thescientist--2020-12-01--Scientists Engineer Dreams to Understand the Sleeping Brain

Adam Haar Horowitz is the first to admit that whispering to strangers as they fall asleep “ seems a little creepy.
” He ’ d been mulling over the idea with fellow MIT master ’ s student Ishaan Grover a few years ago while thinking about ways to influence the dreamlike visions people see at sleep onset , a state known as hypnagogia .
The pair wondered if quietly saying words or phrases to people in hypnagogia might influence the content of their thoughts and visions , thereby serving both as a tool to investigate human cognition and , ultimately @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wield control over their dreaming brains .
Haar Horowitz didn ’ t end up whispering into strangers ’ ears , but he , Grover , and other collaborators did find a way to execute the basic concept , using a more practical solution : a device that fits into a person ’ s hand to monitor changes in heart rate , muscle tone , and skin conductance—all of which help researchers determine the moment at which someone dozes off—paired with a computer or smartphone app that automatically plays audio prompts and records people @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ would speak to people when it guessed that they were at the end of hypnagogia before they go into something deeper , ” Haar Horowitz says .
After reporting what they were thinking about right at that moment , people would be allowed to nod off again , and the whole process could be repeated .
In experiments detailed in Haar Horowitz ’ s master ’ s thesis and a scientific paper published earlier this year , people interacted easily with the setup , known as Dormio .
They chatted with it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they could see and feel as they slipped in and out of wakefulness .
One volunteer , prompted by Dormio to think about a fork , described dreaming about a family that was “ happy to see the fork .
And they ’ re putting it in a pumpkin , ” according to Haar Horowitz ’ s thesis .
Another participant , told to think about a tree , described “ a tree from my childhood , from my backyard .
It never asked for anything.
” Dream researchers who spoke with The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for a field traditionally limited by scientists ’ inability to interact with their study participants .
Many experts define dreams broadly as any subjective experiences people have while asleep , although most projects rely on dream reports collected specifically from people woken up from rapid-eye movement ( REM ) sleep , the stage of sleep at which people are most likely to experience emotional , narrative dreams ( though not the only sleep stage in which dreams can occur ; see “ The Stages of Dreaming ” below ) .
This time-consuming approach @ @ @ @ @ @ @ researchers interested in manipulating dreams—an important aspect of dream research , says Haar Horowitz , now a research assistant in the Fluid Interfaces research group at MIT ’ s Media Lab .
After all , he says , “ you can ’ t do controlled experimentation on dreams without an ability to control dreams.
” Haar Horowitz is one of a small but growing group of researchers who call themselves dream engineers and are exploring various methods to influence people ’ s thoughts at sleep onset and during sleep itself .
Some tools @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , while others harness sights or smells , or employ more-complex technologies such as noninvasive brain stimulation .
With a recent wave of studies demonstrating the promise of such approaches , neuroscientists and psychologists may be able to learn more not only about how and why dreams are generated , but about possible health and cognitive applications of dream control .
Such techniques could help give dream researchers the control they ’ re after , says Harvard Medical School dream researcher Robert Stickgold , Haar Horowitz ’ s mentor and collaborator .
With @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the scientific method.
” Attempts to influence dreaming are by no means new .
People dating as far back as the ancient Egyptians have been known to fast to induce vivid dreams , while scientists , philosophers , and artists have been experimenting for centuries with hashish , opium , and other drugs to conjure dreamy visions in and out of sleep .
Many cultures continue to hold beliefs about the dream-altering effects of certain foods—folklore in many Western societies holds that cheese can induce vivid dreams , although there ’ s little @ @ @ @ @ @ @ demand for lucid dreaming classes designed to help people take control of their in-dream environments has taken off in the last few years , helped along by Christopher Nolan ’ s dream-twisting 2010 blockbuster , Inception .
Dream engineers are interested in finding reliable , researcher-controlled ways to induce lucidity—where a dreamer becomes aware of being in a dream and may be able to exert control over their actions and their environment , as well as other sensations such as flying , to investigate how those sensations are generated and whether they ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ person experiencing them .
One method that ’ s received significant interest as a way to manipulate dream sensations is noninvasive brain stimulation , which uses a magnetic coil or scalp electrodes to influence electrical activity in the dreamer ’ s brain .
In 2013 , a small study applied 10 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation ( tDCS ) to people in REM sleep , and concluded , based on reports people made after being woken up from REM sleep , that the procedure increased lucidity in dreams when compared to a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ following year that applied either a sham procedure or bursts of transcranial alternating current stimulation ( tACS ) —which is thought to be better than tDCS at influencing brain oscillations—concluded that 40 Hz currents during REM could also promote dreamers to become more self-aware .
However , in both studies , the effect was weak , and in the 2013 study it was only observed among people who said they already frequently experienced lucid dreams .
That group is unlikely to be representative of the general population , for which researchers estimate that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experienced dream lucidity .
The University of Montreal ’ s Tore Nielsen , who directs the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine , is unconvinced that noninvasive brain stimulation works as a lucidity inducer .
Like many dream researchers , Nielsen says he has experienced his fair share of lucid and otherwise extraordinary dreams .
He and his colleagues recently carried out their own study of tACS using stringent study conditions : for researchers to confirm a participant ’ s report of lucid dreaming , that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ becoming lucid—flicking their eyes from left to right under their closed eyelids three times—and that had to happen during REM sleep , as determined by electroencephalography ( EEG ) analyses of their brain activity .
“ Much to our chagrin , we failed to replicate ” the earlier findings , Nielsen says .
Although some participants did the eye-flick signal during REM sleep and subsequently described vivid dreams , people were no more likely to have lucid dreams after receiving tACS than they were if they ’ d had the sham procedure .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in dream manipulation , particularly for studying the relative roles of different brain regions in generating common dream experiences .
Queen Mary University of London ’ s Valdas Noreika and colleagues , for example , recently used 10-minute sessions of tDCS to disrupt activity in the sensorimotor cortex of 10 volunteers while they were in REM sleep .
The researchers woke people from REM sleep shortly after each session , and asked them to fill out questionnaires on what they ’ d been dreaming about—and specifically , whether they ’ d been engaged @ @ @ @ @ @ @ walking .
The results showed that people who had received tDCS reported experiencing less movement in their dreams than people receiving a sham procedure , suggesting that normal sensorimotor cortex activity is required for those dream sensations , Noreika says .
Specifically , “ we found that this sensorimotor cortex is responsible for repetitive actions of the dream self .
.
.
such as walking , running , swimming.
” Simpler technologies likely also have their place in the manipulation of dream experiences .
Michelle Carr , who did her PhD in Nielsen @ @ @ @ @ @ @ postdoc at the University of Rochester , has been experimenting for the last couple of years with techniques to induce self-awareness in dreamers in a lab setting .
She ’ s found that using behavioral training to get people to associate sensory stimuli such as lights or sounds with a sense of heightened awareness seems to be an effective way to trigger lucid dreaming .
In a recent study , for example , Carr and her colleagues trained awake volunteers to try to become particularly aware of their surroundings whenever researchers presented them @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and a beeping noise .
Participants subsequently were allowed 90 minutes to doze off for a nap in the lab , while researchers monitored their sleep stages using several techniques including EEG and measurements of electrical activity in the muscles .
When a participant entered REM sleep , experimenters triggered the LED and the audio cues in the same alternating pattern they ’ d played during training .
By monitoring eye movements for the agreed-upon eye-flicking signal , collecting dream reports from people woken up by researchers for brief periods mid-nap , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ up , the team found that around 50 percent of the treatment group experienced lucid dreams , compared with just 17 percent in a control group of participants who ’ d completed the training but hadn ’ t had the lights and sounds played to them during their naps .
“ It was really cool—some people did [ the cue-signal response ] up to eight times , ” Carr says .
“ Some people who had never before had one had their first lucid dream in the lab.
” While the research is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ she hopes the findings will encourage further studies intended to trigger certain sensations in dreams , with an eye toward the possible benefits .
She and her colleagues recently analyzed dream and mood diaries kept by 20 people over the course of a week and found that higher lucidity correlated with elevated waking mood the following day .
The researchers plan to use their lucidity-inducing techniques to investigate whether the relationship is to some degree causal , Carr says , and whether inducing lucidity has other applications , such as helping people suffering @ @ @ @ @ @ @ mental health conditions including anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder .
“ If we can get [ these dreams ] to be induced reliably , ” Carr says , “ then we can use them for beneficial purposes.
” For some dream researchers , it ’ s not just the overall dream experience that ’ s worth manipulating , but also a dream ’ s specific content .
Many ancient human civilizations experimented with this idea too , and documented attempts to promote in-dream encounters with various deities , for example .
But @ @ @ @ @ @ @ was a family trip to Vermont in the 1990s that made him start thinking about the idea .
Falling asleep one evening after a hike up Camel ’ s Hump in the Green Mountains , Stickgold was surprised to feel as though he were scrambling up the side of the mountain , just as he had earlier that day , with the distinct sensation of rocky ground under his hands .
Waking up and then dozing off again , he found that he was able to regain this sensation several times before falling @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the experience , Stickgold says , he wondered about how to try to capture it in an experiment .
There was a stumbling block , however : he ’ d be unlikely to obtain ethical and administrative approval to lead a gaggle of undergrads on a rock-climbing expedition just to see if they ’ d go on to dream about the experience .
It was only a few years later that an alternative presented itself .
“ I was in a meeting with a bunch of students one day , pissing and moaning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ be , but how I would never be able to do it , ” Stickgold says .
“ One of the students sitting there just said , ‘ What about Tetris ?
’ They proceeded to tell me that this happens when you start playing Tetris : you see [ the pieces ] floating down before your eyes.
” That conversation was the seed for what would become a famous study in dream research .
Stickgold and colleagues recruited 27 people—10 Tetris experts , 12 Tetris novices , and five patients with memory @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the computer game over the course of three days .
For an hour at the beginning of each night , participants were prompted by an experimenter or by a digitized voice recording to say what they were thinking about into a microcassette recorder or to an experimenter as they fell in and out of sleep .
Almost two-thirds of the participants reported dream-like visions of Tetris during sleep onset , and three of the five amnesiacs also reported seeing Tetris-inspired imagery , despite having no conscious memory of the game .
One @ @ @ @ @ @ @ down on a screen and trying to put them in place , ” while another said they ’ d seen “ images that are turned on their side .
I don ’ t know what they are from , I wish I could remember , but they are like blocks.
” Several Tetris experts reported thinking not only of the Tetris they ’ d been playing during the experiment , but also of older versions of the game they ’ d played previously .
Nudging the brain to incorporate specific content—a trick known @ @ @ @ @ @ @ practical using computer and virtual reality games .
Erin Wamsley , previously a postdoc with Stickgold ’ s group who now runs a lab at Furman University in South Carolina , says that many researchers previously assumed dreams would be most influenced by more-intense experiences .
“ You can show someone horrible graphic images or very disturbing films with very high emotional content that participants would agree is disturbing or emotional , ” says Wamsley .
“ But [ that ’ s ] not something that triggers people to dream directly about that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ hand , we ’ ve had a lot of success causing participants to incorporate new learning experiences into their dreams.
” Wamsley ’ s now looking into what determines whether a particular experience will be incorporated into a dream .
In 2010 , Stickgold , Wamsley , and colleagues got 43 volunteers to play an arcade skiing game called Alpine Racer .
Around a third of the dream reports collected from subjects woken up from non-REM sleep over the following nights were related to the game .
The nature of the dream content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , however , going from typical comments such as “ I get like flashes of that .
.
.
game in my head , virtual reality skiing game , ” to oblique skiing references such as , “ I was picturing stacking wood this time .
.
.
.
I felt like I was doing it at .
.
.
a ski resort that I had been to before , like five years ago maybe.
” In the last couple of years , the same researchers have also used a simple maze navigation @ @ @ @ @ @ @ computer to explore how content is incorporated into dreams that occur during different sleep stages .
A dream report from someone just falling asleep contained thoughts of swimming above the maze , for example , while one participant woken from REM sleep reported dreaming about walking through it .
A typical report from later stages of non-REM sleep involved the dreamer just standing in the middle of a maze waiting for a friend to find them .
This and many other studies have also reported an association between the incorporation of task content @ @ @ @ @ @ @ that adds weight to the prevalent view among sleep researchers that sleep , and perhaps dreaming specifically , plays an important role in memory consolidation .
On the basis of current evidence , it ’ s not clear whether dreaming helps drive that consolidation , or is perhaps instead a reflection or byproduct of the process .
Stickgold , who explores theories of dreaming with coauthor Antonio Zadra in a new book , When Brains Dream , slated for publication in January , hypothesizes that REM sleep plays an active role in consolidating @ @ @ @ @ @ @ experiences , and that perhaps the dreamlike visions of hypnagogia are the brain ’ s way of tagging relevant content for processing later on in the sleep cycle .
Other researchers posit that dreams serve different functions—Noreika is one of several scientists who think they offer simulation of potential threats and social interactions that the dreamer might encounter in waking life—or perhaps no function at all .
Exploring potential functions of dreams and dream content is a key purpose of dream-influencing technologies such as Dormio , notes Haar Horowitz , who says that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with dreamers in real time offers the possibility of collecting data more easily compared to traditional dream research , even if hypnagogia and REM sleep aren ’ t exactly equivalent .
He ’ s recently launched a number of collaborations , not only with sleep scientists curious about how changing dream content could alter memory or learning , but also with artists and philosophers interested in how dream incubation might boost their creativity .
Carr , Haar Horowitz , and others organized a workshop at MIT last year for engineers and dream researchers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and the group put together a special issue of scientific papers on dream engineering for the journal Consciousness and Cognition this summer .
“ A lot of collaborations developed from that workshop , ” says Carr , who was managing guest editor for the issue .
“ I think it ’ s the start of something new.
” With this momentum , dream researchers are hopeful that their field will overcome a lingering image problem in sleep science .
Even now , “ a lot of people view dreaming as a fringe @ @ @ @ @ @ @ [ extrasensory perception ] or out-of-body experiences , ” says Wamsley .
“ Of course , in my opinion , it ’ s nothing like that at all .
In our research on dreaming , we treat studying dreams as another way to understand what the mind and brain are doing during sleep.
” Nevertheless , the subjectivity of self-reported dreams remains an issue , she acknowledges .
While neuroscientists ’ attempts to objectively predict what people are dreaming about on the basis of brain imaging techniques such as functional MRI have made @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they ’ re a long way from matching the detail in dreamers ’ own descriptions , she says .
Aware of this obstacle , several groups working on dream engineering seek to demonstrate the value and feasibility of collecting dream reports as part of regular sleep studies .
In a recent study from Björn Rasch ’ s lab at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland , for example , researchers trained people on a word-picture association task , and then subsequently woke them up for dream reports during the night .
The team @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the task the following morning didn ’ t seem to be affected by the awakenings themselves .
The researchers also reported that there was a positive relationship between dreaming of the task during non-REM sleep and memory performance the following morning , but they found no such association when it came to dreams of the task during REM sleep—a clue about sleep ’ s role in memory that would have been overlooked had dream reports not been gathered .
Dream researchers are also looking toward some of the extraordinary implications of manipulating the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ prospect of devices such as Dormio allowing people to interface with their own or other people ’ s dreams , ethical considerations “ are paramount here , ” notes computer scientist Pattie Maes , the head of the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT ’ s Media Lab and a coauthor of a review of the field in Consciousness and Cognition .
Stickgold agrees , noting that even after having done it for decades , there ’ s something unique , and even unsettling , about interacting with the minds of people in the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ “ It has an edge of scariness , ” he says .
“ We ’ re tapping into an aspect of people ’ s minds that we don ’ t have much control over and they don ’ t have much control over when they ’ re sleeping .
We ’ re almost voyeurs , watching their minds do what they decide to do .
”

ABOVE: © TIFFANY DANG
Adam Haar Horowitz is the first to admit that whispering to strangers as they fall asleep “seems a little creepy.” He’d been mulling over the idea with fellow MIT master’s student Ishaan Grover a few years ago while thinking about ways to influence the dreamlike visions people see at sleep onset, a state known as hypnagogia. The pair wondered if quietly saying words or phrases to people in hypnagogia might influence the content of their thoughts and visions, thereby serving both as a tool to investigate human cognition and, ultimately, as a means to help people wield control over their dreaming brains.
Haar Horowitz didn’t end up whispering into strangers’ ears, but he, Grover, and other collaborators did find a way to execute the basic concept, using a more practical solution: a device that fits into a person’s hand to monitor changes in heart rate, muscle tone, and skin conductance—all of which help researchers determine the moment at which someone dozes off—paired with a computer or smartphone app that automatically plays audio prompts and records people’s spoken responses. The app “would speak to people when it guessed that they were at the end of hypnagogia before they go into something deeper,” Haar Horowitz says. After reporting what they were thinking about right at that moment, people would be allowed to nod off again, and the whole process could be repeated.
In experiments detailed in Haar Horowitz’s master’s thesis and a scientific paper published earlier this year, people interacted easily with the setup, known as Dormio. They chatted with it, albeit somewhat nonsensically, about what they could see and feel as they slipped in and out of wakefulness. One volunteer, prompted by Dormio to think about a fork, described dreaming about a family that was “happy to see the fork. And they’re putting it in a pumpkin,” according to Haar Horowitz’s thesis. Another participant, told to think about a tree, described “a tree from my childhood, from my backyard. It never asked for anything.”
We treat studying dreams as another way to understand what the mind and brain are doing during sleep. —Erin Wamsley, Furman University
Dream researchers who spoke with The Scientist say Dormio marks an exciting step for a field traditionally limited by scientists’ inability to interact with their study participants. Many experts define dreams broadly as any subjective experiences people have while asleep, although most projects rely on dream reports collected specifically from people woken up from rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep at which people are most likely to experience emotional, narrative dreams (though not the only sleep stage in which dreams can occur; see “The Stages of Dreaming” below). This time-consuming approach has been something of an obstacle to researchers interested in manipulating dreams—an important aspect of dream research, says Haar Horowitz, now a research assistant in the Fluid Interfaces research group at MIT’s Media Lab. After all, he says, “you can’t do controlled experimentation on dreams without an ability to control dreams.”
Adam Haar Horowitz (left) works on Dormio alongside (from left to right) Ishaan Grover, Oscar Rosello and Pedro Reynolds-Cuéllar. Other team members include Abhinandan Jain, Tomas Vega Galvez, Eyal Perry, Matthew Ha, Kathleen Esfahany, Christina Chen. COURTESY OF ADAM HAAR HOROWITZ
Haar Horowitz is one of a small but growing group of researchers who call themselves dream engineers and are exploring various methods to influence people’s thoughts at sleep onset and during sleep itself. Some tools, like Dormio, use aural stimuli, while others harness sights or smells, or employ more-complex technologies such as noninvasive brain stimulation. With a recent wave of studies demonstrating the promise of such approaches, neuroscientists and psychologists may be able to learn more not only about how and why dreams are generated, but about possible health and cognitive applications of dream control.
Such techniques could help give dream researchers the control they’re after, says Harvard Medical School dream researcher Robert Stickgold, Haar Horowitz’s mentor and collaborator. With these approaches, “we can use the scientific method.”
Lucidity and other dream experiences
Attempts to influence dreaming are by no means new. People dating as far back as the ancient Egyptians have been known to fast to induce vivid dreams, while scientists, philosophers, and artists have been experimenting for centuries with hashish, opium, and other drugs to conjure dreamy visions in and out of sleep. Many cultures continue to hold beliefs about the dream-altering effects of certain foods—folklore in many Western societies holds that cheese can induce vivid dreams, although there’s little scientific research on the topic. And demand for lucid dreaming classes designed to help people take control of their in-dream environments has taken off in the last few years, helped along by Christopher Nolan’s dream-twisting 2010 blockbuster, Inception.
Dream engineers are interested in finding reliable, researcher-controlled ways to induce lucidity—where a dreamer becomes aware of being in a dream and may be able to exert control over their actions and their environment, as well as other sensations such as flying, to investigate how those sensations are generated and whether they’re associated with any benefits for the person experiencing them. One method that’s received significant interest as a way to manipulate dream sensations is noninvasive brain stimulation, which uses a magnetic coil or scalp electrodes to influence electrical activity in the dreamer’s brain.
In 2013, a small study applied 10 minutes of transcranial direct current stimulation (tDCS) to people in REM sleep, and concluded, based on reports people made after being woken up from REM sleep, that the procedure increased lucidity in dreams when compared to a sham procedure. A similar study the following year that applied either a sham procedure or bursts of transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS)—which is thought to be better than tDCS at influencing brain oscillations—concluded that 40 Hz currents during REM could also promote dreamers to become more self-aware. However, in both studies, the effect was weak, and in the 2013 study it was only observed among people who said they already frequently experienced lucid dreams. That group is unlikely to be representative of the general population, for which researchers estimate that up to 50 percent may never have experienced dream lucidity.
The University of Montreal’s Tore Nielsen, who directs the Dream and Nightmare Laboratory at the Center for Advanced Research in Sleep Medicine, is unconvinced that noninvasive brain stimulation works as a lucidity inducer. Like many dream researchers, Nielsen says he has experienced his fair share of lucid and otherwise extraordinary dreams. He and his colleagues recently carried out their own study of tACS using stringent study conditions: for researchers to confirm a participant’s report of lucid dreaming, that person had to give a signal on becoming lucid—flicking their eyes from left to right under their closed eyelids three times—and that had to happen during REM sleep, as determined by electroencephalography (EEG) analyses of their brain activity. “Much to our chagrin, we failed to replicate” the earlier findings, Nielsen says. Although some participants did the eye-flick signal during REM sleep and subsequently described vivid dreams, people were no more likely to have lucid dreams after receiving tACS than they were if they’d had the sham procedure.
THE STAGES OF DREAMING Neuroscientists used to think that dreaming took place almost exclusively during rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, a stage of slumber that is often accompanied by complex emotional, narrative-heavy dreams that can involve sensations such as flying or other movements. But in the last few decades, research has shown that people can also have subjective dream-like experiences in non-REM sleep, albeit less frequently and of a different nature. For example, a person thinking about a cat as they doze off into the first stage of sleep—a hallucinatory state known as hypnagogia—may see strange cat visions and experience sensations such as falling. Dreams experienced later in non-REM sleep tend to be more mundane and may involve people or objects that are familiar to the dreamer. Once in very deep sleep, people are more likely to have conceptual thoughts than to experience emotional narratives, if they have any memorable dreams at all. MODIFIED FROM © ISTOCK.COM, TOPVECTORS
Noninvasive brain stimulation may have other uses in dream manipulation, particularly for studying the relative roles of different brain regions in generating common dream experiences. Queen Mary University of London’s Valdas Noreika and colleagues, for example, recently used 10-minute sessions of tDCS to disrupt activity in the sensorimotor cortex of 10 volunteers while they were in REM sleep. The researchers woke people from REM sleep shortly after each session, and asked them to fill out questionnaires on what they’d been dreaming about—and specifically, whether they’d been engaged in movements such as lifting objects or walking. The results showed that people who had received tDCS reported experiencing less movement in their dreams than people receiving a sham procedure, suggesting that normal sensorimotor cortex activity is required for those dream sensations, Noreika says. Specifically, “we found that this sensorimotor cortex is responsible for repetitive actions of the dream self . . . such as walking, running, swimming.”
Simpler technologies likely also have their place in the manipulation of dream experiences. Michelle Carr, who did her PhD in Nielsen’s lab and is now a postdoc at the University of Rochester, has been experimenting for the last couple of years with techniques to induce self-awareness in dreamers in a lab setting. She’s found that using behavioral training to get people to associate sensory stimuli such as lights or sounds with a sense of heightened awareness seems to be an effective way to trigger lucid dreaming.
Some people who had never before had one had their first lucid dream in the lab. —Michelle Carr, University of Rochester
In a recent study, for example, Carr and her colleagues trained awake volunteers to try to become particularly aware of their surroundings whenever researchers presented them with alternating cues of flashing red LEDs and a beeping noise. Participants subsequently were allowed 90 minutes to doze off for a nap in the lab, while researchers monitored their sleep stages using several techniques including EEG and measurements of electrical activity in the muscles. When a participant entered REM sleep, experimenters triggered the LED and the audio cues in the same alternating pattern they’d played during training. By monitoring eye movements for the agreed-upon eye-flicking signal, collecting dream reports from people woken up by researchers for brief periods mid-nap, and administering questionnaires after the 90 minutes was up, the team found that around 50 percent of the treatment group experienced lucid dreams, compared with just 17 percent in a control group of participants who’d completed the training but hadn’t had the lights and sounds played to them during their naps. “It was really cool—some people did [the cue-signal response] up to eight times,” Carr says. “Some people who had never before had one had their first lucid dream in the lab.”
While the research is still in early stages, Carr says she hopes the findings will encourage further studies intended to trigger certain sensations in dreams, with an eye toward the possible benefits. She and her colleagues recently analyzed dream and mood diaries kept by 20 people over the course of a week and found that higher lucidity correlated with elevated waking mood the following day. The researchers plan to use their lucidity-inducing techniques to investigate whether the relationship is to some degree causal, Carr says, and whether inducing lucidity has other applications, such as helping people suffering from recurrent nightmares—a common symptom of many mental health conditions including anxiety disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
“If we can get [these dreams] to be induced reliably,” Carr says, “then we can use them for beneficial purposes.”
Incubation of specific dream content
For some dream researchers, it’s not just the overall dream experience that’s worth manipulating, but also a dream’s specific content. Many ancient human civilizations experimented with this idea too, and documented attempts to promote in-dream encounters with various deities, for example. But for Harvard’s Stickgold, it was a family trip to Vermont in the 1990s that made him start thinking about the idea.
Falling asleep one evening after a hike up Camel’s Hump in the Green Mountains, Stickgold was surprised to feel as though he were scrambling up the side of the mountain, just as he had earlier that day, with the distinct sensation of rocky ground under his hands. Waking up and then dozing off again, he found that he was able to regain this sensation several times before falling into a deeper sleep. Intrigued by the experience, Stickgold says, he wondered about how to try to capture it in an experiment.
There was a stumbling block, however: he’d be unlikely to obtain ethical and administrative approval to lead a gaggle of undergrads on a rock-climbing expedition just to see if they’d go on to dream about the experience. It was only a few years later that an alternative presented itself. “I was in a meeting with a bunch of students one day, pissing and moaning about what a great experiment this would be, but how I would never be able to do it,” Stickgold says. “One of the students sitting there just said, ‘What about Tetris?’ They proceeded to tell me that this happens when you start playing Tetris: you see [the pieces] floating down before your eyes.”
That conversation was the seed for what would become a famous study in dream research. Stickgold and colleagues recruited 27 people—10 Tetris experts, 12 Tetris novices, and five patients with memory loss from brain damage—to play seven hours of the computer game over the course of three days. For an hour at the beginning of each night, participants were prompted by an experimenter or by a digitized voice recording to say what they were thinking about into a microcassette recorder or to an experimenter as they fell in and out of sleep. Almost two-thirds of the participants reported dream-like visions of Tetris during sleep onset, and three of the five amnesiacs also reported seeing Tetris-inspired imagery, despite having no conscious memory of the game. One described “thinking about little squares coming down on a screen and trying to put them in place,” while another said they’d seen “images that are turned on their side. I don’t know what they are from, I wish I could remember, but they are like blocks.” Several Tetris experts reported thinking not only of the Tetris they’d been playing during the experiment, but also of older versions of the game they’d played previously.
Nudging the brain to incorporate specific content—a trick known as dream incubation—has proven to be surprisingly practical using computer and virtual reality games. Erin Wamsley, previously a postdoc with Stickgold’s group who now runs a lab at Furman University in South Carolina, says that many researchers previously assumed dreams would be most influenced by more-intense experiences. “You can show someone horrible graphic images or very disturbing films with very high emotional content that participants would agree is disturbing or emotional,” says Wamsley. “But [that’s] not something that triggers people to dream directly about that experience, necessarily. On the other hand, we’ve had a lot of success causing participants to incorporate new learning experiences into their dreams.” Wamsley’s now looking into what determines whether a particular experience will be incorporated into a dream.
The Dream Engineer’s Toolbox Researchers use a variety of technologies to monitor (teal) and attempt to modulate (purple) people’s dream experiences. While many protocols include pre-sleep training—to encourage people to become more aware of their dreaming selves, for example, or to incubate specific ideas using virtual reality or computer games—a number of dream-influencing approaches can be applied during sleep. Scientists also monitor participants during sleep and collect dream reports as soon as they awake. © ANA YAEL
PDF See full infographic: WEB
In 2010, Stickgold, Wamsley, and colleagues got 43 volunteers to play an arcade skiing game called Alpine Racer. Around a third of the dream reports collected from subjects woken up from non-REM sleep over the following nights were related to the game. The nature of the dream content changed as people fell into deeper sleep, however, going from typical comments such as “I get like flashes of that . . . game in my head, virtual reality skiing game,” to oblique skiing references such as, “I was picturing stacking wood this time. . . . I felt like I was doing it at . . . a ski resort that I had been to before, like five years ago maybe.”
In the last couple of years, the same researchers have also used a simple maze navigation task that participants carry out on a computer to explore how content is incorporated into dreams that occur during different sleep stages. A dream report from someone just falling asleep contained thoughts of swimming above the maze, for example, while one participant woken from REM sleep reported dreaming about walking through it. A typical report from later stages of non-REM sleep involved the dreamer just standing in the middle of a maze waiting for a friend to find them.
This and many other studies have also reported an association between the incorporation of task content into dreams and task performance post-sleep—a finding that adds weight to the prevalent view among sleep researchers that sleep, and perhaps dreaming specifically, plays an important role in memory consolidation. On the basis of current evidence, it’s not clear whether dreaming helps drive that consolidation, or is perhaps instead a reflection or byproduct of the process. Stickgold, who explores theories of dreaming with coauthor Antonio Zadra in a new book, When Brains Dream, slated for publication in January, hypothesizes that REM sleep plays an active role in consolidating emotional memories and extracting patterns from recent experiences, and that perhaps the dreamlike visions of hypnagogia are the brain’s way of tagging relevant content for processing later on in the sleep cycle. Other researchers posit that dreams serve different functions—Noreika is one of several scientists who think they offer simulation of potential threats and social interactions that the dreamer might encounter in waking life—or perhaps no function at all.
See “Dreaming of Possibilities”
Exploring potential functions of dreams and dream content is a key purpose of dream-influencing technologies such as Dormio, notes Haar Horowitz, who says that the device’s ability to interact with dreamers in real time offers the possibility of collecting data more easily compared to traditional dream research, even if hypnagogia and REM sleep aren’t exactly equivalent. He’s recently launched a number of collaborations, not only with sleep scientists curious about how changing dream content could alter memory or learning, but also with artists and philosophers interested in how dream incubation might boost their creativity.
Making dream engineering mainstream
Carr, Haar Horowitz, and others organized a workshop at MIT last year for engineers and dream researchers to discuss technologies available to the field, and the group put together a special issue of scientific papers on dream engineering for the journal Consciousness and Cognition this summer. “A lot of collaborations developed from that workshop,” says Carr, who was managing guest editor for the issue. “I think it’s the start of something new.”
With this momentum, dream researchers are hopeful that their field will overcome a lingering image problem in sleep science. Even now, “a lot of people view dreaming as a fringe topic, kind of like studying ESP [extrasensory perception] or out-of-body experiences,” says Wamsley. “Of course, in my opinion, it’s nothing like that at all. In our research on dreaming, we treat studying dreams as another way to understand what the mind and brain are doing during sleep.”
Nevertheless, the subjectivity of self-reported dreams remains an issue, she acknowledges. While neuroscientists’ attempts to objectively predict what people are dreaming about on the basis of brain imaging techniques such as functional MRI have made strides in the last few years, they’re a long way from matching the detail in dreamers’ own descriptions, she says. Aware of this obstacle, several groups working on dream engineering seek to demonstrate the value and feasibility of collecting dream reports as part of regular sleep studies.
You can’t do controlled experimentation on dreams without an ability to control dreams. —Adam Haar Horowitz, MIT
In a recent study from Björn Rasch’s lab at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland, for example, researchers trained people on a word-picture association task, and then subsequently woke them up for dream reports during the night. The team found that people’s memory of the task the following morning didn’t seem to be affected by the awakenings themselves. The researchers also reported that there was a positive relationship between dreaming of the task during non-REM sleep and memory performance the following morning, but they found no such association when it came to dreams of the task during REM sleep—a clue about sleep’s role in memory that would have been overlooked had dream reports not been gathered.
Dream researchers are also looking toward some of the extraordinary implications of manipulating the minds of sleeping people. With the prospect of devices such as Dormio allowing people to interface with their own or other people’s dreams, ethical considerations “are paramount here,” notes computer scientist Pattie Maes, the head of the Fluid Interfaces group at MIT’s Media Lab and a coauthor of a review of the field in Consciousness and Cognition.
Stickgold agrees, noting that even after having done it for decades, there’s something unique, and even unsettling, about interacting with the minds of people in the not-quite-conscious, not-quite-unconscious world of dreams. “It has an edge of scariness,” he says. “We’re tapping into an aspect of people’s minds that we don’t have much control over and they don’t have much control over when they’re sleeping. We’re almost voyeurs, watching their minds do what they decide to do.”


thescientist--2020-12-01--Famous Arecibo Radio Telescope in Puerto Rico Collapses

ABOVE : The Arecibo Observatory in 2014 © ISTOCK.COM , ISAACRIUZ The Arecibo Observatory collapsed today ( December 1 ) , shattering the telescope ’ s 305-meter-wide radio dish and marking a cataclysmic end to the telescope ’ s 57-year run studying outer space , searching for alien life , and characterizing asteroids with the potential to hit Earth .
No one was hurt in the incident , according to National Geographic , though astronomers around the world are mourning the telescope ’ s demise , the Associated Press reports .
Jonathan Friedman , a 26-year veteran of radio astronomy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ observatory in Puerto Rico and heard the rumble this morning as a cable holding a 900-ton equipment platform suspended above the 305-meter-wide radio dish snapped .
The platform went into freefall and slammed into the radio dish , destroying it .
Before he saw the damage , Friedman knew what had happened , and tells the AP , “ I was screaming .
Personally , I was out of control .
.
.
.
I don ’ t have words to express it .
It ’ s a very deep , terrible feeling.
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ Science Foundation ( NSF ) , which owns the observatory , announced it would permanently halt operations at the telescope .
An engineering analysis had predicted that the observatory was at risk of collapsing .
Two cables supporting the platform over the dish snapped earlier this year , one in August and one in early November .
The loss of those cables made it impossible to ensure the safety of crews trying to fix the telescope , leading to the decision to decommission it .
Astronomers around the world began to petition to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ social media under the hashtag # WhatAreciboMeansToMe and on the Save the Arecibo Observatory Twitter account .
The telescope has been a source of inspiration for astronomers and science enthusiasts alike , making cameos in the James Bond film GoldenEye and the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan book Contact .
“ As someone who was inspired as a child by the observatory to reach for the stars , this is devastating and heartbreaking .
I ’ ve seen how the observatory to this day continues to inspire my island , ” planetary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Planetary Institute told National Geographic last month .
Abel Méndez , a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico who uses the telescope to study stars to identify habitable planets , shares a similar sentiment .
“ I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired , ” he tells the AP .
“ The world without the observatory loses , but Puerto Rico loses even more.
” Because of the scientific and cultural pride associated with the telescope , there are murmurs of a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ must begin today , Anne Virkki , who leads the team that uses the telescope to characterize planet-threatening asteroids , tells National Geographic in an email .

ABOVE: The Arecibo Observatory in 2014
© ISTOCK.COM, ISAACRIUZ
The Arecibo Observatory collapsed today (December 1), shattering the telescope’s 305-meter-wide radio dish and marking a cataclysmic end to the telescope’s 57-year run studying outer space, searching for alien life, and characterizing asteroids with the potential to hit Earth. No one was hurt in the incident, according to National Geographic, though astronomers around the world are mourning the telescope’s demise, the Associated Press reports.
Jonathan Friedman, a 26-year veteran of radio astronomy with the telescope, lives near the observatory in Puerto Rico and heard the rumble this morning as a cable holding a 900-ton equipment platform suspended above the 305-meter-wide radio dish snapped. The platform went into freefall and slammed into the radio dish, destroying it. Before he saw the damage, Friedman knew what had happened, and tells the AP, “I was screaming. Personally, I was out of control. . . . I don’t have words to express it. It’s a very deep, terrible feeling.”
On November 19, the National Science Foundation (NSF), which owns the observatory, announced it would permanently halt operations at the telescope. An engineering analysis had predicted that the observatory was at risk of collapsing. Two cables supporting the platform over the dish snapped earlier this year, one in August and one in early November. The loss of those cables made it impossible to ensure the safety of crews trying to fix the telescope, leading to the decision to decommission it. Astronomers around the world began to petition to save the famed telescope, posting on social media under the hashtag #WhatAreciboMeansToMe and on the Save the Arecibo Observatory Twitter account.
The telescope has been a source of inspiration for astronomers and science enthusiasts alike, making cameos in the James Bond film GoldenEye and the film adaptation of the Carl Sagan book Contact.
“As someone who was inspired as a child by the observatory to reach for the stars, this is devastating and heartbreaking. I’ve seen how the observatory to this day continues to inspire my island,” planetary scientist Edgard Rivera-Valentin of the Lunar and Planetary Institute told National Geographic last month.
Abel Méndez, a physics and astrobiology professor at the University of Puerto Rico who uses the telescope to study stars to identify habitable planets, shares a similar sentiment. “I am one of those students who visited it when young and got inspired,” he tells the AP. “The world without the observatory loses, but Puerto Rico loses even more.”
Because of the scientific and cultural pride associated with the telescope, there are murmurs of a campaign to rebuild it. Those efforts must begin today, Anne Virkki, who leads the team that uses the telescope to characterize planet-threatening asteroids, tells National Geographic in an email.


thescientist--2020-12-01--Opinion: Emergency Use Authorizations Are a Threat to Science

A few weeks ago , the World Health Organization rejected the use of Regeneron ’ s remdesivir for hospitalized patients with COVID-19 , regardless of disease severity .
This decision is in direct contrast to the US Food and Drug Administration ’ s emergency use authorization ( EUA ) of the drug , and President Donald Trump ’ s glowing endorsement .
It ’ s also a reflection of the steep price of EUAs—the price of undermining medical science .
The FDA can grant an EUA to a drug to treat COVID-19 to facilitate the distribution of new therapeutics when @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an important tool during the early stages of any pandemic because they loosen restrictions on novel treatment options .
The problem is that they end up interfering with clinical trials that would provide the best evidence on whether these drugs are safe and effective .
The EUA means it is “ reasonable to believe ” that the drug “ may be effective.
” This “ may be effective ” standard is a much lower level of evidence compared to the “ effectiveness ” standard the FDA uses for product approvals .
In addition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ EUAs to three therapies : convalescent plasma , a monoclonal antibody drug called bamlanivimab , and , most recently , Regeneron ’ s cocktail of monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab , the very ones taken by President Trump when he contracted SARS-CoV-2 .
The FDA previously granted and revoked EUA status for hydroxychloroquine .
Randomized clinical trials ( RCTs ) are the gold standard for developing new drugs and vaccines .
Patients are randomly assigned to either the control group receiving a placebo or to the treatment group receiving the experimental drug .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ first , do no harm ” tenet of medical practice—for ensuring a drug ’ s safety and making informed decisions about whether the benefit of a new drug exceeds its dangers .
But in a rush for COVID-19 treatments , we started throwing spaghetti on the wall , looking to see what sticks .
And some , such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesvir , aren ’ t sticking , and things are getting messy .
In the case of hydroxychloroquine , a drug that is often prescribed to treat rheumatoid arthritis , its use @ @ @ @ @ @ @ politicized , and polarized .
The FDA granted hydroxychloroquine EUA status on April 27 , and less than two months later , on June 15 , it was revoked after it became clear that at least one study supporting its use was based on questionable data and new scientific evidence showed that it had little to no effect in treating COVID-19 patients .
Other research even indicated adverse events in patients who took it .
In all cases , even if a drug does turn out to be effective , granting a therapy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ undermines the data and stunts the ability to properly collect and analyze that information to ultimately inform treatment decisions .
When the FDA granted an EUA for remdesivir , our clinical trials on the drug came to a stop .
Patients are less inclined to join a trial , in which they may or may not receive the drug , when they can just ask and receive the treatment that has been granted EUA status .
And it ’ s unethical to ask a patient to participate in a clinical trial in which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ been approved by the FDA .
According to ClinicalTrials.gov , there are a few “ active ” clinical trials for current COVID-19 EUA therapies , and their progress and enrollment numbers are unknown .
While EUAs are much needed , there should be more rigorous guidelines put in place to ensure that the clinical trials run their course before an EUA is granted .
And , if an EUA is granted before that can happen , there needs to be a clearly defined plan to properly study the therapy post-authorization with new , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ COVID-19 therapies that have or will receive an EUA from the FDA , the good news is that authorization is temporary .
The status can be revoked at any time , and such products have to be subjected to rigorous RCTs before receiving long-term FDA approval .
What needs to be done now is to sort through the existing treatment options to determine which ones really work .
President-elect Joe Biden ’ s administration should form an advisory panel to evaluate and reach some agreement on enabling and prioritizing studies of EUA treatments @ @ @ @ @ @ @ on the limited data available on the COVID-19 drugs that have been granted EUA and new agents as they become available .
Sorting through this will be difficult because it creates ethical , financial , regulatory , and medical dilemmas .
Patients need and require treatments and it is the doctors ’ moral responsibility to “ first , do no harm ” and care for their patients with whatever treatments are at hand .
Drugs cost money and clinical trials offer the potential treatments for free , while many insurance companies may not @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
But if the use of multiple EUA drugs continues , without proper rigorously controlled clinical trials , we may never learn what is most effective and least harmful .
Too many COVID-19 EUAs enhance the politicization of medical science and pollute the water for future research to get long-term answers .
Going forward , we need approved therapies and national guidance on COVID-19 care and treatment .
Kevin J. Tracey is the president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research , where Christina Brennan is the vice president of clinical @ @ @ @ @ @ @ pandemic , Tracey and Brennan established a 200-person COVID-19 Clinical Trial Unit ( CCTU ) at the Feinstein Institutes to conduct controlled clinical trials to study the safety and efficacy of experimental COVID-19 therapies .
Under their leadership , the research center has initiated seven clinical trials and programs and enrolled more than 1,200 participants .

ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, TAIZHAN SAKIMBAYEV
A few weeks ago, the World Health Organization rejected the use of Gilead Sciences’s remdesivir for hospitalized patients with COVID-19, regardless of disease severity. This decision is in direct contrast to the US Food and Drug Administration’s emergency use authorization (EUA) of the drug, and President Donald Trump’s glowing endorsement. It’s also a reflection of the steep price of EUAs—the price of undermining medical science.
The FDA can grant an EUA to a drug to treat COVID-19 to facilitate the distribution of new therapeutics when there are no alternatives. EUAs are an important tool during the early stages of any pandemic because they loosen restrictions on novel treatment options. The problem is that they end up interfering with clinical trials that would provide the best evidence on whether these drugs are safe and effective.
The EUA means it is “reasonable to believe” that the drug “may be effective.” This “may be effective” standard is a much lower level of evidence compared to the “effectiveness” standard the FDA uses for product approvals. In addition to remdesivir, the FDA has granted EUAs to three therapies: convalescent plasma, a monoclonal antibody drug called bamlanivimab, and, most recently, Regeneron’s cocktail of monoclonal antibodies casirivimab and imdevimab, the very ones taken by President Trump when he contracted SARS-CoV-2. The FDA previously granted and revoked EUA status for hydroxychloroquine.
Randomized clinical trials (RCTs) are the gold standard for developing new drugs and vaccines. Patients are randomly assigned to either the control group receiving a placebo or to the treatment group receiving the experimental drug. RCTs are the foundation for the “first, do no harm” tenet of medical practice—for ensuring a drug’s safety and making informed decisions about whether the benefit of a new drug exceeds its dangers. But in a rush for COVID-19 treatments, we started throwing spaghetti on the wall, looking to see what sticks. And some, such as hydroxychloroquine and remdesvir, aren’t sticking, and things are getting messy.
Too many COVID-19 EUAs enhance the politicization of medical science and pollute the water for future research to get long-term answers.
In the case of hydroxychloroquine, a drug that is often prescribed to treat rheumatoid arthritis, its use to treat COVID-19 was highly publicized, politicized, and polarized. The FDA granted hydroxychloroquine EUA status on April 27, and less than two months later, on June 15, it was revoked after it became clear that at least one study supporting its use was based on questionable data and new scientific evidence showed that it had little to no effect in treating COVID-19 patients. Other research even indicated adverse events in patients who took it.
In all cases, even if a drug does turn out to be effective, granting a therapy EUA before it has completed clinical testing undermines the data and stunts the ability to properly collect and analyze that information to ultimately inform treatment decisions. When the FDA granted an EUA for remdesivir, our clinical trials on the drug came to a stop. Patients are less inclined to join a trial, in which they may or may not receive the drug, when they can just ask and receive the treatment that has been granted EUA status. And it’s unethical to ask a patient to participate in a clinical trial in which they may not receive treatment that has been approved by the FDA.
According to ClinicalTrials.gov, there are a few “active” clinical trials for current COVID-19 EUA therapies, and their progress and enrollment numbers are unknown. While EUAs are much needed, there should be more rigorous guidelines put in place to ensure that the clinical trials run their course before an EUA is granted. And, if an EUA is granted before that can happen, there needs to be a clearly defined plan to properly study the therapy post-authorization with new, updated protocols.
With respect to the COVID-19 therapies that have or will receive an EUA from the FDA, the good news is that authorization is temporary. The status can be revoked at any time, and such products have to be subjected to rigorous RCTs before receiving long-term FDA approval. What needs to be done now is to sort through the existing treatment options to determine which ones really work. President-elect Joe Biden’s administration should form an advisory panel to evaluate and reach some agreement on enabling and prioritizing studies of EUA treatments. This panel would establish priorities based on the limited data available on the COVID-19 drugs that have been granted EUA and new agents as they become available.
Sorting through this will be difficult because it creates ethical, financial, regulatory, and medical dilemmas. Patients need and require treatments and it is the doctors’ moral responsibility to “first, do no harm” and care for their patients with whatever treatments are at hand. Drugs cost money and clinical trials offer the potential treatments for free, while many insurance companies may not foot the bill for experimental EUA treatments. But if the use of multiple EUA drugs continues, without proper rigorously controlled clinical trials, we may never learn what is most effective and least harmful. Too many COVID-19 EUAs enhance the politicization of medical science and pollute the water for future research to get long-term answers. Going forward, we need approved therapies and national guidance on COVID-19 care and treatment.
Kevin J. Tracey is the president and CEO of the Feinstein Institutes for Medical Research, where Christina Brennan is the vice president of clinical research. At the start of the pandemic, Tracey and Brennan established a 200-person COVID-19 Clinical Trial Unit (CCTU) at the Feinstein Institutes to conduct controlled clinical trials to study the safety and efficacy of experimental COVID-19 therapies. Under their leadership, the research center has initiated seven clinical trials and programs and enrolled more than 1,200 participants.
Correction (December 6): This story has been updated to reflect that remdesivir is made by Gilead Sciences, not Regeneron. The Scientist regrets the error.


thescientist--2020-12-02--Controlling Host Cell Proteins in Drug Development

Host cell proteins ( HCPs ) are endogenous by-products of cell-based methods for biomanufacturing .
While scientists take steps to @ @ @ @ @ remain in the final product .
This can have serious consequences for therapeutic biologics because @ @ @ @ @ potentially immunogenic .
Download this white paper from Cytiva to learn more about HCPs , @ @ @ @ @ and how to develop more robust HCP management strategies .

Host cell proteins (HCPs) are endogenous by-products of cell-based methods for biomanufacturing. While scientists take steps to remove HCPs, some may remain in the final product. This can have serious consequences for therapeutic biologics because most cellular production vehicles are potentially immunogenic.
Download this white paper from Cytiva to learn more about HCPs, how to detect them, and how to develop more robust HCP management strategies.


thescientist--2020-12-02--DeepMind AI Speeds Up the Time to Determine Proteins’ Structures

The shape of a protein has a direct bearing on its function and is a key component in drug discovery , and it can take years of experimentation to figure it out .
On Monday , November 30 , the Protein Structure Prediction Center at the University of California , Davis , announced that the DeepMind artificial intelligence lab and its AlphaFold program have accelerated the time to determine protein shape in a fraction of what it takes traditional methods to accomplish .
The AlphaFold program uses neural networks to perform deep learning , identifying patterns in sequences and structures @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
As it learns over time , the program can identify the structure of a protein in minutes .
Traditionally , researchers would use techniques such as X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy to visualize the protein .
This is a time-consuming process that can take years to complete or even a person ’ s entire career .
DeepMind , based in London and owned by the parent company of Google , participated in the 14th biennial Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction ( CASP ) contest , hosted by the Protein Structure Prediction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of around 100 full or partial proteins , a few at a time , in a process that takes months to complete .
Around half of the teams used deep learning this year and took notes from AlphaFold ’ s last CASP showing , Nature reports , but DeepMind was able to set itself apart by revamping its approach and considering the spatial constraints of protein folds and focusing on the protein ’ s sequence as a whole , not just the likely position of individual amino acids as it did in 2018 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ labs compete to computationally determine the 3-D structures of proteins that the organizers have already verified experimentally , but have not published anywhere that the participants would be able to access .
Scores are given based on accuracy , out of a possible 100 .
According to the organizers , 90 is the threshold for meeting experimental values .
Science reports that at the inaugural event in 1994 , the average score was around 20 and had only grown to 40 by 2016 .
When DeepMind debuted in 2018 , it dwarfed the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s showing , it had a median score of 92.4 overall , and on the most challenging proteins , it scored a full 25 points higher than the competition at 87 .
“ Most atoms [ from DeepMind ’ s results ] are within an atom diameter of where they are in the experimental structure , ” John Moult , a professor at the University of Maryland who cofounded the contest , tells The New York Times .
“ And with those that aren ’ t , there are other possible explanations @ @ @ @ @ @ @ change medicine .
It will change research .
It will change bioengineering .
It will change everything , ” Andrei Lupas , an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany who helped judge the contest , tells Nature , adding that AlphaFold took only 30 minutes to produce the structure of a protein his lab had been trying to figure out for 10 years .
“ I always hoped I would live to see this day , ” Moult tells the Times , with regard to a computer @ @ @ @ @ @ @ it wasn ’ t always obvious I was going to make it .
”

ABOVE: © ISTOCK.COM, SERGUNT
The shape of a protein has a direct bearing on its function and is a key component in drug discovery, and it can take years of experimentation to figure it out. On Monday, November 30, the Protein Structure Prediction Center at the University of California, Davis, announced that the DeepMind artificial intelligence lab and its AlphaFold program have accelerated the time to determine protein shape in a fraction of what it takes traditional methods to accomplish.
The AlphaFold program uses neural networks to perform deep learning, identifying patterns in sequences and structures of proteins found in a global database. As it learns over time, the program can identify the structure of a protein in minutes. Traditionally, researchers would use techniques such as X-ray crystallography or cryo-electron microscopy to visualize the protein. This is a time-consuming process that can take years to complete or even a person’s entire career.
DeepMind, based in London and owned by the parent company of Google, participated in the 14th biennial Critical Assessment of protein Structure Prediction (CASP) contest, hosted by the Protein Structure Prediction Center. Teams work out the structure of around 100 full or partial proteins, a few at a time, in a process that takes months to complete.
Around half of the teams used deep learning this year and took notes from AlphaFold’s last CASP showing, Nature reports, but DeepMind was able to set itself apart by revamping its approach and considering the spatial constraints of protein folds and focusing on the protein’s sequence as a whole, not just the likely position of individual amino acids as it did in 2018.
To participate in the contest, labs compete to computationally determine the 3-D structures of proteins that the organizers have already verified experimentally, but have not published anywhere that the participants would be able to access. Scores are given based on accuracy, out of a possible 100. According to the organizers, 90 is the threshold for meeting experimental values.
Science reports that at the inaugural event in 1994, the average score was around 20 and had only grown to 40 by 2016. When DeepMind debuted in 2018, it dwarfed the competition at 60. For this year’s showing, it had a median score of 92.4 overall, and on the most challenging proteins, it scored a full 25 points higher than the competition at 87.
“Most atoms [from DeepMind’s results] are within an atom diameter of where they are in the experimental structure,” John Moult, a professor at the University of Maryland who cofounded the contest, tells The New York Times. “And with those that aren’t, there are other possible explanations of the differences.”
“This will change medicine. It will change research. It will change bioengineering. It will change everything,” Andrei Lupas, an evolutionary biologist at the Max Planck Institute for Developmental Biology in Germany who helped judge the contest, tells Nature, adding that AlphaFold took only 30 minutes to produce the structure of a protein his lab had been trying to figure out for 10 years.
“I always hoped I would live to see this day,” Moult tells the Times, with regard to a computer topping the 90-point mark. “But it wasn’t always obvious I was going to make it.”


thescientist--2020-12-02--COVID-19 May Have Arrived in US in December: Study

Some people may have been infected with the novel coronavirus as early as December 13 , more than a month before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of the virus , according to a study published online November 30 in Clinical Infectious Diseases , in which researchers analyzed blood samples from American Red Cross donations .
The findings provide further evidence that the virus was spreading around the world well before public health officials and researchers thought it had started circulating .
The Red Cross had originally collected the blood samples to test for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Nile virus and the study authors used them to test for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 , Susan Stramer , an American Red Cross virologist and a coauthor of the paper , tells The New York Times .
Among the 7,389 samples , 106 had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies , of which 39 were collected from California , Oregon , and Washington between December 13 and December 16 .
Another 67 were collected from Connecticut , Iowa , Massachusetts , Michigan , Rhode Island , and Wisconsin between December 30 and January 17 .
Of 90 samples @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , 84 showed some evidence of antibodies blocking SARS-CoV-2 from binding to ACE2 , a receptor the coronavirus uses to enter host cells .
Positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests suggest a prior COVID-19 infection , but they do not provide definitive proof , as prior exposure to other coronaviruses—some of which can cause a common cold—can produce a false-positive result .
The authors conclude that it is unlikely that all 84 samples represent false positives , and therefore at least some reflect COVID-19 infections in December or early January .
Even though the authors @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to SARS-CoV-2 , cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses can ’ t be ruled out , George Rutherford , an epidemiologist at the University of California , San Francisco , who was not affiliated with the study , tells Live Science .
He also notes that even if these results show actual COVID-19 infections , the researchers can not determine where the participants acquired the infection—some blood donors could have recently traveled to China and became infected there , for example .
University of Washington epidemiologist Trevor Bedford , who has been using genetics to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ spread and was not involved in the study , writes in a Twitter thread that seasonal coronaviruses tend to circulate more often in the winter .
He adds that antibody concentrations are typically higher in those recently infected compared to random healthy adults , suggesting that there could be a high false positive rate .
Even if the results are accurate , then by extrapolation that would mean there were millions of infections in the general US population , which would have been accompanied by a higher excess death rate , he writes @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until March .
To better understand how often false positives occur , the researchers will look at blood samples from prior years to see whether they , as expected , would not show antibodies for SARS-CoV-2 , Stramer tells the Times .
“ We ’ re looking at the echoes of somebody ’ s infection , ” Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security immunologist Gigi Gronvall , who was not affiliated with the study , tells USA Today .
“ I think we have pretty high expectations for the immediacy of our data @ @ @ @ @ @ @ diseases tends to be more murky and require months and years of investigation .
”

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VESNAANDJIC
Some people may have been infected with the novel coronavirus as early as December 13, more than a month before the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the first case of the virus, according to a study published online November 30 in Clinical Infectious Diseases, in which researchers analyzed blood samples from American Red Cross donations. The findings provide further evidence that the virus was spreading around the world well before public health officials and researchers thought it had started circulating.
The Red Cross had originally collected the blood samples to test for exposure to mosquito-borne illnesses such as West Nile virus and the study authors used them to test for antibodies against SARS-CoV-2, Susan Stramer, an American Red Cross virologist and a coauthor of the paper, tells The New York Times.
Among the 7,389 samples, 106 had SARS-CoV-2 antibodies, of which 39 were collected from California, Oregon, and Washington between December 13 and December 16. Another 67 were collected from Connecticut, Iowa, Massachusetts, Michigan, Rhode Island, and Wisconsin between December 30 and January 17.
Of 90 samples the researchers could perform follow-up tests on, 84 showed some evidence of antibodies blocking SARS-CoV-2 from binding to ACE2, a receptor the coronavirus uses to enter host cells.
Positive SARS-CoV-2 antibody tests suggest a prior COVID-19 infection, but they do not provide definitive proof, as prior exposure to other coronaviruses—some of which can cause a common cold—can produce a false-positive result. The authors conclude that it is unlikely that all 84 samples represent false positives, and therefore at least some reflect COVID-19 infections in December or early January.
Even though the authors tried to measure antibodies that were specific to SARS-CoV-2, cross-reactivity with other coronaviruses can’t be ruled out, George Rutherford, an epidemiologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not affiliated with the study, tells Live Science. He also notes that even if these results show actual COVID-19 infections, the researchers cannot determine where the participants acquired the infection—some blood donors could have recently traveled to China and became infected there, for example.
University of Washington epidemiologist Trevor Bedford, who has been using genetics to understand the timing and location of SARS-CoV-2 spread and was not involved in the study, writes in a Twitter thread that seasonal coronaviruses tend to circulate more often in the winter. He adds that antibody concentrations are typically higher in those recently infected compared to random healthy adults, suggesting that there could be a high false positive rate. Even if the results are accurate, then by extrapolation that would mean there were millions of infections in the general US population, which would have been accompanied by a higher excess death rate, he writes, something that wasn’t observed until March.
To better understand how often false positives occur, the researchers will look at blood samples from prior years to see whether they, as expected, would not show antibodies for SARS-CoV-2, Stramer tells the Times.
“We’re looking at the echoes of somebody’s infection,” Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security immunologist Gigi Gronvall, who was not affiliated with the study, tells USA Today. “I think we have pretty high expectations for the immediacy of our data and . . . the origin of diseases tends to be more murky and require months and years of investigation.”


thescientist--2020-12-03--Shrew Brains Shrink During Winter

Shrew Brains Shrink During Winter

The smallest terrestrial mammal , the Etruscan shrew ( Suncus etruscus ) , is about as big as a person ’ s thumb and no heavier than a couple of paper clips .
To have enough energy to survive , it must eat eight or more times its body weight daily and therefore doesn ’ t hibernate .
Instead , according to a study published November 30 in PNAS , in winter , these shrews lose 28 percent of the volume from their somatosensory cortex , which likely helps them conserve energy .
“ This phenomenon of an animal that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ energy saving strategies is just stunning , ” says Christine Schwartz , a neuroscientist who studies hibernation at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse and was not involved in the work .
Scientists have shown before that red-toothed shrews , which belong to a group separate from the Etruscan shrew , are born and grow to their full body size in a single summer .
Then in autumn , they start to shrink all over—in their spine length , skull , brain , bones , organs such as the liver , and body @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Somewhere around February , they start to grow again and reach a second size peak as they sexually mature in the spring .
Then they reproduce just once , and , shortly after , die .
This cycle is known as Dehnel ’ s phenomenon .
Saikat Ray , a postdoc in Nachum Ulanovsky ’ s lab at the Weizmann Institute in Israel , and colleagues were curious to see if Dehnel ’ s phenomenon also exists in white-toothed shrews , the subfamily that includes the Etruscan shew .
They already had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ lab , Ray says , because the animals ’ tiny brains are a helpful model system for studying more of the brain at once than are the brains of larger mammals , such as mice or rats .
Starting in summer , the researchers repeatedly conducted MRI scans of the brains of 10 shrews each season for a year .
They found that brain volume decreased in the winter , despite keeping the animals under a constant 12-hour light-dark cycle , at a consistent temperature , and with unlimited access to food .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ in different shrews , they saw a decrease in brain thickness .
This indicated that the phenomenon is subject to both internal cues related to their age or to the passing of time and external influences , such as the availability of food .
Using another group of animals , Ray ’ s team pinpointed the shrinkage in the brain to the somatosensory cortex , the area that receives sensory input from the animals ’ whiskers , which they use in hunting .
One layer of the somatosensory cortex decreased in width by @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 29 percent the following summer .
Neuron numbers also increased by 42 percent in this level of the cortex from winter to summer .
The most surprising part of this finding , according to Ray , is that “ the brain shrinkage effect [ is ] happening in the lab , but it ’ s also very specific in that it seems to happen only in particular regions and is not a general effect everywhere.
” These physical changes also translated to changes in brain function .
In the somatosensory cortex , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ activated , suppressed , and unaffected by whisker touch .
Neurons that were suppressed had a more than two-fold higher activity in spring and summer than in fall and winter .
This change in activity could help the animals conserve energy , the authors hypothesize in the paper .
The researchers “ put them in an MRI and .
.
.
thus were able to show a change in the volume of [ one layer of ] this brain region , the neocortex , which is super important across an animal ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ And they show not only that the cortex changes in size and thickness , but also which parts of the cortex are affected and at which stage in the animal ’ s life , ” says Dina Dechmann , a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany who did not participate in the work .
The authors didn ’ t find changes in other parts of the brain or a winter decrease followed by a summer increase in the animals ’ overall mass , “ so it ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ are affected by Dehnel ’ s phenomenon , ” Dechmann tells The Scientist .
Another area for future research , according to Ray , is how the recovery in neuron numbers happens in the spring and summer .
“ It seems like neurons are coming back , but exactly how that ’ s happening .
.
.
is pretty open right now , ” he says .
“ It ’ s not clear if they ’ re just new neurons being born or if there are other kinds of cells , which are @ @ @ @ @ @ @ neurogenesis is something that ’ s very rare and happens in very low numbers , ” says Dechmann .
“ And this is—in mammals , as far as we know—restricted to the hippocampus [ and the olfactory bulb ] .
And if someone shows that there are massive changes in neurons , increases in neuron numbers in the cortex in a mammal , that ’ s .
.
.
another stellar finding .
Learning how animals make new cells in the brain has so many potential ” applications .
“ We see brain @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , and those are often linked to really detrimental events , ” agrees Schwartz .
“ But the fact that these animals go through that , but then they just bounce back and they regain that loss is something that makes this so interesting and so important to study.
” S. Ray et al.
, “ Seasonal plasticity in the adult somatosensory cortex , ” PNAS , doi:10.1073/pnas.1922888117 , 2020 .

ABOVE: An Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus)
AXEL GEBAUER
The smallest terrestrial mammal, the Etruscan shrew (Suncus etruscus), is about as big as a person’s thumb and no heavier than a couple of paper clips. To have enough energy to survive, it must eat eight or more times its body weight daily and therefore doesn’t hibernate. Instead, according to a study published November 30 in PNAS, in winter, these shrews lose 28 percent of the volume from their somatosensory cortex, which likely helps them conserve energy.
“This phenomenon of an animal that is not a hibernator still implementing these energy saving strategies is just stunning,” says Christine Schwartz, a neuroscientist who studies hibernation at the University of Wisconsin La Crosse and was not involved in the work.
Scientists have shown before that red-toothed shrews, which belong to a group separate from the Etruscan shrew, are born and grow to their full body size in a single summer. Then in autumn, they start to shrink all over—in their spine length, skull, brain, bones, organs such as the liver, and body weight—reaching their smallest size in the winter. Somewhere around February, they start to grow again and reach a second size peak as they sexually mature in the spring. Then they reproduce just once, and, shortly after, die. This cycle is known as Dehnel’s phenomenon.
Adult neurogenesis is something that’s very rare and happens in very low numbers. And if someone shows that there are massive changes in neurons, increases in neuron numbers in the cortex in a mammal, that’s . . . another stellar finding. —Dina Dechmann, Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
When Saikat Ray was a graduate student in Michael Brecht's lab at the Bernstein Center for Computational Neuroscience in Berlin, he was curious to see if Dehnel’s phenomenon also exists in white-toothed shrews, the subfamily that includes the Etruscan shrew. They already had a colony of Etruscan shrews in the lab, says Ray, who is now a postdoc in Nachum Ulanovsky’s lab at the Weizmann Institute in Israel, because the animals’ tiny brains are a helpful model system for studying more of the brain at once than are the brains of larger mammals, such as mice or rats.
Starting in summer, the researchers repeatedly conducted MRI scans of the brains of 10 shrews each season for a year. They found that brain volume decreased in the winter, despite keeping the animals under a constant 12-hour light-dark cycle, at a consistent temperature, and with unlimited access to food. When they limited food in the summer in different shrews, they saw a decrease in brain thickness. This indicated that the phenomenon is subject to both internal cues related to their age or to the passing of time and external influences, such as the availability of food.
Using another group of animals, Ray’s team pinpointed the shrinkage in the brain to the somatosensory cortex, the area that receives sensory input from the animals’ whiskers, which they use in hunting. One layer of the somatosensory cortex decreased in width by 28 percent in winter and increased by 29 percent the following summer. Neuron numbers also increased by 42 percent in this level of the cortex from winter to summer.
Superimposition of the cortex of a shrew imaged in winter (blue, dark blue) and summer (gold, tan), indicates a larger cortex volume in the summer, as more gold and tan are visible than blue. SAikat ray
The most surprising part of this finding, according to Ray, is that “the brain shrinkage effect [is] happening in the lab, but it’s also very specific in that it seems to happen only in particular regions and is not a general effect everywhere.”
These physical changes also translated to changes in brain function. In the somatosensory cortex, the researchers classified three groups of neurons: activated, suppressed, and unaffected by whisker touch. Neurons that were suppressed had a more than two-fold higher activity in spring and summer than in fall and winter. This change in activity could help the animals conserve energy, the authors hypothesize in the paper.
The researchers “put them in an MRI and . . . thus were able to show a change in the volume of [one layer of] this brain region, the neocortex, which is super important across an animal’s lifetime. It’s beautiful. And they show not only that the cortex changes in size and thickness, but also which parts of the cortex are affected and at which stage in the animal’s life,” says Dina Dechmann, a behavioral ecologist at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior in Germany who did not participate in the work.
The authors didn’t find changes in other parts of the brain or a winter decrease followed by a summer increase in the animals’ overall mass, “so it’s not affecting other things that usually are affected by Dehnel’s phenomenon,” Dechmann tells The Scientist.
Another area for future research, according to Ray, is how the recovery in neuron numbers happens in the spring and summer. “It seems like neurons are coming back, but exactly how that’s happening . . . is pretty open right now,” he says. “It’s not clear if they’re just new neurons being born or if there are other kinds of cells, which are getting converted into neurons.”
“Adult neurogenesis is something that’s very rare and happens in very low numbers,” says Dechmann. “And this is—in mammals, as far as we know—restricted to the hippocampus [and the olfactory bulb]. And if someone shows that there are massive changes in neurons, increases in neuron numbers in the cortex in a mammal, that’s . . . another stellar finding. Learning how animals make new cells in the brain has so many potential” applications.
“We see brain shrinkage. We see loss of cells, and those are often linked to really detrimental events,” agrees Schwartz. “But the fact that these animals go through that, but then they just bounce back and they regain that loss is something that makes this so interesting and so important to study.”
S. Ray et al., “Seasonal plasticity in the adult somatosensory cortex,” PNAS, doi:10.1073/pnas.1922888117, 2020.
Correction (December 4): The story has been updated to clarify the lab in which the work began. The Scientist regrets the error.


thescientist--2020-12-03--The Scientist's 2020 Gift Guide

The Scientist's 2020 Gift Guide

Socks for Animals was started by wildlife biologist Wes Larson as a way to educate the public about threatened species such as the pangolin , red panda , and narwhal .
A portion of each sale is donated to a charity or scientist working with the species featured on your sock .
Recipient Debahutee Roy Kar , for example , is a biologist at the Indian nonprofit Nature ’ s Foster who studies how habitat fragmentation affects the endangered golden langur monkey .
Socks start at $ 10 .
Why not pick out a new book for your loved one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ All We Can Save features poetry and essays by women working towards uplifting solutions to climate change .
If someone on your list got really into birding in 2020 , try The Bird Way by science writer Jennifer Ackerman .
For a compelling story about one naturalist ’ s journey to organize the world , there ’ s Why Fish Don ’ t Exist by Lulu Miller , the cofounder of the NPR podcast Invisibilia .
The End of Everything ( Astrophysically Speaking ) by astrophysicist Katie Mack will certainly inspire some dinner @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , written by neurodivergent biochemist Camilla Pang .
Lastly , if the science enthusiast you ’ re buying for wasn ’ t able to join The Scientist ’ s social club for our reading of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi , we certainly enjoyed it .
The Foldscope emerged from a brainstorming session between two Stanford University scientists asking the question , “ What is the best microscope you can build for under $ 1 ?
” The answer , they discovered , was there in the paper they used to sketch their @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to engage with nature , and the company continues to send them throughout the world as a way of making science more accessible .
You can purchase one for the microscopist on your list for $ 29.99 or donate directly in their honor to help send Foldscopes to classrooms worldwide .
Whether you want to cuddle it , burn it , or gift it , Giant Microbes has you covered with this COVID-19 plushy .
Five percent of your purchase will go to one of three charities : Combating COVID-19 Fund , No @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for Infectious Diseases .
Small plushies start at $ 14.95 , but you can also buy a giant version for $ 39.95 or a “ Class of 2020 ” plushy to celebrate those who graduated in such turbulent times for $ 18.95 .
Boutique Academia specializes in science-themed jewelry , including this set of friendship necklaces ( $ 29.99 ) , perfect for that pal you haven ’ t seen since the pandemic began .
The virus and the antibody even bind !
They also have accessories for those who love physics , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ among others .
We ’ re fans of this tardigrade necklace , the neuron earrings , and the Avogadro ’ s number tie bar , each $ 24.99 .
It feels especially important this year to support science .
While we always suggest doing your own research on the activities and finances of charities before donating , we ’ ve included a few ideas here .
For COVID-19 charities , consider donating to Get Us PPE , which provides personal protective equipment to frontline workers and under-resourced communities , the CDC Foundation , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Fund , or to EcoHealth Alliance , a nonprofit that works to protect wildlife and the public from the emergence of disease .
The Scientist has featured several researchers this year involved in charitable initiatives .
The Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation , founded by Scientist to Watch Hadiyah-Nicole Green , seeks to make cancer treatments affordable , accessible , and more effective .
After the pandemic erased many summer research opportunities for Black , indigenous , and other undergraduates of color , Michael Johnson , a microbiologist at the University of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Research Project as a way to facilitate remote mentorship .
For a teaser of what you can look forward to in the January issue of the magazine , consider donating to conservation biologist Celine Frere ’ s group Detection Dogs for Conservation .
Her specially trained dogs track and rescue rare animals , detect pests , and locate threatened native plants .
Lastly , consider donating to local science and natural history museums in your city that may be struggling due to the pandemic .

Comfort for conservation
Socks for Animals was started by wildlife biologist Wes Larson as a way to educate the public about threatened species such as the pangolin, red panda, and narwhal. A portion of each sale is donated to a charity or scientist working with the species featured on your sock. Recipient Debahutee Roy Kar, for example, is a biologist at the Indian nonprofit Nature’s Foster who studies how habitat fragmentation affects the endangered golden langur monkey. Socks start at $10.
A gift for the mind
Why not pick out a new book for your loved one to enjoy with their new socks? All We Can Save features poetry and essays by women working towards uplifting solutions to climate change. If someone on your list got really into birding in 2020, try The Bird Way by science writer Jennifer Ackerman. For a compelling story about one naturalist’s journey to organize the world, there’s Why Fish Don’t Exist by Lulu Miller, the cofounder of the NPR podcast Invisibilia. The End of Everything (Astrophysically Speaking) by astrophysicist Katie Mack will certainly inspire some dinner table conversation, as will Explaining People, written by neurodivergent biochemist Camilla Pang. Lastly, if the science enthusiast you’re buying for wasn’t able to join The Scientist’s social club for our reading of Transcendent Kingdom by Yaa Gyasi, we certainly enjoyed it.
Origami microscope
The Foldscope emerged from a brainstorming session between two Stanford University scientists asking the question, “What is the best microscope you can build for under $1?” The answer, they discovered, was there in the paper they used to sketch their prototype. Foldscopes are a great way to engage with nature, and the company continues to send them throughout the world as a way of making science more accessible. You can purchase one for the microscopist on your list for $29.99 or donate directly in their honor to help send Foldscopes to classrooms worldwide.
COVID-19 plushy
Whether you want to cuddle it, burn it, or gift it, Giant Microbes has you covered with this COVID-19 plushy. Five percent of your purchase will go to one of three charities: Combating COVID-19 Fund, No Kid Hungry, or the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases. Small plushies start at $14.95, but you can also buy a giant version for $39.95 or a “Class of 2020” plushy to celebrate those who graduated in such turbulent times for $18.95.
Genetic jewelry
Boutique Academia specializes in science-themed jewelry, including this set of friendship necklaces ($29.99), perfect for that pal you haven’t seen since the pandemic began. The virus and the antibody even bind! They also have accessories for those who love physics, microbiology, chemistry, and astronomy, among others. We’re fans of this tardigrade necklace, the neuron earrings, and the Avogadro’s number tie bar, each $24.99.
Support STEM
It feels especially important this year to support science. While we always suggest doing your own research on the activities and finances of charities before donating, we’ve included a few ideas here.
For COVID-19 charities, consider donating to Get Us PPE, which provides personal protective equipment to frontline workers and under-resourced communities, the CDC Foundation, the WHO’s COVID-19 Solidarity Response Fund, or to EcoHealth Alliance, a nonprofit that works to protect wildlife and the public from the emergence of disease.
The Scientist has featured several researchers this year involved in charitable initiatives. The Ora Lee Smith Cancer Research Foundation, founded by Scientist to Watch Hadiyah-Nicole Green, seeks to make cancer treatments affordable, accessible, and more effective. After the pandemic erased many summer research opportunities for Black, indigenous, and other undergraduates of color, Michael Johnson, a microbiologist at the University of Arizona, started the National Summer Undergraduate Research Project as a way to facilitate remote mentorship. For a teaser of what you can look forward to in the January issue of the magazine, consider donating to conservation biologist Celine Frere’s group Detection Dogs for Conservation. Her specially trained dogs track and rescue rare animals, detect pests, and locate threatened native plants.
Lastly, consider donating to local science and natural history museums or science centers in your city that may be struggling due to the pandemic.
CREDIT FOR OPENING IMAGE: © ISTOCK.COM, ALEXRATHS


Whole-Slide Imaging

Whole-side imaging , also known as virtual microscopy , is essential for digital pathology and clinical and basic research .
@ @ @ @ @ are often restrictive and expensive .
Microscopy experts have developed a new whole-slide scanner that @ @ @ @ @ and conveniently performs whole-slide scanning , live-cell imaging , and microdissection in the comfort of @ @ @ @ @ Download this ebook from Molecular Machines and Industries to learn about

Whole-side imaging, also known as virtual microscopy, is essential for digital pathology and clinical and basic research. However, commercial whole-slide scanners are often restrictive and expensive. Microscopy experts have developed a new whole-slide scanner that fits on common laboratory microscopes and conveniently performs whole-slide scanning, live-cell imaging, and microdissection in the comfort of the user's laboratory.
Download this ebook from Molecular Machines and Industries to learn about


thescientist--2020-12-04--The Importance of Good Pipetting Practices

The ubiquity of pipettes in the life sciences emphasizes their importance .
Good pipetting practices and techniques are essential to @ @ @ @ @ also reduce fatigue and lessens the risk of repetitive stress injury .
Learn more at @ @

The ubiquity of pipettes in the life sciences emphasizes their importance. Good pipetting practices and techniques are essential to not data accuracy, but also reduce fatigue and lessens the risk of repetitive stress injury. Learn more at thermofisher.com/pipettingtechniques.


thescientist--2020-12-04--Blocking Cancer Progression and Shrinking Tumors with Antibody-ligand Traps

Antibody-ligand traps unleash potent immune responses by binding and blocking proteins that typically enhance cancer progression and spread , such @ @ @ @ @ webinar from The Scientist , LuZhe Sun will describe how he uses these traps to @ @ @ @ @ rapidly dividing cancer cells , shrinking tumors in the process .
• Using novel TGFβ-targeting @ @ @ @ @ activities and enhance anti-cancer therapy LuZhe Sun , PhD Professor and Dielmann Chair in Oncology @ @ @ @ @ Anatomy Associate Director for Basic Research , The Mays Cancer Center University of Texas Health @ @ @ @ @

FREE Webinar
Friday, December 18, 2020
2:30 - 4:00 PM, Eastern Time
Register Now
Antibody-ligand traps unleash potent immune responses by binding and blocking proteins that typically enhance cancer progression and spread, such as TGFβ. In this webinar from The Scientist, LuZhe Sun will describe how he uses these traps to control the cell cycle in rapidly dividing cancer cells, shrinking tumors in the process.
Topics to be covered
Using novel TGFβ-targeting antibody-ligand traps to block tumor-promoting activities and enhance anti-cancer therapy
Register Now
Meet the Speakers:
LuZhe Sun, PhD
Professor and Dielmann Chair in Oncology
Department of Cell Systems and Anatomy
Associate Director for Basic Research, The Mays Cancer Center
University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio