Can meditation slow ageing A Nobel Prize-winner thinks so

Can meditation slow ageing A Nobel Prize-winner thinks soCan meditation slow ageing A Nobel Prize-winner thinks soIts seven in the morning on the beach in Santa Monica, California. The low sun glints off the waves and the clouds are still golden from the dawn. The view stretches out over thousands of miles of Pacific Ocean. In the distance, white villas of wealthy Los Angeles residents dot the Hollywood hills. Here, by the shore, curlews and sandpipers cluster on the damp sand. A few meters back from the waters edge, a handful of people sit cross-legged members of a local Buddhist center about to begin an hour-long silent meditation.Such spiritual practices may seem a world away from biomedical research, with its focus on molecular processes and repeatable results. Yet just up the coast, at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), a team led by a Nobel Prize-winning biochemist is charging into territory wherbeibeibeie few mainstream scientists would dare to tread. Whereas wildwestfilm biomedicine has traditionally shunned the study of personal experiences and emotions in relation to physical health, behauptung scientists are placing state of mind at the center of their work. They are engaged in serious studies hinting that meditation might as Eastern traditions have long claimed slow ageing and lengthen life.Elizabeth Blackburn has always been fascinated by how life works. Born in 1948, she grew up by the sea in a remote town in Tasmania, Australia, collecting ants from her garden and jellyfish from the beach. When she began her scientific career, she moved on to dissecting living systems molecule by molecule. She was drawn to biochemistry, she says, because it offered a thorough and precise understanding in the gestalt of deep knowledge of the smallest possible subunit of a process.Working with biologist Joe Gall at Yale in the 1970s, Blackburn sequenced the chromosome tips of a single-celled freshwater creature called Tetrahymena (pond scum, as s he describes it) and discovered a repeating DNA motif that acts as a protective cap. The caps, dubbed telomeres, were subsequently found on human chromosomes too. They shield the ends of our chromosomes each time our cells divide and the DNA is copied, but they wear down with each division. In the 1980s, working with graduate student Carol Greider at the University of California, Berkeley, Blackburn discovered an enzyme called telomerase that can protect and rebuild telomeres. Even so, our telomeres dwindle over time. And when they get too short, our cells departure to malfunction and lose their ability to divide a phenomenon that is now recognized as a key process in ageing. This work ultimately won Blackburn the 2009 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.In 2000, she received a visit that changed the course of her research. The caller was Elissa Epel, a postdoc from UCSFs psychiatry departement. Psychiatrists and biochemists dont usually have much to talk about, but Epel was inte rested in the damage done to the body by chronic stress, and she had a radical proposal.Epel, now director of the Aging, Metabolism and Emotion Center at UCSF, has a long-standing interest in how the mind and body relate. She cites as influences both the holistic health guru Deepak Chopra and the pioneering biologist Hans Selye, who first described in the 1930s how rats subjected to long-term stress become chronically ill. Every stress leaves an indelible scar, and the organism pays for its survival after a stressful situation by becoming a little older, Selye said.Back in 2000, Epel wanted to find that scar. I was interested in the idea that if we look deep within cells we might be able to measure the wear and tear of stress and daily life, she says. After reading about Blackburns work on ageing, she wondered if telomeres might fit the bill.With some trepidation at approaching such a senior scientist, the then postdoc asked Blackburn for help with a study of mothers going through o ne of the most stressful situations that she could think of caring for a chronically ill child. Epels plan was to ask the women how stressed they felt, then look for a relationship between their state of mind and the state of their telomeres. Collaborators at the University of Utah would measure telomere length, while Blackburns team would measure levels of telomerase.Blackburns research until this point had involved elegant, precisely controlled experiments in the lab. Epels work, on the other hand, was on real, complicated people living real, complicated lives. It was another world as far as I was concerned, says Blackburn. At first, she was doubtful that it would be possible to see any meaningful connection between stress and telomeres. Genes were seen as by far the most important factor determining telomere length, and the idea that it would be possible to measure environmental influences, let alone psychological ones, was highly controversial. But as a mother herself, Blackbur n was drawn to the idea of studying the plight of these stressed women. I just thought, how interesting, she says. You cant help but empathize.It took four years before they were finally ready to collect blood samples from 58 women. This was to be a small pilot study. To give the highest weg of a meaningful result, the women in the two groups stressed mothers and controls had to match as closely as possible, with similar ages, lifestyles and backgrounds. Epel recruited her subjects with meticulous care. Still, Blackburn says, she saw the trial as nothing more than a feasibility exercise. Right up until Epel called her and said, You wont believe it.The results were crystal clear. The more stressed the mothers said they were, the shorter their telomeres and the lower their levels of telomerase.The most frazzled women in the study had telomeres that translated into an extra decade or so of ageing compared to those who were least stressed, while their telomerase levels were halved. I was thrilled, says Blackburn. She and Epel had connected real lives and experiences to the molecular mechanics inside cells. It was the first indication that feeling stressed doesnt just damage our health it literally ages us.Unexpected discoveries naturally meet skepticism. Blackburn and Epel struggled initially to publish their boundary-crossing paper. Science one of the worlds leading scientific journals couldnt bounce it back um ein haar enough chuckles Blackburn.When the paper finally was published, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in December 2004, it sparked widespread press coverage as well as praise. Robert Sapolsky, a pioneering stress researcher at Stanford University and author of the bestselling Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers, described the collaboration as a leap across a vast interdisciplinary canyon. Mike Irwin, director of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at the University of California, Los Angeles, says it took a lot of courage for E pel to seek out Blackburn. And a lot of courage for Liz Blackburn to say yes.Many telomere researchers were wary at first. They pointed out that the study was small, and questioned the accuracy of the telomere length test used. This was a risky idea back then, and in some peoples eyes unlikely, explains Epel. Everyone is born with very different telomere lengths and to think that we can measure something psychological or behavioral, not genetic, and have that predict the length of our telomeres? This is really not where this field was ten years ago.The paper triggered an explosion of research. Researchers have since linked perceived stress to shorter telomeres in healthy women as well as in Alzheimers caregivers, victims of domestic abuse and early life trauma, and people with major depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. Ten years on, theres no question in my mind that the environment has some consequence on telomere length, says Mary Armanios, a clinician and geneticist at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine who studies telomere disorders.There is also progress towards a mechanism. Lab studies show that the stress hormone cortisol reduces the activity of telomerase, while oxidative stress and inflammation the physiological fallout of psychological stress appear to erode telomeres directly.This seems to have devastating consequences for our health. Age-related conditions from osteoarthritis, diabetes and obesity to heart disease, Alzheimers and stroke have all been linked to short telomeres.The big question for researchers now is whether telomeres are simply a harmless marker of age-related damage (like grey hair, say) or themselves play a role in causing the health problems that plague us as we age. People with genetic mutations affecting the enzyme telomerase, who have much shorter telomeres than normal, suffer from accelerated-ageing syndromes and their organs progressively fail. But Armanios questions whether the smaller reductions in telomere lengt h caused by stress are relevant for health, especially as telomere lengths are so variable in the first place.Blackburn, however, says she is increasingly convinced that the effects of stress do matter. Although the genetic mutations affecting the maintenance of telomeres have a smaller effect than the extreme syndromes Armanios studies, Blackburn points out that they do increase the risk of chronic disease later in life. And several studies have shown that our telomeres predict future health. One showed that elderly men whose telomeres shortened over two-and-a-half years were three times as likely to die from cardiovascular disease in the subsequent nine years as those whose telomeres stayed the same length or got longer. In another study, looking at over 2,000 healthy Native Americans, those with the shortest telomeres were more than twice as likely to develop diabetes over the next five-and-a-half years, even taking into account conventional risk factors such as body mass index a nd fasting glucose.Blackburn is now moving into even bigger studies, including a collaboration with healthcare giant Kaiser Permanente of Northern California that has involved measuring the telomeres of 100,000 people. The hope is that combining telomere length with data from the volunteers genomes and electronic medical records will reveal additional links between telomere length and disease, as well as more genetic mutations that affect telomere length. The results arent published yet, but Blackburn is excited about what the data already shows about longevity. She traces the curve with her finger as the population ages, average telomere length goes down. This much we know telomeres tend to shorten over time. But at age 7580, the curve swings back up as people with shorter telomeres die off proof that those with longer telomeres really do live longer. Its lovely, she says. No one has ever seen that.In the decade since Blackburn and Epels original study, the idea that stress ages u s by eroding our telomeres has also permeated popular culture. In addition to Blackburns many scientific accolades, she was named one of Time magazines 100 most influential people in the world in 2007, and received a Good Housekeeping achievement award in 2011. A workaholic character played by Cameron Diaz even described the concept in the 2006 Hollywood film The Holiday. It resonates, says Blackburn.But as evidence of the damage caused by dwindling telomeres piles up, she is embarking on a new question how to protect them.At first, the beach seems busy. Waves splash and splash and splash. Sanderlings wheel along the shoreline. Joggers and dog walkers amble across, while groups of pelicans hang out on the water before taking wing or floating out of sight. A surfer, silhouetted black against the sky, bobs about for 20 minutes or so, catching the odd ripple towards shore before he, too, is gone. The unchanging perspective gives a curious sense of detachment. You can imagine that the b irds and joggers and surfers are like thoughts they inhabit different forms and timescales but in the end, they all pass.There are hundreds of ways to meditate but this morning Im trying a form of Buddhist mindfulness meditation called open monitoring, which involves paying attention to your experience in the present moment. Sit upright and still, and simply notice any thoughts that arise without judging or reacting to them before letting them go. For Buddhists this is a spiritual quest by letting trivial thoughts and external influences fall away, they hope to get closer to the true nature of reality.Blackburn too is interested in the nature of reality, but after a career spent focusing on the measurable and quantifiable, such navel-gazing initially held little personal appeal and certainly no professional interest. Ten years ago, if youd told me that I would be seriously thinking about meditation, I would have said one of us is loco, she told the New York Times in 2007. Yet that is where her work on telomeres has brought her. Since her initial study with Epel, the pair have become involved in collaborations with teams around the world as many as 50 or 60, Blackburn estimates, spinning in wonderful directions. Many of these focus on ways to protect telomeres from the effects of stress trials suggest that exercise, eating healthily and social support all help. But one of the most effective interventions, apparently capable of slowing the erosion of telomeres and perhaps even lengthening them again is meditation.So far the studies are small, but they all tentatively point in the same direction. In one ambitious project, Blackburn and her colleagues sent participants to meditate at the Shambhala mountain retreat in northern Colorado. Those who completed a three-month course had 30% higher levels of telomerase than a similar group on a waiting list. A pilot study of dementia caregivers, carried out with UCLAs Irwin and published in 2013, found that volunteer s who did an ancient chanting meditation called Kirtan Kriya, 12 minutes a day for eight weeks, had significantly higher telomerase activity than a control group who listened to relaxing music. And a collaboration with UCSF physician and self-help guru Dean Ornish, also published in 2013, found that men with low-risk prostate cancer who undertook comprehensive lifestyle changes, including meditation, kept their telomerase activity higher than similar men in a control group and had slightly longer telomeres after five years.In their latest study, Epel and Blackburn are following 180 mothers, half of whom have a child with autism. The trial involves measuring the womens stress levels and telomere length over two years, then testing the effects of a short course of mindfulness training, delivered with the help of a mobile app.Theories differ as to how meditation might boost telomeres and telomerase, but most likely it reduces stress. The practice involves slow, regular breathing, which may relax us physically by calming the fight-or-flight response. It probably has a psychological stress-busting effect too. Being able to step back from negative or stressful thoughts may allow us to realize that these are not necessarily accurate reflections of reality but passing, ephemeral events. It also helps us to appreciate the present instead of continually worrying about the past or planning for the future.Being present in your activities and in your interactions is precious, and its rare these days with all of the multitasking we do, says Epel. I do think that in general weve got a society with scattered attention, particularly when people are highly stressed and dont have the resources to just be present wherever they are.Inevitably, when a Nobel Prize-winner starts talking about meditation, it ruffles a few feathers. In general, Blackburns methodical approach to the topic has earned a grudging admiration, even among those who have expressed concern about the health clai ms made for alternative medicine. She goes about her business in a cautious and systematic fashion, says Edzard Ernst of the University of Exeter, UK, who specializes in testing complementary therapies in rigorous controlled trials. Oncologist James Coyne of the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, who is skeptical of this field in general and describes some of the research on positive psychology and health as morally offensive and tooth fairy science, concedes that some of Blackburns data is promising.Others arent so impressed. Surgeon-oncologist David Gorski is a well-known critic of alternative medicine and pseudoscience who blogs under the name of Orac hes previously described Dean Ornish as one of the four horsemen of the Woo-pocalypse. Gorski stops short of pronouncing meditation as off-limits for scientific inquiry, but expresses concern that the preliminary results of these studies are being oversold. How can the researchers be sure theyre investigating it rigorously? Its really hard to do with these things, he says. It is easy to be led astray. Nobel Prize-winners are not infallible. Blackburns own biochemistry community also seems ambivalent about her interest in meditation. Three senior telomere researchers I contacted declined to discuss this aspect of her work, with one explaining that he didnt want to comment on such a controversial issue.People are very uncomfortable with the concept of meditation, notes Blackburn. She attributes this to its unfamiliarity and its association with spiritual and religious practices. Were always trying to say it as carefully as we can always saying look, its preliminary, its a pilot. But people wont even read those words. Theyll see the newspaper headings and panic.Any connotation of religious or paranormal beliefs makes many scientists uneasy, says Chris French, a psychologist at Goldsmiths, University of London, who studies anomalous experiences including altered states of consciousness. There are a lot of raised eyebrows, even though Ive got the word skeptic virtually tattooed across my forehead, he says. It smacks of new-age woolly ideas for some people. Theres a kneejerk dismissive response of we all know its nonsense, why are you wasting your time? When meditation first came to the West in the 1960s it was tied to the drug culture, the hippie culture, adds Sara Lazar, a neuroscientist at Harvard who studies how meditation changes the structure of the brain. People think its just a bunch of crystals or something, they roll their eyes. She describes her own decision to study meditation, made 15 years ago, as brave or crazy, and says that she only plucked up the courage because at around the same time, the US National Institutes of Health (NIH) created the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine. That gave me the confidence that I could do this and I would get funding.The tide is now turning. Helped in part by that NIH money, researchers have developed secularised or non-religious practices such as mindfulness-based stress reduction and mindfulness-based cognitive therapy, and reported a range of health effects from lowering blood pressure and boosting immune responses to warding off depression. And the past few years have seen a spurt of neuroscience studies, like Lazars, showing that even short courses of meditation can forge structural changes in the brain.Now that the brain data and all this clinical data are coming out, that is starting to change. People are a lot more accepting of meditation, says Lazar. But there are still some people who will never believe that it has any benefit whatsoever.Blackburns view is that meditation is a fair topic to study, as long as robust methods are used. So when her research first pointed in this direction, she was undaunted by concerns about what such studies might do to her reputation. Instead, she tried it out for herself, on an intensive six-day retreat in Santa Barbara. I loved it, she says. She still uses short bursts of meditation, which she says sharpen her mind and help her to avoid a busy, distracted mode. She even began one recent paper with a quote from the Buddha The secret of health for both mind and body is not to mourn for the past, worry about the future, or anticipate troubles but to live in the present moment wisely and earnestly.That study, of 239 healthy women, found that those whose minds wandered less the main aim of mindfulness meditation had significantly longer telomeres than those whose thoughts ran amok. Although we report merely an association here, it is possible that greater presence of mind promotes a healthy biochemical milieu and, in turn, cell longevity, the researchers concluded. Contemplative traditions from Buddhism to Taoism believe that presence of mind promotes health and longevity Blackburn and her colleagues now suggest that the ancient wisdom might be right.I meet with Blackburn in Paris. Were at an Art Nouveau-themed bistro just dow n the road from the Curie Institute, where she is on a short sabbatical, arranging seminars between groups of scientists who dont usually talk to one another. In a low, melodious voice that I strain to hear through the background clatter, the 65-year-old tells me of her first major brush with Buddhist thinking.In September 2006, she attended a conference held at the Menla Mountain Buddhist center, a remote retreat in New Yorks Catskill mountains, at which Western scientists met with Tibetan-trained scholars including the Dalai Lama to discuss longevity, regeneration and health. During the meeting, the spiritual leader honored Blackburns scientific achievements by inducting her as a Medicine Buddha.If Epels psychiatry research had been another world, the scholars Eastern philosophy seemed to Blackburn more alien still. Over dinner one evening, while explaining to the other delegates how errors in the gene for telomerase can cause health problems, she described genetic mutation as a r andom, chance event. Thats dogma for Western scientists but not for those trained in the Tibetan worldview. They said oh no, we dont regard this as chance, says Blackburn. For these holistic scholars, even the smallest events were infused with meaning. I suddenly thought, whoa, this is a very different world from the one Im on.But instead of dismissing her Eastern counterparts, she was impressed, finding the Dalai Lama to have a very good brain, for example. Theyre scholarly in a very different way, but it is still good-quality thinking, she explains. It wasnt God told me this, it was more lets see what actually happens in the brain. So there are certain elements of the approach that I am quite comfortable with as a scientist.Blackburn isnt tempted to embrace the spiritual approach herself. Im rooted in the physical world, she says. But she combines that grounding with an open mind towards new ideas and connections, and she seems to love breaking out of established paradigms. For ex ample, she and Epel have shown that the effects of stress on telomeres can be passed on to the next generation. If women experience stress while pregnant, their children have shorter telomeres, as newborns and as adults in direct contradiction of the voreingestellt view that traits can only be passed on via our genes.In the future, information from telomeres may help doctors decide when to prescribe particular drugs. For example, telomerase activity predicts who will respond to treatment for major depression, while telomere length influences the effects of statins. In general, however, Blackburn is more interested in how telomeres might help people directly, by encouraging them to live in a way that reduces their disease risk. This is not a familiar model for the medical world, she says.Conventional medical tests give us our risk of particular conditions high cholesterol warns of impending heart disease, for example, while high blood sugar predicts diabetes. Telomere length, by co ntrast, gives an overall reading of how healthy we are our biological age. And although we already know that we should exercise, eat well and reduce stress, many of us fall short of these goals. Blackburn believes that putting a concrete number on how we are doing could provide a powerful incentive to change our behavior. In fact, she and Epel have just completed a study (as yet unpublished) showing that simply being told their telomere length caused volunteers to live more healthily over the next year than a similar group who werent told.Ultimately, however, the pair want entire countries and governments to start paying attention to telomeres. A growing body of work now shows that the stress from social adversity and inequality is a major force eroding these protective caps. People who didnt finish high school or are in an abusive relationship have shorter telomeres, for example, while studies have also shown links with low socioeconomic status, shift work, lousy neighborhoods and environmental pollution. Children are particularly at risk being abused or experiencing adversity early in life leaves people with shorter telomeres for the rest of their lives. And through telomeres, the stress that women experience during pregnancy affects the health of the next generation too, causing hardship and economic costs for decades to come.In 2012, Blackburn and Epel wrote a commentary in the journal Nature, listing some of these results and calling on politicians to prioritize societal stress reduction. In particular, they argued, improving the education and health of women of child-bearing age could be a highly effective way to prevent poor health filtering down through generations. Meditation retreats or yoga classes might help those who can afford the time and expense, they pointed out. But we are talking about broad socioeconomic policies to buffer the chronic stressors faced by so many. Where many scientists refrain from discussing the political implications of the ir work, Blackburn says she wanted to speak out on behalf of women who lack support, and say Youd better take their situations seriously.While arguments for tackling social inequality are hardly new, Blackburn says that telomeres allow us to quantify for the first time the health impact of stress and inequality and therefore the resulting economic costs. We can also now pinpoint pregnancy and early childhood as imprinting periods when telomere length is particularly susceptible to stress. Together, she says, this evidence makes a stronger case than ever before for governments to act.But it seems that most scientists and politicians still arent ready to leap across the interdisciplinary canyon that Blackburn and Epel bridged a decade ago. The Nature article has engendered little response, according to a frustrated Epel. Its a strong statement so I would have thought that people would have criticised it or supported it, she says. Either wayIts now a consistent story that the ageing ma chinery is shaped at the earliest stages of life, she insists. If we ignore that and we just keep trying to put band-aids on later, were never going to get at prevention and were only going to fail at cure. Simply responding to the physical symptoms of disease might make sense for treating an acute infection or fixing a broken leg, but to beat chronic age-related conditions such as diabetes, heart disease and dementia, we will need to embrace the fuzzy, subjective domain of the mind.This article published on Mosaic.

Why Helping Others Is Good for Your Career - The Muse

Why Helping Others Is Good for Your Career - The MuseWhy Helping Others Is Good for Your Career Whether youre new to the workforce or a naturally shy person, the idea of going out there and building a network can feel intimidating. Even if you know that you should be out there meeting people and making connections.Columnist Kare Anderson found herself in a similar situation, but instead of being frightened, she learned that she had a special power- she could be an opportunity maker and help launch the careers of others, while also launching her own.Watch this great video to see how you can do the same.Photo of hiker courtesy of Shutterstock.

About Job-Specific Skills

About Job-Specific SkillsAbout Job-Specific SkillsJob-specific skills are those abilities that allow a candidate for employment to excel in a particular job. Some skills are attained by attending school or training programs. Others can be acquired through experiential learning on the job. The skills that are needed for a specific job are also known as askill set. When hiring, employers will usually include the skill set required to be able to perform the job in the job posting. The applicants who most closely match the required skills will have the best chance of getting selected for a job interview. Read below for examples of job-specific skills, tips for identifying job-specific skills, and advice on how to match your skills and experience to those required for a job. Jobs Job-specific skills vary based on the position. For example, a CPA needs to have auditing skills, teachers need lesson planning skills, architects need rechneruntersttzte konstruktion (computer-aided design) skills, construction workers need to know how to use a variety of tools, and hair stylists must know hair coloring techniques. Job-Specific Skills vs. Transferable Skills Job-specific skills can be contrasted withtransferable skillslike communication, organization, presentation, teamwork, planning, and time management, which are required in a broad array of jobs. Transferable skills are those that you use for almost every job. Employability skillsare also the skills and traits necessary to succeed in every job. Hybrid skills are a combination of soft and hard skills that may be required for some positions. Certain transferable skills will be valued more highly for some occupations than others. For example, consultants need strong presentation skills and lawyers need solid research skills. However, these transferable skills shouldnt be confused with job-specific skills since they represent general areas of ability valued in a wide cross-section of jobs. In contrast, job-specific skills are skills required for a particular job. They might be completely unnecessary for other jobs but are critical for that job. For example, being able to operate a power saw is a job-specific skill for a carpenter, but not for many other jobs. Often, job-specific skills are hard skills, which are quantifiable or easily teachable skills. Transferable skills are more often soft skills. These are more subjective skills, often related to your personality and behavior, particularly how you interact with others. How to Identify Job-Specific Skills When applying for a job, you want to know the job-specific skills required for the position, so that you can emphasize your related skills and abilities. You can typically find job-specific skills within the job posting. Often there is a section of the job listing titled Required Skills or Qualifications that includes job-specific skills. Here is advice on how to decode a job posting. You can also look up similar job postings to get a s ense of the required skills for the position. Finally, check out this list ofjob-specific skillsfor many different jobs. How to Match Your Skills to Job-Specific Skills When applying for a job, identify the job-specific skills for the position. Make a list of these skills. Then, look at each skill and think about how you can prove you have that asset. Think about work experience you have that has helped you develop each skill. Include these skills in your resume. You might even have sections on your resume that list all your experiences developing a specific skill. For example, if you are applying for a job as an editor, you might have a section in your resume titled Editing Experience. You can also emphasize these skills on your LinkedIn profile. Also, emphasize the job-specific skills you have in your cover letter. Use keywords from the job listing, and provide specific examples of times you demonstrated or developed each skill. Prepare to discuss these skills, and your experi ence in developing these skills, in every job interview. Before an interview, review your cover letter and resume, and make sure you can answer questions about times you have demonstrated each skill. For more tips on the best way to show that youre a strong match for a job, review thesetips for matching your qualifications for a job description. What to Do If Youre Missing a Skill If you are missing a critical job-related skill, this does not mean you cant apply for the job. One option is to begin to develop that skill right away. For example, if you need experience coding, you might take a free coding class online. You can then list that course in your resume and cover letter, and mention it in your interview. You can also emphasize in your resume, cover letter, and interview that you are a fast learner, and provide examples of this. This might help convince the employer that you can quickly develop that missing skill set.

5 Innovations from the White House Science Fair

5 Innovations from the White House Science Fair 5 Innovations from the White House Science Fair For some students, all under the age of 20, meeting the President is not a fanciful dream any longer. Not only did they meet the President, they also showcased their inventions to him at the White House Science Fair on March 23, 2015.President Obama hosted the 5th White House Science Fair, celebrating the student winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) competitions from across America. This years event focused on diversity and inclusion in STEM, with participants as young as the six-year old Girl Scout Daisies, who stole everyones hearts with their page-turning LEGO invention.Wearable tech, smartphone apps, diagnostics tools, energy-saving devices, and 3D printed products were berhmt among the research projects exhibited by students from 30 states. Here are five innovative ideas that caught ASME.orgs attention.Sophia Nobles and Joseph Santana posing wi th Bill Nye The Science Guy. Image WateRenewRenewable Water SystemSophia Nobles and Joseph Santana, two middle-school students from Florida, designed a renewable way of generating safe drinking water from ocean water and won a competition at their school. We were researching desalination and realized how costly it is, so we came up with a way to clean water with less energy, says Nobles, displaying WateRenew, a conceptual system that converts energy from the elliptical motion of waves into electrical energy that can power desalination of ocean water into drinking water. With technology we can fix the problems in the world, says 11-year old Nobles, who aims to be a mechanical engineer.Heart-Rate AnalyzerFifteen-year old Maureen Botros of Kansas invented a wearable device that collects and stores workout data, which can be analyzed and tracked by the user. The device called Illumi-cize, which took the top prize at the Kansas Junior Academy of Science competition, uses a pulse meter to measure heart rate and sends that information to a computer chip. The chip illuminates light-up accessories based on the intensity of a persons physical activity. Botros also developed a wristband that lights up when a persons heart rate is elevated beyond its normal resting range.Jonathan Hernandez and Fanta Sinayoko of the SOAR High School InvenTeam that invented an alcohol level detection bracelet named ris.Blood-Alcohol DetectorAnotzu sich wearable device at the science fair was displayed by high-school students Jonathan Hernandez and Fanta Sinayoko from Lancaster, CA, representing their high-schools Lemelson-MIT InvenTeam. The kollektiv designed a blood alcohol content detection wristband aimed for adults and of-age college students who wish to drink responsibly. Upon blowing onto a miniature sensor in the low-cost wearable breathalyzer, the presence of ethanol triggers an analog voltage charge that is converted into a light-emitting diode reaction. Colors indicate blood alcoh ol results to the wearer green indicates the user is safe to drive, and red indicates the user is not safe to drive.Diagnostics for CancerA research project presented by 19-year old Natalie Ng, a freshman at Stanford University, could have implications for breast cancer diagnosis. The problem today is a lot of people are taking chemotherapy to prevent the spread of cancer and metastasis. My project was to tell the doctor which patients will most likely to develop metastasis, and therefore, would be good candidates for chemotherapy, says Ng. She developed two micro-RNA-based prognostic models that can predict metastasis in breast cancer, which garnered her the first place at the 2013 International BioGENEius Challenge.3D Printed ImplantTufts Universitys bioengineering student Harry Paul, who was born with congenital scoliosis, endured more than a dozen spinal surgeries to help correct the problem. Now the 17-year old freshman is working to help other young patients avoid the burdenso me operations with a 3D printed spinal implant that expands with age, extending the time between surgeries. The mechanical model of the spinal column that he designed using computers and 3D printers, earned him a place as a semifinalist at the 2014 Intel International Science and Engineering Fair.President Obama applauded all the students exhibiting at the White House, saying We give students the inspiration not just that math and science are inherently interesting, and technology and engineering are inherently interesting, but theres actual problems to solve, it turns out that young people, they rise to the challenge.Obama also highlighted that Science is for all of us and the classrooms, labs, workplaces, and media should reflect that. We get the most out of all our nations talent and that means reaching out to boys and girls, men and women of all races and all backgrounds, he said. For Further Discussion We get the most out of all our nations talent and that means reaching out to boys and girls, men and women of all races and all backgrounds.President Obama

The Fight Against Dietary Aide Resume

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