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The Journalist and the Pharma Bro

At home later that night, she couldn’t sleep; her Fitbit measured her resting heart rate at 10 beats higher for a week afterward. “I still was in denial about it, but this really hit me hard,” she says of Shkreli’s sudden jailing.

Introducing 'phyjama,' a physiological-sensing pajama - ScienceBlog.com

“Such pressured regions of the textile are potential locations where we can measure ballistic movements caused by heartbeats and breathing,” he explains, “and these can be used to extract physiological variables.” The difficulty is that these signals can be individually unreliable, particularly in loose-fitting clothing, but signals from many sensors placed across different parts of the body can be intelligently combined to get a more accurate composite reading.

Mindful body awareness training during treatment for drug addiction helps prevent relapse -- ScienceDaily

The intervention is called Mindful Awareness in Body-oriented Therapy (MABT) and combines manual, mindfulness and psycho-educational approaches to teach interoceptive awareness and related self-care skills. Interoceptive awareness is the ability to access and process sensory information from the body. Researchers studied 187 women at three Seattle-area locations. The cohort, all women in treatment for substance use disorder (SUD), was split into three relatively equal groups. Every group continued with their regular SUD treatment. One group received SUD treatment only, another group was taught the mindfulness technique in addition to treatment, and the third group received a women's education curriculum in addition to treatment in order to test whether the additional time and attention explained any positive study outcomes. Women were tested at the beginning, and at three, six and 12 months on a number of factors including substance use, distress craving, emotion regulation (self-report and psychophysiology), mindfulness skills and interoceptive awareness. There were lasting improvements in these areas for those who received the MABT intervention, but not for the other two study groups. "Those who received MABT relapsed less," Price said. "By learning to attend to their bodies, they learned important skills for better self-care."

Sensor created to detect dopamine, brain disorders, in seconds -- ScienceDaily

Current methods to detect dopamine are time consuming, require rigorous sample preparation, including blood-plasma separation, as well as specialized laboratory equipment. With this device, however, a few drops of blood on a palm-sized, rectangular chip is all that is needed. "A neurotransmitter like dopamine is an important chemical to monitor for our overall well-being so we can help screen out neural disorders like Parkinson's disease, various brain cancers, and monitor mental health," said Debashis Chanda, an associate professor in UCF's NanoScience Technology Center and the study's principle investigator. "We need to monitor dopamine so that we can adjust our medical doses to help address those problems." Plasma is separated from the blood within the chip. Cerium oxide nanoparticles, which coat the sensor surface, selectively capture dopamine at microscopic levels from the plasma. The capture of dopamine molecules subsequently changes how light is reflected from the sensor and creates an optical readout indicating the level of dopamine.