UC Science Today

It’s one thing to have palliative care services in hospitals – and that’s taken over a decade to happen; but it’s another to recognize the importance of providing specialized medical care for patients with serious illnesses outside of the hospital in an office or clinic setting.

"We’re starting to develop those services, but they’re not available widely by any stretch. I mean, it’s really where hospital-based palliative care was 15 years ago is where outpatient-based palliative care is today."

Dr. Steve Pantilat of the University of California, San Francisco, started one of the first hospital-based palliative care centers in the nation almost 20 years ago. He admits there’s still a long way to go in this field.

"We’re recognizing this as an important area for training healthcare professionals, but we still don’t have enough. We need more experts, but we also need to make sure that all doctors and nurses and social workers and chaplains are trained in the basics of palliative care, what we in the field call primary palliative care or generalist palliative care."

It’s one thing to have palliative care services in hospitals – and that’s taken over a decade to happen; but it’s another to recognize the importance of providing specialized medical care for patients with serious illnesses outside of the hospital in an office or clinic setting.

"We’re starting to develop those services, but they’re not available widely by any stretch. I mean, it’s really where hospital-based palliative care was 15 years ago is where outpatient-based palliative care is today."

Dr. Steve Pantilat of the University of California, San Francisco, started one of the first hospital-based palliative care centers in the nation almost 20 years ago. He admits there’s still a long way to go in this field.

"We’re recognizing this as an important area for training healthcare professionals, but we still don’t have enough. We need more experts, but we also need to make sure that all doctors and nurses and social workers and chaplains are trained in the basics of palliative care, what we in the field call primary palliative care or generalist palliative care."

At what point does pursuing power become unhealthy? Psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley says that while having power can be good and bad, too much focus on gaining power can lead to mental health problems including mania and psychopathy. She also says that those who don’t meet their goals of attaining power are at high risk for depression and anxiety.

"My worry would be about the people who start to put too much focus on wanting to be more powerful, more famous, more influential, that that’s a dangerous place for them to be in from a mental health perspective. It shouldn’t be their primary focus in life."

Johnson explains that there are benefits to having power if pursued in the right way.

"People in power tend to be a little bit more optimistic about whether they’re going to get their outcomes. They are a little bit more action-oriented because action is often helpful when you’re in power. So you could pursue power in a very socially connected way, where you’re basically building coalitions, and that can be really adaptive and a great way to achieve power."

At what point does pursuing power become unhealthy? Psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley says that while having power can be good and bad, too much focus on gaining power can lead to mental health problems including mania and psychopathy. She also says that those who don’t meet their goals of attaining power are at high risk for depression and anxiety.

"My worry would be about the people who start to put too much focus on wanting to be more powerful, more famous, more influential, that that’s a dangerous place for them to be in from a mental health perspective. It shouldn’t be their primary focus in life."

Johnson explains that there are benefits to having power if pursued in the right way.

"People in power tend to be a little bit more optimistic about whether they’re going to get their outcomes. They are a little bit more action-oriented because action is often helpful when you’re in power. So you could pursue power in a very socially connected way, where you’re basically building coalitions, and that can be really adaptive and a great way to achieve power."

At what point does pursuing power become unhealthy? Psychologist Sheri Johnson of the University of California, Berkeley says that while having power can be good and bad, too much focus on gaining power can lead to mental health problems including mania and psychopathy. She also says that those who don’t meet their goals of attaining power are at high risk for depression and anxiety.

"My worry would be about the people who start to put too much focus on wanting to be more powerful, more famous, more influential, that that’s a dangerous place for them to be in from a mental health perspective. It shouldn’t be their primary focus in life."

Johnson explains that there are benefits to having power if pursued in the right way.

"People in power tend to be a little bit more optimistic about whether they’re going to get their outcomes. They are a little bit more action-oriented because action is often helpful when you’re in power. So you could pursue power in a very socially connected way, where you’re basically building coalitions, and that can be really adaptive and a great way to achieve power."

About 92% of drug candidates make it through the initial Phase 1 testing, but then fail in the later stages of a trial. And the worst possible scenario is when a drug has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is on the market and then problems start to arise – like adverse drug reactions, or ADRs.

"There’s a figure, 100 thousand fatalities per year are caused by these undetected ADRs. You know, 177 billion dollars in medical costs. So, that’s comparable to the cost associated with chronic illnesses like diabetes."

Montiago LaBute is an applied statistician at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and he’s part of a team that’s discovered a high-tech method using supercomputers to identify proteins that cause medications to have certain adverse side effects.

"What this allows one to do is use all of the resources on a supercomputer and scale it up so you can do multiple drugs and multiple proteins all in parallel and it allows you to characterize how they interact together using a three-dimensional model that encapsulates the basic physics."

About 92% of drug candidates make it through the initial Phase 1 testing, but then fail in the later stages of a trial. And the worst possible scenario is when a drug has already been approved by the Food and Drug Administration, is on the market and then problems start to arise – like adverse drug reactions, or ADRs.

"There’s a figure, 100 thousand fatalities per year are caused by these undetected ADRs. You know, 177 billion dollars in medical costs. So, that’s comparable to the cost associated with chronic illnesses like diabetes."

Montiago LaBute is an applied statistician at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and he’s part of a team that’s discovered a high-tech method using supercomputers to identify proteins that cause medications to have certain adverse side effects.

"What this allows one to do is use all of the resources on a supercomputer and scale it up so you can do multiple drugs and multiple proteins all in parallel and it allows you to characterize how they interact together using a three-dimensional model that encapsulates the basic physics."

A single female sea urchin produces lots of eggs – like five to ten million of them. And sea urchin embryos are evolutionarily closely related to man* – more so than fruit flies or worms, which are typically used as model organisms. Because of this, sea urchins are being used to help scientists identify toxic chemicals in the environment.

"Chemical testing is an area of intensive investigation right now. One of the challenges is trying to determine whether a compound is going to be harmful when you don’t actually know what mechanisms it can interact with and how it can potentially cause harm."

So, biologist Amro Hamdoun and his colleagues at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography are systematically searching through the genes in the sea urchin genome to find those involved in drug transporters in humans.

"And by sorting through these genes and cataloging them and understanding what the functions of each of them is, we can begin to make these testable predictions about whether there are these common patterns of pollutant interaction."

*Quick fact: Sea urchins are echinoderms, marine animals that originated more than 540 million years ago. The reason for the great interest in sequencing the sea urchin genome is because it shares a common ancestor with humans. Sea urchins are closer to human and vertebrates from an evolutionary perspective than other more widely studied animal models, such as fruit fly or worms.

Image: fluorescent expression of transporters in sea urchin embryos

A single female sea urchin produces lots of eggs – like five to ten million of them. And sea urchin embryos are evolutionarily closely related to man* – more so than fruit flies or worms, which are typically used as model organisms. Because of this, sea urchins are being used to help scientists identify toxic chemicals in the environment.

"Chemical testing is an area of intensive investigation right now. One of the challenges is trying to determine whether a compound is going to be harmful when you don’t actually know what mechanisms it can interact with and how it can potentially cause harm."

So, biologist Amro Hamdoun and his colleagues at the University of California San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography are systematically searching through the genes in the sea urchin genome to find those involved in drug transporters in humans.

"And by sorting through these genes and cataloging them and understanding what the functions of each of them is, we can begin to make these testable predictions about whether there are these common patterns of pollutant interaction."

*Quick fact: Sea urchins are echinoderms, marine animals that originated more than 540 million years ago. The reason for the great interest in sequencing the sea urchin genome is because it shares a common ancestor with humans. Sea urchins are closer to human and vertebrates from an evolutionary perspective than other more widely studied animal models, such as fruit fly or worms.

Image: fluorescent expression of transporters in sea urchin embryos

Can you fall in love after taking a quiz? This is Science Today. Psychologist Arthur Aron started studying the science of falling in love nearly 50 years ago as a graduate student at the University of California, Berkeley. Since then, he developed a set of 36 questions that he says can bring a close connection between two strangers.

"We’re confident that this procedure of answering 36 questions that gradually get more and more personal—that both people answer as well of a few other items in there like saying what you have in common, things you like about the other—that when you do these things you’re going to feel closer to the other person."

Aron tested the questions in his lab on two participants who ended up marrying each other six months later. But he says the questions were originally meant for accelerating intimacy rather than romance.

"We know these 36 questions get people closer. That can facilitate falling in love. Certainly if many other things are in place, and this happens, it could be the straw that breaks the camel’s back."