day, H.G. Wells, with whom she would later embark on a long affair, the 19-year-old West wrote, ?Of course he is the old maid among novelists; even the sex obsession that lay clotted on Ann Veronica and The New Machiavelli like cold white sauce was merely an old maid?s mania.?
4) Though people like to think of the first ?nonfiction novel? as Truman Capote?s In Cold Blood, West was doing that kind of innovative nonfiction writing long before. The idea of taking a cultural event, and investigating it with the storytelling eye of the novelist informs both her crime writing and her longer work. (See her brilliant meditation on the public trial of an Englishman who became a radio personality for Nazi propaganda, Lord Haw-Haw, The Meaning of Treason, which first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker.
5) We associate a certain kind of cultural analysis, where the writer takes apart a social event and analyzes it in graceful prose, with the stylish deconstruction of new journalism, with writers like Joan Didion in the ?60s, but Rebecca West?s pieces doing just that were appearing in The New Yorker when the young Joan Didion might have been reading it. Take this passage about the wife of an accused murderer:
The suspicion that many men and some women felt about Mrs. Hume derived not from dissatisfaction at her explanation of her conduct, but from their reactions to her intense femininity. Her face, her body, her bearing, and above all, her soft preoccupied voice made an allusion to something outside the context and they assumed that something to be the truth about the murder. One might as well suspect a tree that blossomed in spring of making signals to another tree. What her being was alluding to, definitely, though with dignity, was sex.
6) Her life was not boring. She had H.G. Wells? love child in her very early 20s, and built her impressive career in the midst of a colorful and dramatic series of romantic entanglements.
7) Her letters. When H.G. Wells died, she wrote to a friend: ?Dear H.G., he was devil, he ruined my life, he starved me, he was an inexhaustible source of love and friendship to me for 34 years, we should never have met, I was the one person he cared to see at the end, I feel desolate because he has gone.?
8) What H. G. Wells called ?her splendid, disturbed brain.?
9) Several impressive and established women writers found her so threatening that they were extremely catty about her. Take Virginia?s Woolf?s description of the very young journalist: ?Rebecca is a cross between a charwoman and gypsy, but as tenacious as a terrier, with flashing eyes, very shabby, rather dirty nails, immense vitality, bad taste, suspicion of intellectuals and great intelligence.?
10) Her sentences. H.G. Wells said once that she wrote like God.
The INPEX-led Ichthys LNG Project in Australia has finalized arrangements for US$20 billion in project finance loans including those with eight export credit agencies (ECAs) and 24 commercial banks.
According to the press release issued by INPEX, the Ichthys project financing is the biggest project financing ever arranged in the international financial market.The project finance credit facilities are comprised of direct loans from ECAs, ECA insured or guaranteed commercial loans, commercial loans from 24 commercial banks and senior sponsor loans from the Ichthys LNG Project participants.
Direct loans from ECAs include US$5 billion direct loans from Japan Bank for International Cooperation (JBIC) and US$2.75 billion loans insured by Nippon Export and Investment Insurance (NEXI).
The Ichthys LNG Project is the first case where the Japanese company is leading such a world-scale LNG project as an operator. The finalization of the project financing arrangements is a major milestone in ensuring the successful development of the promising Ichthys LNG Project that will contribute not only to a long-term stable supply of cleaner energy to Japan but also to a diversification of Japan?s energy sources.
?The participants in the Ichthys LNG Project appreciate the continued support from financial institutions, the local communities, the governments of Australia, Western Australia and Northern Territory, as well as support from other stakeholders for timely delivery of the Ichthys LNG Project,? says INPEX in a press release.
Crooner Seal has made an offer on a 5,500-square-foot home in Brentwood, Calif., which had been recently listed for $6M. The place looks mighty swank, with a much more modern, bachelor-pad-esque feel than the the charming Beverly Hills chateau he shared with his supermodel ex, Heidi Klum. [TMZ; previously]
We thought it'd take years to see Surround Haptics make its way affordably into future living rooms. After all, it was only at last year's SIGGRAPH that Disney Research demoed the tech in a $5,000 prototype chair. But with the impending release of The Avengers-branded Vybe gaming pad, it's clear the family-friendly conglomerate found a way to fast-track its patent-pending sensory solution as an all-purpose peripheral. Set to hit Walmart and select Meijer stores in time for the holidays, the $99 speaker-laden pad utilizes an Arm Cortex M3 microprocessor and features an array of actuating motors to translate audio from most any source (e.g.,TV, videogame console, smartphone or tablet) into dynamic localized or general vibratory feedback. Whether or not it's actually pleasing to use remains to be seen -- our time with a preview model seemed to indicate otherwise. That said, if you're in the market for a full body tactile experience, we'd wager comfort's the last thing on your mind. Check out the official PR after the break.
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Notre Dame's Reilly Center highlights emerging ethical dilemmas in science and technologyPublic release date: 17-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jessica Baron baron.17@nd.edu 574-631-1880 University of Notre Dame
As a new year approaches, the University of Notre Dame's John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values has announced its first annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in Science and Technology for 2013.
The Reilly Center explores conceptual, ethical and policy issues where science and technology intersect with society from different disciplinary perspectives. Its goal is to promote the advancement of science and technology for the common good.
The center generated its first annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in science and technology with the help of Reilly fellows, other Notre Dame experts and friends of the center.
The center aimed to present a list of items for scientists and laypeople alike to consider in the coming months and years as new technologies develop. It will feature one of these issues on its website each month in 2013, giving readers more information, questions to ask and resources to consult.
The ethical dilemmas and policy issues are:
Personalized genetic tests/personalized medicine
Within the last ten years, the creation of fast, low-cost genetic sequencing has given the public direct access to genome sequencing and analysis, with little or no guidance from physicians or genetic counselors on how to process the information. What are the potential privacy issues and how do we protect this very personal and private information? Are we headed towards a new era of therapeutic intervention to increase quality of life, or a new era of eugenics?
Hacking into medical devices
Implanted medical devices, such as pacemakers, are susceptible to hackers. Barnaby Jack recently demonstrated the vulnerability of a pacemaker by breaching the security of the wireless device from his laptop and reprogramming it to deliver an 830-volt shock. How do we make sure these devices are secure?
Driverless zipcars
In three states Nevada, Florida, and California it is now legal for Google to operate its driverless cars. Google's goal is to create a fully automated vehicle that is safer and more effective than a human-operated vehicle and they plan to marry this idea with the concept of the Zipcar. The ethics of automation and equality of access for people of different income levels are just a taste of the difficult ethical, legal, and policy questions we will need to address.
3-D Printing
Scientists are attempting to use 3-D printing to create everything from architectural models to human organs, but we could be looking at a future when we can print personalized pharmaceuticals or home-printed guns and explosives. For now, 3-D printing is largely the realm of artists and designers, but we can easily envision a future where 3-D printers are affordable and patterns abound for products both benign and malicious, and that cut out the manufacturing sector completely.
Adaptation to climate change
The differential susceptibility of peoples around the world to climate change warrants an ethical discussion. We need to identify effective and safe ways to help people deal with the effects of climate change, as well as learn to manage and manipulate wild species and nature in order to preserve biodiversity. Some of these adaptation strategies might be highly technical (e.g. building sea walls to stem off sea level rise), but others are social and cultural (e.g., changing agricultural practices.
Low-quality and counterfeit pharmaceuticals
Until recently, detecting low-quality and counterfeit pharmaceuticals required access to complex testing equipment, often unavailable in developing countries where these problems abound. The enormous amount of trade in pharmaceutical intermediaries and active ingredients raise a number of issues, from the technical (improvement in manufacturing practices and analytical capabilities) to the ethical and legal (for example, India ruled in favor of manufacturing life-saving drugs, even If it violates US patent law).
Autonomous systems
Machines (both for peaceful purposes and for war fighting) are increasingly evolving from human-controlled, to automated, to autonomous, with the ability to act on their own without human input. As these systems operate without human control and are designed to function and make decisions on their own, the ethical, legal, social, and policy implications have grown exponentially. Who is responsible for the actions undertaken by autonomous systems? If robotic technology can potentially reduce the number of human fatalities, is it the responsibility of scientists to design these systems?
Human-animal hybrids (chimeras)
So far scientists have kept human-animal hybrids on the cellular level. According to some, even more modest experiments involving animal embryos and human stem cells violate human dignity and blur the line between species. Is interspecies research the next frontier in understanding humanity and curing disease, or a slippery slope, rife with ethical dilemmas, toward creating new species?
Ensuring access to wireless and spectrum
Mobile wireless connectivity is having a profound effect on society in both developed and developing countries. These technologies are completely transforming how we communicate, conduct business, learn, form relationships, navigate, and entertain ourselves. At the same time, government agencies increasingly rely on radio spectrum for their critical missions. This confluence of wireless technology developments and societal needs present numerous challenges and opportunities for making the most effective use of the radio spectrum. We now need to have a policy conversation about how to make the most effective use of the precious radio spectrum, and to close the digital access divide for underserved (rural, low-income, developing areas) populations.
Data collection and privacy
How often do we consider the massive amounts of data we give to commercial entities when we use social media, store discount cards, or order goods via the Internet? Now that microprocessors and permanent memory are inexpensive technology, we need think about the kinds of information that should be collected and retained. Should we create a diabetic insulin implant that could notify your doctor or insurance company when you make poor diet choices, and should that decision make you ineligible for certain types of medical treatment? Should cars be equipped to monitor speed and other measures of good driving, and should this data be subpoenaed by the authorities following a crash? These issues require appropriate policy discussions in order to bridge the gap between data collection and meaningful outcomes.
Human Enhancements
Pharmaceutical, surgical, mechanical, and neurological enhancements are already available for therapeutic purposes. But these same enhancements can be used to magnify human biological function beyond the societal norm. Where do we draw the line between therapy and enhancement? How do we justify enhancing human bodies when so many individuals still lack access to basic therapeutic medicine?
###
For a more expanded discussion of each topic, as well as resources to consult, visit: http://reilly.nd.edu/outreach/emerging-ethical-dilemmas-and-policy-issues-in-science-and-technology/
In an era where online voting has become a way of life, the Reilly Center also is offering visitors to its site the opportunity to vote for their top emerging ethical dilemma or policy issue by clicking on http://reilly.nd.edu/outreach/emerging-ethical-dilemmas-and-policy-issues-in-science-and-technology/vote-on-our-list-2013/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Notre Dame's Reilly Center highlights emerging ethical dilemmas in science and technologyPublic release date: 17-Dec-2012 [ | E-mail | Share ]
Contact: Jessica Baron baron.17@nd.edu 574-631-1880 University of Notre Dame
As a new year approaches, the University of Notre Dame's John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology and Values has announced its first annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in Science and Technology for 2013.
The Reilly Center explores conceptual, ethical and policy issues where science and technology intersect with society from different disciplinary perspectives. Its goal is to promote the advancement of science and technology for the common good.
The center generated its first annual list of emerging ethical dilemmas and policy issues in science and technology with the help of Reilly fellows, other Notre Dame experts and friends of the center.
The center aimed to present a list of items for scientists and laypeople alike to consider in the coming months and years as new technologies develop. It will feature one of these issues on its website each month in 2013, giving readers more information, questions to ask and resources to consult.
The ethical dilemmas and policy issues are:
Personalized genetic tests/personalized medicine
Within the last ten years, the creation of fast, low-cost genetic sequencing has given the public direct access to genome sequencing and analysis, with little or no guidance from physicians or genetic counselors on how to process the information. What are the potential privacy issues and how do we protect this very personal and private information? Are we headed towards a new era of therapeutic intervention to increase quality of life, or a new era of eugenics?
Hacking into medical devices
Implanted medical devices, such as pacemakers, are susceptible to hackers. Barnaby Jack recently demonstrated the vulnerability of a pacemaker by breaching the security of the wireless device from his laptop and reprogramming it to deliver an 830-volt shock. How do we make sure these devices are secure?
Driverless zipcars
In three states Nevada, Florida, and California it is now legal for Google to operate its driverless cars. Google's goal is to create a fully automated vehicle that is safer and more effective than a human-operated vehicle and they plan to marry this idea with the concept of the Zipcar. The ethics of automation and equality of access for people of different income levels are just a taste of the difficult ethical, legal, and policy questions we will need to address.
3-D Printing
Scientists are attempting to use 3-D printing to create everything from architectural models to human organs, but we could be looking at a future when we can print personalized pharmaceuticals or home-printed guns and explosives. For now, 3-D printing is largely the realm of artists and designers, but we can easily envision a future where 3-D printers are affordable and patterns abound for products both benign and malicious, and that cut out the manufacturing sector completely.
Adaptation to climate change
The differential susceptibility of peoples around the world to climate change warrants an ethical discussion. We need to identify effective and safe ways to help people deal with the effects of climate change, as well as learn to manage and manipulate wild species and nature in order to preserve biodiversity. Some of these adaptation strategies might be highly technical (e.g. building sea walls to stem off sea level rise), but others are social and cultural (e.g., changing agricultural practices.
Low-quality and counterfeit pharmaceuticals
Until recently, detecting low-quality and counterfeit pharmaceuticals required access to complex testing equipment, often unavailable in developing countries where these problems abound. The enormous amount of trade in pharmaceutical intermediaries and active ingredients raise a number of issues, from the technical (improvement in manufacturing practices and analytical capabilities) to the ethical and legal (for example, India ruled in favor of manufacturing life-saving drugs, even If it violates US patent law).
Autonomous systems
Machines (both for peaceful purposes and for war fighting) are increasingly evolving from human-controlled, to automated, to autonomous, with the ability to act on their own without human input. As these systems operate without human control and are designed to function and make decisions on their own, the ethical, legal, social, and policy implications have grown exponentially. Who is responsible for the actions undertaken by autonomous systems? If robotic technology can potentially reduce the number of human fatalities, is it the responsibility of scientists to design these systems?
Human-animal hybrids (chimeras)
So far scientists have kept human-animal hybrids on the cellular level. According to some, even more modest experiments involving animal embryos and human stem cells violate human dignity and blur the line between species. Is interspecies research the next frontier in understanding humanity and curing disease, or a slippery slope, rife with ethical dilemmas, toward creating new species?
Ensuring access to wireless and spectrum
Mobile wireless connectivity is having a profound effect on society in both developed and developing countries. These technologies are completely transforming how we communicate, conduct business, learn, form relationships, navigate, and entertain ourselves. At the same time, government agencies increasingly rely on radio spectrum for their critical missions. This confluence of wireless technology developments and societal needs present numerous challenges and opportunities for making the most effective use of the radio spectrum. We now need to have a policy conversation about how to make the most effective use of the precious radio spectrum, and to close the digital access divide for underserved (rural, low-income, developing areas) populations.
Data collection and privacy
How often do we consider the massive amounts of data we give to commercial entities when we use social media, store discount cards, or order goods via the Internet? Now that microprocessors and permanent memory are inexpensive technology, we need think about the kinds of information that should be collected and retained. Should we create a diabetic insulin implant that could notify your doctor or insurance company when you make poor diet choices, and should that decision make you ineligible for certain types of medical treatment? Should cars be equipped to monitor speed and other measures of good driving, and should this data be subpoenaed by the authorities following a crash? These issues require appropriate policy discussions in order to bridge the gap between data collection and meaningful outcomes.
Human Enhancements
Pharmaceutical, surgical, mechanical, and neurological enhancements are already available for therapeutic purposes. But these same enhancements can be used to magnify human biological function beyond the societal norm. Where do we draw the line between therapy and enhancement? How do we justify enhancing human bodies when so many individuals still lack access to basic therapeutic medicine?
###
For a more expanded discussion of each topic, as well as resources to consult, visit: http://reilly.nd.edu/outreach/emerging-ethical-dilemmas-and-policy-issues-in-science-and-technology/
In an era where online voting has become a way of life, the Reilly Center also is offering visitors to its site the opportunity to vote for their top emerging ethical dilemma or policy issue by clicking on http://reilly.nd.edu/outreach/emerging-ethical-dilemmas-and-policy-issues-in-science-and-technology/vote-on-our-list-2013/
[ | E-mail | Share ]
?
AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
Rebecca West 
Crooner Seal has made an offer on a 5,500-square-foot home in Brentwood, Calif., which had been recently listed for $6M. The place looks mighty swank, with a much more modern, bachelor-pad-esque feel than the the charming Beverly Hills chateau he shared with his supermodel ex, Heidi Klum. [TMZ; previously]
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Public release date: 17-Dec-2012
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