pany's income statement or balance
sheet.
Write to Liam Pleven at liam.plev
St. Jude Medical, Inc. (NYSE:STJ)
announced it has received an Investigational Device Exemption (IDE) from the
U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to begin enrollment in a controlled,
multi-site, blinded, clinical study of deep brain stimulation for major
depressive disorder, a severe form of depression.
The BROADEN™ (BROdmann Area 25 DEep
brain Neuromodulation) study will http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
evaluate the safety and effectiveness
of deep brain stimulation in patients with depression for whom
currently-available treatments are not effective. The study will build upon the
pioneering depression work of a research team from the University of Toronto,
led by neurologist Helen S. Mayberg, M.D. (now with Emory University School of
Medicine), and neurosurgeon Andres Lozano, M.D.
"Major depressive disorder is
severely disabling," said Dr. Lozano. "Currently, there are no
widely-accepted treatment options for patients with this condition once
multiple medications, psychotherapy and electroconvulsive therapy have
failed."
Drs. Mayberg and Lozano conducted the
first study of deep brain stimulation (DBS) for depression in Toronto, Canada,
in 2003 and published their findings in Neuron in March 2005. As reported in
this journal article, imaging studies led them to an area of the brain thought
to be involved in depression called Brodmann Area 25. This area appears to
become overactive when people are profoundly sad and depressed.
St. Jude Medical owns the intellectual
property rights and has various patents pending for the use of neurostimulation
at Brodmann Area 25. The Libra® Deep Brain Stimulation System, which is being
evaluated in this study, is designed to deliver mild electrical pulses from a
device implanted near the collarbone and connected to small electrical leads
placed at specific targets in the brain.
In the U.S., http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
more than 21 million adults suffer
from some kind of depressive disorder, according to the National Institute of
Mental Health. Of these, only about 80 percent can be effectively treated with
currently available therapies, according to the National Advisory Mental Health
Council. Unfortunately, that means approximately 4 million adult Americans live
with depression that does not respond to medications, psychotherapy and, in
certain cases, electroconvulsive therapy.
"St. Jude Medical is dedicated to
researching and developing neuromodulation therapies for people who live with
conditions such as severe depression," said Chris Chavez, president of St.
Jude Medical's ANS Division. "We are hopeful that this trial will lead to
the successful development of a sustainable therapy for those patients who have
exhausted other treatment options."
About St. Jude Medical
St. Jude Medical is dedicated to
making life better for cardiac, neurological and chronic pain patients
worldwide through excellence in medical device technology and services. The
Company has five major focus areas that include: cardiac rhythm management,
atrial fibrillation, cardiac surgery, cardiology and neuromodulation.
Headquartered in St. Paul, Minn., St. Jude Medical employs approximately 12,000
people worldwide. For more information, please visit http://www.sjm.com.
About the ANS Division of St. Jude
Medical
The ANS Division (Advanced
Neuromodulation Systems) became a part of St. Jude Medical in 2005. The ANS
Division is an innovative technology leader dedicated to the design,
development, manufacturing and marketing of implantable neuromodulation systems
to improve the quality of life for people suffering from disabling chronic pain
and other nervous system disorders (http://www.ans-medical.com).
Using a cosmic magnifying glass to
peer into the deepest reaches of space, two teams of astronomers have
discovered tiny galaxies that may be among the most distant known. Images
suggest that one of the galaxies is so remote that the light now reaching Earth
left this starlit body when the 13.7-billion-year-old universe was only about
700 million years old.
LONG AGO, FAR AWAY. Gravity of the
cluster Abell 1689 acts as a gravitational lens, http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
bending into arcs and magnifying the
light from remote background galaxies. One galaxy appears so remote that it
doesn't show up in visible light but only in the infrared.
The discoveries are important, notes
Tim Heckman of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, because they probe a
special time in the universe, when the cosmos changed from a place filled with
neutral gas to a place ionized by the emergence of the first substantial
population of stars and black holes. Studies of distant galaxies help pinpoint
when that critical era happened.
All of the galaxies are so small that
even the keen eye of the Hubble Space Telescope couldn't have spotted them
without nature providing a gravitational assist. According to Einstein's theory
of general relativity, a massive foreground body acts like a lens, bending and
magnifying light from a more remote galaxy that lies along the same line of
sight to Earth.
That's why Garth Illingworth and
Rychard Bouwens of the University of California, Santa Cruz and their
colleagues went hunting for distant galaxies around a nearby cluster of
galaxies called Abell 1689.
The cluster's gravity distorts images
of background galaxies, bending them into arcs and magnifying their brightness.
One of these galaxies proved especially intriguing because it appeared bright
at several infrared wavelengths recorded by Hubble but disappeared in visible
light.
That's a sign that the galaxy, dubbed
A1689-zD1, is both extraordinarily distant and youthful. The data also indicate
that the galaxy forms stars at a rate equivalent to five suns a year, typical
of the small galaxies thought to be common in the early universe, says Bouwens.
The researchers don't have a spectrum
for the galaxy and therefore can't be sure of its distance, but they calculate
in an upcoming Astrophysical Journal paper that the galaxy most likely lies 13
billion light-years from Earth and has a redshift of 7.6. That redshift
signifies that cosmic expansion has stretched the wavelengths emitted by the
galaxy by a factor of 8.6.
"The reason we are excited about
this [galaxy] is that we can look at it in great detail because of the factor
of 10 gravitational amplification by the foreground cluster," Bouwens
says. A1689-zD1 is the brightest known galaxy that's likely to be extremely
distant, his team notes.
The Hubble images show several dense
clumps, each containing hundreds of millions of stars. Follow-up images, taken
at longer infrared wavelengths with NASA's Spitzer Space Telescope, provide
additional evidence that the galaxy is remote and also yield a more accurate
measurement of the galaxy's mass.
"It looks pretty convincing"
that A1689-zD1 is remote, but proof may require spectra taken by Hubble's
proposed successor, the James Webb Space Telescope, Heckman says.
In searching for distant galaxies, a
second team, which includes Richard Ellis and Johan Richard of the California
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, also surveyed several galaxy clusters. The
team found evidence of six distant galaxies, which may lie between 12.9 billion
and 13.1 billion light-years from Earth, Richard reported this week at an
astrophysics meeting at the Aspen Center for Physics in http://louis-j-sheehan.net/
Colorado. Because the galaxies don't appear as bright—the
clusters magnify them by a factor of only two to four—astronomers have less
information about these faint bodies than about A1689-zD1, Richard notes.
At first, it may seem like a treat to
stay up late—but the next day will be no picnic. There'll be yawning, heavy
limbs, and a cranky disposition.
At times like these, the desire to
sleep can feel overwhelming.
And it should.
Growing kids need sleep, as do people
of all ages. Indeed, research shows that health and safety both suffer when we
try to get by with too little shut-eye. So it's fortunate that our bodies do
such a good job of alerting us when it's time to hit the sack.
Like people, other animals also take
time out to rest. You've probably seen a lion dozing at the zoo, or maybe
watched your dog snooze away, curled up in its bed. In fact, sleep is a
necessity for every animal that's ever been studied. This includes whales,
octopuses—even fruit flies.
How long animals slumber, though,
varies widely. Elephants and giraffes sleep only about 2 to 4 hours a day,
while bats and opossums may nod off for up to 20 hours. By studying
similarities and differences in when and how long various animals sleep,
researchers hope to better understand why the need for rest is critical to
creatures throughout the animal kingdom.
Getting sleepy? Yawning is just one
trait we share with many animals that are tired.
Getting sleepy? Yawning is just one
trait we share with many animals that are tired.
What is sleep?
It's obvious what your mom means when
she says it's time to go sleep, But how do scientists describe this restful
period? When we sleep, our eyes usually close and we lose consciousness. You
might even think that your brain shuts down. But it doesn't.
By attaching sensors to the surface of
a sleeper's scalp, researchers can listen in on patterns of electrical waves
within the brain. Such measurements show that the patterns of these waves
change throughout the night as the body alternates between two types of sleep.
In the first type, brain activity
slows as the body enters an especially deep sleep. In the second type, known as
rapid-eye movement (REM) sleep, our eyes flutter rapidly under their lids
(hence the name)—and our brains become almost as active as they are when we're
awake. http://louis-j-sheehan.com/
This period is also when we dream.
Unlike reptiles, amphibians, and fish,
all land mammals and birds experience this type of resting. "REM sleep is
quite a mystery," says Jerome Siegel, who studies slumber in animals at
the University of California, Los Angeles. Researchers don't know why people or
any other animals do it.
One thing REM-sleeping animals have in
common, though, is that they're all relatively intelligent. Researchers wonder if
the need for REM sleep, with its buzzing brain activity, has something to do
with that.
The need for sleep is important, which
is why many animals—including cats and dogs—grab a nap when there's little need
for activity.
The need for sleep is important, which
is why many animals—including cats and dogs—grab a nap when there's little need
for activity.
"We have always joked and used
the term 'birdbrain' to indicate that somebody's stupid," says Niels
Rattenborg, who studies bird sleep at the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology
in Starnberg, Germany. But birds are better at certain intelligence tests than
are some mammals, so perhaps "birdbrain" should be considered a
compliment, he says.
On the other hand, Siegel has found
that the duck-billed platypus, which isn't a particularly brainy animal, has
"spectacular" REM sleep—twitching its bill and legs throughout this
stage. And some of the smartest animals—dolphins and whales—experience no REM
sleep. So its purpose remains a puzzle.
That's not the only baffling thing
about the sleep habits of dolphins and whales. A second mystery is that just
half of their brain dozes—and one eye closes—at a time. Keeping partly alert
may be one way that these mammals protect themselves in the open ocean, Siegel
says: "They have no safe place to sleep."
Ducks do something similar. When sleeping
together, the birds on the edge of the group slumber with the outside eye open
and half of their brain awake—presumably to keep watch while the other half of
their brain snoozes.
Some birds may even sleep while
flying. Rattenborg's team has designed instruments to attach to birds that
spend most of their life in flight. Using these tools, the scientists will
measure the birds' brain waves as the animals fly, looking for signs that they
might nap in the air.
The fact that all animals make time
for sleeping, even under potentially dangerous circumstances, suggests that
sleep must serve a crucial function. And indeed, some evidence suggests that
sleep is essential for learning and forming permanent memories.
But sleep may also be primarily a way
for animals to save energy and stay out of harm's way, Siegel says. This may
help explain why meat-eating critters sleep more than herbivores, which are
animals that dine solely on plants. Herbivores like cows and zebras need to
spend more time searching for and grazing on food than do meat eaters, such as
lions and other big cats. A lion that has just fed on an antelope won't have to
eat again for several days. So a big cat might be better off snoozing for a
spell after it eats, rather than prowling around and risking injury. http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
Top predators, like this polar bear,
may slumber for a long time after a major meal.
Top predators, like this polar bear,
may slumber for a long time after a major meal.
But that's just an educated guess,
really, based on a growing number of observations. Scientists need to study the
animals they've already looked at in greater detail. And they need to study
other animals as well before they can fully understand the benefits of sleep
and identify which benefits are most important for a particular species.
One thing is certain: ample slumber is
essential to health and learning. So give in when a strong urge to sleep hits,
and catch plenty of ZZZ's.
|
Jupiter’s twin found… 60 light years away!Triple
asteroid amateur imageDid salt lick Martian life?AstroShaqCarnival of Space
41XKCD has SETI’s numberGLAST’s rocket arrives at CapeJupiter’s twin found… 60
light years away!
Astronomers have
just announced that they have found a near twin of Jupiter orbiting
the star HD 154345, a fairly sunlike star about 60 light years away. This is very cool news, and has some pretty
big implications for finding another Earth around some distant star.
Finding a planet like this isn’t as
easy as it sounds! Finding planets with the same mass as Jupiter isn’t hard; many have been found with even lower
mass. The hard part is finding one that is orbiting a sun-like star at the same distance Jupiter orbits
our Sun. The closer in a planet is to its star, the easier it is to find: the
method used measures how hard the planet’s gravity tugs on its parent star as
it orbits; the planet pulls the star around just like the star pulls the
planet, and we see this as a change in the velocity of the star toward and
away from us (called the radial
velocity; Wikipedia has a nice animated GIF for this), and that
effect gets bigger with bigger planets, and the closer they orbit.
So we see lots ofhttp://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
superjupiters orbiting close in, and some lighter planets
also close to their parent stars. But finding a Jupiter-like planet on an
orbit like Jupiter’s, well, that takes a long time to do. Jupiter takes 12 years
to orbit the Sun, so it would take many observations over many years to
detect a planet like that.
But they’ve done it! The team (Jason
White, Geoff Marcy, Paul Butler, and Steven Vogt) have been using the monster
10-meter Keck telescope for ten years, observing HD 154345. This star is a
lot like the Sun (it’s a G8, and the Sun is a
This makes HD 154345b the first true
Jupiter analog discovered. It’s a tremendous achievement!
So why is this important?
The superjupiters in tight orbits that
have been discovered probably didn’t form that close to their stars; it’s a
tough environment to form a big planet. The commonly accepted theory is that
a planet like that forms farther out from the star and migrates closer in
over millions of years, probably due to friction from the disk of gas and
dust from which it formed.
Now imagine: you’re a planet that’s
about the size of Earth, orbiting your star at about the same distance Earth
is from the Sun. You’re pretty happy, thinking that in a few hundred million
years, things’ll cool off, you’ll form oceans, and continents, and life. But
then, hey, what’s that? Oh, it’s a planet with 5000 times your mass, headed right for you! When it passes you
by, its tremendous gravity either drops you into the star, or ejects you
right out of the system!
Bummer.
So we don’t think that the stars that
have close-in massive planets will have Earth-like planets. It may be that
the only solar systems with planets like Earth will have their Jupiter
analogs orbiting farther out, where they can’t hurt the smaller planets.
And hey, that’s just what we have here! http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
So, does HD 154345 have a blue-green
ball orbiting it as well? These observations can’t say; they are only
sensitive enough to find the Jupiter-like planet (and they can’t rule out
planets farther out either). It might, or it might not. But here’s an
interesting point: the system is probably about 2 billion years old. By that
age, the Earth was already teeming with microscopic life. Provocative, eh?
I expect that future missions will
spend quite a bit of time peering at this system. As of right now, it holds a
lot of promise for those of us hoping that one day we’ll find another Earth.
Scientists working to see if Mars ever
had life have concentrated, of course, on looking for water. It appears to
have been abundant on Mars a long time ago, but what was it like?
On Earth, water can be pure, or salty,
or laden with minerals and metals. On Mars, the presence of minerals like
jarosite indicate that at least in some spots, Martian water was high in
minerals, with a corresponding high acidity. That’s bad enough, but now evidence from the rover Opportunity indicates that
the water was also very salty, far higher in salinity than Earth’s
oceans.
This has dimmed somewhat the idea of
life on Mars, at least lately — meaning, the last few billion years. It’s
possible that the water was in better shape to develop life as we know it
early on in the history of Mars, but over time, the water got more acidic and
more salty. At first blush, this precludes life arising and flourishing on
the Red Planet, but I wonder. One scientist said "This tightens the
noose on the possibility of life," but I think that’s a hasty
conclusion.
Life arose on Earth almost immediately
after the asteroid and comet bombardment ceased, just a billion or so years
after Earth formed. Conditions then were very different than they are now,
and yet here we are. Whatever life started back then, it evolved, adapted.
Every corner of the Earth has life in it, from miles down under the surface
to pools of chemicals that would kill a human (and most bacteria) instantly.
Check out D. radiodurans for a real eye-opener on
how tough life can be. I have little doubt our oceans have changed their
salinity numerous times over the past 3 billion years, and life adapted.
From this press release, it’s impossible to say how much
things have changed on Mars — besides, of course, the loss of its atmosphere,
its water, and the drop in temperature. In this case, I mean how the water on
Mars changed over time, and how rapidly. If it happened overnight, then sure,
it’s not hard to imagine it wiping out all life on the planet. But what if it
took, say, a few million years? Life on Earth has survived horrific
circumstances in the past. Could any possible Martian life have
done the same? http://louis-j-sheehan.biz/
We still have no idea if life ever
arose on Mars or not — Mars cooled more rapidly than the Earth did, and so
may have had life on it before we did. If any life did form there, it may not
be around anymore, and there could be any number of causes. We simply don’t
know, and I think it’s way too early in our exploration of the planet to rule
anything out.
|
Cupid is the Roman love god associated
with the cherubic archer of Valentine's Day. Cupid is also the fully adult god
associated with Psyche in the story of the marriage of Cupid and Psyche, our
first record of which comes from the Golden Ass of Apuleius, and was retold in
C.S. Lewis' Till We Have Faces. The story of Cupid and Psyche has also
interested Jungian psychologists, including Erich Newman and Marie-Louise Von
Franz. Cupid is the son of the Roman goddess of love and beauty Venus. The
Roman love god is Eros.
In 1957, marketing executive James
Vicary claimed that during screenings of the film Picnic, the words “eat
popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola” were flashed on the screen every five seconds
for 1/3,000 second—well below the threshold of conscious awareness. Vicary said
soda and popcorn sales spiked as a result of what he called “subliminal
advertising.”
Psychologists had been studying
subliminal messages since the late 19th century. It was Vicary’s ideas,
presented in Vance Packard’s 1957 best seller, The Hidden Persuaders, that
catapulted the concept of subliminal advertising into the public consciousness.
Even though in a 1962 interview with Advertising Age Vicary admitted that the
amount of data he’d collected was “too small to be meaningful,” subliminal
messages continued to attract public—and commercial—interest.
In 1974, the FCC held hearings about
the perceived threat of subliminal advertising and issued a policy statement
saying that “subliminal perception” was deceptive and “contrary to the public
interest.”
Concerns about subliminal advertising
continued for decades. As recently as 2000 during the presidential race, the
Republican National Committee ran an ad attacking the policies of Al Gore in
which the word rats briefly flashed on the screen. Many suspected subliminal
intent, which the ad’s creator denied.
Matthew Erdelyi, a psychology
professor at Brooklyn College, says that while Vicary’s methods were
controversial, new studies continue to suggest the use of subliminal perception
in advertising could be effective. “There’s a lot of interest, but the subject
matter is a little bit taboo,” he says. Still, if subliminal messages in
advertising have a resurgence in the future, “nobody should be terribly
surprised.”
An icy landscape studded with frozen
lakes, the wintry terrain of southern Finland appears to be the birthplace of
ice skating.
To trace the sport’s origins,
researchers studied remnants of bone-and-leather skates found throughout
northern Europe and dating to at least 2000 B.C. They re-created these ancient
skates and gave them to volunteers, who glided on ice while scientists measured
the energy spent. Then the researchers entered findings in a computer program
that simulated journeys through five different European regions. For each region,
the computer calculated the energy spent by travelers who walked around every
lake as opposed to those who skated across them.
In places where lakes are relatively
uncommon, like northern Germany, a human making a 10-kilometer trek would have
saved two or three percent of his energy by skating across frozen lakes. But in
southern Finland, there are so many lakes that those with skates could save as
much as 10 percent of their metabolic energy.
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below
“These tools were used for traveling
and to save energy and time when people had to go hunting and fishing,” said
Federico Formenti, a human locomotion biomechanist at the University of Oxford
and one of the study’s authors. “The energy saved in the southern area of Finland
was far greater than the energy saved in any other area,” making it the most
likely birthplace of the ice skate.
But the Finns don’t get all the
credit, Formenti says. The next big innovation—the more efficient wooden skates
with steel blades—likely originated http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
in the Netherlands, where extensive,
man-made canals provided new skating opportunities.
Do emotions influence a cancer
patient’s prognosis? In one of the largest, longest, and most controlled
studies of its kind, researchers investigated whether the emotional state of
cancer patients has any relationship to their survival.
University of Pennsylvania
psychologist James Coyne and his colleagues followed 1,093 adults, all of whom
had advanced head and neck cancer with nonspreading tumors. All patients
received standardized medical care through clinical trials run by the Radiation
Therapy Oncology Group (RTOG).
At the start of the study, the
participants completed a 27-item questionnaire used to evaluate the physical,
social, and emotional quality of life in people with cancer and other chronic
diseases. Five items targeted emotional state, asking patients to rate, on a
scale of 0 to 4, the extent to which statements like “I feel sad” and “I am
losing hope in my fight against my illness” had been true for them over the
past seven days. The researchers then calculated a score for each person’s
initial emotional well-being.
Coyne tracked patients for an average
of nine years, until they either dropped out of the study or died. The study
reported 646 deaths. Once the records for the participants were complete,
researchers analyzed the data. “We were surprised to find absolutely no
relationship” between emotion and survival, Coyne says. http://louis1j1sheehan.us/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=36f0e6c9-8b8a-4f0a-8630-e5d3b879fad4&m=0
http://louis2j2sheehan.us/ImageGallery/CategoryList.aspx?id=14218f60-0cb6-4fa5-beba-5ee65da4b5e1&m=0
99999999999999999999999999999
Louis J Sheehan
Louis J Sheehan, Esquire
http://louis2j2sheehan.bloggerteam.com/ http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog&pop=1&indicate=1http://pub25.bravenet.com/journal/post.php?entryid=22156
Louis
J Sheehan Esquire
The researchers then looked at emotion
and survival in greater detail, examining data for the most buoyant optimists,
the most despondent individuals, and patients with complicating factors like
smoking. In none of these analyses did emotional well-being affect survival.
Because the study was so large and long, it gathered far more information than
previous investigations of emotion and cancer survival. In smaller studies,
Coyne says, it can be difficult to tell whether deaths were related to a factor
like emotion or were simply due to chance.
While the huge pool of subjects and
the controlled clinical trial conditions give the study statistical heft, Coyne
acknowledges a few limitations. Having only people with head and neck cancers
in the study eliminates the variability of a group suffering from different
forms of the disease, but it also eliminates information about whether patients
with other forms of cancer would show the same results. Additionally, patients
had to be judged “mentally reliable”—able to follow instructions and keep
appointments—in order to qualify for the clinical trials, so their emotional
scores might not represent the full spectrum of psychological states among
cancer patients.
Coyne says this is the most in-depth
study of its kind, and until a study with a similar sample size proves
otherwise, he is convinced there is no conclusive relationship between
emotional well-being and cancer survival. Many cancer patients struggling to
maintain a positive outlook—and fearing that their lives depended on it—have
contacted Coyne to express relief that their survival may not be dependent on
their emotions. “Having a positive outlook is not going to extend the quantity
of life,” Coyne says. “Not everybody is capable of being positive when they
have cancer.”
• A 2004 study found that 72 percent
of the public and 86 percent of cancer patients believe psychological factors
affect cancer survival. Only 26 percent of oncologists agree.
• About 25 percent of breast cancer
patients who joined support groups told researchers in a 2005 study that they
attended to improve their immune systems.
• Four previous studies indicate that
people with better psychological function do survive longer with cancer—but
four others suggest that a healthier psychological condition predicts shorter
survival time. More than a dozen studies have found no relationship between the
two variables.
• A 2007 study found that the
emotional, physical, and social questionnaire Coyne used is effective at
predicting depression.
• Major depression afflicts about 25
percent of all cancer patients.
• The two clinical trials in Coyne’s
study were conducted by the RTOG, which had a $13 million budget in 2007 and is
funded by the National Cancer Institute.
• The American Cancer Society cited
1.4 million new cases of cancer in the United States in 2007 and more than
500,000 cancer deaths, with about 11,000 due to head and neck cancer.
While this study attempts to correct
factors that muddied previous research, few experts think the question of
cancer and emotion is closed. Stanford psychiatrist David Spiegel notes that
coping strategies are an important part of the picture and that they were not
addressed by Coyne’s research. He points to a study of breast cancer patients
that provides evidence that survival has to do more with how people deal with
emotions than how they feel. (Coyne believes the sample size in that study was
inadequate and says larger studies oppose Spiegel’s contention.) http://louis2j2sheehan.us/page1.aspx
Spiegel says support groups and other
therapies might improve outcomes by helping patients manage stress and improve
communication with doctors. Coyne acknowledges the possibility that
psychological support could affect survival by mechanisms other than emotional
well-being but says no methodologically sound study has yet shown a
relationship.
In 1957, marketing executive James
Vicary claimed that during screenings of the film Picnic, the words “eat
popcorn” and “drink Coca-Cola” were flashed on the screen every five seconds
for 1/3,000 second—well below the threshold of conscious awareness. Vicary said
soda and popcorn sales spiked as a result of what he called “subliminal
advertising.”
Psychologists had been studying
subliminal messages since the late 19th century. http://louis-j-sheehan.de/
It was Vicary’s ideas, presented in Vance Packard’s 1957 best
seller, The Hidden Persuaders, that catapulted the concept of subliminal
advertising into the public consciousness. Even though in a 1962 interview with
Advertising Age Vicary admitted that the amount of data he’d collected was “too
small to be meaningful,” subliminal messages continued to attract public—and
commercial—interest.
In 1974, the FCC held hearings about
the perceived threat of subliminal advertising and issued a policy statement
saying that “subliminal perception” was deceptive and “contrary to the public
interest.”
Concerns about subliminal advertising
continued for decades. As recently as 2000 during the presidential race, the
Republican National Committee ran an ad attacking the policies of Al Gore in
which the word rats briefly flashed on the screen. Many suspected subliminal
intent, which the ad’s creator denied.
Matthew Erdelyi, a psychology
professor at Brooklyn College, says that while Vicary’s methods were
controversial, new studies continue to suggest the use of subliminal perception
in advertising could be effective. “There’s a lot of interest, but the subject matter
is a little bit taboo,” he says. Still, if subliminal messages in advertising
have a resurgence in the future, “nobody should be terribly surprised.”
We report the anticarcinogenic,
anti-aging polyphenol resveratrol activates the radio- and chemo-inducible
cancer gene therapy vector Ad.Egr.TNF, a replication-deficient adenovirus that
expresses human tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-alpha) under control of the
Egr-1 promoter. Like ionizing radiation or chemotherapeutic agents previously
shown to activate Ad.Egr.TNF, resveratrol also induces Egr-1 expression from
its chromosomal locus with a possible role for Egr-1 promoter CC(A+T)richGG
sequences in the expression of TNF-alpha. Resveratrol induction of TNF-alpha in
Ad.Egr.TNF-infected tumor xenografts demonstrated antitumor response in human
and rat tumor models comparable to that of radio- or chemotherapy-induced
TNF-alpha. Although sirtuins are known targets of resveratrol, in vitro
inhibition of SIRT1 activity did not abrogate resveratrol induction of Egr-1
expression. This suggests that SIRT1 is not essential to mediate resveratrol induction
of Egr-1. Nevertheless, control of transgene expression via resveratrol
activation of Egr-1 may extend use of Ad.Egr.TNF to patients intolerant of
radiation or cytotoxic therapy and offer a novel tool for development of other
inducible gene therapies.
Keywords:
resveratrol, adenovirus, TNFerade,
SIRT1, TNF-alpha
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