Just a few weeks ago, a friend of mine sustained a concussion playing football in his final regular season college game of the season. This caused me to look further into the NCAA’s regulations concerning athlete education and reporting rules for this injury. While a variety of colleges and universities have introduced programs to help protect athletes from concussions, a recent Harvard study has concluded that, when examining the specific components of those plans, many schools still fail to meet accepted standards.

According to an article from WebMD.com, the most common and least severe type of traumatic brain injury is a concussion. Between the years 2001 and 2009, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, estimated that 173,285 people under the age 19 were treated in hospital emergency rooms for concussion related sports and activities. Concussions can be difficult to diagnose and signs may not appear for days or weeks after the injury.

Surprisingly, universities are not actually required to report a plan to the NCAA. This is likely to result in each school having a divergent set of actions from the recommended guidelines. However, integrity is dependent on self-reporting practices. While these rules have been in place for a number of years, only until recently have they been evaluated with a systematic study.

Researchers just conducted a comprehensive examination of whether universities actually comply with the Concussion Policy and Legislation adopted by the NCAA in 2010. They found these results through the use of a surveys sent to 1,066 NCAA institutions. They asked population-specific questions about institutional concussion management. Due to the use of surveys, some degree of response bias will be inevitable. However, the large sample size used in the study allowed researchers to increase the accuracy of their results and gain information from a representative group.

Interestingly, 92 percent of schools specified that they have instituted a concussion management plan. This should include the availability of a team doctor, an athletic trainer, and annual athlete concussion education. However, the conclusions suggested that, “many schools could improve in a number of areas, particularly enhanced education of coaches and athletes on the risks of concussion and increasing sports medicine staffing.”

Specifically in the study, researchers found that athlete and coach education on concussions positively correlates with compliance to reporting situations. This is an area that researchers suggest schools can improve. However, it is indefinite whether causation is a factor. The authors, Christine Baugh, a Harvard Health Policy Ph.D. student, and Emily Kroshus, a Post Doctoral Fellow at the Harvard School of Public Health, both desire that the results of the study will serve to motivate the NCAA to use its regulatory capabilities to improve concussion policies and increase medical staffing.

As Kroshus asserts, “figuring out how to most effectively and feasibly encourage implementation is a difficult proposition, given the multifaceted nature of effective concussion management.” Nevertheless, this study may serve as the first step in helping the NCAA recognize the challenges that they and schools will face in encouraging compliance. More research that provides evidence of the seriousness of this injury may be necessary to convince the NCAA to use its regulatory capabilities to ensure athlete safety.

Sources:

Improved compliance needed with NCAA concussion guidelines

http://ajs.sagepub.com/content/early/2014/10/20/0363546514553090.abstract

http://www.webmd.com/brain/concussion-traumatic-brain-injury-symptoms-causes-treatments?page=2

http://www.bu.edu/cte/about/leadership/christine-baugh/

First reports of the Ebola outbreak in Western Africa appeared in March 2014 and over time, it has developed rapidly as the deadliest outbreak of the of the disease since its discovery. Ebola is transmissible by means of bodily fluids and can affect a person anytime from 2 to 21 days after. During this time, victims may have no knowledge that they are infected. For this reason, it is vital to be able to track where people have been and where they are going.

Epidemiologist and associate director of the Center for Communicable Disease Dynamics, Caroline Buckee, has recently been working with a team of researchers to use cell phone data to track people’s travel patterns across West Africa in an effort to fight the Ebola epidemic.

For a moment, consider how often you carry your cell phone. Personally, I never forget this important device whenever I travel. Cell phones are ubiquitous in almost all countries – even those of different financial backgrounds. They have the ability to generate massive amounts of data about human mobility. Cell phone “ping” towers make this possible.

A cell phone’s “ping” refers to the process of determining its location, with reasonable accuracy, at any given point in time. By using a phone’s GPS location capabilities, it is relatively easy to track its movements. Specifically, “to ping” is the process of sending a signal to a particular cell phone and in return, receiving the requested data. Thus, these “pings” from cell phone towers have the capability to exhibit where people have traveled after leaving an area with an Ebola outbreak. This can indicate where a disease cluster may appear next and where to concentrate health care efforts.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, Buckee and her colleagues are currently working with a Swedish nonprofit organization named Flowminder, in an effort to analyze data from Senegal and Ivory Coast. The West African mobile carrier, known as Orange Telecom, has used the aforementioned data collecting method to provide the information for this research.

Nevertheless, in a November article in the Boston Globe, Buckee asserted, “The first priority has to be clinical, just getting people cared for and treated.” She goes on to describe the necessary planning policies, including projections for “how many beds they’ll need, how many gowns to send out, and where to send them.”

Last month, in a separate study published in Science, Yale researchers developed a model that tested the effects of interventions, such as tracing all the contacts of a sick person. This model suggests the virus will infect 224 new people each day in Liberia alone. They asserted that unlike past outbreaks, “where single measures such as ensuring burials were don’t in a sanitary way may have been sufficient,” their study found that multiple actions may be needed to contain the disease. Their study design helps to reduce biases and is thus more credible. Ultimately, this study is relevant in accessing the actions that health care officials can potentially take after gaining knowledge of Ebola from cell phone data.

Data collection with cell phones is just one means examining the spread of this epidemic. Researches have continued to use conventional methods, such as surveys, in order to analyze population movements. However, mobile phones can amass huge databases containing information on population movements and social patterns in a way that other sources can’t. For this reason, they may have life-saving potential.

Sources:

http://www.technologyreview.com/featuredstory/513721/big-data-from-cheap-phones/

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/caroline-buckee/

Locating Mobile Phones through Pinging and Triangulation

http://www.bostonglobe.com/metro/2014/11/02/ebola-disease-modelers-new-england-help-predict-future-spread-best-strategies/LZHSEGlInJs6SflLWW0yaP/story.html

For my younger siblings in elementary school back home, it’s that time of the year again – PSSA testing week. For those people who did not attend grade school in Pennsylvania, the Pennsylvania System of School Assessment (PSSA) is a statewide, standardized test. Given the modern emphasis on standardized testing in primary education, it seems that policy makers hold the high expectation that all students should meet these standards. The debate whether struggling students benefit more from repeating a grade or from moving ahead with their same-age peers, is one that has resurfaced in recent years in response to increasing pressures to improve school performance. At the elementary level, “young-for-grade” kindergarteners have been shown to experience a disproportionate risk of retention compared to their “old-for-grade” classmates.

Retention refers to the practice of requiring a student who has been in a given grade level for a full school year, to remain at that level for a subsequent school year. In the United States, approximately 10% of students from kindergarten to the eighth grade have been retained at least once. Also, the largest proportion of grade repeaters, making up 34.1% of the total population, was held back in either kindergarten or the first grade.

In the study, “Further Understanding Factors Associated With Grade Retention: Birthday Effects and Socio-Emotional Skills,” researchers sought to investigate factors associated with kindergarten retention. They also examined if socio-emotional skills, such as attentiveness, mediated the association of age on kindergarten retention. Investigators utilized multilevel logistic regression models to test whether certain positive and negative socio-emotional skills were related to the likelihood of grade repetition.

The study sample only included schools that had indicated their designated cutoff date by which students must turn five. Moreover, the study sample was composed only of first-time kindergarteners and excluded children who entered kindergarten at a young age or were held back. These strategies served to reduce the issue of selection bias.

Ultimately, researchers analyzed 7711 first-time kindergarteners that were enrolled on time in public schools that did not specifically prohibit students from being retained in kindergarten. By examining this specific subpopulation, researchers were still able to study a large majority of kindergarteners, while also ensuring less biased comparisons.

The independent variable that researchers examined was the relative age of the child at the time of kindergarten entry. This was computed using the schools designated cutoff date in comparison to the child’s birthdate. Also at the onset of the study, teachers and parents each rated students individually on a Social Rating Scale, which measured the frequency of occurrence of different types of behaviors using a scale of 1 (never), 2 (sometimes), 3 (often), and 4 (very often). They reported behavior including the following:

1. Approaches to learning
2. Self-control
3. Interpersonal skills
4. Externalizing problem behaviors
5. Internalizing problem behaviors

Because this survey method was used, some response bias is inevitable. However, investigators attempted to control for this by excluding participants whose parent’s and teacher’s surveys expressed very dissimilar results.

Another confounding variable that potentially affected the results of the study is the nature of why children were retained. The information of whether teachers or parents initiated the retention process and their motivations for doing so were unknown. According to the study, “Teachers (and parents) may view retention in the early grades as helpful rather than punitive.” Their concern about their child repeating a later grade might cause them to choose to have it done with early on.

Lastly, despite the fact that a large, nationally representative sample dataset was used, the study is still observational in nature. Thus, it is not fully possible to draw clear causal inferences regarding socio-emotional skills, relative age, and retention from the results of this study. Nonetheless, the study yields the important conclusion that a disproportionate number of young-for-grade students were retained in kindergarten, compared to their relatively older peers.

Ultimately, the findings exemplify the potential need for a renewed emphasis on grade retention as an educational remedy for underachieving children. In order to help students reach their full academic potential, it is vital that educators address the academic, behavioral and mental health needs of children when not only recommending grade retention, but also when teaching in general. Perhaps further research on the success and failure rates of students in the years after their retention may provide a lens into the effectiveness of this practice.

Sources:

http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0193397313001081

http://www.nasponline.org/communications/spawareness/Grade%20Retention.pdf

http://nces.ed.gov/pubs2009/2009081.pdf

I have always gotten a good kick out of the Miles Kington quote, “Knowledge is knowing that a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.” However, while it may be wise to leave them out of a fruit salad, recent studies have suggested that it may be vital for men’s health to incorporate a few daily servings of tomatoes into their daily diet. Why? Tomatoes contain high quantities of an important chemical lycopene.

Lycopene is a carotenoid (a natural pigment made by plants). High quantities are found in fruits and vegetables like apricots, guavas and watermelons. However, the main source of lycopene in the American diet is in tomatoes and tomato-based products. It is this chemical that is thought to play a large role in reducing the risk of prostate cancer in men.

According to the American Cancer Society, about 1 man in every 7 will be diagnosed with prostate cancer during his lifetime. The disease occurs mainly in older men and approximately 6 cases in 10 are diagnosed in those people aged 65 years or more. While most men diagnosed with this form of cancer do not die from it, more then 2.5 million people in the United States are alive and fighting it today.

The World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) recently published recommendations for cancer prevention. However, there is inconclusive evidence to prove if these are effective in reducing the risk of developing prostate cancer.

As a result, University of Bristol, Cambridge, and Oxford researchers investigated the diets and lifestyles of men aged 50 to 69, to evaluate if there is a link between adherence to the WCRF and AICR recommendations (including lycopene intake) and prostate cancer risk. In doing so, researchers examined a large sample size: 1,806 men with the disease and 12,005 cancer-free men. The data was acquired over an eight-year period from 2001 to 2009.

Researchers concluded that men who consumed more than 10 portions of tomatoes each week – such as fresh tomatoes, tomato sauce, or tomato juice had an 18% reduction in risk for developing prostate cancer.

Although adherence to the prostate cancer-specific dietary recommendations was correlated with decreased risk of prostate cancer, this does not mean that causation is necessarily at play. These recommended nutrients alone may be insufficient for prostate cancer prevention. Also, because of the observational nature of the study, researchers are not able to “prove” causality but rather just discern a potential association.

When critiquing this study, it is important to consider potential confounding variables. Known factors such as age, black ethnicity and family history of the disease contribute greatly to a person’s risk of developing prostate cancer. Even when researchers attempt to control for these factors, chance is always a possibility.

The researchers additionally studied two other dietary components linked with prostate cancer risk – selenium, found in flour-based foods and calcium, found in dairy products. They similarly concluded that participants who maintained the recommended intake of both these dietary components had a lower risk of prostate cancer.

Ultimately, the study suggests that men should strive to incorporate 10 or more portions of tomatoes each week, between 750mg and 1,200mg of calcium a day, and between 105mcg to 200mcg of selenium daily. Because of the low cost, it may be worth adding these few daily servings of tomato-based products to your diet. However, it is also important to consider the financial opportunity cost and whether or not tomato allergies may be a relevant factor. If these aren’t a deterrent, the potential benefits could be extensive.

Nevertheless, Vanessa Er, Bristol Nutrition BRU, PhD student, who led the study asserted, “Our findings suggest that tomatoes may be important in prostate cancer prevention. However, further studies need to be conducted to confirm our findings, especially through clinical trials. Men should still eat a wide variety of fruits and vegetables, maintain a healthy weight, and stay active.“

Currently, the US Department of Agriculture and Purdue University researchers are working to develop a tomato that will contain more than twice as much lycopene and will have a longer shelf life than currently available tomatoes. The product, which is still in development, is modified with a yeast gene that slows the ripening process, allowing more time for lycopene to accumulate. It may be interesting to follow the progression of this new technology and see if could have application in other fields of food-science research.

Sources:

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/vegetables-full-story/#8 

http://www.aicr.org/assets/docs/pdf/reports/Second_Expert_Report.pdf

http://www.webmd.com/vitamins-supplements/ingredientmono-900-tomato.aspx?activeingredientid=900&activeingredientname=tomato

http://cebp.aacrjournals.org/content/early/2014/07/12/1055-9965.EPI-14-0322.full.pdf+html

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/28/tomato-rich-diet-prostate-cancer-reduce-risk_n_5727780.html

While walking through the grocery store during a shopping trip over this recent Thanksgiving break, I noticed that one particular item has nearly taken over the dairy isle – yogurt. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to find other traditional dairy products amid the abundant selection of yogurt products. This led me to research some of the health benefits of this increasingly popular food. My findings were intriguing. A recent study conducted by the Harvard School of Public Health reveals a potential link between higher consumption of yogurt and a reduced risk of type 2 diabetes.

 Over 29 million people or 9.3% of the U.S. population have been diagnosed with diabetes according to recent reports from the government’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. For many of those people, the obesity factor increased their risk significantly for developing the disease. In fact, four out of five people with type 2 diabetes are overweight or obese.

One problem is that excess fat changes the way that a person’s body responds to insulin -the hormone that allows glucose (sugar) to leave the bloodstream and enter the cells to be used as fuel. Type 2 diabetes occurs when the pancreas doesn’t make enough insulin, or the cells of the body become resistant to insulin. Additionally, as Vivian Fonseca, professor of medicine and pharmacology and chief of endocrinology at Tulane University Health Sciences Center, asserts, “One of the links with obesity is that fat induces a mild, low grade inflammation throughout the body that contributes to heart-disease and diabetes.”

However, people with diabetes can control their blood glucose by following a program that includes regular physical activity, a healthy eating plan, and medication. Education on diet and self-care practices is a critical aspect of controlling diabetes and staying healthy. In light of modern research, it might be beneficial for those striving to prevent diabetes to weigh the costs and benefits of adding a daily serving of yogurt to their diet.

The HSPH observational study utilized a large sample size of adults, tracking the progress of 3 studies: 41,436 men in the Health Professionals Follow-Up Study (1986 to 2010), 67,138 women in the Nurses’ Health Study (1980 to 2010) and 85,884 women in the Nurses’ Health Study II (1991 to 2009). In 1980, NHS participants were administered a 61 question food frequency questionnaire in order to collect information on their usual intake of foods and beverages. Every two years after, these participants completed a similar yet expanded 131 question FFQ to update their diet records. A similar procedure was conducted in the NHS II and Health Professionals studies.

Throughout the course of the investigation, researchers documented 15,156 cases of diabetes. They conducted a further analysis of individual types of dairy products and their associations with risk of type 2 diabetes. Surprisingly, the researchers found little correlation between general dairy intake and diabetes. However, greater levels of yogurt intake were significantly associated with a lower risk of type 2 diabetes. The study concluded that a daily increase of one yogurt serving was significantly associated with an 18% reduced risk of developing diabetes.

Because of the observational nature of the study, the associations do not definitively indicate causation. Those who eat yogurt frequently may just have a healthy lifestyle and thus be at less risk. It is also possible that yogurt consumption has a positive correlation with other indicators of a wellness, such as exercise or a healthy diet.

When critiquing this research, it is important not to rule out reverse causation as a potential factor. Some overweight participants and possible diabetics may have tried to incorporate yogurt into their diet as an effort to improve health. Thus, diabetes risk could cause people to increase their yogurt consumption. Even in a study that attempts to control for these factors, chance is always a possibility. Also, because the response-based survey method was used in all three investigations, some error measurement of dairy intake assessment is unavoidable, despite researchers’ efforts to control for variation.

Additionally, since the study did not assess the types or brands of yogurt consumed, researchers cannot definitively attribute observed benefits to various components of yogurt. However, in a recent Forbes interview, Frank Hu, the study’s lead author and researcher, stated, “One hypothesis is that the probiotics in yogurt may help to improve insulin sensitivity and reduce inflammation, but this hypothesis needs to be tested in randomized clinical trials.” Perhaps further research will yield more information on the separate components of yogurt and their different affects on metabolic health.

Overall, eating a daily serving of yogurt is a relatively low cost action that has the potential to yield highly favorable health benefits. However, before immediately adding it to your diet as a means to decrease your chances of getting diabetes, it is important to consider a variety of factors. One should review the financial and opportunity costs that come with buying the product. As long as yogurt consumption isn’t used as a means to replace other healthy habits such as exercising and maintaining a balanced diet, it may not be a bad idea to add it to your diet. Even if you’re not at risk for diabetes, chances are it could play a small role in improving your health.

Sources:

http://www.biomedcentral.com/1741-7015/12/215

http://www.everydayhealth.com/type-2-diabetes/causes/

http://www.forbes.com/sites/alicegwalton/2014/11/25/yogurt-may-cut-type-2-diabetes-risk/

Few concepts in science are as powerful, or as widely misunderstood as the theory of evolution. Through his assertion that, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” biologist and geneticist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, illustrates that an understanding of life’s diversity, as well as the great unity among organisms, can be facilitated when examined within the context of evolution. A recent discussion in my Introductory Psychology class raised the question – “What is the role of evolution in the fields of cognitive and behavioral science?” It provoked me to question evolution’s function in determining an individual’s learning and decision-making skills.

As the unifying theory of the life sciences, evolution by natural selection offers an unparalleled ability to integrate disparate research areas such as those in biology and psychology – an interplay that psychologist, David Myers, recognizes as critical to fully understanding this psychological phenomenon. Thus, the evolutionary perspective creates a powerful framework for understanding the complex patterns of causality in behavioral and mental phenomena. Ultimately, evolution serves to explain the development of species and how individuals can adapt favorable behavior through the biological process of social learning.

In order to understand the roots of behavioral and mental processes, evolutionary scientists turn to the works of the English naturalist, Charles Darwin. Darwin made two major points in his publication, “On the Origin of Species”. First, he argued from evidence that the species of organisms inhabiting the Earth at the present time descended from ancestral species. “Descent with modification” conveys that as the descendants of those ancestral organisms spilled into various habitats over millions of years, many underwent adaptations, which accounted for the vast diversity among organisms.

Darwin’s second point posed a mechanism that enables evolution, which he termed “natural selection.” This is the principle that among the range of inherited trait variations in a population, those “favorable” traits, contributing to survival and reproduction, will most likely be passed on to succeeding generations. Darwin supported this observable phenomenon with empirical evidence of his studies of the adaptations of Galapagos finches and marine organisms.

Individuals often acquire their beliefs and behavior from their parents, peers, and others members of their social environment. “Social learning” is thus an essential part of adaptation and a key factor in a species’ ecological success. Understanding how an individual uses information available from others is important for not only understanding that individual’s decisions, but also for comprehending patterns of change and variation among species over time.

In the study, A Bayesian Approach to the Evolution of Social Learning, investigators at UCLA sought to understand when natural selection will favor individuals who imitate others, as environments change and individuals must determine which behaviors are beneficial to survival. To build models of cultural evolution, investigators modified mathematical formulas drawn from population genetics and epidemiology to account for features of social learning. This Bayesian statistical research approach uses probability estimates to infer the unequal ability of individuals to conform to the favorable behavior of others in changing environments.

As the experiment varies the environment (independent variable) proportionately from state 1 to state 2, the adaptive problem for individuals is to infer the current state of the environment using two sources of information:

1. Other individual’s behavior from the previous generation (social cues).

2. Individually learned details about a habitat, acquired possibly through trial and error processes (environmental or nonsocial cues).

Individuals who exhibit one of two behaviors acquire either a favorable or unfavorable fitness depending on which state the environment is in. Thus, individuals who can accurately determine the current state of the environment, using the two former mentioned cues, will be able to choose the preferable behavior to emulate and survive better. This will result in a higher reproductive success for the individual.

Because the psychological mechanisms that make social learning possible are partly products of natural selection, statistical models can help us understand their design. While this type of experimental approach can help eliminate biases that may arise in other experimental designs, (such as a response based survey), it cannot rule out the possibility of chance. Also, just because there is a correlation between two variables, for example, a fluctuating environment and a decreased chance of perceiving favorable behavior, doesn’t always mean that causation is a factor.

Overall, the results largely support the theory that conformist individuals are favored by natural selection under a wide range of environmental conditions. It is reasonable to assume that during the course of evolution, individuals routinely have had access to many models for which to base their behavior, which raises the possibility that this experiment has underestimated the range of environmental conditions (confounding variables) that favor conformism. Additionally, the researchers may have underestimated the specific strategic circumstances under which non-conformity is critically adaptive – which may require a whole different investigatory lens.

Humans today descended from a long line of successful ancestors. Yet there may be individual and group differences in psychological domains that are partially a result of differential selection pressures on ancestral populations and even subsequent mutations. Daniel J. Krugar of the University of Michigan noted that, “Humans have colonized nearly every land area on the surface of the earth, and each of these diverse ecologies shaped our psychological design.” Today, humans strive to advance medicine, security, and technology, which create an environment that pressures our psychological development. Genes are not the only script for a pre-ordained destiny. Nearly everything about us as individuals is a product of complex interactions between our genetic make up and trigger aspects of the environments in which they are expressed. In the light of evolution, humans can gain a greater understanding of the behavior and mental process that distinguish them from other organisms and the basic biological structures that unify them with all species.

Sources:

Campbell, A., Neil, & Reece B. Jane. (2002). Biology (6th ed.). San Francisco, CA:                          Cummings.

Kruger, J., Daniel. (2009). Evolutionary Psychology and the Evolution of Psychology. Evolutionary Theory and Psychology, 2-4.

Myers, G., David. (2013). Psychology (10th ed. in modules). New York, NY: Worth.

Perreault, C., Moya, C., & Boyd, R. (2012). A Bayesian approach to the evolution of       social learning: Evolution And Human Behavior, 33(5), 449-459. doi:10.1016/                j.evolhumbehav. 2011.12.007

Hi everyone, my name is Patrick and I am from Bethlehem Pennsylvania. I am part of the Division of Undergraduate Studies. I chose to take this course to fulfill a science credit. Also, the course description included a lot of interesting topics. While, I find science interesting, I don’t plan to major in the field and rather intend to study business.