%feed https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/06/plantlife-jessica-albarn-creation-meadow-artwork Plantlife: Jessica Albarn's meadow art
At the family farm in Devon, artist Jessica Albarn has turned a sheep field into a study plot for her electric ink drawings of spiders, crickets and bumblebees
Crickets bounce, bees wobble, hoverflies dart and Jessica Albarn stands in the middle of her steep, sunny meadow and scrunches up her hands in delight. “Quite a bit of my work is about layers,” she says, crouching down to investigate the depth of the grass with her fingers. “It's about being able to get right in there and explore an area.”
Albarn is a visual artist best known for her beautifully detailed pencil drawings of spiders, bees, butterflies and other insects. Perhaps it is inevitable that peering through a microscope at dead insects in her London studio led her to the lanes of south Devon to create a meadow, and capture some of its richness in a series of artistic adventures.
We've wired up these electric ink drawings put your hand neart and it activates the sound
%feed http://www.designboom.com/art/inside-a-rainbow-liz-west-immersive-color-landscape-bristol-biennial-09-06-2016/ step inside a rainbow with liz west's immersive color landscape
'our color' drenches viewers in the spectrum and surrounds them in a vibrant, prismatic expanse.
%feed http://www.designboom.com/art/burning-man-art-installations-2016-round-up-09-05-2016/ burning man art installations: a look at black rock city's fiery finish
as burning man officially comes to a close, we take a look at some of the most mind-bending installations and architectural artworks to land on the playa this year.
%feed https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/05/inside-review-a-momentous-artangel-project Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison review a star-studded tribute to Oscar Wilde
HM Reading prison Ai Weiwei and Steve McQueen are among the artists doing time at the prison where Wilde was an inmate. Our critic goes behind bars at Artangel's new show
Oscar and Bosie are sharing a cell. Their painted portraits hang on a wall spotted with graffiti, the tags and love hearts left by the young offenders who languished here before Reading prison, built in 1844, finally closed in 2013. Painter Marlene Dumas amplifies Lord Alfred Douglas's sly and shifty gaze, as he looks out of the corner of his eye towards an imperious and self-possessed Wilde. There is an enormous tension between the two portraits. This is more than just proximity.
The prison itself, with its echoing walkways and wings, suicide netting on its open stairwells, its rows of closed doors and cells, is also much more than just a setting for the artists and writers banged up in Artangel's latest project, Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison.
%feed https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/2016/sep/05/inside-review-a-momentous-artangel-project Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison review a star-studded tribute to Oscar Wilde
HM Reading prison Ai Weiwei and Steve McQueen are among the artists doing time at the prison where Wilde was an inmate. Our critic goes behind bars at Artangel's new show
Oscar and Bosie are sharing a cell. Their painted portraits hang on a wall spotted with graffiti, the tags and love hearts left by the young offenders who languished here before Reading prison, built in 1844, finally closed in 2013. Painter Marlene Dumas amplifies Lord Alfred Douglas's sly and shifty gaze, as he looks out of the corner of his eye towards an imperious and self-possessed Wilde. There is an enormous tension between the two portraits. This is more than just proximity.
The prison itself, with its echoing walkways and wings, suicide netting on its open stairwells, its rows of closed doors and cells, is also much more than just a setting for the artists and writers banged up in Artangel's latest project, Inside: Artists and Writers in Reading Prison.
%feed https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/jonathanjonesblog/2016/sep/05/kanye-west-famous-artist-overnight So, Kanye West has become a Famous artist overnight? Props to him
Displayed in a gallery for two days, an automaton from the rapper's latest video is suddenly a $4m collector's item. Just don't call the work on show a sculpture
Is it or is it not on sale for $4m? In case it's not obvious, I'm talking about Kanye West's “sculpture” Famous. According to which reports you believe, his lineup of lifelike, automated models of celebrities in bed together is either going for a lot of money, or was never up for grabs in the first place. Perhaps the “creator” himself can't decide. That's if Kanye moulded these figures. Did he really shape that silicone or did he just pay for it?
Famous, originally made for the video of West's song of the same name, has been exhibited in an “exclusive” two-day exhibition at the Los Angeles gallery, Blum and Poe thus becoming art. Because it's in a gallery, it has to be, right? Cue the inevitable speculation that art inspires in our lofty culture: how much is it worth? Remarkably, what little of the media coverage has asked is whether Famous is a work of art (let alone a good or bad one) or in what sense West is a visual artist.
%feed http://twitter.com/BrassSass/status/773176970926559233 @POTUS at G20 summit, @FBI cites Russia in Arizona voter reg. hack, pro democracy wins in Hong Kong, and endangered species, #IntheNewsToday http://ifttt.com/missing_link?1473174877
1473173092000
culture
%feed http://movieposteroftheday.tumblr.com/post/150009657787 US one sheet for ANTIBIRTH (Danny Perez, USA, 2016)Designers:...
US one sheet for ANTIBIRTH (Danny Perez, USA, 2016)
%feed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160905114511.htm Earth's carbon points to planetary smashup Research suggests that virtually all of Earth's life-giving carbon could have come from a collision about 4.4 billion years ago between Earth and an embryonic planet similar to Mercury. astronomy
1473172870000
astronomy
%feed https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/09/160905064829.htm First gravitational waves form after 10 million years If two galaxies collide, the merging of their central black holes triggers gravitational waves, which ripple throughout space. An international research team has now calculated that this occurs around 10 million years after the two galaxies merge -- much faster than previously assumed. astronomy
1473172467000
images
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2F500px.com%2Fphoto%2F171325433%2Fwindswept-by-tj-drysdale&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Windswept by TJ Drysdale
Learn my editing techniques! www.tjdrysdale.com/finearttutorial In this 1hr tutorial, I'll discuss some of the tips and tricks I've discovered in Photoshop to give photos a cinematic/artistic feel! You won't be disappointed!
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fxero123%2F29389519872%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Asian small-clawed otter
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fsteven-cohen%2Fclimate-denial-and-sea-le_b_11873484.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dgreen%26ir%3DGreen&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Climate Denial and Sea Level Rise Like those who do not think the Holocaust took place, men landed on the moon, or President Obama is an American, there are equally deluded people who think that climate science is a hoax or some kind of left-wing conspiracy. As the New York Times reported last week, parts of Florida are already having 'sunny-day floods' due to the impact of sea level rise during some high tides. Last weekend I left my Long Island summer home early to return to the safety of Morningside Heights, a full 121 feet above sea level. The south shore of Long Island is no stranger to flooding, but where we once saw a 6-12 inch storm surge last weekend we saw a surge of 1-3 feet, from a storm that did not really come close to my summer home.
Scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute in our Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, International Research Institute for Climate and Society, Center for Climate Systems Research, Lenfest Center for Sustainable Energy, and Center for International Earth Science Information Network have been studying each aspect of climate change for decades. They study tree rings, geology, soil sediments and arctic ice melts among many other forms of research to understand the human impact on climate change. They have analyzed historical data and have built models to project our possible climate future. The problem is real, and now the impacts have begun. The time for denial is over. But the political power of climate deniers continues.
The worldwide alarm over climate change was demonstrated last week when despite a great deal of disagreement on many issues, President Barack Obama and China's President Xi Jinping signed the Paris Climate Accord in a ceremony in Hangzhou, China. According to New York Times reporters Mark Landler and Jane Perlez:
At a ceremony in this picturesque lakefront city, the two leaders hailed the adoption of the Paris agreement as critical to bringing it into force worldwide. Though widely expected as the next step in the legal process, the move could provide a boost to those who want to build momentum for further climate talks by bringing the December accord into effect as soon as possible. Countries accounting for 55 percent of the world's emissions must present formal ratification documents for that to happen, and together, China and the United States generate nearly 40 percent of the world's emissions.
In the United States, our federal legal and political system represents places as well as people. We are very good at responding to local problems that can be seen, touched and smelled. Toxics, air pollution and water pollution are obvious and undeniable and much easier to act on. Climate change is a global problem that is caused everywhere and much of the impact will take place in the future. But in an excellent report in last week's New York Times, Justin Gillis reported that some of the impacts of climate change have already started to affect some of our coastal cities. According to Gillis:
Federal scientists have documented a sharp jump in this nuisance flooding -- often called "sunny-day flooding" -- along both the East Coast and the Gulf Coast in recent years. The sea is now so near the brim in many places that they believe the problem is likely to worsen quickly. Shifts in the Pacific Ocean mean that the West Coast, partly spared over the past two decades, may be hit hard, too...Local governments, under pressure from annoyed citizens, are beginning to act. Elections are being won on promises to invest money to protect against flooding. Miami Beach is leading the way, increasing local fees to finance a $400 million plan that includes raising streets, installing pumps and elevating sea walls. In many of the worst-hit cities, mayors of both parties are sounding an alarm.
The need to adapt to the current impact of climate change is already obvious in many cities and work is already underway to make cities more resilient to extreme weather events. New York City has begun to implement a resiliency plan that will cost at least $20 billion over the next decade. My hope is that the need to adapt to current climate impacts will lead to the deep understanding needed to develop political support to mitigate climate change.
The path to political understanding is not always direct. We often require visible, direct impacts to delve deeper into an issue. To John and Robert Kennedy, civil rights initially concerned them because they were worried about losing the votes of southern white democrats. Then television brought us the images of African American peaceful protestors and bystanders being attacked by dogs and fire hoses. JFK thought more deeply on the evils of segregation and gave a live TV address defining civil rights as a moral issue. The mere presence of racism and segregation should have been enough to foster change, but it required a dramatic visible image to bring the point home. Visible local impacts are often a prerequisite for action in our political process.
Climate adaptation may well be the path to climate mitigation. You don't need to understand or agree with climate science or computer models to invest in infrastructure to reduce damage from extreme weather events. This is a little ironic. When scientists at Columbia's Earth Institute and throughout the world first started studying climate adaptation, some scientists and activists considered it a distraction from the more important work of preventing human induced climate change. Like many other political issues, dealing with immediate visible impacts can lead to an attack on the causes of the problems we are addressing. We may provide food stamps to prevent starvation, but then some people start to look at the causes of poverty. This leads to an emphasis on education and job opportunities. I think we are seeing this political dynamic with climate change as well.
If we are going to make the transition to a renewable resource based, sustainable economy we will need a sophisticated partnership between government and the private sector. That will need to be informed by an understanding of ecology, earth systems science, and climate science. When your streets keep getting flooded you first work to stop the flood, and then you ask: Why is this happening?
The ideology of denying climate science does not prevent investment in resiliency infrastructure, but does prevent an objective search for causes. Just as civil rights are still subject to political struggle, we can expect a long battle with climate deniers in the United States. Fortunately, climate denial is mainly an American problem, and in a global economy other nations matter a great deal.
The way around climate denial has been carved out by the Obama team: Use the Clean Air Act to regulate greenhouse gases. The next step will be to do the basic research needed to develop renewable energy technologies that will drive fossil fuels from the market place. Even climate deniers will buy energy that is cheaper but as reliable as fossil fuels. This R&D must include dramatic increases in funding for renewable energy technology research by our national labs and research universities, along with substantial tax breaks for companies bringing this technology to the market and for individuals who replace fossil fuels with renewables.
Climate denial is an ideology based on the fear of losing the benefits of our energy intensive economy. It builds on the fear that government will take away our SUVs and air conditioners. Taking climate denial on directly is necessary but futile. The end run is to make climate denial irrelevant. The key is energy efficiency, distributed generation through microgrids and smart grids, and renewable energy. These are realistic and feasible updates to our aging energy infrastructure. They are also a stimulator of employment and economic growth. If we are able to develop a more modern and cost effective energy system, climate denial and sea level rise should slowly recede into history.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
gaia
1473170812000
gaia
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.newscientist.com%2Farticle%2F2104757-hurricane-hermines-flood-damage-was-ramped-up-by-climate-change%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Hurricane Hermine's flood damage was ramped up by climate change The hurricane has caused widespread flooding across four US states, thanks in part to existing sea-level rise in the region gaia
1473170394000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Flindahall.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F150027385025&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Louis Essen Scientist of the Day Louis Essen, an English... http://www.npl.co.uk/upload/img/1955.jpg
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FPhysicsWorld%2F%7E3%2FU_QuyUbn-Sw%2Fflash-physics-philae-lander-spotted-diamond-light-source-launched-electron-microscopy-lab-prizes-for-cosmology-and-fusion-research&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Flash Physics: Philae lander spotted, Diamond Light Source launched electron-microscopy lab, prizes for cosmology and fusion research Today's selection of need-to-know updates from the world of physics science
1473170389000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FPhysicsWorld%2F%7E3%2F0OPx4lIEehI%2Fwhy-do-physicists-want-to-redefine-basic-units-as-fundamental-constants&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Why do physicists want to redefine basic units as fundamental constants? Stephan Schlamminger explains why this change is taking place science
1473170387000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Ffeedproxy.google.com%2F%7Er%2FPhysicsWorld%2F%7E3%2F7NvehUq16Nc%2Fsingle-molecule-spectroscopy-using-c-wave&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Single molecule spectroscopy using C-WAVE Using the high-performance optical parametric oscillator laser C-WAVE at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light. A white paper from HÜBNER Photonics science
1473170381000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fthe-conversation-us%2Fwant-to-prevent-lone-wolf_b_11868462.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Want To Prevent Lone Wolf Terrorism? Promote A 'Sense of Belonging' Among Immigrants Robert F. Barsky, Vanderbilt University
This September, as they start the school year, French children aged 14 years old and upwards are going to get lessons on how to deal with a terrorism attack on their school. Meanwhile, the debate over the ban on wearing burkinis and whether they are, in the words of France's prime minister, "a political sign of religious proselytising" continues.
The big question, however is this: Why are we seeing a rash of these attacks in Europe and especially in France, and are such measures effective in countering them?
What have we learned from the horrors of the Charlie Hebdo shooting, the murder of 130 people in and around Paris last November, the Bastille Day truck attack in Nice and the killing of an 85-year-old priest inside of a church in Normandy?
Examining the reactions of French authorities, we can conclude there are only limited actions that can be taken to prevent such atrocities.
Security can been heightened by extending the state of emergency that it declared last November. Intelligence efforts can be redoubled. Such efforts are raising concern about civil liberties being curtailed. But the Nice attack is also a dire warning that these measures aren't effective as a means of protecting citizens from continued attacks.
Police guard the church in Saint-Etienne-du-Rouvray where Father Jacques Hamel was killed. Pascal Rossignol/Reuters
The point is that none of the above policies could have prevented Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel and Abdelmalik Petitjean from carrying out their violent actions. Thousands if not millions of people living in Europe have similar profiles. Tunisian or Algerian descent and French citizenship are not enough to tip off authorities that a person could run over 84 people with a truck or slit the throat of a priest.
So how can we hope to prevent future attacks? We need to change our focus, in my opinion, to examining these perpetrators' "sense of belonging" rather than looking for reasons to detain or expel them because they don't belong.
This led me to work on research projects that looked at a broad range of questions - from why people claim refugee status to how immigrants use storytelling to talk about their displacement and assimilation into Canada.
My first project was focused upon immigrant literary works - especially novels and short stories - that were a largely untapped source of information to help officials understand the complex process of integrating into Quebec society, and in particular, as a way to understand relationships between immigrants and individuals from the host country.
There's a pretty large body of so-called immigrant literature in Québec. Interestingly, many of these narratives include graphic and sometimes even pornographic descriptions of encounters between native-born and immigrant protagonists.
A broad reading of these stories made me realize that developing relationships with friends and lovers contributed to the migrant's "sense of belonging." They helped him or her to forget their country of origin and forge a new beginning in the host society.
In fact, I came to believe that these immigrants' ability to adapt had something to do with the very process of exchange. Or, put another way, the many acts of giving and receiving that they committed each day helped them to feel connected to society.
Measuring belonging
In order to evaluate this process of adaptation, I turned to work by French biblical scholars called the Groupe d'Entrevernes, which focuses upon how narratives "make sense": that is, how a story creates meaning in the context of the text, but also in regards to the world to which it refers.
This approach focuses on looking for meaning by analyzing particular actions, notably "who does what to whom where." So in the case of immigrant literature, a group of us looked in minute detail at the complex interactions between characters, with special focus upon how relationships begin and end, and what is gained in the process. We also assessed characters' attitudes prior to and after each interaction, with an eye to understanding the effect of the exchange.
Our goal was to assess which specific actions help foster a sense of belonging, in a new country and which alienate the character from his or her society.
The signing of a lease, the acquisition of immigrant status (whether a work visa or a green card) or being hired for a job all foster a sense of belonging. Being kicked out of an apartment, divorced or deported are all examples of loss of belonging.
Implications for policymakers
The advantage of research like this for a case like Nice is that it forces the investigator to examine all of the concrete details of the perpetrators' lives leading up to the horrific event, rather than just focusing upon the act of violence.
It's not sufficient to know that Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel had a violent relationship with his wife, or that Abdelmalik Petitjean visited Turkey just prior to entering a church in Normandy.
What's more important is to understand what they wanted for themselves in the longer term. As difficult as it now seems in light of their murderous actions, we would gain a lot by undertaking meticulous investigations into these individuals' sense that they didn't belong in France, and that they had to destroy what it represents.
By creating concrete conditions for different communities to feel they belong, policymakers can help their diverse populations feel connected to, and thus protective of, their societies.
Many of the analyses of recent terrorist events have focused upon the "lone-wolf" quality of the perpetrators. These lone wolves are difficult to predict, because they are acting independently, and without any contact with extremist organizations or individuals.
The work of policymakers, then, is to figure out how to prevent these individuals from acting impulsively, on the basis of some unpredictable trigger. My sense is that the only way to do this is to build a sense of belonging that will prevent them from feeling destructive. If they feel alienated from their society and feel they don't belong there, then they can also feel that other people deserve to suffer or die.
Following the logic of this approach, we can try to figure out which actions serve to reinforce belonging and which hinder it and then develop policies that build on the positive rather than the purely negative.
Our research in Quebec indicated that most of these actions are quite simple and achievable. They range from providing federal funds for ethnic celebrations and translations for pamphlets about available social services to encouraging local tolerance for so-called "foreign" customs such as the wearing of burkinis (something that has not happened in France) or Sikh turbans. In the Quebec example, our reading of the literature also indicated that undue bureaucratic wrangling that hinders the process of procuring basic necessities, like a driver's license, or that made access to social services such as health care or daycare difficult, can become sources of frustration and alienation.
At the same time, it is crucial to explain which of these customs can lead to severe punishment in the host country. Such actions as Latin Americans shooting off guns during parties or immigrants from Africa and the Middle East sending children abroad for female genital mutilation can become grounds for serous punishments.
Most importantly, our research suggested that successful integration generally occurs through individual incentive and personal relationships, fostered, whenever possible, by the community or the government. The 1988 Canadian Multiculturalism Act formalized a policy to encourage multicultural diversity and develop a sense of tolerance through recognition and understanding. One result of our own research was to help contribute to a higher profile for the Ministry of Immigration and Cultural Communities and to support their championing of diversity and inclusion.
A minute of silence July 18 in Nice. Eric Gaillard/Reuters
I may have traveled to Nice this summer with my family in order to celebrate Bastille Day, because it's a beautiful setting, a city where we dream of the passion, luxury and the sultry pleasures of the French Riviera. Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel may have decided to target those same celebrations for exactly the same reasons, because while we might feel like sharing in that sense of belonging, he most certainly didn't.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F09%2F06%2Factive_love_life_bad_for_older_men%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Sex is bad for older men, and even worse when it's good
Frisky older women reap positive benefits
Men of a certain age who enjoy frequent sex are putting themselves at higher risk of heart attacks and other cardiovascular problems, US researchers have warned. And just to rub salt in the wounds, older ladies who still enjoy a bit of the other reap positive benefits from frequent nookie.…
general
1473161195000
images
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.flickr.com%2Fphotos%2Fflcherb%2F28870271034%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Whilst The Sun Falls over Wetminster
This was taken from The Park Plaza in Westminster they were kind to let me use one of there pent house rooms that has a view to capture this sunset over Westminster. I think it's come out well please let me know what you guys think.
images
1473159534000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F09%2F06%2Fshould_humanity_hump_robots_serious_question_feature%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 It's time for humanity to embrace SEX ROBOTS. For, uh, science, of course
Not just mankind: Ladies love 'em too, we're told
Humankind is still considering whether we could create sex robots but should we, considering the ethical and legal questions arising from the creation of sex data and non-adult sex robots?…
science
1473159532000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fgo.theregister.com%2Ffeed%2Fwww.theregister.co.uk%2F2016%2F09%2F06%2Feye_spy_with_my_little_eye_something_beginning_with_p%2F&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Retired Philae lander slouches on Comet 67P
Chilling on 70°C comet, leg stuck in the air... Fancy a beer, friend?
The European Space Agency's (ESA) obsolete robotic lander Philae has been spotted lying on its side in the dark depths of Comet 67P/ChuryumovGerasimenko as the Rosetta mission nears completion.…
science
1473159529000
science
%feed http://redirect.viglink.com?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.huffingtonpost.com%2Fresearchgate%2Fcritical-but-overlooked-i_b_11871270.html%3Futm_hp_ref%3Dscience%26ir%3DScience&key=ddaed8f51db7bb1330a6f6de768a69b8 Critical But Overlooked: ICU Patients' Gut Bacteria
Paul Wischmeyer
Our bodies are full of bacteria, and when we get sick, those microbial populations change. Hospitals monitor patients' bloodwork and vitals, so why not track the makeup of their microbiomes too? Paul Wischmeyer and his collaborators are conducting research that could allow them to do just that, opening the door for microbiome diagnostic indicators and probiotic measures to restore patients' normal bacterial signatures. We asked him about the research, and what he's learned so far. This text was edited for length. Read the full interview on ResearchGate News.
ResearchGate: How did you first get involved in this field?
Paul Wischmeyer: My passion for the research I do started when I was a teenager. At 15, I was diagnosed with inflammatory bowel disease. I had been a very healthy kid until I took antibiotics for strep throat and began to bleed and had other gastrointestinal symptoms. I was diagnosed with ulcerative colitis shortly thereafter, and it progressed rapidly. I spent six months in the hospital and was given steroids and other medicines that never really made me better. I ultimately ended up losing my colon, getting quite sick, and being put in the ICU. Many surgeries later, it's still a part of my life. But it was at that age that I realized I wanted to study treatments that worked with the body, not against it, and to find ways to restore normalcy to the body after illness. RG: And what was the impetus for this particular study of microbiomes of ICU patients?
Wischmeyer: Any of us who work with the microbiome will say we're far more bacterial as humans than we are human as humans. More than 50 percent of the cells that exist in our body are bacterial cells, and 99 percent of the genetic material in our body is bacterial rather than human. So the role those organisms play in who we are as healthy or sick individuals is probably enormous.
So I reached out to Rob Knight and explained that we have this large nutrition research platform with Daren Heyland in a number of hospitals that collect quite a bit of data, and do it largely for free. I said we'd love to start collecting microbial samples along with the other data, and we really can't do that without someone who's a true microbiome expert like he is. Rob and his lab said, that's great, because we have thousands of healthy people's data from the American Gut Project, but we don't know much about disease and how it changes the microbiome. And so the collaboration began. With essentially no funding, we worked together to initiate a project involving four medical centers across the US and Canada and multiple ICUs, generating an initial data set of 115 patients. It appears right now to be the largest survey of the microbiome in critical illness published to date.
RG: And how did you collect the samples?
Wischmeyer: In each of the participating hospitals, if patients had been on a ventilator for 48 hours and were expected to stay in the ICU at least three days, they met inclusion criteria and we collected samples from them, anonymizing the data. The samples were collected by nurses and dieticians at the hospitals using techniques that mimic those of the American Gut Project, because we knew that would be the large control group we'd compare against.
We collected the first sample at around 48-72 hours after ICU admission, and we'd collect another sample at discharge from the ICU, or day 10, to look for change over time. It was basically a small swab of the stool of the patient, a small swab of the oropharyngeal region--avoiding the teeth, which have quite a distinct microbiome--and then a skin swab across the forehead, looking at changes in the skin microbiome.
RG: And what have you learned so far?
Wischmeyer: Our initial results have really supported the hypothesis that critical illness would lead to a loss of diversity of the microbiome and that this loss of diversity would correlate with adverse outcomes. Patients lose significant, significant amounts of their normal flora, the families of bacterial species that make up a healthy gut or oropharynx. They're largely replaced by pathogens or proteobacteria; like staph, proteus, and other bacteria we associate with GI-associated bacterial translocation. Under normal circumstances, the human gut is made up of many different species. Our patients often start out with that normal appearance, but within just a few days we saw that in some patients 95 percent of bacteria in the gut were one taxa, and often this was a pathogen that dominated. One bacterial taxa overwhelms the rest, or grows because the others have been wiped out by antibiotics or other interventions. The lack of diversity that can occur is severe.
One of the bacteria we noted was quite depleted in the sick patients is a Faecalibacterium, which is a very important bacterium that makes short-chain fatty acids and helps nourish and protect the gut under normal and stress circumstances. It's been shown to be deficient in inflammatory bowel disease, and probably plays a role in controlling inflammation in the gut. Significant depletion of this bacterium had not to our knowledge been well-described before in critical illness, so that's one of the first results. Faecalibacterium is likely a bacterial species we should be studying as a replacement for our patients, because it probably plays a key role physiologically, and it becomes quite depleted in acute illness.
The microbiomes of critically ill patients also mirrored some known bacterial compositions in ways that were often quite unexpected. In many patients, the bacteria began to revert back to what an early neonatal gut looks like. In other cases, the gut and the mouth--especially the gut--would resemble samples taken from corpses found at outdoor crime scenes or around autopsy sites.
RG: Does the type of illness matter in terms of the expected impact on the microbiome?
Wischmeyer: That's another question we're trying to answer. At the moment, we aren't seeing those patterns emerge yet. This is very initial, but it appears that perhaps the microbiome's response to illness is not necessarily related to the disease we have, but may also be linked to other factors, such as the types of antibiotics people are treated with. In some of the more recent research we've done, we used a standardized score that quantitated some of the pressures that different antibiotics exert--some are much more broad in their killing activities than others--and it appears that antibiotic pressure may relate to some of the bacterial changes we're seeing. It doesn't appear to be all antibiotic related, but the treatments we give are fairly common across different diagnoses of patients, and do seem to drive some of these changes. That's one of the next steps: to look at the data and really break out diagnoses groups and identify the trends that actually drive microbiome patterns. As I move my research program to Duke University's Department of Anesthesiology, we hope to embark on answering many of these questions.
RG: Do you think the composition of the microbiome could become the standard way we look at illness in ICUs?
Wischmeyer: We hope it becomes part of it. I think you could imagine a day where we follow patients' microbiomes on a daily or weekly basis, much like we would blood cultures, blood pressure, or other laboratory markers. This could allow us to predict which ICU patients are at risk for adverse outcomes or have undiagnosed infections. It could also tell us who needs to be treated aggressively and early with restoration therapies--we call it "resodding the lawn." We could tell individually, patient to patient, what bacteria need to be given back based on a sample collected at admission.
We can save just about anybody in the ICU from just about anything and get them out of the hospital. But the reality is these patients are so depleted, they're never able to go back to their lives as normal. Many of them, because of their weakened state and the other things we've done to their bodies and microbiomes, will die within a year, never having held their grandkids again, never having walked down the street with their spouse again. With all of our advances in critical care, we must ask ourselves, are we creating survivors or are we creating victims, people who will never really go home and back to the quality of life they had before? Now that we've gotten good enough to save people from severe disease and injury, we need to work on ways of restoring health and life and normalcy. By creating effective methods of restoring the microbiome, together with nutrition and exercise, we hope we can begin to give people their lives back. Want to receive updates on this project? Follow it on ResearchGate.
-- This feed and its contents are the property of The Huffington Post, and use is subject to our terms. It may be used for personal consumption, but may not be distributed on a website.
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designboom.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F09%2Four-colour-liz-west-bristol-biennial-rainbow-designboom-01.jpg&width=540&mix=0b54d-art")
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.designboom.com%2Fwp-content%2Fuploads%2F2016%2F09%2Fburning-man-2016-art-installations-architecture-round-up-designboom-016.jpg&width=540&mix=0b54d-art")
![]("http://chimpfeedr.com/img/?url=http%3A%2F%2F67.media.tumblr.com%2F613e28f3e161c9424506526a6a64e62a%2Ftumblr_od28laKLbj1r6ivyno1_500.jpg&width=540&mix=42dfe-culture")
![]("https://drscdn.500px.org/photo/171325433/m%3D900/0cc59b26a0025054d3e49f94ef0b990b")
!["Asian]("http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8373/29389519872_48f127194b_m.jpg")
![]("http://66.media.tumblr.com/40d290471f5040996743a6110a5de115/tumblr_ocvpi9WhiR1ry3nado1_500.jpg")
![]("http://66.media.tumblr.com/807ca6b6897e5e71ba60dc8317ec861d/tumblr_ocvpi9WhiR1ry3nado2_500.jpg")
![]("http://65.media.tumblr.com/b82725c80e4c5cd1270b572e2fc1948f/tumblr_ocvpi9WhiR1ry3nado3_500.jpg")
![]("http://67.media.tumblr.com/697bc34cb93f68f774a2d425a9b81481/tumblr_ocvpi9WhiR1ry3nado4_500.jpg")
![]("https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/134508/width754/image-20160817-3592-1rudnsg.jpg")
![]("https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/134510/width754/image-20160817-3587-17gljfx.jpg")
![]("https://62e528761d0685343e1c-f3d1b99a743ffa4142d9d7f1978d9686.ssl.cf2.rackcdn.com/files/134699/width754/image-20160818-12292-tchnge.jpg")
!["The]("https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/63487/count.gif")
!["GF0007]("http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8842/28839164453_e898c7b7cb_m.jpg")
!["Whilst]("http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8895/28870271034_c5ffa493c5_m.jpg")
!["2016-09-06-1473152539-3120502-wischmeyer.JPG"]("http://images.huffingtonpost.com/2016-09-06-1473152539-3120502-wischmeyer.JPG")
![Nicolas M. Perrault]("https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incendies_(play)#/media/File:Incendies_(pi%C3%A8ce_de_Mouawad)_au_th%C3%A9%C3%A2tre_Lise-Gu%C3%A8vremont.JPG"){kind=link}