Category: The Dish

A team of researchers that has been growing red blood cells from pluripotent stem cells has received a grant to trial the cultured cells in humans. Victoria Turk has the details:

The first three volunteers will receive some of the lab-cultured red blood cells before the end of 2016, and the goal is to eventually go mainstream. Think full-scale “blood factories,” according to the Telegraph. I spoke to Jo Mountford, one of the scientists working on producing the cells at the University of Glasgow who also works with the Scottish National Blood Transfusion Service. She explained that their aim had been to create red blood cells that were “the closest thing possible to a red cell you would take from a donor,” but made in a dish rather than taken from someone’s arm.

Liat Clark looks at the potential advantages of manufactured blood cells:

The aim is to target smaller markets where the blood is necessary for therapeutic benefits first, in the lead up to mass manufacturing. Once efficacy is proven at that scale, it could be used more universally for trauma in the future. It also means the risk of transmitting infections is extinguished, and we will no longer be faced with the waste of disposing of supplies 35 days after they are donated.

“In the long term we would hope to deliver it to many parts of the world where they don’t have access to blood supplies — if we crack the cost issue, it could be a more global solution.”

This is where perhaps the greatest potential lies. In developing countries up to 150,000 women die each year due to blood loss in childbirth. If the process can be scaled up to beat these problems, the possibilities seem endless.

Emily Badger flags a new study adding to the large body of evidence that environmental problems disproportionately affect poor and minority communities:

[R]esearchers at the University of Minnesota, writing in the journal PLOS ONE, have created a sweeping picture of unequal exposure to one key pollutant — nitrogen dioxide, produced by cars, construction equipment and industrial sources — that’s been linked to higher risks of asthma and heart attack. They’ve found, all over the country, in even the most rural states and the cleanest cities, that minorities are exposed to more of the pollution than whites. …

Specifically, they found that minorities are on average exposed to 38 percent higher levels of outdoor NO2 than whites in the communities where they live, based on demographic data from the 2000 census. That gap varies across the country, though, and it’s substantially wider in the biggest cities. Nationwide, the difference in exposure is akin to approximately 7,000 deaths a year from heart disease.

Meanwhile, John Upton flags research connecting pollution and suicide:

“We found an association between air pollution exposure and suicide risk,” says Amanda Bakian, an assistant professor in the university’s psychiatry department who was involved with the research. “Our study wasn’t designed to test for causality. It was designed to assess whether or not there is a correlation.”

Bakian and her colleagues found that the odds of committing suicide in the county spiked 20 percent following three days of high nitrogen dioxide pollution—which is produced when fossil fuels are burned and after fertilizer is applied to fields.

Rosie Blau (as our German readers chuckle) looks at how light affects our health:

In the morning, high concentrations of blue occur naturally; by dusk we are left mostly with green and red. The blue light has the greatest impact on our circadian system, telling the brain that it’s morning and time to be alert, and setting our clock for the day. That is important because we sleep soundly, and our brain and body function better, when the internal signals of the body clock are in sync with external cues of day and night.

The problem is that artificial light does not replicate the colours of the natural world. Much electric light has high intensities of blue, so it deceives our brains into thinking that it’s daytime even when it isn’t. Just ten minutes of regular electric light can make some changes to our internal clock. “We evolved to be blue-sensitive, we need it,” says [professor Satchin] Panda. But many of us get an awful lot of it, particularly in the evening: when we get home we spotlight the kitchen so we can make the dinner, and then plug into our laptops, tablets or smartphones, which beam blue light into our eyes at close range. So we … lessen the contrast between light and dark that our circadian system relies on to work well. All of which makes us more prone to insomnia or disturbed sleep in some way.

But artificial light isn’t all bad:

Teenagers the world over should be cheering on the work of Mariana Figueiro, an expert on light and health at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York. In 2012 she found that when a group of young adults used an iPad for two hours before bedtime, they suppressed their production of melatonin, a sleep-promoting hormone. The media focused on the obvious conclusion: that using such backlit devices ruins our sleep.

But Figueiro draws another inference too. Because they blast us with blue light, these same backlit items could act as light therapy by day to help invigorate us and reset our clock. She may be the first person to prescribe an hour playing “Angry Birds” each morning as a solution to our ills.

(Photo by Gisela Giardino)

With Indiana recently becoming the first state to repeal the Common Core State Standards – and opposition to the standards rising in Louisiana, Oklahoma, and several other states – Jay Greene worries that Core supporters “made some of the same political mistakes that opponents of gay marriage did”:

They figured if they could get the US Department of Education, DC-based organizations, and state school chiefs on board, they would have a direct and definitive victory. And at first blush it looked like they had achieved it, with about 45 states committing to adopt the new set of standards and federally-sponsored standardized tests aligned to those standards. Like opponents of gay marriage, the Common Core victory seemed so overwhelming that they hardly felt the need to engage in debates to defend it. But in the rush to a clear and total victory, supporters of Common Core failed to consider how the more than 10,000 school districts, more than 3 million teachers, and the parents of almost 50 million students would react. For standards to actually change practice, you need a lot of these folks on board.

And he doesn’t see that happening anytime soon:

Supporters of Common Core may draw the wrong lesson from this post and increase efforts to convince the public and train educators to love the Common Core. Not only will these re-education efforts be too little, too late, but they fail to grasp the inherent flaw in reforms like Common Core. Trying to change the content and practice of the entire nation’s school system requires a top-down, direct, and definitive victory to get adopted. If input and deliberation are sought, or decisions are truly decentralized, then it is too easy to block standards reforms, like Common Core. Supporters of CC learned this much from the numerous failed efforts to adopt national standards in the past. But the brute force and directness required for adopting national standards makes its effective implementation in a diverse, decentralized, and democratic country impossible.

Meanwhile, Rick Hess and Michael Q. McShane see a parallel to the Obamacare debate, arguing that “[ACA] critics have recognized that it’s important to offer solutions, not just complaints. Common Core critics in each state need to devise their own version of ‘repeal and replace’”:

Common Core critics must keep in mind that policy debates are won by proposing better solutions. The Core standards were adopted with a big federal boost and little public debate, but adopted they were. Teachers and school leaders have been implementing the standards since 2010, and opponents can’t wish this away any more than Obamacare critics can wish away the new landscape produced by the Affordable Care Act. … The ixmpulse to undo an ambitious reform that was adopted with little scrutiny or debate is a healthy and understandable one. But criticism unaccompanied by solutions is a self-defeating strategy. Common Core critics need to make sure they’re saying more than just “no.”

Previous Dish on the Common Core here and here. Update from a reader:

There seems to be a lot of misunderstanding around Common Core. I’ve noticed that even pundits who support it often call it a curriculum and it is not a curriculum; it is a set of standards around which states and local school build a curriculum. The other thing I hear and read often is, “Common Core standards are not rigorous AND too many students fail the tests”. What? They are saying students are failing non rigorous tests?? If the standards lack rigor, shouldn’t everyone be passing the tests?

If students are failing the tests for Common Core, either:

1. The standards are too rigorous; perhaps not developmentally appropriate for a particular grade, asking too much too soon.

2. The curriculum implemented to prepare students to meet the standards is not effective

3. Our little angels are not all the gifted geniuses we thought they were.

Some states, including my own (GA) are just testing against the new standards this year. Maybe as there is more data it will become clear why students scores are going down, or if that is even true over all the participating states.

Common Core advocates did a lousy job of rolling out the standards, but Indiana is unique in that they have robust state standards to go back to. Many states had less rigorous standards prior to common core so they should at least wait for some data before drafting more new standards. The most useful data point may be how kids who have been taught under the new standards since kindergarten perform on their first round of testing in 3rd grade. In our district, that does not occur until next year.

Another:

State assessments, including any created for the Common Core, aren’t pass/fail. Students receive a score on a scale. States divide scale scores into categories of achievement, such as advanced, proficient, basic, below basic. Each category of achievement represents a band of scale scores. The scores that constitute a band are set subjectively. Because proficiency is desirable, and because No Child Left Behind expects students to be proficient, some people say that any score below proficiency is “failing.” It is not, any more than a “C” grade in a class is failing.

Now, here’s the thing. Under NCLB originally, each state set its own standards, commissioned its own tests, and decided upon the scores that constitute each category of achievement. As a result, NCLB created a perverse incentive for states to have low standards, easy tests, and a low score for proficiency. States are free to continue to do this.

NCLB came up for reauthorization in 2007, long after it was much reviled, but Congress has been unable to agree whether to kill it or change it. NCLB contains a provision allowing for waivers. In the absence of Congressional action, the U.S. Department of Education has created a comprehensive waiver that amounts to its own version of NCLB. Many states wanted these waivers because the waiver allowed them to set up a more sensible accountability system for schools.

Conditions for receiving a waiver included adopting rigorous standards and assessments. The standards and assessments do not have to be Common Core-related. But states with a waiver must still categorize students as proficient or not, and still deal with low-performing schools.

The Common Core and its assessments are more rigorous than most previous state tests. The new standards require closer reading of texts in all subjects , better writing and speaking skills, ready knowledge of math facts, understanding of math principles, and application of math to real-life problems. The assessments will require students to think.

With teachers and students just gearing up for this, we can expect that fewer students will score proficient on the new tests, for at least a few years — probably longer. Unfortunately, people categorize this as failing the test. Imagine that you used to require students to jump two feet high and now students must jump four feet high. They will need to be trained to work up to this. America is not a patient culture.