A brain region known as the amygdala could play a key role in predicting symptom improvement following ketamine therapy in patients with treatment-resistant anxious depression, according to new research published in the Journal of Affective Disorders.
“Since the antidepressant effects of ketamine in patients with anxious depression remain unclear, it is necessary to investigate the potential biomarkers predicting the antidepressant efficacy of ketamine in patients with anxious depression,” said study author Bin Zhang of the Affiliated Brain Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University.
“Previous studies have pointed out that functional connectivity differences in the amygdala are linked to depression improvement after ketamine treatment in depressed patients, but their role in anxious depression patients is uncertain. Therefore, we investigated the correlation between depression improvement after ketamine treatment and amygdala functional connectivity in anxious depression patients.”
For their study, the researchers examined neuroimaging data from 31 patients with anxious depression and 18 patients with non-anxious depression.
The researchers only included participants who had a diagnosis of major depression without comorbid psychotic symptoms, had a score greater than 17 on the Hamilton Depression Rating Scale, had previously failed to improve after at least two antidepressant treatments, had completed fMRI brain scans, and had undergone six ketamine infusions.
Among the patients with anxious depression, about 60% (20 patients) exhibited clinically significant reductions in depression symptoms following their sixth ketamine infusion. The remaining 11 patients with anxious depression were classified as non-responders.
The researchers found that, prior to the ketamine infusions, those who responded to the treatment tended to have greater functional connectivity between the left laterobasal amygdala and the left precuneus compared to non-responders. Additionally, the connectivity between the two brain regions was significantly reduced post-treatment among responders.
Patients with anxious depression also tended to have reduced connectivity between the right centriomedial amgydala and the right middle temporal gyrus compared to patients with non-anxious depression, which predicted treatment response.
“Corresponding to the crucial role of the amygdala in emotion regulation, especially in negative emotion, our study shown that the amygdala functional connectivity is associated with depression improvement to ketamine infusions in patients with anxious depression,” Zhang told PsyPost.
“The most surprising finding of the current study was that the baseline hyperconnectivity of the amygdala-precuneus found in the responders relative to the non-responders was significantly reduced on day 13 compared to baseline after six ketamine infusions. It may point to a potential neural underpinning by which ketamine exerts its antidepressant effect in patients with anxious depression.”
The results provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying ketamine’s antidepressant effects. But as with any study, the new research includes limitations. The researchers noted that their sample size was relatively small. Future research with larger samples should be conducted to validate the findings.
“Though the findings in our study may suggest that amygdala functional connectivity is a significant predictor of treatment response to ketamine infusions in patients with anxious depression, further validation is required,” Zhang said. “Moreover, further studies exploring the potential antidepressant mechanisms of ketamine may aid in the treatment of anxious depression patients.”
The study, “Functional connectivity differences in the amygdala are related to the antidepressant efficacy of ketamine in patients with anxious depression“, was authored by Shiqi Yuan, Xin Luo, Xiaoyu Chen, Mingqia Wang, Yiru Hu, Yanling Zhou, Yuping Ning, and Bin Zhang.
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Summary: Lowering nicotine levels to non-addictive levels reduces smoking without worsening symptoms of depression and anxiety for those suffering from mental health disorders.
Source: Penn State
Lowering the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to non-addictive levels may reduce smoking without worsening mental health in smokers with mood or anxiety disorders, according to Penn State College of Medicine and Harvard Medical School researchers.
They said reducing nicotine content in cigarettes could also lessen addiction, lower exposure to toxicants and increase a smoker’s chances of quitting.
Tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of premature death and disease in the United States. Recent proposals by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the New Zealand government seek to limit the amount of nicotine in cigarettes to minimally addictive levels.
Prior research indicates that reducing nicotine content could help smokers quit, but there is little evidence to demonstrate if these policies could adversely affect smokers with current or prior affective disorders like depression and anxiety disorders — which affect an estimated 38% of U.S. cigarette smokers.
According to Jonathan Foulds, professor of public health sciences and of psychiatry and behavioral health, smokers with mental health conditions are more likely to have severe nicotine withdrawal symptoms and less success at quitting.
He also said there is speculation that lessening nicotine content to very low levels could worsen psychiatric symptoms in smokers with mental health conditions and lead to heavier smoking and increased exposure to toxicants, or harmful chemicals.
The researchers studied 188 smokers with a history of or who had a current mood or anxiety disorder and had no plans to quit.
Volunteer participants were randomly assigned to a group that received either research cigarettes containing the usual amount of nicotine (11.6 mg nicotine/cigarette) or a progressively reduced amount of nicotine for an additional 18-week period (the final amount was 0.2 mg nicotine/cigarette).
At the beginning and conclusion of the study, the researchers measured levels of cotinine, a metabolite of nicotine, levels of harmful chemicals, cigarette dependence indexes and various mental health measures.
The researchers observed no statistically significant differences in mental health measures between the two groups at the conclusion of the study.
The team used the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale, a six-item self-report assessment where participants reported on a 5-point scale the degree to which they experienced feelings or emotions like “nervous,” “hopeless” or “so depressed that nothing could cheer them up.” Scores are developed by summing points for the six experiences.
Participants in the reduced nicotine content group scored an average of 5.3 at the beginning of the study and finished at an average score of 4.6, while participants in the usual nicotine content group scored 6.1 at the beginning of the study and finished around 4.9.
“These findings are important because we want to understand the effect these policies would have on smokers with anxiety or depressive disorders,” said Foulds, a Penn State Cancer Institute researcher.
“Our data showed that there wasn’t a significant difference in mental health measures between the groups, suggesting reduced nicotine cigarettes might not have adverse psychological effects on this population.”
Similar to what prior studies reported, Foulds and team found that groups in the reduced nicotine content group were absorbing lower amounts of nicotine and ingesting lower levels of harmful carcinogens such as the biomarker 4-(methylnitrosamino)-1-(3-pryidyl)-1-butanol), more commonly known as NNAL. That group also smoked fewer cigarettes and reported lower levels of nicotine addiction by the end of the randomized phase of the trial.
The results were published in PLOS ONE today, Nov. 2.
Unique to this study, participants in both groups were also given the choice to “choose their treatment,” after the 18-week period. They could go back to using their own cigarettes, continue smoking the research cigarettes or attempt to quit.
Of the 188 participants in the study, those randomized to reduced nicotine content cigarettes were more likely to have quit smoking 12 weeks later (18.1%), compared to those in the control (usual nicotine content) group (4.3%).
Tobacco remains the leading preventable cause of premature death and disease in the United States. Image is in the public domain
“We believe this is the first randomized trial to find that smokers who used very low nicotine cigarettes were significantly more likely to have quit smoking (with biochemical verification), three months after the end of the trial,” Foulds said.
“Our results suggest that these policies will likely result in reduced nicotine absorption from cigarettes without worsening the mental health of smokers with mood or anxiety disorders,” said Dr. Eden Evins, Cox Family Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. “They also suggest that with proper support and resources, smokers with mood and anxiety disorders could quit successfully as a result of these policies.”
For more information on nicotine, smoking and health studies at the Penn State Center for Research on Tobacco and Health, visit https://research.med.psu.edu/smoking/#participants.
See also
Susan Veldheer, Ahmad Hameed, Sophia Allen, Jessica Yingst, Erin Hammett, Jennifer Modesto, Nicolle Krebs, Courtney Lester, Neil Trushin, Lisa Reinhart, Emily Wasserman, Junija Zhu, Jason Liao, Joshua Muscat and John Richie of Penn State College of Medicine; Shari Hrabovsky of Penn State Ross and Carol Nese College of Nursing; and Gladys Pachas, Corinne Cather, Nour Azzouz and A. Edin Evins of Harvard Medical School also contributed to this research. Foulds and Evins have done paid consulting for pharmaceutical companies involved in producing smoking cessation medications. Other author conflicts of interest are noted in the manuscript.
Funding: This research was supported by the National Institutes of Health through the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health (award P50DA036107) and the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences through Penn State Clinical and Translational Science Institute (award UL1 TR000127). The research was also supported by the Center for Tobacco Products of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health or the Food and Drug Administration.
About this nicotine addiction and mental health research news
Author: Sara LaJeunesse Source: Penn State Contact: Sara LaJeunesse – Penn State Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access. “The effects of reduced nicotine content cigarettes on biomarkers of nicotine and toxicant exposure, smoking behavior and psychiatric symptoms in smokers with mood or anxiety disorders: A double-blind randomized trial” by Jonathan Foulds et al. PLOS ONE
Abstract
The effects of reduced nicotine content cigarettes on biomarkers of nicotine and toxicant exposure, smoking behavior and psychiatric symptoms in smokers with mood or anxiety disorders: A double-blind randomized trial
Background
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the government of New Zealand have proposed a reduction of the nicotine content in cigarettes to very low levels. This study examined the potential effects of this regulation in smokers with affective disorders.
Methods
In a randomized controlled parallel group trial conducted at two sites in the USA (Penn State University, Hershey, PA and Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA) 188 adult smokers with a current (n = 118) or lifetime (n = 70) anxiety or unipolar mood disorder, not planning to quit in the next 6 months, were randomly assigned (1:1) to smoke either Usual Nicotine Content (UNC) (11.6 mg nicotine/cigarette) research cigarettes, or Reduced Nicotine Content (RNC) research cigarettes where the nicotine content per cigarette was progressively reduced to 0.2 mg in five steps over 18 weeks. Participants were then offered the choice to either receive assistance to quit smoking, receive free research cigarettes, or resume using their own cigarette brand during a 12-week follow-up period. Main outcomes were biomarkers of nicotine and toxicant exposure, smoking behavior and dependence and severity of psychiatric symptoms. The pre-registered primary outcome was plasma cotinine.
Results
A total of 143 (76.1%) randomized participants completed the randomized phase of the trial, 69 (73.4%) in the RNC group and 74 (78.8%) in the UNC group. After switching to the lowest nicotine content cigarettes, compared to smokers in the UNC group, at the last randomized visit the RNC group had significantly lower plasma cotinine (metabolite of nicotine): difference between groups, -175.7, 95% CI [-218.3, -133.1] ng/ml. Urine NNAL (metabolite of NNK, a lung carcinogen), exhaled carbon-monoxide, cigarette consumption, and cigarette dependence were also significantly lower in the RNC group than the UNC group. No between-group differences were found on a range of other biomarkers (e.g. 8-isoprostanes) or health indicators (e.g. blood pressure), or on 5 different psychiatric questionnaires, including the Kessler K6 measure of psychological distress. At the end of the subsequent 12-week treatment choice phase, those randomized to the RNC group were more likely to have quit smoking, based on initial intent-to-treat sample, n = 188 (18.1% RNC v 4.3% UNC, p = 0.004).
Conclusion
Reducing nicotine content in cigarettes to very low levels reduces some toxicant exposures and cigarette addiction and increases smoking cessation in smokers with mood and/or anxiety disorders, without worsening mental health.
My teenage years, like many of our teenage years, were raw ones. I felt vulnerable, destabilized and confused, and I chronicled every bit of it on the pages of highly guarded diaries.
Looking back, I see there was a beauty to this rawness. All those strong feelings helped me figure out who I was and what kind of people I wanted around me. I also feel lucky to be a part of the last generation to experience childhood without much in the way of digital life, and the last to be influenced by Gen X slackers rather than the self-optimizers who came next. This rawness was somewhat protected from societal influences telling me I should do and be more.
That’s not true today. Girls are growing with a rising number of external pressures, making their transition into teen and adulthood far more psychologically disturbing than it used to be. Research shows sharp spikes in depression and anxiety among girls in recent years, at rates notably higher than boys.
In her new book, “Girls on the Brink: Helping Our Daughters Thrive in an Era of Increased Anxiety, Depression, and Social Media,” Donna Jackson Nakazawa looks into why this is the case, and what we can do about it. CNN spoke with Nakazawa about new brain science on girls and puberty, and how our fast-paced, online lifestyle doesn’t work well with our psychological needs.
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: What is it about this moment in time that makes life so much more emotionally challenging for teenage girls?
Donna Jackson Nakazawa: There is so much focus on performance and competition. Our children are missing that important part of childhood, those in between years, ages 7 to 13, when they should be doing things like hanging out with their friends and lying in the grass to chat about whatever. We’ve replaced that with a fast-moving culture and have also added in social media, which kids are not supposed to be on until age 13, but many get on much earlier.
Once they are on social media, the focus on appearance hits girls especially. They are more likely to be “liked” or “disliked” based on their looks, and sexualized, than boys. They learn that the more clothes you take off, the more “likes” you get, and that their bodies are going to get evaluated.
Add to this the threats of global warming, school shootings and everything else. It’s all heating up, literally, and social media platforms are created to increase the intensity of emotion. And then we have to layer upon that the stark reality that girls routinely face added threats like sexual harassment, rape and violence against women by virtue of being female.
CNN: And girls’ brains are particularly sensitive to these stressors?
Nakazawa: Puberty is a super vulnerable time for girls’ brain development. Of course, this is true for boys and everyone on the spectrum, too, but it is especially true for girls. When estrogen comes on board during puberty, it is particularly powerful at increasing a potent stress response to unmitigated stressors, and there is good reason for that.
Estrogen, evolutionarily speaking, is a very groovy hormone and master regulator in the brain. On the good side, in normal circumstances, it gives women this added immune response that helps keep them healthy and strong. But when a woman faces big ongoing stressors in the environment, it can make our systems overreact. This is why women have a more robust response to vaccines, and why women suffer from autoimmune diseases at many times the rate of men. Social stressors can evoke an immune response similar to that of experiencing physical harm.
When girls experience overwhelming social and emotional stressors at the same time that estrogen is coming onboard during puberty, this can exacerbate the ill effects of stress on health and development.
CNN: On top of all that, girls are going through puberty at younger ages.
Nakazawa: Puberty is happening earlier at a time when the brain isn’t supposed to be remodeled. All those parts of the brain that help discern what we should respond to and what we shouldn’t, and when we need help, haven’t fired up yet.
Scientists are still trying to parse out why puberty is happening earlier, but we do know that it is happening. Back in 1800, girls got their periods around age 16; in the 1900s, it was around age 15; and in 2020, the average age was 11. It might be that development is sped up by stress or a shift in diet. Some neuroscientists posit that it is possible that the sexualization of girls at an early age is perhaps another part of the reason why they are going through puberty early. If the environment is telling you you are sexual, then it might trigger the pathways that trigger puberty. But for each of these theories there is always someone who says we don’t know.
Whatever the reason, more and more girls are going through puberty younger, which means they are having feelings and experiencing increased stress before their brains are fired and wired up to handle it. This is an evolutionary mismatch.
CNN: Puberty, for everyone, tends to be a time of strong feelings and some level of alienation. How can you tell the difference between typical moody teens and a mental health disorder?
Nakazawa: The classic sign is that your child is no longer talking to you or anyone. They are isolating, irritable, picking fights with friends, sleeping all the time or not sleeping at all, and experiencing persistent sadness, hopelessness and fatigue.
This is why, when your daughter comes to you with hard things, try to make it a good experience for her. If a child says they can talk to their parents about anything, that says a lot about how the child is doing. Parents need to try to find ways to keep the conversation open, and not just with them, but with anyone, whether a favorite aunt or teacher.
CNN: Still, the solution to this problem isn’t something parents can or should handle on their own, right?
Nakazawa: There are so many different ways to bring in the wider community. Too many parents think they are alone in dealing with this, but we are not alone, and we shouldn’t be thinking this is all on us. There is going to be a time when our kids aren’t talking to us, and it is OK to reach out to the school and say you need help. You are not a failure if your child is anxious or depressed, and you can’t handle it on your own. Why should we think we are the only ones with viable advice?
Talk therapy can help; there is very good evidence. So can having a wider community, which can provide a lot of reassurance for kids — because that is how humans evolved across evolutionary time — we knew that the tribe had our back. We came from communal settings, but today there is so much isolation, and kids feel as though they are competing against each other, which makes them less likely to feel connected.
When you get the community involved, your kids get a sense from the wider world that they matter and that there are other adults in the world that say, “I see you over there.” We want to get our kids involved in community-wide events that are not about performance or evaluation, or about external validation, or building up their resume. Instead, we want these experiences to help them know they matter because they matter and build up their intrinsic worth.
Overall, the more we make the wider world seem compelling, inviting and exciting to our girls, full of healthy connection and different from their online social media world, the more our girls feel safe.
When they feel safe, the stress machinery in their brains is less likely to get engaged, and they have a better chance at getting through their teen years without depression or anxiety. Girls’ brains at puberty are incredibly agile; they are taking a lot of social cues at once. If these cues are good and we eliminate a lot of the stressors, the adolescent female brain is a superpower.
New research provides evidence that insecure attachment is associated with cognitive functioning in older couples. The findings have been published in the Journal of Research in Personality.
“I came across a book chapter that mentioned how attachment could be linked to Alzheimer’s disease and I was hooked,” said study author Rebekka Weidmann, a postdoctoral fellow at the Close Relationships Lab at Michigan State University.
“The idea that what was going on in the romantic couple could be associated with cognitive decline in later adulthood was very fascinating to me. So I emailed Prof. Chopik — an attachment expert — to ask if he was interested to collaborate on a study on attachment and cognitive health. Luckily he was and we planned and conducted the ‘Attachment and Neurodegenerative Disease’ study, which provided the data for the current article.”
A large body of research has demonstrated that people can be secure or insecure in their attachments to others, and insecure individuals can be either anxious or avoidant. Anxiously attached individuals agree with statements such as “I am afraid my partner may abandon me,” while avoidantly attached individuals agree with statements such as “I don’t feel comfortable opening up to my partner.”
The researchers had 1,043 couples (who had been together for at least six months) complete assessments of romantic attachment, cognitive impairment, dementia symptoms, memory performance, stress, and relationship satisfaction. The participants were 64.7 years old on average, and couples had been together for an average of 35.8 years.
Weidmann and Chopik found that insecure attachment was associated with higher stress, and higher stress was linked to greater cognitive impairment for both the participants themselves and their partners.
More anxiously attached participants tended to report more cognitive impairment, including greater skill loss and worse memory for recent events. Anxious attachment, however, was unrelated to dementia symptoms or memory performance. Avoidantly attached participants, on the other hand, did not show a tendency for cognitive impairment. However, the partners of avoidantly attached individuals were more likely to report cognitive impairment and demonstrate worse memory performance.
“The take-away message from the study is that insecure attachment is differently linked to cognitive health, depending on if you look at anxious attachment or avoidant attachment,” Weidmann told PsyPost. “Anxiously attached people tend to have lower self-rated cognitive health, while partners of avoidantly attached people tend to have lower self-rated cognitive health but also fare worse in an objective memory task. These effects are not completely explained by relationship satisfaction, hinting to the possibility that there are other things going on in the couple that link insecure attachment to their cognitive health.”
The researchers controlled for a number of factors known to influence cognitive functioning and romantic attachment, including education levels, income, body mass index, relationship length, and general health. But the study, like all research, includes some caveats.
“The major caveat is that it was a cross-sectional study,” Weidmann explained. “Even though the sample was very large, and we measured cognitive health in many different ways, we still know little about the directionality of effects. Does cognitive health decline because of the insecure attachment of romantic partners, or is it that people grow more insecurely attached because of their and their partner’s cognitive decline? These are questions that need to be addressed in the future.”
The study, “Romantic attachment, stress, and cognitive functioning in a large sample of middle-aged and older couples“, was authored by Rebekka Weidmann and William J. Chopik.
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LONDON — Nick Kyrgios felt “disappointment” when he first heard Rafael Nadal had withdrawn from their Wimbledon men’s singles semifinal. Then he said he only managed one hour of sleep on Thursday night and was “a reckless ball of energy” as he processed the news.
Nadal withdrew from their semifinal with an abdominal injury, meaning Kyrgios will contest his first ever Grand Slam final on Sunday against either Novak Djokovic or Cam Norrie.
Kyrgios on Friday said he was hoping for a “third chapter” after going 1-1 in two previous matches against Nadal at Wimbledon.
“My energy was so focused on playing [Nadal] and tactically how I’m going to go out there and play, the emotions of walking out there, all that type of stuff,” said Kyrgios, who said he learned of Nadal’s decision while he was eating dinner Thursday.
“But, you know, it wouldn’t have been easy for him to do that [withdraw]. … He barely lost a match this year. He wanted to probably go for all four. So it wouldn’t be easy. I hope he gets better.”
Now Kyrgios’ attention has shifted to the men’s final on Sunday, saying he was “super proud” of himself and that he “never thought” he’d make a Grand Slam final.
“I had a shocking sleep last night, though, to be honest,” Kyrgios said. “I probably got an hour’s sleep just with everything, like the excitement. I had so much anxiety. I was already feeling so nervous, and I don’t feel nervous usually.
He added: “I was just restless. So many thoughts in my head about a Wimbledon final. That’s all I was thinking about. I was thinking just [about] playing, obviously imagining myself winning, imagining myself losing. Everything. … I feel like I’m just a reckless ball of energy right now. I just want to go out on the practice court now and hit some tennis balls and just talk. I don’t know. I want it to come already. Yeah, I want the final to come already.”
Kyrgios has twice lost to Djokovic in matches, and they have also previously clashed off the court. However, they have grown closer since Kyrgios supported Djokovic at the start of the year when he was deported from Australia in advance of the Australian Open.
“We definitely have a bit of a bromance now, which is weird,” said Kyrgios, who added that Djokovic sends him direct messages on Instagram. “I think everyone knows there was no love lost for a while there. I think it was healthy for the sport. I think every time we played each other, there was hype around it. It was interesting for the media, the people watching, all that.
“I felt like I was almost the only kind of player and someone to stand up for him with all that kind of drama at Australian Open. I feel like that’s where respect is kind of earned — not on the tennis court, but I feel like when a real life crisis is happening and someone stands up for you.”
That has been rare in Kyrgios’ instance, especially with his fellow Australians.
Kyrgios said that Lleyton Hewitt, who was the last Australian men’s player to reach a Slam final at the 2005 US Open, is one of the few Australian former pros who show him any support.
“The kind of only great that’s ever been supportive of me the whole time has been Lleyton Hewitt,” said Kyrgios, who said that he hit with Hewitt earlier in the tournament. “Like he knows. He’s our Davis Cup captain, and he kind of knows that I kind of do my own thing.”
It’s been an eventful fortnight for Kyrgios at Wimbledon. He was twice fined — first for spitting in the direction of a spectator after his first-round win, then again for an “audible obscenity” in the third round vs. Stefanos Tsitsipas. He overcame a shoulder injury in the fourth round. Prior to his quarterfinal match, news broke that he was being summoned to a court in Canberra, Australia, next month to face a charge of common assault.
Earlier in the tournament, he was criticized by Pat Cash for bringing “tennis to the lowest level I can see as far as gamesmanship, cheating, manipulation, abuse, aggressive behavior to umpires, to linesmen” during an appearance on BBC radio.
“I mean, look, as for the greats of Australian tennis, they haven’t always been the nicest to me personally,” Kyrgios said. “They haven’t always been supportive. They haven’t been supportive these two weeks. So it’s hard for me to kind of read things that they say about me. … I’m definitely the outcast of the Australian players.
“It’s pretty sad because I don’t get any support from any of the other Australian tennis players, the male side. Not the players, but like the past greats. It’s weird they just have like a sick obsession with tearing me down for some reason. Like, I just don’t know whether they don’t like me or they’re, like, afraid. I don’t know. I don’t know what it is. But it sucks, because if it was roles reversed, if I saw [Alex] De Minaur in a final, or if I saw Jordan Thompson or Thanasi [Kokkinakis], I’d be pumped. I’d be stoked. I’d be having a pint watching going nuts.”
When it comes to my own health, I’m not a hypochondriac. But if we’re talking about Daisy, my 4.5-pound, 17-year-old Yorkie? Every sneeze, every meal she doesn’t finish, or any time she loses a fight that she started with our 18-pound cat — I’m convinced she’s embarking on her inevitable journey across the rainbow bridge. In 2020, I outfitted her with the Whistle Go, a fitness tracker for pets, to encourage her to walk at least 10 minutes a day. It did not go as I’d planned. Two years later, I haven’t learned my lesson. For the past two weeks, Daisy has been rocking the $44.95 Whistle Health on her collar.
The Whistle Health is, as the name suggests, a more health-focused tracker than the Go. It generates a wellness score, which gives me a big-picture view of Daisy’s health. I also got to see how frequently Daisy scratches, licks, eats, or drinks. Plus, it also tracks her sleep quality — not just the duration. Other helpful features include a food portion calculator, pet-related to-dos, and access to Whistle’s televet service. The last three weren’t options when I previously tested a Whistle tracker, and it was nice to consolidate my pet-related tasks within a single app.
Before I go any further, there are a few things you should know about Daisy. People have always been surprised by how old she is because she’s a spry lady prone to snootily huffing when things don’t go her way. She has, on multiple occasions, faked a limp to get out of a walk and pretended to be sick so I’d give her a little extra turkey. Her favorite activities are eating, sleeping, and doing things she’s not supposed to do. She’s basically running CatOS on Dog hardware.
But, in the two years since I tested the Go, that’s started to change. Daisy’s not as wily as she used to be. She’s starting to go bald in some areas. She has cataracts, and she sometimes slips when walking on hardwood floors. She stares at walls a lot more than she used to. At a recent checkup, our vet said that Daisy was showing signs of cognitive decline and suggested I focus on “maintaining her quality of life.” It was part of the reason I was interested in trying the Whistle Health in the first place. Maybe it’d give some insight into her health and help me figure out what was worth freaking out over and what was natural aging.
The Whistle Health lacks GPS tracking.
Design-wise, I appreciated that the Health is lightweight, thin, and small. Battery life was also strong. I’ve been testing this device for two weeks and still haven’t had to recharge it. Attaching it to Daisy’s collar was easy thanks to the velcro backing. Though, when I put it on her, she gave me eyes that said “not this again.” In my defense, this has been a less arduous experience because of the smaller size. The Whistle Go was simply too big and heavy for her and was probably a big reason why her metrics were so wonky. The smaller size of the Whistle Health might also be due to the fact that it doesn’t include GPS tracking. That’s fine if you have a dog that doesn’t walk much. It’s less fine if you have an active pupper who’s constantly escaping your backyard.
I wasn’t surprised when the Whistle Health told me Daisy mostly sleeps about 14–18 hours a day. I was more impressed that the Health could pinpoint when Daisy goes on her midnight patrols. When I compared my sleep data to hers, you could see that we wake up around the same time each night because I have to help guide her to her pee pad or rescue her from a corner. (No, nightlights haven’t helped.)
It dropped five points because she had a fight with the cat at 4AM.
It was also accurate at detecting how often Daisy licks and scratches. This wasn’t the case when I tested the Whistle Go. At that time, she basically licked any textile she could find as a nervous tic. Now that she’s senile, she sticks to licking herself. As for scratching, I’m not sure she remembers how to anymore.
It was less accurate when it came to eating and drinking. I’ll cop to being a helicopter dog mom because I keep track of how much food Daisy’s eating in a spreadsheet. Aside from the times when she’s not feeling well or traveling with me, she eats each perfectly proportioned meal with joyous gusto. (Occasionally, she steals the cat’s food, too.) Because she’s toothless, it takes her quite a while to lick her bowl clean. The Whistle Health, however, says she only spends an average of 7.5 minutes eating per day and eats less than the average dog. Sounds fishy to me.
As for drinking, Daisy does her best to imitate a cactus. (Probably because she gets most of her water from wet food.) Frankly, the only time I see her drinking is on long summer road trips or because she feels like antagonizing the cat by sullying the purity of his water fountain. However, the Whistle Health says she drinks much more than the average dog. Again, fishy.
In the year 2022, I don’t like that it uses a micro USB cable.
Nothing was quite as egregious, however, as her daily activity. Earlier this week, the Whistle Health said Daisy walked 8.6 miles. This is impossible. She has teeny legs that she has zero desire to use for anything other than transporting herself to her food bowl. The most she does is a few laps around the apartment, sniffing shoes and crying because she got stuck behind the TV console yet again. On average, the Health reported she walked somewhere between 3 and 4 miles a day. That is the equivalent of a lap around a local park. It takes me, a healthy person who walks a 15-minute mile, a whole hour to do that. Daisy will not, I repeat, will not walk more than 50 feet outside. I mapped her usual route in our apartment. It’s roughly 25 feet. My napkin math tells me that she’d have to make approximately 845 laps to hit four miles.
Even so, this is still a marked improvement over the numbers I got with the Whistle Go. That tracker once said she walked a mile in a minute. Despite my best efforts, Daisy has not walked a mile continuously in years.
While I liked what the Whistle Health brought overall, I had a couple of gripes. For instance, the tracker dropped Bluetooth or was unable to sync fairly often. It usually sorted itself out, but it makes you less likely to open the app. Also, the last thing I need is to wake up again at 4AM with Daisy hovering over me, the Bluetooth light flashing in my eyes for no reason. My other gripe was that, because the device is Bluetooth-only, I was unable to see her metrics while away on a weekend trip. Did it ultimately matter? No, but my anxiety would’ve appreciated any evidence she was doing fine because my pet sitter only sporadically sends pics.
The Bluetooth light can be a tad too bright at night.
The average pet owner probably doesn’t need this device, especially since you have to sign up for a subscription: $9.95 monthly; $60 for one year; or $108 for two years. This is mostly useful if your dog has chronic health issues or you need a little help reducing their weight. If you like to have your vet on speed dial, this can also be a handy alternative since you can text, chat, or video call a vet to see whether you actually need to head for emergency care.
At the end of the day, I recognize this is more for me than for her. Daisy is getting older and nearing the end of a Yorkie’s life expectancy. No device can change that. I don’t need data to understand that. I probably should just spend as much time with her as possible instead of trying to figure out every supplement, food, or fitnesstracker that might extend her already long life. But pets are family, and in Daisy’s case, she’s all I have left of my dad. It’s easier to lump all of this baggage into a tracker and app that helps me feel productive. It momentarily eases my anxiety — even if I know it’s just a placebo.
As for Daisy, the geriatric bugger did a little dance when I took the tracker off her.
Late last week, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter managed to reestablish its connection with the Perseverance rover following a brief communications disruption. The space agency says the looming winter is likely responsible and is making adjustments as a result.
On Thursday, Ingenuity—mercifully—sent a signal to Perseverance after the intrepid helicopter missed a scheduled communications session. It marked the first time since the pair landed together on Mars in February 2021 that Ingenuity has missed an appointment, according to NASA.
The team behind the mission believes that Ingenuity had entered into a low-power state to conserve energy, and it did so in response to the charge of its six lithium-ion batteries dropping below a critical threshold. This was likely due to the approaching winter, when more dust appears in the Martian atmosphere and the temperatures get colder. The dust blocks the amount of sunlight that reaches the helicopter’s solar array, which charges its batteries.
The Perseverance rover is on a mission to find evidence of ancient microbial life on Mars, while the rover’s much smaller companion, Ingenuity, became the first powered aircraft to lift off from the surface of another planet on April 19, 2021. The two robots share a communication line, with Perseverance relaying Ingenuity’s messages to Earth. Ingenuity uses small antennas to communicate with Perseverance, exchanging data that is then routed to the rover’s main computer and transferred to Earth through NASA’s Deep Space Network (a global array of radio antennas).
Ingenuity has an alarm that wakes the helicopter for its scheduled communication sessions with Perseverance. But on May 3, Ingenuity was a no-show for the scheduled daily data exchange after its field-programmable gate array lost power overnight, causing a reset of the helicopter’s onboard clock (the gate array manages Ingenuity’s operational state, switching its electronic systems on and off to conserve power). The Sun’s rays recharged Ingenuity’s batteries the following morning, but the helicopter’s clock was now out of sync with Perseverance’s clock. By the time Ingenuity was able to send out a signal, the rover was no longer listening.
Two days later, mission control set out to fix the pair’s communication issue by programming the rover to spend nearly the entirety of its 429th sol (a Martian day, which lasts slightly longer than a day on Earth) listening for the helicopter’s signal. Ingenuity’s call finally came in on May 5 at 11:45 a.m. local Mars time. Although brief, Ingenuity’s call reassured the team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that the helicopter’s battery was healthy and that the solar array was recharging its batteries.
Ingenuity wasn’t exactly built to withstand the harsh Martian winter nights, as the rotorcraft was designed to last only 30 sols on Mars. But the 19-inch tall (48 cm), 4-pound (1.8 kg) helicopter has gone far beyond its test flights, recently receivingan extension on its mission to assist Perseverance as it explores the Martian terrain. Ingenuity will now fly above the Martian surface, advising Perseverance’s controllers on the most ideal routes.
“We have always known that Martian winter and dust storm season would present new challenges for Ingenuity, specifically colder sols, an increase in atmospheric dust, and more frequent dust storms,” Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at JPL, said in a statement. “Every flight and every mile of distance flown beyond our original 30-sol mission has pushed the spacecraft to its limits each and every sol on Mars.”
For now, the team has put together a plan to help the tiny helicopter survive the looming winter. The newly issued commands “lower the point at which the helicopter energizes its heaters from when the battery falls below 5 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 15 degrees Celsius) to minus 40 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 40 degrees Celsius),” according to NASA, which added that the “helicopter then shuts down quickly, rather than consuming the battery charge with the heaters.” This should allow Ingenuity to accumulate battery charge during the day, which it can then use to survive the bitterly cold nights.
“Our top priority is to maintain communications with Ingenuity in the next few sols, but even then, we know that there will be significant challenges ahead,” Tzanetos said. “We are hopeful that we can accumulate battery charge in order to return to nominal operations and continue our mission into the weeks ahead.”
Even with the dropped call, Ingenuity still remains the little copter that could, surpassing expectations with a total of 28 flights logged on Mars. Hard to believe now, but the original plan was to have Ingenuity perform just five flights on the Red Planet.
The 72 hours prior to the effective closing of the NCAA’s transfer portal are tumultuous in college football circles. And while Pittsburgh All-American wide receiver Jordan Addison’s will-he-won’t-he flirtation with the portal dominates most of the conversation, nearly every school is dealing with the new realities of college football as we wait for the May 1 transfer portal deadline dust to settle.
No team better represents the new normal than the Texas Longhorns. Not only was Texas engaged in a heated recruiting battle for a top transfer target, but it was also attempting to protect its own roster from the tampering winds that are gusting across the sport.
The best place to start is TCU transfer Ochaun Mathis.
The No. 25 overall player in the 247Sports Transfer Rankings, Mathis was a top target for the Longhorns, who sorely need pass-rushing help off the edge. Mathis grew up right outside of Austin and had a strong connection at Texas in new special assistant to the head coach, Gary Patterson, his former coach at TCU. And while Mathis visited Austin four times and was considered a heavy Longhorn lean throughout the process, he ultimately chose Nebraska.
Multiple sources have indicated to 247Sports that Mathis’ decision to pick the Huskers had to do in large part because of a significant NIL deal Nebraska presented, which a source said was in the mid-six-figure range.
While that battle on the transfer recruiting trail was ongoing, the Longhorns were battling to keep their roster intact — outside of the expected roster purge that did occur.
Among the players targeted by others schools was True Freshman All-American wide receiver Xavier Worthy, who a source said had a significant six-figure offer from at least one Power Five school to enter the portal and attend their program.
That’s something the Longhorns managed to fend off, according to Horns247 senior writer Jeff Howe.
“He’s not leaving,” a source told Howe. “You can take that to the bank.”
A budding superstar who caught 62 passes for 981 yards and 12 touchdowns as a freshman, Worthy would have been a massive loss for the Longhorns.
That’s not all. Sources say third-year defensive back Jahdae Barron, Texas’ projected starting nickelback, was also approached by a Power Five program with a significant deal to enter the portal. As of Monday evening, Barron’s name has not popped up in the transfer portal (Horns247’s Mike Roach has more here).
Three names, three different storylines. It’s just a glimpse into the bonanza that is college football right now as the transfer portal window, lightly regulated NIL policies and post-spring depth charts collide.
“It’s the new norm,” said one Power Five assistant coach.
WASHINGTON — Asked at a Wednesday briefing of the White House pandemic response team about when Americans could expect life to return to normal, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Rochelle Walensky offered a somewhat cryptic but revealing response.
“We know people are anxious,” Walensky said.
Asked which anxiety she was referring to, a Walensky spokesperson told Yahoo News: “This comment was made in response to a question on if people can change their habits for gathering in groups or going to bars and restaurants. Dr. Walensky recognizes that many people are anxious to get back to these activities and no longer have COVID-19 disrupt their daily lives.”
Dr. Rochelle Walensky, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention answers questions during a Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee hearing. (Greg Nash/Pool via Reuters)
Indeed, a recent poll by YouGov for Yahoo News found 46 percent of Americans saying that society needs to learn to live with the virus and return to pre-pandemic normalcy. A recent Monmouth poll found even more dramatic results, with 70 percent of respondents agreeing with the statement that “we just need to get on with our lives.”
There is, to be sure, plenty of anxiety to go around: about catching COVID-19, which continues to kill more than 2,000 people per day, but also about what public health officials envision for the future. Resistance to masking in schools is growing even among progressives, amid a broader recognition that while caution may continue to be justified, Americans are becoming increasingly impatient.
Walensky described herself as “cautiously optimistic,” but offered nothing like an endorsement of returning to normal that governors who met with President Biden earlier this week have been hoping for.
“Milder does not mean mild,” Walensky said, referencing the fact that the Omicron tends to cause more mild sickness. But close to 40 percent of eligible Americans are unvaccinated. And of the fully vaccinated, 60 percent have not had a booster shot, which epidemiologists say is necessary to offer the highest level of protection against the coronavirus.
“We really do have look to our hospitalization rates, and our death rates, to look to when it’s time to lift some of these mitigation efforts,” Walensky said in explaining why her agency’s guidance on masking remains cautious, and why the recent drop in cases is not being met with the level of enthusiasm some believe it deserves.
A health care worker treats a COVID-19 patient in the ICU at Hartford Hospital in Hartford, Conn. (Allison Dinner/Bloomberg via Getty Images)
Hospitals are full in many parts of the country, and COVID-19 continues to exact a far greater toll in the United States than in other developed nations. “We’ve normalized a very high death toll in the U.S.,” Dartmouth public health scholar Anne Sosin told the New York Times.
The pandemic has frustrated previous attempts at reopening with new variants that have pushed a true reopening — masks off, people back in offices, schools open and restaurants full — ever further into the future.
Last spring, the CDC lifted indoor masking guidance for vaccinated people, a move some thought was premature. Then, in early July, President Biden all but declared independence from the virus, symbolically delivered on Independence Day during a party celebrating first respondents. That too was seen as a rash move by some.
But the late summer saw a surge of new cases fueled by the Delta variant. Just as it subsided, Omicron came along. Even though that wave is now subsiding too, public health officials are reluctant to declare victory. Speaking at the White House briefing with Walensky, Dr. Anthony Fauci, the president’s top medical adviser, reminded Americans that even the recent drop in cases could signal a mere lull before yet another variant comes along.
Which could mean that, whether people are anxious about the coronavirus or about relegating the disease to the past, they may have to live in the current state of uncertainty. “We have to be honest that we don’t know,” Fauci said of the pandemic’s ultimate trajectory. But, he added, “We believe we are now going in the right direction.”
How are vaccination rates affecting the latest COVID surge? Check out this explainer from Yahoo Immersive to find out.
What do astronomers eat for breakfast on the day that their $10 billion telescope launches into space? Their fingernails.
“You work for years and it all goes up in a puff of smoke,” said Marcia Rieke of the University of Arizona.
Dr. Rieke admits her fingers will be crossed on the morning of Dec. 22 when she tunes in for the launch of the James Webb Space Telescope. For 20 years, she has been working to design and build an ultrasensitive infrared camera that will live aboard the spacecraft. The Webb is the vaunted bigger and more powerful successor to the Hubble Space Telescope. Astronomers expect that it will pierce a dark curtain of ignorance and supposition about the early days of the universe, and allow them to snoop on nearby exoplanets.
After $10 billion and years of delays, the telescope is finally scheduled to lift off from a European launch site in French Guiana on its way to a point a million miles on the other side of the moon.
An informal and totally unscientific survey of randomly chosen astronomers revealed a community sitting on the edges of their seats feeling nervous, proud and grateful for the team that has developed, built and tested the new telescope over the last quarter-century.
“I will almost certainly watch the launch and be terrified the entire time,” said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein, a professor of physics and gender studies at the University of New Hampshire.
And there is plenty to be anxious about. The Ariane 5 rocket that is carrying the spacecraft has seldom failed to deliver its payloads to orbit. But even if it survives the launch, the telescope will have a long way to go.
Over the following month it will have to execute a series of maneuvers with 344 “single points of failure” in order to unfurl its big golden mirror and deploy five thin layers of a giant plastic sunscreen that will keep the telescope and its instruments in the cold and dark. Engineers and astronomers call this interval six months of high anxiety because there is no prospect of any human or robotic intervention or rescue should something go wrong.
But if all those steps succeed, what astronomers see through that telescope could change everything. They hope to spot the first stars and galaxies emerging from the primordial fog when the universe was only 100 million years or so old, in short the first steps out of the big bang toward the cozy light show we inhabit today.
“The entire astronomy community, given the broad range of anticipated science returns and discovery potential, has skin in the game” with the telescope, said Priyamvada Natarajan, an astrophysicist at Yale. “We are all intellectually and emotionally invested.”
But the telescope has been snake bitten during its long development with cost overruns and expensive accidents that have added to the normal apprehension of rocket launches.
Michael Turner, a cosmologist at the Kavli Foundation in Los Angeles and past president of the American Physical Society, described the combination of “excitement and terror,” he expected to feel during the launch.
“The next decade of astronomy and astrophysics is predicated on J.W. being successful,” Dr. Turner said, referring to the James Webb Space Telescope, “and U.S. prestige and leadership in space and science are also on the line. That is a heavy burden to carry, but we know how to do great things.”
That opinion was echoed by Martin Rees of Cambridge University and the Astronomer Royal for the British royal households.
“Any failure of JWST would be disastrous for NASA,” he wrote in an email. “But if the failure involves a mechanical procedure — unfurling a blind, or unfolding the pieces of the mirror — this will be a mega-catastrophic and embarrassing P.R. disaster. That’s because it would involve a failure of something seemingly ‘simple’ that everyone can understand.”
Dr. Natarajan, who will use the Webb to search for the origins of supermassive black holes, said, “I am trying to be Zen and not imagine disastrous outcomes.”
But in describing the stakes, she compared the telescope to other milestones of human history.
“Remarkable enduring achievements of human hand and mind, be it the temples of Mahabalipuram, the pyramids of Giza, the Great Wall or the Sistine Chapel have all taken time and expense,” she said. “I truly see JWST as one such monument of our times.”
Alan Dressler of the Carnegie Observatories in Pasadena, who was chair of a committee 25 years ago that led to the Webb project, responded with his own question when asked how nervous he was.
“When you know someone is about to have critical surgery, would you sit around and have a conversation about ‘what if it fails?’” he wrote. He added that his colleagues “know there is no certainty here, and it does no good for any of us to ruminate about it.”
Another astronomer who has been involved with this project from the beginning, Garth Illingworth of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said in an email that he was optimistic about the launch despite his reputation of being a “glass is half empty” kind of guy.
“The deployments are complex but my view is that all that is humanly possible has been done!” he wrote. He said that even if there were surprises in the telescope’s deployment, he did not “expect these to be either major or mission terminating — not at all.”
Other respondents to my survey also took refuge from their nervousness in the skill and dedication of their colleagues.
Andrea Ghez of the University of California, Los Angeles, who won the Nobel Prize in 2020 for her observations of the black hole in the center of our galaxy, said she kept herself sane “by trusting that really smart people have worked really hard to get things right.”
That thought was seconded by Tod Lauer, an astronomer at NOIRLab in Tucson, Ariz., who was in the thick of it when the Hubble Space Telescope was launched and found to have a misshapen mirror, which required repair visits by astronauts on the now-retired space shuttles. He said his feelings regarding the upcoming launch were all about the engineers and technicians who built the Webb telescope.
“You very quickly respect the team nature of doing anything in space, and your dependence on scientists and engineers that you may never even know to get it all right,” he said. “Nobody wants it to fail, and I have yet to meet anyone in this who didn’t take their part seriously.”
He added that astronomers had to trust their colleagues in rocket and spacecraft engineering to get it right.
“Someone who knows how to fly a $10 billion spacecraft on a precision trajectory is not going to be impressed by an astronomer, who never took an engineering course in his life, cowering behind his laptop watching the launch,” Dr. Lauer said. “You feel admiration and empathy for those people, and try to act worthy of the incredible gift that they are bringing to world.”
And if anything does go wrong, some astronomers said they would keep in perspective that it’s only hardware, not people, at stake.
“Should anything bad happen, I will be heartbroken,” Dr. Prescod-Weinstein said. “I am glad that at least human lives aren’t on the line.”
There was also a lot to look forward to if everything works as intended, said Dr. Rieke, who worked on the telescope’s infrared imaging device.
“When the camera turns on we’ll have another party,” she said.
