Humanities April Issue

HUMANITIES SAVE MONEY ON YOUR MEDS!!

81 IS ALKALINE WATER REALLY GOOD FOR YOU?

CAN'T SLEEP? EXPLORE THESE 7 APPS

A DOUBLE PASSION BETWEEN MEDICINE AND ART

BY ANCA STUPARU

THE EPA'S NEW WOOD BURNING DELIMA

PAGING DR.CON!

TABLE OF CONTENTS

WHY GOOD THINGS HAPPEN TO BAD PEOPLE BABY EATING ANTS? MANUKA GOLD ARE YOUR FAVORITE MEDICAL SHOWS MEDICALLY ACCURATE? REASSURING THINGS YOUR SHOULD KNOW ABOUT CANCER IS ALKALINE WATER GOOD OR BAD? POEM: LET ME BE POEM: IN SILENCE ANCA STORY ABOUT DR MIND YOUR MINDFULNESS SAVE ON YOUR MEDS NOW AN ERA OF CUBANS WITHOUT CASTRO 5 TIPS FOR HEALTHY SKIN WHY YOU FEEL BAD ABOUT UNFRIENDING PEOPLE 7 APPS FOR A PEACFEUL NIGHTS SLEEP THE WORLD’S PLASTIC LITER PROBLEM EPA’S NEW WOOD BURNING CLASSIFICATION IS RAISING BROWS BORED? TRY BOARDGAMES! AMAZON TRUNK – AMAZON’S NEWEST VENTURE THE SIGN OF A GREAT LEADER FACEBOOK: MASS POPULATION CONTROL OR EXCELLENT MARKETING TOOL?

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Printed in the United States of America EDITORIAL BOARD Hassan Farhat MD. President/ Editor in Chief April Khan Vice President/ Chief Business Officer /VP Marketing Dinah Rashid Senior Editor/Chief Content Officer Saood Mukhtar Deputy Design Director/ Deputy Web Editor Catherine Finley Articles Editor

Why Good Things Happen To Bad People

By Derell Rydall “To he who is right in mind, he can do all the wrong things and it will still turn out right. To she who is wrong in mind, she can do all the right things and it will still turn out wrong.”

As we watch the Wall Street rich get richer (many of whom created our economic crisis) while honest, hardworking people get poorer, a question naturally arises: “Why do good things happen to bad people — and so many bad things happen to good people?”

It sometimes feels like we’re living in a perpetual opposite day, where “Love yourself not your neighbor” seems to be the golden rule and “Take and you shall receive” appears to be the principle of abundance. In the self-help/spiritual arena, the pain is felt even more acutely; where’s karma, the law of cause and effect, the law of attraction? if you’re a good human being, good stuff is supposed to happen to you, right?

Wrong.

It’s a common misunderstanding to believe that “human goodness” leads to the experience of human good.

In fact, that’s not always — or even often — the case.

Here is the real principle of life: Consciousness is cause.

It’s not so much the actions we take, but the consciousness behind them, that determines our experience.

If a greedy person believes they’re worthy or capable of creating wealth, they’ll create it. If a generous and kind person doesn’t feel worthy or abundant, they’ll end up a broke do-gooder.

It’s not personal, it’s principle.

For every area of our life, we have certain set-points. For example, we might feel capable and confident with our work — and hold a strong self-image about it — but simultaneously harbor a limited identity and belief system around wealth. This can create an experience where we do great work, receive abundant kudos and are still underpaid. Or if we manage to increase our paycheck, our expenses increase with it — making us broke at a higher income bracket!

This can also show up in the area of health. A person can do all the right things, eat all the right foods and still end up getting sick — while another person eats whatever they want and hardly has a down day in their life. Don’t you just hate those people?!

Some would argue that this is about genetics. But the latest discoveries in epigenetics reveal that genes don’t control our body, the environment of the cell does. And what controls the environment of our cells?

Our consciousness.

This has been further shown in the science of psychoneuroimmunology, which explains how our thoughts become chemical and electrical impulses in our body, forming a biological alphabet that sends commands to our cells. Thoughts become things. Our biography becomes our biology.

Our consciousness is the cause of our reality.

If we take a deeper look at the do-gooder, striving to change the world for the better — but getting shortchanged themselves — we’ll find a belief system of limitation and fear. The inner talk might sound something like “life is hard, people are unfairly treated, things are unjust... “ And that is the kind of life they experience, regardless of how much they “fight the good fight.”

We don’t get what we want — or even what we pray for — we get what we are in consciousness. Life is not fair, it’s lawful. When a person eats a healthy meal, but underneath it is motivated by fear or self-loathing,

the law of consciousness sees a fearful, self-loathing person and magnifies that, drawing more of that to them.

The universe is blind to your actions but acutely aware of the thoughts behind them.

This isn’t to say that actions aren’t important. Action is crucial to creation. As the saying goes, “Faith without works is dead.” But the reverse is also true: “Works without faith are dead.” By all means, act from your highest standard of good. But be sure to align yourself with an equally high state of consciousness.

If you find yourself saving money out of fear of loss, shift that perspective so you’re saving from a state of inspiration and abundance — you’re saving “for” something, like financial freedom or a new house, rather than saving “from” something, like the fear of financial ruin or losing your house.

This week, pay closer attention to the consciousness behind your actions. Notice when what you say matches what you’re thinking and feeling and when it doesn’t. Become aware of when your actions are in alignment with your deeper beliefs and when they contradict them.

Take some time to journal about the beliefs, self-talk and emotions behind the key areas of your life — particularly the ones where you’re experiencing challenges. At the end of the week, review this. You’ll discover that the picture you’re seeing outside is a reflection — if only faintly — of the mental/emotional picture you’re living inside. You’ll also start to see the gap between what you’re trying to create — the actions you’re taking — and what you’re really creating with your thoughts, feelings and mental images.

The awareness of this gap is the beginning of real change. Set the intention to close that gap. Work with this material daily. And as your thoughts, feelings, words and actions become in integrity with your highest vision, you’ll become one of the “good people” who has good things happening... and you’ll be unstoppable.

Until next time, Stay Inspired!

Why freeloader baby-eating ants are welcomed to the colony It might seem surprising that a colony of ants would tolerate the type of guests that gobble both their grub and their babies. But new research shows there’s likely a useful tradeoff to calmly accepting these parasite ants into the fold: They have weaponry that’s effective against their host ants and a more menacing intruder ant.

The parasitic Megalomyrmex symmetochus ant crashes colonies of fungusfarming Sericomyrmex amabilis ants, eating crops and killing babies. New research suggests the farmers let it slide because of the intruders’ potent chemical weaponry.

It might seem surprising that a colony of ants would tolerate the type of guests that gobble both their grub and their babies.

But new research shows there’s likely a useful tradeoff to calmly accepting these parasite ants into the fold: They have weaponry that’s effective against their host ants and a more menacing intruder ant. The study appears online in the journal Animal Behaviour.

Rachelle Adams, an ant expert at The Ohio State University, wanted to better understand the dynamics of the symbiotic relationship between parasitic Megalomyrmex symmetochus ants and Sericomyrmex amabilishosts.

The host ants spend their lives farming fungus. The party crashers come in, don’t contribute to the work and eat both fungus and ant larvae. This lopsided arrangement goes on for years.

When they began the study, Adams and her collaborators knew that there were some obvious explanations for such behavior in nature. It could be that the parasites smell like the hosts and therefore go unnoticed, a situation called “mimicry.” It could be that they smell like nothing and are essentially invisible intruders, a strategy called “insignificance.”

But when the researchers analyzed the odiferous hydrocarbons on the ants’ bodies -- the ant world’s way of cueing the insects into whether they’re encountering a nest mate or an outsider -- they found that neither of these explanations told the entire story. The compounds on the intruders’ backs were subdued, but that didn’t seem to account for the accepting behavior of the host ants.

Instead, the host/parasite relationship appears to be built on mutual protection from a more fearsome foe, said Adams, an assistant professor of evolution, ecology and organismal biology.

The parasitic ants possess a volatile alkaloid-based venom that the host ants detect from a distance. The parasite ants’ potent chemical weaponry is known to work against a more-lethal invader ant.

“It’s likely a scenario where the enemy of your enemy is your friend,” she said.

To better understand the interplay between the ants, the researchers introduced the parasitic Megalomyrmex ant to Sericomyrmex host ants in a laboratory-controlled face-off.

“When confronted with a parasitic ant, the farmer ant will at first lunge at the intruder, but then instead of biting, she’ll pull away and bow her head down, in a submissive response.”

There are more than 250 species of these fungus-farming ants in the United States and in Central and South America, she said.

The ants studied in this research live in Panama.

“These fungus farmers start little farms and care for the fungus garden by feeding it and protecting it from pathogens,” Adams said.

The crops are bountiful -- more than what the host colony needs -- so when the parasites invade it doesn’t cause a tremendous amount of stress to either the fungus or ants, she said.

And while they do eat some of the ants’ protein-rich brood, they don’t kill the queen and the host colony remains healthy.

Going forward, Adams hopes to discover whether or not this parasite-tolerance behavior is transmitted from parent to offspring colonies. Not all Sericomyrmex amabilis colonies live with parasites in their midst. Scientists estimate that about three-quarters of colonies host parasites.

“From an evolutionary standpoint, we’re interested in the ongoing relationships between hosts and parasites and what drives these seemingly unfair cohabitations,” Adams said.

“We now know that we need to not just consider hydrocarbons but consider other ant-derived chemicals that influence their behavior.”

MANUKA HONEY IS MORE OF A MEDICINE THAN A FOOD.

For others, the honey has eased conditions ranging from gum inflammation and burns to the side effects of chemotherapy WEARING a white wedding dress was an impossible dream for Rebecca Rickman-Jenkins only a few years ago.

The 36-year-old had such severe diarrhea as a result of Crohn’s disease she could not drive to the nearby shops without worrying where the nearest toilet was.

Rebecca Rickman Jenkins had severe diarrhea as a result of Crohn’s disease and could barely travel to the shops.

Prescription drugs failed to ease her stomach cramps or stop other embarrassing symptoms — but two daily teaspoons of manuka honey solved her problems.

And for others, the miracle of manuka — from $7 a jar — has eased conditions ranging from gum inflammation and burns to the side effects of chemotherapy.

Kourtney Kardashian swears that smearing it on her skin does wonders — as do Gwyneth Paltrow and other celebrities including Scarlett Johansson.

However, two daily teaspoons of manuka honey solved her problems Rebecca, a TV studio floor manager from Norwich, says: “I heard that a footballer was taking manuka honey to ease his colitis, so I thought I’d try it too.

“I didn’t really think it would work but a month later I felt like a different person.”

“Manuka honey is a miracle cure for me. Now, when I have a check-up, there are no inflammation markers in my blood or problems with my stool samples so it’s almost like my Crohn’s has gone.”

Overnight results were astonishing “It flares up if I ever get stressed but having an extra teaspoon in the evening, as well as my regular dose, helps keep my symptoms at bay.

“Two daily teaspoons meant I could wear a white dress at my wedding in 2014. I could never imagine being well enough to do that before I started having the honey.”

Manuka honey is made in New Zealand by bees feeding on the nectar of the native manuka tree, also known as a tea tree.

It is a particularly thick, deep-flavored honey which is said to have amazing anti-bacterial, anti-viral and antimicrobial properties both in its natural form and when used in other medical products.

Thanks to the honey, she was able to wear a white dress on her wedding day in 2014 Last week, experts from Southampton University found that manuka honey-based products could kill more than three quarters of potentially deadly bacteria that accumulates on surfaces — which could potentially save lives.

A US review has also reported that applying honey on a burn could slash healing times compared to traditional dressings.

That is something Danny Porter, 43, fully appreciates.

He has fought adenoid cystic carcinoma, a cancer of the glands, three times.

The radiotherapy he had in September 2015 left him with severe burns on his neck.

The university sports manager, from Sheffield, says: “The burns were so painful it was hard to move my head

or even eat.

“Applying and removing dressings was agonizing. My sores would never heal between my treatment, which lasted six weeks.

“A friend suggested trialing a product containing manuka honey that needed applying directly to the skin and the overnight results were astonishing.”

As part of a medical trial, Danny applied Medihoney HCS Adhesive dressings to his neck every day.

Danny Porter used it to heal agonizing sores on his neck They soothed the area and, within a few weeks, the burns had completely healed.

He says: “It was such a relief to use something that soothed it.

“A year later and there is no scarring at all. I doubt that would have been the same had I not used the honey treatment.”

The dressings proved so good that they are now available on prescription through the NHS. And Amy French was able to combat her unbearable eczema Amy French, 29, is another fan after it helped her eczema.

And the marketing manager from Peterborough, Cambs, says: “Applying a product containing 80 per cent medical-grade manuka honey means my skin now looks like anyone else’s. The redness, itching and oozing has gone.

“I’ve stopped having bad breakouts, which has improved my sleep because I’m not scratching through the night. It has boosted my mood and my confidence.”

She stopped having severe breakouts like this and was actually able to sleep The product is also been championed as a cure for the common cold, as well as an energy booster.

Wound expert Maeve Kelly, director of Derma Sciences, says: “Extensive research has been done into the effect of manuka honey on wounds and wound healing — and it is proven to be very good.

There is no antibacterial resistance found with manuka honey, making it a good germ killer.

It is proven to stimulate the immune system “It is also proven to reduce the inflammation of wounds and stimulate the immune system to help heal them.

“More research needs to be done looking at the effects on the rest of the body.

“It is very good to take but more studies need to be carried out to determine how effective it is for other ailments.”

Other celebs including Gywneth Paltrow claim that smearing it on their skin does wonders There is so far limited solid research into how it works for digestive health problems such as Crohn’s, or even if it really does help prevent colds.

Sun doctor Carol Cooper, says: “There is plenty of anecdotal evidence for manuka honey, as these stories show. The snag is that there haven’t been many scientific studies yet to show it is better than placebo or conventional treatments. Until then, it is hard to know when it is best used.

“Manuka honey is expensive and I would like to see more science before I feel confident in recommending it to more patients.”

But happy bride Rebecca needs no official research to convince her of the benefits.

She says: “No matter what the science says, no one can dispute how much better I am now after taking manuka honey.

“I’d recommend it to anyone — even my 61-year-old dad Martin now takes it and he never gets colds any more.”

How Medically Accurate is Your Favorite Hospital Show?

Television shows about doctors and hospitals are a common guilty (or not-so-guilty) pleasure, if ratings and the sheer number of them are any indication. But have you ever wondered exactly how accurate these fictional hospitals are when it comes to the science and medicine behind all of that drama?

“ER” (1994-2009) While the writers of “ER” met with real doctors to develop ideas for episodes, the show is by no means the most medically accurate on this list. For example, The New York Times reported that medical students were not placing breathing tubes correctly because they had learned the skill from watching shows like “ER.” In a similar vein, a 1996 study in the New England Journal of Medicine found that medical TV shows like “ER” were giving people unrealistic expectations about CPR’s effectiveness: On the show, CPR saves the patient’s

life significantly more often than it would in reality. Additionally, the show often has doctors performing duties that, in real life, would be the nurses’ jobs, Sandy Summers, executive director of the Center for Nursing Advocacy, told Forbes. On the bright side, the show gains accuracy points for raising awareness for many important health issues, like the availability of emergency contraception and the link between HPV and cervical cancer.

“Grey’s Anatomy” (2005-present) Despite the fact that this show’s writers work with medical advisors, “Grey’s Anatomy” has received criticism for favoring drama and suspense over accuracy (somehow we don’t think a surgeon would ever be allowed to practice medicine again after stopping a patient’s heart in a risky scheme to bump him up on the transplant list). Indeed, one of the show’s medical consultants, Karen Pike, M.D., told Stanford Medicine Magazine that her advice to the writers is sometimes ignored. A 2018 study actually found that the show’s portrayal of trauma victims gives real-life patients unrealistic expectations in the ER. Critics have also called out the show, now in its 14th season, for over-glamorizing the lives of surgical interns — even beyond the implausible number of affairs. For example, a real-life surgeon noted that first-year interns rarely get to skip all of the scut work and head straight for the operating room. The same surgeon said the show also messes up on something incredibly basic: Doctors use tape to keep patients eyes shut for safety during surgery in real life — this never happens on “Grey’s Anatomy,” which features countless scenes in the operating room.

Details, schmetails, apparently.

“Scrubs” (2001-2010)

“Scrubs” is a hospital show driven mainly by the antics and fantastic daydreams of goofball Dr. John “J.D.” Dorian (played by Zach Braff). One scene even features J.D. riding his scooter into a puddle, disappearing, then reappearing in a completely different puddle only to say: “I think I saw a manatee.” All of this considered, it may be surprising to find that critics and real medical professionals alike have repeatedly called “Scrubs” the most accurate medical show on TV. The show’s creator, Bill Lawrence, based much of the show on his real-life friend’s experiences in a medical residency program. In fact, he regularly had the show’s writers interview doctors to generate story ideas based on real-life hospital situations. And unlike other dramatic medical shows, “Scrubs,” despite its comedic tone, often ends its episodes on a somber or uncertain note — much more realistic than other shows that tend to tie up loose ends and send each patient home, cured, at the end of the half-hour block.

“House” (2004-2012) This medical drama varies quite a bit when it comes to medical accuracy. Dr. House, played by Hugh Laurie, is the sarcastic, antisocial lead character, and each episode follows his investigative journey in diagnosing complex patient cases that no one else can seem to crack. One physician, Scott Morrison, once dedicated his blog to rating the medical accuracy of the show’s episodes. In 2012, he told Forbes, “An average House episode may rate a C, but that is still miles above any other show out there.” While some episodes are wildly inaccurate (for example, Morrison calls out one season 6 episode where a doctor gives someone a “truth serum drug,” which, surprise, doesn’t really exist), others are spot-on when it comes to real-life medicine — minus all of the shock-and-drama that comes with primetime TV, of course.

“The Mindy Project” (2012-2017) “The Mindy Project” follows the life of a young OB-GYN (played by Mindy Kaling) who seems to have it together professionally, but not so much when it comes to her personal life. The choice to make Mindy the only female OB-GYN in her practice may have been for entertainment reasons, but it certainly is not an accurate representation of real-world OB-GYN demographics: According to the American Medical Association, 85 percent of OB-GYN residents are women. The show also highlights a supposed rivalry between OB-GYNs and (again, male) midwives and has received criticism for its portrayal of midwifery in general. Holly Kennedy, president of the American College of Nurse-Midwives, defended the profession to The Atlantic, saying that, actually, “certified nurse-midwives and certified midwives work collaboratively with OB-GYNs across all birth settings.” As for accuracy of actual clinical practice on the show, “The Mindy Project” gets a pass — but only because the doctors are rarely shown actually seeing patients or practicing medicine at all.

“Marcus Welby, MD” (1969-1976) “Marcus Welby, MD” is quite different from most modern-day fictional doctors, whose flaws are often highlighted to create drama. Welby was a general practitioner, played by Robert Young, portrayed as a wise and caring physician — almost like a father figure to some of his patients. At least for the time period in which it was made, “Welby” ranks high in medical accuracy. As was the case for several other early medical shows, the writers of “Marcus Welby, M.D.” worked with the American Academy of Family Physicians, who reviewed each script to ensure they were getting everything right. In an op ed for the New York Times in 1972, a doctor named Michael J. Halberstam wrote, “The show is authentic, no doubt of that,” adding that “it is technically perfect.” As for modern critiques of the show? Patients wishtheir doctors had the same personality of Dr. Welby.

“Call the Midwife” (2012-present) This British drama series from the BBC focuses on a midwife in 1950s London. Like other contemporary medical dramas, “Call the Midwife” has a technical advisor on board to help ensure medical accuracy. And they mean business — the prosthetic babies they use in filming cost around 5000 British pounds each. The advisor, midwife Terri Coates, actually inspired fellow-midwife Jennifer Worth to write the memoirs on which the TV show is based. Beyond Coates’ guidance, the show’s writers rely on research from various medical journals. In addition to being medically accurate, the show is also historically accurate thanks to the same dedication to research when it comes to the setting of postwar London.

“Nurse Jackie” (2009-2015) Where “ER” gets flack for giving doctors the duties that nurses handle in real life, “Nurse Jackie,” as one may guess from the title, is all about the nurses. One nurse, reviewing the show for The New York Times, praised “Nurse Jackie” for its “realistic and mostly positive” portrayals of nursing. But that doesn’t mean the entire nursing community is thrilled with the way the profession is portrayed on TV — mostly thanks to the main character. Edie Falco stars as Jackie, an emergency department nurse who struggles with an addiction to painkillers. In the first episode, she flushes a patient’s ear down the toilet. Oops.

What You Should Know About Cancer Please ask for genetic screening “One of my early ovarian cancer patients told me her mom and grandma had both died of ovarian cancer, yet her doctor had never said, ‘Have you considered genetic testing?’” recalls Elizabeth Swisher, MD, a gynecologic oncologist at the University of Washington. “By the time she came to me, it was too late. But before she died, I tested her to identify the mutation that had caused her cancer. Afterward, I helped her daughter get that same test and removed her ovaries as a preventive measure. She’ll likely be the first person who doesn’t die of cancer in four generations of women in her family.” These are ovarian cancer symptoms you might overlook.

Therapies targeting a cancer’s individual profile are working By decoding the thousands of genes in someone’s cancer cells, scientists can find out which mutations they carry and then match the important mutations to the right drugs. Dr. Haber began investigating this method a decade ago, when he read the story of a nurse who’d never smoked but had metastatic lung cancer: “She got into a clinical trial for a new targeted therapy [called Iressa]. It was failing, but for 10 percent of participants, it worked magically. She happened to be in that magical 10 percent. We found a gene called

EGFR in her tumor and in the other patients who had responded well.” Today, targeted drug therapy is routinely used for many types of cancer, including lung, breast, colon, and melanoma.

Every patient should ask about getting his or her tumor profile “We had an 11-year-old girl with a rare form of leukemia go through chemotherapy four times—yet her cancer kept coming back,” says Arul Chinnaiyan, MD, PhD, a pathologist at the University of Michigan.

“Finally, we sequenced her tumor cells, and we found a genetic mutation that we knew was sensitive to a particular compound. We gave that drug to her, and she went into remission for more than 18 months. As we develop more and more targeted therapies, there will be hundreds of stories like that.”

We hope a “liquid biopsy” will replace needle biopsies In a development that may revolutionize cancer screening, scientists have developed a blood test that can identify biomarkers for a variety of stage I cancers in the bloodstream. “The same technology that can find your DNA at a crime scene can find a cancer’s DNA in your body,” says William G. Nelson, MD, PhD, director of the Sidney Kimmel Comprehensive Cancer Center at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland.

Cancer centers are already exploring the use of the tests, but the hope is that one day, a simple blood draw at your annual physical would detect cancer before you show any symptoms. Here are cancer symptoms you should never ignore.

We can help your immune system kill your tumor Cancer cells use a type of “brake” to turn off your immune system’s natural response. Immunotherapy drugs release that brake, enabling the immune system’s T cells to attack. The results have been staggering. In clinical trials, for example, almost 5,000 stage IV melanoma patients who weren’t expected to live more than a year or two were given three immunotherapy drugs. Three years later, 20 percent were still alive. “Many patients from that trial have now lived more than a decade with no sign of disease,” says Tak Wah Mak, PhD, an immunologist and molecular biologist at the Princess Margaret Cancer Centre in Toronto, Ontario. “It’s a miraculous thing.” The FDA has since approved more than a dozen different immunotherapy agents for a range of cancers.

Drug combinations may be a patient’s best bet “If we come in with just one drug, the cancer can mutate around it or become resistant,” Dr. Chinnaiyan says.

“But we’re finding that using a cocktail of drugs—similar to the treatment HIV-infected patients receive—can be more effective.”

The cancer death rate has declined 23 percent since its peak in 1991. Right now, America’s biopharmaceutical companies are working on more than 800 cancer medicines. “If you walk the corridors of any hospital studying cancer today, the excitement is palpable,” says Daniel Haber, MD, PhD, the director of Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and a professor of oncology at Harvard Medical School in Boston.

Viruses are among our most secret weapons “When we put a virus into a tumor, it makes cancer cells think they’re infected, so they commit suicide or display new antigens that signal your immune system to come in for the kill,” says Peter Jones, PhD, chief scientific officer of Van Andel Research Institute in Grand Rapids, Michigan. The FDA recently approved a genetically engineered form of the herpes virus to treat melanoma. And at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, scientists are fighting brain cancer by injecting tumors with a genetically modified polio virus. Now Jones and his colleagues are working on a solution for tumors that can’t easily be injected: epigenetics, a process that wakes up ancient viruses that are embedded in our human DNA. “We are making tumors visible [to your immune system] by turning on the viruses that are already there,” Jones says. Early research indicates that combining epigenetics with immunotherapy drugs may be particularly effective. Coming soon (we hope): a Pap smear that can detect ovarian cancer

“We have developed a test that can find genetic markers of ovarian and endometrial cancers in the cervical fluid collected during a routine Pap test,” says Dr. Nelson. The research is in its early stages, but it’s an exciting development because ovarian cancer kills more than 14,000 women a year, often because it’s diagnosed too late.

We’ve built a chip that can find runaway tumor cells Cancer experts have known for 100 years that malignant cancers send free-floating cells into the bloodstream, creating new tumors in other parts of your body. But because there is about one circulatory cancer cell for every one billion blood cells, we haven’t been able to capture the rogue cells—until now. “We have a device that can pull out those cells so pathologists can study them,” Dr. Haber says. “That’s important because the reason most people die of cancer is that it spreads to other places.”

Diagnosed? Make sure you see a medical oncologist as well as a surgeon “Surgeons have a financial incentive to recommend surgery,” Dr. Swisher says. “Many of us believe that’s part of the reason for the huge increase in double mastectomies in the United States.” (The rate has tripled over the past decade; more moderate treatments like lumpectomy that preserve the breast can be equally effective.) A medical oncologist can talk to you about the pros and cons of surgery and can share other alternatives such as treatment with just drugs and radiation, chemotherapy, and more frequent screening.

Please make this simple change to your diet If you’re overweight or diabetic, you’re much more likely to get dangerous cancers. Many researchers believe that eating too much sugar and rapid-release carbohydrates is particularly dangerous. “Sugar makes your insulin levels spike, and insulin activates P13K, an enzyme that we have learned is a major player in many human cancers,” says Lewis Cantley, PhD, director of Weill Cornell’s Meyer Cancer Center in New York, New York. “The evidence is strong enough that I try to avoid processed foods, especially those with added sugars.”

Make more room in your diet for these cancer-fighting foods.

For many of us, this is personal “I decided to become a medical oncologist when I was 16 years old, after I’d lost both my parents to cancer,” says Patricia LoRusso, DO, associate director for innovative medicine at Yale Cancer Center in New Haven, Connecticut. “I wanted to go after the thing that had destroyed my childhood.” Adds Dr. Jones, “I think about my research when I’m in the shower, while I eat lunch, and before I go to bed at night. I dream of actually making an impact on the survival rate of the disease.”

Clinical trials are the best way to get access to the latest treatments Remember, if you’re in the “placebo” group, you won’t be taking sugar pills, says Dr. Cantley. Instead, you’ll get “the standard of care,” that is, the same treatment you would get if you didn’t enroll in the trial. If you’re not in the placebo group, you get the standard treatment plus whatever compound we’re testing. And when we find that a therapy is particularly effective, we often transition the trial to a “crossover” study, which allows every patient to receive the study drug.

Sorry, naturopathic remedies are not a cure They have websites that look so scientific and claim clinical trials, but because they’re not evaluated by the FDA for safety or effectiveness, they can make any claim they want, says Dr. Swisher. “I had a patient who bought into a treatment where they filtered his urine and infused it back into him by IV,” she said. “Another was getting ‘ozone therapy.’ She came in hooked up to a gas tank that was taller than her; it was pumping gas into her belly.” Not only do these naturopathic remedies not cure cancer, a lot of them also interfere with real cancer treatment that could work. If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is.

Seek out a cancer center This is especially important if you’ve been diagnosed with a late-stage or incurable cancer. So much

is changing so fast that it’s important to have access to the latest technologies, treatments, trials and medicines, and cancer centers are where you can find those things, says Dr. Cantley. Look for an institution that has a lot of experience with your specific type of cancer or, even better, one that has published research on it.

Cancer is no longer a death sentence “My dad got lymphoma when he was 76,” says Daniel Von Hoff, MD, physician-in-chief and director of translational research at the Translational Genomics Research Institute in Phoenix, Arizona. “He said, ‘I don’t want to be treated. I’ve lived a good life, and I know most people who get cancer die.’ I told him that wasn’t true anymore, but he wouldn’t listen. Finally, out of exasperation, I said, ‘Dad, I’m a cancer researcher. If you die, I’ll look bad.’ He relented, got treated, and went into remission. That was 18 years ago. He’s now 94 and still doing well.”

We are spending less money, not more, fighting cancer With the exception of a one-time increase in 2009, the federal investment in cancer research (when adjusted for inflation) has been stagnant for more than a decade. At the same time, the cost of conducting research has escalated, says Dr. Haber. So a lot of good projects don’t get funded.

Cancer is not one disease It’s actually more than 100 unique diseases, each with dozens of genetic subsets, says Dr. Chinnaiyan. Even cancers that arise in the same part of the body can have different genetic fingerprints. Breast cancer, for example, is really at least ten different kinds of cancer that respond to different targeted treatments.

Knowing your family cancer history is more important than ever—especially if you have more than one relative with cancer (on either side of your family).

Why? Because we now know that about 5 to 10 percent of all cancers are inherited. Genetic tests today can screen you for every known hereditary cancer gene, says Dr. Swisher. “Finding out you have a mutation is not a death sentence; it’s a call to action,” she says. “Once you know you are at risk, the right interventions and screenings can literally keep you from getting cancer. It is so frustrating to me when people die of hereditary cancer and I think, ‘This was preventable.’”

We focus too much on treatment, not enough on prevention The vast majority of available research funds are spent on developing treatments, with only a fraction focused on prevention. Yet at least 21 percent of U.S. cancer deaths may be related to preventable causes, such as smoking and obesity, according to the CDC; other research indicates the figure is closer to 50 percent. Here are 30 simple ways to prevent cancer.

What is Alkaline Water?

You may have heard some of the various health claims about alkaline water. Some say it can help slow the aging process, regulate your body’s pH level, and prevent chronic diseases like cancer. But what exactly is alkaline water, and why all the hype?

The “alkaline” in alkaline water refers to its pH level. The pH level is a number that measures how acidic or alkaline a substance is on a scale of 0 to 14. For example, something with a pH of 1 would be very acidic, and something with a pH of 13 would be very alkaline.

Alkaline water has a higher pH level than regular drinking water. Because of this, some advocates of alkaline water believe it can neutralize the acid in your body. Normal drinking water generally has a neutral pH of 7.

Alkaline water typically has a pH of 8 or 9.

BENEFITS Does it really work?

Alkaline water is somewhat controversial. Many health professionals argue against its use, saying there isn’t enough research to support the many health claims made by users and sellers. According to the Mayo Clinic, regular water is best for most people, as there is no scientific evidence that fully verifies the claims made by supporters of alkaline water.

However, there are a few studies that suggest alkaline water might be helpful for certain conditions.

For example, a 2012 study found that drinking alkaline water with a pH of 8.8 may help deactivate pepsin,

which is the main enzyme that causes acid reflux.

Another study suggested that drinking alkaline water may have benefits for people who have high blood pressure, diabetes, and high cholesterol.

A more recent study that included 100 people found a significant difference in whole blood viscosity after consuming high pH water compared to regular water after a strenuous workout. Viscosity is the direct measurement of how blood flows through the vessels. Those who consumed high pH water reduced viscosity by 6.3 percent compared to 3.36 percent with standard purified drinking water. This means blood flowed more efficiently with alkaline water. This can increase oxygen delivery throughout out the body.

However, more research is needed beyond these small studies, specifically into some of the other claims made by alkaline water supporters.

Despite the lack of proven scientific research, proponents of drinking alkaline water still believe in its many proposed health benefits, which include: • • • • • •

anti-aging properties (via liquid antioxidants that absorb more quickly into the human body) colon-cleansing properties immune system support hydration, skin health, and other detoxifying properties weight loss cancer resistance

RISK FACTORS Possible side effects and risks of alkaline water Although alkaline drinking water is considered safe, it may produce negative side effects.

Some examples of negative side effects include the lowering of natural stomach acidity, which helps kill bacteria and expel other undesirable pathogens from entering your bloodstream.

Additionally, an overall excess of alkalinity in the body may cause gastrointestinal issues and skin irritations.

Too much alkalinity may also agitate the body’s normal pH, leading to metabolic alkalosis, a condition that may produce the following symptoms: • • • • • •

nausea vomiting hand tremors muscle twitching tingling in the extremities or face confusion

Alkalosis can also cause a decrease in free calcium in the body, which can affect bone health. However, the most common cause of hypocalcemia is not from drinking alkaline water, but from having an underactive parathyroid gland.

HOW IT’S MADE Natural or Artificial?

Water that is naturally alkaline occurs when water passes over rocks — like springs — and picks up minerals, which increase its alkaline level.

However, many people who drink alkaline water buy alkaline water that’s been through a chemical process called electrolysis, which uses a product called an ionizer to raise the pH of regular water. Makers of ionizers say that electricity is used to separate molecules in the water that are more acidic or more alkaline, and that the acidic water is then funneled out. Still, some doctors and researchers say these claims are not backed by quality research.

A study published by the World Health Organization cautions against drinking water with low mineral content on a regular basis.

WHERE TO GET IT Where do you get it?

Alkaline water can be bought in many grocery or health food stores. It can also be found online. Water ionizers are sold in many large chain stores as well.

You can also make your own at home. Even though lemon and lime juices are acidic, they contain minerals that can change the composition of water. Adding a squeeze of lemon or lime to a glass of water can make your water more alkaline. Adding pH drops or baking soda is another way to make water more alkaline. It’s important to use distilled water when making alkaline water because tap water or bottled water may have other additives.

TAKEAWAY Is it safe?

The issue that many health professionals have with alkaline water is not its safety, but rather the health claims that are made about it.

There’s not enough scientific evidence to support the use of alkaline water as a treatment for any health condition. Medical experts warn against believing all the marketing claims.

Drinking natural alkaline water is generally considered safe, since it contains natural minerals. However, you should use caution with artificial alkaline water, which likely contains fewer minerals necessary for good health than its high pH would have you believe. Overuse may leave you deficient.

Time To Take a Trip!

Getting out of town in January, February, and March is a cinch with so many viable cold weather and spring break destinations. But April’s like the awkward middle child between winter and summer, and planning a trip can be tricky. It’s a bit too warm to go careening down the side of a mountain, but the full-blown summer lake parties won’t be going down for another two months. Plus, it’s probably raining.

Luckily we’ve scoured the globe and the far reaches of America to find the coolest events and new attractions worth traveling for this month. Here are your best bets for kicking off spring with a bang.

Coachella Valley, California This year’s Coachella Music Festival runs from April 20-22 and will include headliners Eminem and Beyoncé, as well as The Weeknd, Post Malone, alt-J, Tyler the Creator, Portugal the Man, and Jamiroquai. And if the news that Jamiroquai has actually made new music since 1996 isn’t getting you on a plane to Indio, we’re not sure what will.

Of course, the huge crowds and big names of Coachella aren’t the only festival happening there in April.

There’s also the Stagecoach festival from April 27-29, the largest country music festival in California, headlined this year by Garth Brooks, Keith Urban, and Florida Georgia Line, if you consider them country.

You can also check out the brand new Hotel Paseo, which among other retro accommodations has a fully restored Airstream trailer you can stay in, and the hot new AC3 Restaurant and Bar. Singapore This Southeastern Asian city-state is one of the greatest food destinations in the world, and the best way to experience it will be the World Gourmet Summit from March 20 to April 16. Over four weeks, spots like Bacchanalia Singapore, Hua Ting Restaurant, Gattopardo Ristorante Di Mare, Majestic Restaurant, and Tippling Clubwill have special menus for the event, showcasing their top dishes and collaborating with other chefs from around the world. The festival also includes dinners hosted by vintners from Europe, Australia, and the Americas, plus a smattering of celebrities and after-parties.

Even if you tire of the fancy festival foodie stuff, Singapore boasts some of the world’s best street food, and with influences from all over Asia and Europe in the city’s restaurants, you’d have to try to find a bad meal.

Last fall saw some dirt-cheap flightsover there, so keep your eyes peeled for a repeat.

Richmond, Virginia Richmond, of all places, is home to America’s biggest new art museum opening of 2018. This April, Virginia Commonwealth University cuts the ribbon on its Institute for Contemporary Art, a 41,000-square-foot, $41 million project that will feature rotating collections of contemporary artwork, films, and performances.

Richmond already rocks a renowned ballet and repertory theater; it’s time you came down to see what the fuss is about. The once-boarded Downtown is alive again, with record stores and thrift shops lining the streets and a converted dry goods store now serving as the Quirk Hotel. It’s become one of the best beer towns in the South, with Veil Brewing, Hardywood Park, and Downtown’s Answer Brewpub all must-hits.

Warm April days are also the perfect time to come and experience the James River and to horse around in

the Pony Pastures Rapid Park.

Oahu, Hawaii Picking the best time to go to Hawaii is kind of like picking the best Ben & Jerry’s flavor: you really can’t go wrong. That said, April might have Oahu’s best lineup of things to do, other than laying on the beach and hiking Diamondhead. First there’s the annual Waikiki SPAM Jam, where 30,000 people jam Kalakaua Avenue sampling Spam made in every way you could possibly imagine. Spam sushi. Spam pizza. Spam pho.

Chocolate-covered Spam. It’s an education in both Hawaiian culture and Spam subculture, all out in front of the venerable Outrigger Waikiki Beach.

Other aspects of Hawaiian culture beyond processed pork will be on display at the Mele Mei festival, which kicks off in April and features music and hula events all over the island. This is where you’ll get your lifetime quota of steel guitar, ukulele, and slack key.

If your new year’s goal was to run more, there’s no better place to do it than the Hapalua, a half-marathon on April 8. For a look into the world of fresh Hawaiian food, April 1 marks the beginning of a new farmto-table experience on Oahu where you’ll travel out to Kualoa Private Nature Reserve and tour through livestock ranches, tropical produce farms, and shrimping operations before enjoying a meal made from stuff grown on the reserve.

Idaho This past December, the United States got its first designated Dark Sky Reserve from the International Dark Sky Association. It’s only the 12th in the world, and sits just outside the Sawtooth Mountains National Recreation Area, in a patch of central Idaho the size of Long Island. The thing about Idaho in December to March, though: It skews cold. As spring rolls around it’s the perfect time to go and check out the best stars in the country without freezing your toes off.

April is also Idaho Craft Beer Month, where breweries statewide will be holding special events to showcase what Gem State beer is all about. It all wraps up April 28 in Boise, when a massive beer festival takes over Downtown with brewers from all over Idaho and the rest of the beer-crazy West pour samples in the warm mountain sunshine.

Croatia You may have sultry dreams of Yacht Week for your first Croatian vacation. Thing is, so does everyone else, and it’s both cheaper and easier to steer clear. Instead hit up Croatia in April, when Dubrovnik will host Festiwine, which, as the name might imply, brings over 100 local winemakers to the city to sample their goods from the 16th to the 22nd. If you’re more active, the Dubrovnik half-marathon is the 28th and 29th, in which runners wind through the streets of the walled city. Not enough of a challenge? Hit the 100 Miles of Istria on April 6, where more than a thousand people will race through Medieval stone towns, mystic forests, and perches above the Adriatic. Kikra National Park and has reduced admissions in April, and it’s just a short hop from the town of Sibenik, which just got its first UNESCO World Heritage Site at St. Nicholas Fortress.

Baltimore, Maryland Opening day at Camden Yards is one of the highlights of the year in Charm City, but even if you’re not a baseball person you’ve still got great reason to head to Baltimore in April. This month brings the Light City festival from April 6-22, when buildings, bridges, sidewalks and pretty much every space in the city becomes a canvas for illuminated art. Light-based artwork will pop up throughout 14 neighborhoods, turning the city into a sprawling outdoor museum.

This year the festival adds a couple of new activities designed to engage visitors and locals alike. Lab@ LightCity will take place from the 18th to the 21st, a pay-what-you-can conference where aspiring artists can learn from panel discussions and interactive sessions. It’ll also add a “Where’s Charlie the Peacock” game, where one of the most popular pieces from the original festival will appear in different areas each night.

Western Washington April can be iffy in the dreary Pacific Northwest, but if recent springs have been any indication, you may be in for blue skies and low-60s temperatures. Oh, and the best dang oysters of your life. Hood Canal Oysters -which you’ve undoubtedly been grossly overcharged for in a restaurant at some point -- are their fattest this time of year, due to a combination of glacial fjord water and April’s place in the oyster’s reproductive phase.

Don’t think too hard about that and head over to Hood Canal, where the Alderbrook Resort will have oyster barbecues, beachside oyster delivery, and shucking lessons.

If pork is more your traif of choice, the Bacon and Beer Classic promises to be the most exciting thing at Safeco Field all year. The home of the Seattle Mariners will host the festival April 28th, where $49 gets you unlimited bacon dishes served by some of Seattle’s best restaurants, like Warthog Barbecue. You’ll wash it all down with 100 different craft beers, and even have a chance to win free bacon for a year. Come earlier in the month, and you can see the home team begin its quest to end the longest playoff drought in all of

professional sports. Thank you, Buffalo Bills!

South Australia Food festivals with Michelin-starred chefs and culinary masters from the world’s best restaurants are fun and all. But wouldn’t they be a lot more fun with kangaroos? Australia’s overlooked southern state Adelaide hosts the annual Tasting Australiafood festival in April, where names like Norbert Niederkofler of three-Michelin starred St. Hubertus in Italy and Christian Puglisi of Relæ in Copenhagen (No. 39 among the World’s 50 Best Restaurants) will be hosting events in from the 13th through the 22nd.

Once you’re done eating, fall is a beautiful time to be in South Australia, where some of the country’s top wine regions still have harvests going on and the sunsets over the vineyards are pure magic. When the first cold snap hits, the colors along the Barossa ranges are a magnificent green and gold. Which gives you a chance to go leaf-peeping six months before all your friends back home.

Toronto, Ontario The cherry blossoms in DC might be the most iconic outside of Japan, but the ones in Toronto’s High Park in late April are just as impressive and won’t be packed with eighth-grade field-trippers. Look, too, for Toronto to open its new Museum of Contemporary Art, a 55,000-square-foot space in an old industrial building that’s set to anchor the Junction Triangle neighborhood.

The spring thaw kickstarts a festival season that Canada does as well as anyone in the world. It begins in Toronto with the Creativ Festival April 13-14, in which craft makers and scrapbookers from all over Canada converge. It continues with the Hot Docs fest, the largest documentary film festival in North America, drawing more than 20,000 attendees and more than 200 films. Add that to four professional sports when the Blue Jays and Toronto FC begin their seasons as the Raptors and Leafs wind theirs down, and this is definitely the month to check out one of the world’s most diverse cities.

San Antonio, Texas

There’s this little amateur basketball tournament called the Final Four hitting the Alamodome in April. Much like the Super Bowl, it’s more about the parties, events, and celebrities than it is about any actual sports, and often more fun to attend if you’re not actually going to the game, i.e., overpaying for nosebleed seats in a converted football arena.

April also brings the annual Fiesta from April 19-29, which, if you learned three words of Spanish, you can guess means “big party with a rowdy parade.” The event honors the heroes of the Alamo, but has morphed into a citywide event with a Fiesta King and Queen, chicken on a stick, and colorful costumes. Beyond that, San Antonio also celebrates its tricentennial this year, as well as the 50th anniversary of the World’s Fair from April 6-8.

The Beautiful Poetry of Anca Stuparu

Let Me Be

I ask you like an unhappy kid That loses his last day of vacation, With the fear that time will freeze The dolls made out of corn leaves, Left to dry in the garden, under the chestnut tree; Still, playing, swinging in the hammock In which we used to snooze from the drowsiness On summer days. Only to be awoken By falling clouds, touching our foreheads To make way for the paper planes On their route to exotic places, Let me fly, with you, Through you, through clouds and thunders; Let me break myself, in your whisper, In your hand, in the trace of your steps, Crushed by crosswords!

Let me flow, in your time, Like a confused hourglass, forgotten by time, Let me sit on the fold of your eyes, Hidden there, like a child That doesn’t want the summer to end, Let me pray by your feet, With my head glued to them!

To tell all my worries and my fears, Which I scatter when you squeeze me, With your arms smelling like the beginning Of walnut green bark and of childhood; So hard, that raw seeds Start growing in our trembling hands

In Silence Be silent!

Over the whispers of flowers Over the time, over us, Silence!

Look at me and be silent!

I am the emptiness between two words, Between two scraps of syllables I told you to be silent, Don’t ask me why this spring The flowers of appricot are frosted On my face, Why we measure time After streaks drained from the light, Be silent and say nothing!

When I leave, when there are no more Traces from our looks Be silent!

Over the noise, over silence, Over the word!

A Double Passion: Between Medicine and Art

Anca Stuparu “ The doctor’s pen is the title, his hand is the means, and his fingers are the beginning of the end of the talks” says Dr. Hassan Farhat, an ER Physician who runs one of the most prolific and fast growing on line magazine, Ya7eleween Magazine Group, expanding in 5 continents, while practicing as Physician in two extremely demanding Emergency Departments at NYCH and Mount Sinai in New York. The miracle of medicine stays not only in healing, but also in cultivating the soul at its most intimate level, at its junction with the body, where one can always find a source of inspiration and creativity that can be immortalized in art.

I met in New York physicians who turned in their middle age to writing, music, sculpture and photography as one of their latent passion, that always existed somewhere, hidden in their soul, just like a validation that doctors can write and operate, can be philosophical and resuscitate, can be poets and do cesarean

sections, can sculpt and run a Trauma Level One ER, can sing and recite Tagore while saving and treating an anaphylactic shock. They live at the highest level of humanity, they give themselves to others physically, through strenuous shifts and nights on call, and they give back artistically by elevating their work to the level of fine art, turning the Medical call into a source of inspiration. In hospital settings, ED Physician, Dr. Hassan Farhat wrote the most inspiring quotes about women, between two codes, ED Physician Dr. Utpal Chowdhury chants verses

of Tagore and reviews the partitions of violin. Dr. Emil Silberman takes the grimace of faces, seen transfigured by emotion, grief and pain molding them in sculptures. One of his sculptures, depicting the sufferance of 9/11 and two towers is placed at the entrance of Jamaica Hospital.

When I met Dr. Hassan Farhat in ER, surgical cap on head, a jovial, child-like regard, he asked me: “Did you see that baby boy? Was seizing in the hallway as family visited here a patient. He s fine now, we saved him!” Then he takes out the phone from the navy blue scrub’s pocket and reads me one of the many quotes, written on a moment of inspiration, between two critical patients; quotes emerged literally in the seconds delineating life from death: “Your eyes are The most beautiful ones, in them I let my tears dripping, until your eyes became dry because of my powerful tears and still my tears are running down the cheek without stop”, I just wrote it! I looked at him with stupor and shock. This man just saved a life, sat down, mask still covering his mouth and nose, sweat dripping at the edge of the on surgical cap still on, and wrote one of the most candid quotes of love. I often ask him to read in Arabic: ُ ‫ وما زال الدمع يجري في‬، ‫ فجفت عيونك من وهج دموعي‬، ‫عيناك أجمل العيون فيهم سكبت دموع مقلتي‬ ‫المقل‬ ِ ِ

There is a musicality of Arabic language, that reminds me of my student years in Western Romania, in Timisoara, as students from the Middle East would travel there for Medical school. I did not recall any of those Medical students to have written quotes then, but I still recall the musicality of their tongue, as I involuntarily listened to them on campus; their vocal inflections resembling to a continuous song, sounding like that famous, traditional Lebanese “El Bint el Shalabia” , I learned by heart from an over listened tape with Farouz. Every time I listen to Dr. Farhat’s quotes in Arabic, I hear the musicality of that song.

A patient with a resonant first name, Rabindranath, caught our attention, as he was assigned to an area for intoxicated patients. Missing teeth, disheveled hair, wearing a yellow gown to signal us by color that he needs close observation, this man seemed coming from a different world. Dr. Utpal Chowdhury was on call and instantly a discussion about a Noble Price Winner and Bangla poet, Rabindranath Tagore emerged in ER. Dr. Chowdhury, a cardiologist by formation with 10 years of experience in Bangladesh, has a known passion for literature and music. He keeps Tagore’s Gitanjali on his desk and reads fragments in between seeing patients. “Gitanjali was given the stamina of a Nobel Price winning book because it was translated in English by Tagore himself”, says Dr. Chowdhury as he talks with the same enthusiasm about Tagore’s drawings and inclination for painting and music. Motivated by his children who play violin, Dr. Chowdhury signed up for violin lessons now. “I have always wanted to play violin but studying hard for medical school I never had time”, says while skimming thru musical notes.

It is fascinating to see Dr. Farhat and Dr. Chowdhury working in team at NYCH, running codes, resuscitating patients, intubating.

While finishing notes and documentation side by side, they engage in literary discussions: “The disappointment comes from ambiguity of visions” said Dr. Farhat speaking about symbiotic, complementary relationships and love. Dr. Chowdhury, with a touch of erudite, brings in discussion “Sadhana”, a philosophic book written by Tagore. “Twenty years ago, I wrote short poems and poetry, now I enjoy playing violin and harmonica and reading Tagore” adds Dr. Chowdhury in a moment of breathing in between patients, before running for another code and saving another critical patient. From the call of healing to the call of creating art and living on an artistic note in the midst of life and death, both physicians elevate their passion to fine art.

“The goal of one is reaching the impossible and attain goals beyond the awareness.”

Anca Stuparu is a graduate of The University of West in Timisoara, Romania with a Baccalaureate Degree in French and German Language and Literature. Since 1998 Anca lives in New York where she practices as a Women Health Clinician, completing currently a Doctoral Degree in Women’s Health. Anca is working at Jamaica Hospital Medical Center Emergency Medicine OB-GYN and at New York Community Hospital, Presbyterian affiliated. Her literary debut was in Romanian American Review of Literature and Spirituality, Gracious Light. Thanks to the renown Romanian - English translator, Razvan Hotaranu, Anca’s poems have now an English voice.

CUT COSTS ON YOUR MEDS NOW!

LYBIA NGECOBI

13 Ways to Save on Prescription Drugs Your medicine may come with a new side effect: financial pain. Prescription-drug spending grew 12.2% in 2014—five times as fast as the year before—according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. And the sickest Americans bear the biggest burden. Some 43% of those in fair or poor health say it’s somewhat or very difficult to afford their medications, and 37% say they’ve skipped out on filling a prescription because of cost, according to the Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF).

What has changed? Generic drugs, long an affordable alternative to name-brand medicines, have become part of the problem. The average price of the 50 most popular generic drugs increased 373% between 2010 and 2014, according to OptumRx, a pharmacy benefit management company. One culprit is consolidation: After a decade of mergers, three big companies now control 40% of the generics market, says Gerard Anderson, professor at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Weaker competition means drug companies can charge your insurer more. Meanwhile, pricey new miracle drugs—like hepatitis C treatment Sovaldi ($1,000 per pill for an 84-pill course)—are also a key factor forcing up overall medication costs.

In response, insurers are making consumers pay more, and work harder, to get their prescriptions—if the drugs are even covered. “We’re seeing plans limit the choices of drugs that are available,” says Sandy Ageloff, senior consultant with Willis Towers Watson.

Fortunately, there are plenty of ways for you to save. By making strategic changes in the medications you take (with your doctor’s okay, of course), the places you buy them, and the insurance plan you elect, you may be able to shave 40% or more off your total prescription-drug costs this year. Here are the steps you need to take.

CHANGE YOUR MEDICATION 1. Substitute generics for name brands.

First things first: If you haven’t already, ask your doctor if you can try any generic versions of your prescription meds. Despite recent price increases, the savings can still be immense. On average, Americans on employer plans could have shelled out as much as 80% less in co-pays in 2015 by switching from a branded drug to a generic, according to KFF data. “The evidence is very strong that generics work just as well,” says American College of Physicians president Wayne J. Riley.

2. Combine pills—or split them.

If you are taking several medications for the same condition, ask your physician if there’s a single pill that would do the job. For example, your insurer could make you pay a combined $100 or more a month to get a brand-name beta-blocker and a brand-name thiazide diuretic to treat high blood pressure, Riley says. But most people, he says, can sub in a generic combination pill containing both medications, which will probably have a co-pay of less than $15.

Alternatively, you might be able to save money by splitting some pills, Riley says. You’ll need to check with your physician, because not all doses can be divided safely—but once you’ve gotten the green light, ask for a prescription for half as many double-strength pills. Then buy a pill splitter and cut the tablets in two.

3. Check the formulary for your insurer’s favorites.

The list of medications that any given drug plan will cover—called a formulary—has gotten much more complicated. As little as 15 years ago, most plans had no more than two tiers, or price categories. The two-tier plans would charge you one co-pay for generics and a second, higher one for brand-name drugs. By 2015, however, 81% of workers had three or more tiers in their prescription-drug benefits plan, and 23% had four or more, according to KFF. Obamacare and Medicare plans have multiple tiers too.

Generally, the higher the tier, the more you pay. While first-tier (usually generic) drug co-pays were just $11 on average in 2015, fourth-tier co-pays averaged $93 per prescription.

And co-insurance—in which you pay a fixed percentage of the price, rather than a set dollar amount— could push your out-of-pocket costs even higher. Among plans with three or more tiers, 40% required that patients pay co-insurance on pricier fourth-tier drugs, putting an average 32% of the cost on your shoulders.

“It can make for some confusion at the pharmacy counter,” says Sharon Frazee, vice president of research and education at the Pharmacy Benefit Management Institute (PBMI). “If you don’t know where the drug sits on the formulary, you don’t know how much you’re going to be charged.”

Plans use tiers to lower costs. Your insurer will save money if you switch to a cheaper, clinically equivalent drug. The plan may also have negotiated better prices with one manufacturer by promising to charge more for the competition.

Either way, many plans offer incentives to switch. Show your doctor your formulary list and ask if there’s another drug in a lower price tier that would work just as well for you.

4. Jump through your insurer’s hoops.

In 2015, almost 70% of employers required, for at least some drugs, that you try over-the-counter, generic, or lower-cost versions before insurance would cover the pricier alternatives, according to a survey from PBMI. More than half of all employers required such “step therapy” for cholesterol-lowering drugs, for instance, up from 38% in 2010. This process can make it tricky for patients to get the expensive drugs their doctors have prescribed.

“A lot of health insurance companies are requiring that patients try three medications before they can get the one that their doctor originally recommended,” says health care consultant Martine Ehrenclou.

If your drug has such restrictions, you’ll get the bad news when you go to the pharmacy to fill your prescription. Work with your doctor to try the alternatives; if you ignore the rules altogether, you could get stuck with the full bill for your medication.

What if you have already tried the treatments your insurer is pushing? “You don’t have to start over,” says Katy Votava, founder of health insurance consulting firm Goodcare. Go to the drug section of your insurer’s website. You can send your doctor’s staff the necessary authorization forms or, in some cases, initiate the process yourself, says Votava. Your insurer should spell out the kind of documentation you’ll need.

5. Ask your plan to make an exception.

Your plan might waive restrictions, pay for a drug that’s not on its list, or charge a lower co-pay if your doctor says a specific medication is necessary.

For example, when cholesterol-lowering drug Lipitor went generic, many plans refused to cover the brandname version or charged a higher co-pay, says Tatiana Fassieux, board chair of California Health Advocates, a Medicare advocacy nonprofit. But some people couldn’t take the generic because they were allergic to the binding additive, so plans let them take branded Lipitor or pay the generic co-pay for the branded drug.

Ask explicitly for an exception: You again go to the drug section of your insurer’s website, but this time look for a medication exception request. Give it to your doctor’s office to complete, says Riley of the American College of Physicians.

Request denied? You have the right to both internal and external reviews. Your plan’s explanation of benefits document will tell you whom to contact.

For all Medicare Part D plans, call your provider and ask to have the exception form sent to your doctor, Fassieux says. If your request is rejected, you can appeal.

CHANGE YOUR PHARMACY 6. Use mail-order options.

If you don’t use mail order for common maintenance medications, you’re probably overpaying. More than 90% of employers offered the service in 2015, and almost a quarter of those required it for at least some drugs, PBMI says. Processing can take a week or more, so when you’re starting a new medication, ask your doctor for one 30-day prescription to fill locally plus a 90-day script for mail order, Riley says. On average, you’ll save a third on co-pays for brand-name drugs when you buy through the mail.

7. Use a preferred drugstore.

Almost three in 10 employers had a preferred network in 2015, meaning workers got a discount at certain drugstores, according to PBMI. Another 13% had a limited network, meaning insurance paid only for prescriptions filled at in-network chains. Medicare plans can also have preferred or limited networks.

Preferred pharmacies generally offer good discounts, Frazee says: “The savings can be considerable, particularly if you’re on brand medications.”

Free to choose any pharmacy? Use the OneRx app to see which ones offer the lowest prices. Take a photo of your insurance card, and the app will show estimated co-pays based on your plan. The app also shows cash prices, the amount you would pay without insurance; these can sometimes be less than your co-pay, says A.J. Loiacono, chief innovation officer at Truveris, which created the app. Just remember that if you bypass your insurance, the payments won’t count toward your deductible or out-of-pocket maximum.

8. Beware of online pharmacy scams.

When looking at online drugstores, be cautious. Many of the “Canadian pharmacies” you’ll find on the Internet are fraudulent, according to a 2013 Government Accountability Office report—which also noted that some drugs ordered online contained “dangerous contaminants, such as toxic yellow highway paint, heavy metals, and rat poison.”

You can be sure a web pharmacy is safe if its domain name ends with “.pharmacy,” which means the site has been approved by the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy and meets all regulatory requirements. You can also search for the site’s name on LegitScript.com to confirm that it’s aboveboard.

CHANGE YOUR INSURANCE 9. Check your insurer’s formulary lists.

To make the biggest dent in high drug costs, you may need to change your insurance. Employers usually let workers choose new health plans in the fall; Obamacare marketplaces are on a similar timetable. And seniors can choose new Medicare plans starting Oct. 15.

To compare plans, start by checking the formulary lists to ensure that medications you take are covered, Votava says. (These lists are often online, but in some cases you may need to request the document from a prospective insurer.) Identify which tiers your drugs are in, and then use each plan’s “summary of benefits and coverage” to see how much you would pay in each tier. “Get used to doing a little more homework,” Votava says.

Drug coverage is of particular concern for people on Obamacare plans, some of which have placed all the necessary drugs—even generics—for certain chronic conditions in the most expensive tier. A 2014 study by the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America identified higher drug costs for Obamacare enrollees with cancer, diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, and even asthma. And a New England Journal of Medicine study found that HIV patients on plans with such “adverse tiering” owed $3,000 more than HIV patients on other plans, even after accounting for out-of-pocket maximums and premiums.

Trying to calculate what you’d owe? Get help. “Call the pharmacy help desk for your plan,” Votava says.

“They are going to be your best shot.” Tell the rep the plan you’re considering and the medication you’re on, she says, and ask what price you would pay.

10. Check for tricky deductibles.

For many patients, drug co-pays kick in from the first day of coverage. But last year, KFF found, almost a quarter of workers on high-deductible employer plans had to pay full price for prescription drugs until they met their overall deductible—more than $1,300 for individuals and over $2,600 for families. That could require a big outlay for people with high drug costs.

And 36% of employer plans in 2015 had a separate drug deductible, up sharply from 14% in 2014, according to PBMI. On average, drug deductibles are $325 for individuals and $960 for families. “You go to the drugstore more than you go to the doctor, so you’re more likely to feel it faster,” PBMI’s Frazee says.

At least one change has delivered a measure of relief. Under the Affordable Care Act, all new employer and marketplace plans must cap how much you’d pay for in-network care each year. In 2015 the average outof-pocket max was $3,291 on individual PPO (preferred provider organization) plans, according to KFF. So if you face high drug costs, you may be able to save by choosing a plan with higher premiums but a lower cap. To gauge your potential liability, add a given plan’s premiums to the out-of-pocket max, Votava says.

11. Price out Medicare options.

Part D beneficiaries have a somewhat different set of rules and concerns. Unlike employer and marketplace plans, Medicare drug plans have no out-of-pocket maximums, so you can continue to hemorrhage cash if you’re taking expensive drugs.

Meanwhile, out-of-pocket costs can vary widely between plans, notes a KFF survey. For example, a drug

called Spiriva, used to treat emphysema, costs a Medicare Part D beneficiary as much as $472 per month in 2016 on one plan—but as little as $33 on another. Diabetes treatment Lantus Solostar ranges from $29 to $172 a month; generic cholesterol drug atorvastatin costs $20 a month on one plan but is free on another.

You need to shop around every year; Fassieux says coverage lists change all the time. The Medicare Plan Finder at Medicare.gov makes it easy to search plans, however. Enter your medication information, including dosage and frequency. You can also enter the name of your favorite pharmacy in case some of the plans have preferred or limited pharmacy networks. The tool will show you your expected costs on both Medicare Part D and Medicare Advantage prescription-drug plans.

Again, remember that what was cheapest last year won’t necessarily be the right answer this year, even if your drug regimen hasn’t changed.

“We see people who didn’t look at their plans; they didn’t do anything,” Fassieux says. “Then they go to the pharmacy, and their co-pay has tripled.” Don’t be among them.

AND IF ALL ELSE FAILS… If you take a high-price brand-name drug and have exhausted other ways to reduce your costs, you may need extra help. Two options: 12. Clip coupons.

Some drugmakers offer discounts directly to patients. If you take any brand medications, says health care consultant Martine Ehrenclou, check the manufacturer’s website for coupons. (Medicare beneficiaries are ineligible.)

13. Ask for help.

Pharmaceutical companies also have patient-assistance programs to aid people who have a hard time affording their treatment. There may be income limits and other requirements. Check RxAssist. org, patientadvocate.org, and pparx.org to find programs for your medications.

Cubans Face the End of the Castro Era For decades, Cuban schoolchildren were taught a slogan about the kind of pioneers of Communism they should aspire to be: “Seremos como el Che!” (We will be like Che!), that is, like the Argentine insurgent Ernesto “Che” Guevara, who played a leading role in the 1959 Cuban revolution and later sacrificed his life in pursuit of revolution in Bolivia. In the wake of Fidel Castro’s death at age 90 on November 25, 2016, however, the school curriculum now includes songs and posters that state “Yo Soy Fidel.” Indeed, “I am Fidel” has become a new mantra of revolutionary commitment heard and seen throughout the island.

History will record Fidel as the undisputed comandante of the Cuban revolution, the charismatic and grandiose former guerrilla leader who transformed a Caribbean island that had served as a playground for wealthy Americans, the mafia, and other malevolent US interests into a proud nationalist country with an outsize role on the world stage. But it is the legacy of his younger brother, Raúl, who officially steps down as president this week, that may prove to be even more compelling for Cuba’s future.

Raúl Castro opened the door to many basic necessities that Cubans had been denied.

Over the dozen years that Raúl led the country—he replaced his ailing brother in July 2006 and officially assumed the role of president in February 2008—Cuba has slowly evolved away from a tightly controlled, hyper-state-centric system toward a more dynamic and modern, if still fundamentally socialist and authoritarian, society. Raúl Castro opened the door to many basic necessities that Cubans had been denied—access to cell phones, the Internet, freedom to travel, the sale of private property such as homes and cars, and a functioning private sector, among other needed freedoms that affect the daily lives of many average citizens. He also achieved a historic modus vivendi with the United States— no small feat given the years of US aggression and perpetual hostility to bilateral relations.

Raúl Castro’s agreement with the Obama administration to reestablish normal diplomatic ties certainly ranks as one of his greatest accomplishments. He assigned his son, Alejandro Castro Espín, a high-ranking intelligence officer, to lead 18 months of secret negotiations with President Obama’s representatives—and secured a deal that not only fulfilled Fidel’s promise to obtain the return of Cuba’s imprisoned spies, known as the Cuban Five, but also bring bilateral relations into the realm of normalcy, with more open commerce, travel, and diplomatic interaction. Despite pushback from wary hard-liners in the Communist Party, including Fidel himself, Raúl hosted President Obama’s historic March 2016 trip to Havana. “To destroy a bridge is easy and takes little time,” Castro presciently stated during their joint press conference in Havana. “To reconstruct and fortify it is a much longer and more difficult task.”

Despite Trump’s efforts to sabotage improved relations, Cuba and the United States remain connected economically, culturally, and diplomatically.

Despite the Trump administration’s efforts to sabotage that bridge of better relations, Cuba and the United States remain connected economically, culturally, and diplomatically. In recent weeks, the two governments have approved an expansion of US commercial air and cruise-ship travel to Cuba. Some 620,000 US travelers—among 4.7 million international tourists—visited Cuba in 2017, despite Trump’s travel warnings, restrictions, and hostile rhetoric. “We’re, as you know, very tough on Cuba,” Trump told reporters in Florida yesterday, commenting on Raúl Castro’s departure. His administration, Trump vaguely claimed, is “taking care of Cuba.”

The expansion of Cuba’s tourist sector has contributed to Raúl Castro’s efforts to create a functioning private sector—again, despite forceful opposition from doctrinaire Communist Party officials who oppose the economic inequalities that moving toward a more mixed economy inevitably brings to Cuban society. His nonsocialist economic reforms created categories for licensed self-employment that have resulted in close to 600,000 private-sector small businesses. Those cuentapropistas, as Cuban entrepreneurs are called, are in turn employing tens of thousands of other Cubans. According to some estimates, four in 10 Cuban workers have a foot in the private-sector work force. “Raúl’s legacy in economic policy lies in breaking once forbidding ideological barriers,” points out Richard Feinberg in a study for the Brookings Institution, even though those reforms have failed to end the crisis-level stagnation of Cuba’s socialist economy. “Regardless, these changes have paved the way for the successor generation of leaders—if they dare—to push Cuba forward into the 21st century.”

“Cuba needs [Raúl Castro], providing ideas and proposals for the revolutionary cause.” —Miguel DíazCanel, Cuba’s new president The post-Castro era now begins; at least that is the conventional narrative of the US media. In reality, Raúl Castro’s tenure as first secretary of the Cuban Communist Party—arguably a more powerful position than the office of the president—will continue for several more years, and he is retaining his role in the Cuban military, which he has commanded since 1959. His continued power is likely to be used to advance the agenda of his handpicked successor, Miguel Díaz-Canel, who assumed the presidency on April 19. “You can look at Raúl Castro and Díaz-Canel as mentor and disciple,” notes Carlos Alzugaray, a former Cuban diplomat and political observer. Indeed, in his acceptance speech to the Cuban National Assembly, the newly inaugurated president made it clear he was still a disciple. “Raúl Castro, as first secretary of the Communist Party, will lead the decisions about the future of the country,” Díaz-Canel stated. “Cuba needs him, providing ideas and proposals for the revolutionary cause, orienting and alerting us about any error or deficiency, teaching us, and always ready to confront imperialism.”

Skin care: 5 tips for healthy skin Best skin care — including sun protection and gentle cleansing — can keep your skin healthy and glowing.

By Marissa Stamos Don’t have time for intensive skin care? You can still pamper yourself by acing the basics. Good skin care and healthy lifestyle choices can help delay natural aging and prevent various skin problems. Get started with these five no-nonsense tips.

1. Protect yourself from the sun One of the most important ways to take care of your skin is to protect it from the sun. A lifetime of sun exposure can cause wrinkles, age spots and other skin problems — as well as increase the risk of skin cancer.

For the most complete sun protection: Use sunscreen. Use a broad-spectrum sunscreen with an SPF of at least 15. Apply sunscreen generously, and reapply every two hours — or more often if you›re swimming or perspiring.

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Seek shade. Avoid the sun between 10 a.m. and 4 p.m., when the sun›s rays are strongest.

Wear protective clothing. Cover your skin with tightly woven long-sleeved shirts, long pants and wide-brimmed hats. Also consider laundry additives, which give clothing an additional layer of ultraviolet protection for a certain number of washings, or special sun-protective clothing — which is specifically designed to block ultraviolet rays.

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2. Don’t smoke Smoking makes your skin look older and contributes to wrinkles. Smoking narrows the tiny blood vessels in the outermost layers of skin, which decreases blood flow and makes skin paler. This also depletes the skin of oxygen and nutrients that are important to skin health.

Smoking also damages collagen and elastin — the fibers that give your skin strength and elasticity. In addition, the repetitive facial expressions you make when smoking — such as pursing your lips when inhaling and squinting your eyes to keep out smoke — can contribute to wrinkles.

In addition, smoking increases your risk of squamous cell skin cancer. If you smoke, the best way to protect your skin is to quit. Ask your doctor for tips or treatments to help you stop smoking.

3. Treat your skin gently Daily cleansing and shaving can take a toll on your skin. To keep it gentle: Limit bath time. Hot water and long showers or baths remove oils from your skin. Limit your bath or shower time, and use warm — rather than hot — water.

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Avoid strong soaps. Strong soaps and detergents can strip oil from your skin. Instead, choose mild cleansers.

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Shave carefully. To protect and lubricate your skin, apply shaving cream, lotion or gel before shaving. For the closest shave, use a clean, sharp razor. Shave in the direction the hair grows, not against it.

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Pat dry. After washing or bathing, gently pat or blot your skin dry with a towel so that some moisture remains on your skin.

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Moisturize dry skin. If your skin is dry, use a moisturizer that fits your skin type. For daily use, consider a moisturizer that contains SPF. •

4. Eat a healthy diet A healthy diet can help you look and feel your best. Eat plenty of fruits, vegetables, whole grains and lean proteins. The association between diet and acne isn’t clear — but some research suggests that a diet rich in fish oil or fish oil supplements and low in unhealthy fats and processed or refined carbohydrates might promote younger looking skin. Drinking plenty of water helps keep your skin hydrated.

5. Manage stress Uncontrolled stress can make your skin more sensitive and trigger acne breakouts and other skin problems.

To encourage healthy skin — and a healthy state of mind — take steps to manage your stress. Get enough sleep, set reasonable limits, scale back your to-do list and make time to do the things you enjoy. The results might be more dramatic than you expect.

Why you feel guilty unfriending people you don’t even like Bye bye!

BY ANARKALI AMRIT If we all sought to live our lives like the very best versions of ourselves, we’d treat our social media accounts like we do our closets.

We’d sift through our news feeds like we do old clothes, cutting ties with people we no longer feel connected to.

The fact that there are (usually) real humans behind these accounts complicates this effort.

Namely: Sometimes we feel really, really guilty unfollowing former friends online.

But because we spend so much time online, curating what we see might be worth the effort. To help you get to cleaning up your social media friend list, I asked three psychologists and one sociologist for their theories on why we feel so bad and how we can get over it.

Where does the guilt come from?

“Guilt seems to occur when people feel they might be violating some kind of standard, and they think their behavior’s controllable,” says Michael Andreychik, associate professor of psychology at Fairfield University, whose research includes the study of both positive and negative intergroup relationships.

Though Andreychik notes that we’re excellent at justifying our behaviors to avoid guilt, it’s still uncomfortable to feel that we’ve violated the “implicit standard” of friendship, even when we haven’t been in contact with a friend for years.

Our online lives are our real lives Though our standards for friendship might be rooted in the real world, it’s natural for those standards to inform the way we interact with others online.

“We forget that the virtual world is kind of an extension of the physical world that we live in,” says Evelyn Bilias Lolis, assistant professor of special education and school psychology, also at Fairfield University.

“Individuals just generally have, sometimes, difficulties in setting personal boundaries, and I think that that can happen in your personal life and your professional life, physically, as well as online.”

Social media connections are connections all the same For many of us, not everyone we’re connected with online is someone we’ve met in real life. But as Dustin

Kidd, associate professor of sociology at Temple University tells me, these “weak ties” still play an important role in our “sense of connectedness.”

People need connection, he says, “and when those connections break down, we start to feel isolated from society, and in the age of social media, those social media connections have become part of the way that we feel integrated into the larger society.”

Kidd frames it this way: Imagine you’re following 3,000 people, and you’re looking to cut that number to 500. Might curating your followers to a selection of friends, family, colleagues, and more lead to a more satisfying online experience? Probably! But to get there, he says, you’ll need to evaluate your relationship to 2,500 separate people, and naturally, that’s going to bring up a lot of baggage.

This can include concerns that those people might 1) notice and 2) confront us about it, which brings us to ...

We’re afraid of how unfollowing might affect someone’s perception of us.

Jaclyn Moloney, visiting assistant professor of psychology at the College of William & Mary whose research deals with shame and guilt in close relationships, posits that we fear our connections will notice us unfollowing them, and that doing so will reflect poorly on us.

“Most people like to have a positive self image in general, and I think that applies to their social media presence as well,” she says. “It almost seems like you’re sort of rejecting someone if you unfollow them.” And naturally, it feels worse when we’re unfollowing people we used to know in real life.

“Strangers – you feel bad because you’re severing a social tie even though it’s kind of arbitrary, but when it’s someone you do know, I think that fear of seeming like a bad person for unfollowing might be stronger.”

How to get over it: Now that we’ve tossed out a few theories as to why this process can be so challenging, let’s see what we can do to mitigate the stress associated with cleaning house online.

It’s OK to put yourself first.

In my joint conversation with Lolis and Andreychik, both suggested evaluating our online relationships in terms of their value to us, and their effect on us.

If the content someone is sharing online isn’t, as Lolis says, “serving you in some way that is positive,” then it might be time to reassess that connection.

As Andreychik suggests, it’s fair to sever connections – both the toxic kind and the kind that fade naturally – if they no longer fit into our lives. This, he says, might leave room for us to prioritize relationships that matter to us currently.

“I think we ordinarily do a very good job getting rid of some of those guilt feelings already – before they even get to us – and when we don’t, I think it can be good to try to put things in perspective,” he says.

Lolis echos that sentiment, and suggests a one-to-10 scaling strategy to determine how the loss of a specific social connection might make us feel. (In this case, 10 is a terrible sense of guilt; one is pure relief.)

“That’s a real, tangible thing,” she says. What might in the moment feel like an eight or nine might be closer to a two or a three when placed in perspective with the other stressors in our lives.

The way we share online is changing, and that’s a good thing.

The debate over online privacy isn’t a new topic, but it’s a particularly salient one here, given the datasharing crises currently plaguing major social networks. (The best current example is the Cambridge Analytica scandal, which compromised data from at least 87 million Facebook users.)

Our relationships with these social networks have changed over time and, as Moloney notes, the “social norms” of online friendship are changing, too.

While a decade ago, it was normal and expected to connect with acquaintances and people with whom we share loose connections, Moloney says these norms are changing.

“People are protecting their privacy a little bit more,” she says. “I don’t think they should feel bad [about wanting to limit their online circle]. I think people do, but it’s maybe kind of shifting a little bit.”

Consider the likelihood that whoever you unfollow just won’t care.

If, after all this, we’re still struggling to hit that “Unfollow” button, we should consider the likelihood that no one (no one!) really cares what we do online.

For proof, Moloney points us to “the spotlight effect,” the term for our tendencies to assume that people are closely following what we do.

“We think everyone’s going to notice our behaviors or thoughts or feelings, but really, a lot of times we’re doing things and people don’t even notice it – especially bad behavior or negative things,” she says.

She posits that this happens with social media as well. “We think someone’s going to know if we unfollow them, but in actuality they probably have no clue and maybe don’t even care.”

Comforting, right?

You can do it!

Ultimately, there’s nothing inherently wrong with wanting a better online experience for ourselves. And while getting there might take some self-reflection, it’s a necessary step towards a more pleasant future.

As Lolis put it, “As we mature into adulthood, we hope that we can deal with things that are uncomfortable by first accepting that we’re going to feel uncomfortable, but then justifying the reason that we feel this is good for us.”

It’s like the moment before you rip off a bandage, she says: “You know it’s going to pinch for a minute ...

You’re not going to like that feeling, but you justify it, and then you can move forward with what you need to do.”

7 apps to help you get a peaceful night’s sleep

BY BRIAN DE LOS SANTOS Sleeping is a lot harder than it used to be.

There are countless distractions in this world. So many television shows to watch. So much content to meme.

So many Chrissy Teigen tweets to read. So many Westworld theories to hypothesize. So many minutes to spend watching Drake strut down a dance line in curls.

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, too, enough that sleeping can feel pretty much impossible sometimes. Luckily, the technology that surrounds and distracts us also gives us plentiful tools to help ease ourselves into the land of z’s.

Here are a few apps that will hopefully help you finally get a good night’s sleep.

Your daily night’s rest is broken up into several sleep cycles. Research showsthat repeatedly missing sleep or keeping an inconsistent sleep schedule can mess with your rest overall. These next few apps help you track your sleep cycles to make sure you’re getting the best sleep you can, and waking up every morning refreshed.

1. Sleep Cycle Sleep Cycle tracks your sleep and wakes you up when you’re least groggy.

Sleep Cycle is a nice twist on the standard alarm clock. Using your microphone, it tracks your sleep patterns and wakes you in the lightest phase of sleep so you’re not groggy. You set a window during which to be woken (for example, between 7 and 7:30 a.m.), and it figures the best time to pull you out of your slumber. It even lets you tap your phone twice to snooze.

2. Apple Bedtime Apple’s Bedtime feature is a simple twist on the standard alarm clock. It will lull you out of sleep with a peaceful tone.

If you want more control over your wake-up time, Apple’s Bedtime, available as part of your Clock app, works similarly to Sleep Cycle, but lets you set an exact time for rising. You can select which days of the week you want your alarm to go off (weekdays only, weekends only, etc.). Choose how many hours you want to sleep, and the app will tell you when to head to bed to Wake up on time. It will also give you a push notification before your bedtime.

3. Pillow Pillow works like Apple’s Bedtime, but also lets you set an array of timed naps.

Pillow is the perfect app for those who want to know everything they can about the way they’re sleeping.

Like Bedtime and Sleep Cycle, it tracks your sleep and wakes you in a light stage of rest. But you can also use its features to time different kind of mid-day rests: power naps (15 minutes), recovery naps (45 minutes), and full cycle naps (120 minutes). It’ll give you information about your heart rate, your REM cycles, and how long it took you to get to sleep.

Mindfulness and meditation has been proven to help people who struggle with insomnia. The apps below focus on meditation through various techniques, like music, nature sounds, and voice commands. All are aimed to help you hit the state of relaxation you need to go to bed.

4. Pzizz

Pzizz will lull you to sleep with some really soothing music that fades out over time.

First: This app looks incredible; its appearance alone is calming! As for the music, think of an incredibly soothing, movie-style soundtrack that you set to fade out after an hour or so to help wind you down before you go to bed. It also offers narration in both male and female voices, but if you find that creepy (which you will), you can shut it off. It also lets you use its music in bursts as a “focus” setting.

5. Headspace: Meditation Headspace makes meditating easy by breaking it up into small, helpful sessions.

The Headspace: Meditation app sets you up with different sessions depending on your goals. It’ll send you push notifications reminding you to meditate throughout the day.

Each session only takes a few minutes. If you’re the kind of person whose mind races before you hit the sack, this app is for you.

6. Calm Calm lets you enjoy a wide range of meditation tutorials, mixing in the sounds of nature to add ambiance.

Like Headspace: Meditation, Calm will soothe your mind right before bed. The sessions are longer, and you can set up programs over time to ease you into zen. The app offers ambient sounds of nature and turns your phone into a giant portrait of a scenic landscape.

The first one I tried was 12 minutes long, and it did an incredible job at helping me calm down. I hadn’t ever tried meditation before. Something about the mix of nature sounds and music really put me in a place of peace. Just make sure to also put your phone on silent; not too long after I finished my session I got a breaking news alert that broke my zen.

7. Podcasts Jason Mantzoukas, June Diane Raphael, and Paul Scheer host the highly entertaining “How Did This Get Made?”

If all else fails, podcasts are always an option. Err on the side of comedy to end the day with a few laughs before sleeping (I highly recommend “How Did This Get Made?”) or something storytelling-based, like This American Life.

Remember to use the sleep timer at the bottom of the app to make sure a long podcast doesn’t wake you once you fall asleep.

Even remote Arctic sea ice is teeming with plastic litter

BY MATTHEW KAUFMAN

In 2014, scientists clad in thick neon orange suits stepped off a research vessel and visited five different patches of pristine-looking Arctic sea ice. As these researchers discovered, the blinding white ice in the remote north looks awfully pure, but its appearance is deceiving.

After removing cores of ice from the frozen ground, the research team found it contained up to 12,000 tiny to microscopic bits of plastic, some from cigarette filters, some from paint, and others that were degraded pieces of common litter. The amount of plastic found was over double the numbers previously seen in Arctic sea ice.

The research, published Tuesday in Nature Communications, shows that Arctic sea ice doesn’t just temporarily trap plastic pollution; the drifting and melting ice cover can also transport this microscopic litter to other oceans, where it melts and enters a new food web.

“In many ways, plastics have stopped surprising us,” Jennifer Lavers, a research scientist at the University of Tasmania’s Institute for Marine and Antarctic Studies, said in an interview. “We now know that plastics are

ubiquitous. They’re found from the surface to the deepest depths,” she said. Lavers was not involved in the new study.

It’s not as if there’s been a sudden spike in the amount of plastic particles in the Arctic ocean — it’s been accumulating there for decades. Rather, the researchers used a more precise method of observing all the plastic fragments in the ice, even pieces just one-sixth the width of a human hair (11 micrometers).

This ability to see an unprecedented number of microplastics in the ice was still somewhat eye-opening for researchers.

“Overall we were surprised by these high numbers, although, by using this approach, we discovered plastic particles that were only 11 micrometers across, which might partly explain the extremely high numbers we found,” Ilka Peeken, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute’s Helmholtz Center for Polar and Marine Research and lead author of the study, said in an email.

The researchers used a specialized camera to peer into the sea ice and identify microplastic particles, twothirds of which were thinner than a human hair. Specifically, the team employed an infrared spectrometer, which involves shooting an invisible type of light (infrared) into the ice sample and then analyzing the wavelengths that bounce back off the particles. Each type of plastic reflects a different “fingerprint” of light, telling scientists what type of plastics were trapped in the ice.

About half the plastics were of the same six types, which included packing materials, a material used to make cigarette filters (cellulose acetate), paints, and nylon.

Where did the plastics come from?

There were two major sources of microplastic pollution, and the first is well known: the Great Pacific Garbage Patch.

Although it’s not so much a “patch” as it is an area with lots of floating litter, it’s undoubtedly huge, and growing. The patch is now over twice the size of Texas and is rich in the most common type of plastic, called polyethylene. This sturdy plastic was abundant in some ice floes, so the team suspects these Garbage Patch particles drifted by Alaska through the tempestuous Bering Strait and into the Arctic, where they ultimately froze into the ice.

The paint and nylon particles, though, are believed to come from Siberian seas in the Arctic itself. The paint likely comes from thick-hulled vessels and the nylon from fishing nets. “These findings suggest that both the expanding shipping and fishing activities in the Arctic are leaving their mark,” Peeken said.

As the Arctic continues to experience record warmth and historic lows in sea ice cover — both in summer and winter — more of the sea becomes navigable, and accordingly, new shipping lanes open up. This means more shipping traffic — and more microplastic pollution.

Will these plastics enter the food web?

The Arctic Ocean is connected to both the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans, as well as regional seas, making the fate of liberated plastics from melting ice a key question for scientists to answer. Peeken suspects the plastics will have various fates.

One of these, she said, is sinking to the sea floor. Algae and bacteria tend to stick to the small plastics,

weighing them down. Researchers have already found high concentrations of plastics embedded in sea floors around the world. But this doesn›t mean the plastics get sequestered down there for good. Sea creatures commonly eat off the sea floor, so plastics could still enter the food web after sinking.

Or, said Peeken, marine creatures could simply swallow floating plastics after the ice melts, and the plastics could then be incrementally passed up the food chain.

It’s clear how large plastic debris harms, and can kill, sea life. In February, for instance, a dead sperm whale washed up onto a Spanish beach. Inside the whale’s stomach, scientists found 64 pounds of trash, which they believe caused a deadly internal inflammation.

Microplastics, however, have the potential to harm anything that eats, not just the largest denizens of the ocean.

“Microplastics have opened the floodgates,” said Lavers. Everything from tiny, shrimp-like krill to massive whales are now at risk, she said.

“Wildlife has been adapted to identify things in the ocean,” said Lavers. “And if they can see it, they can eat it.”

It’s not fully understood, though, how microplastics might harm marine or human life, said Peeken. So far, the research is inconsistent, and as is common, more needs to be done.

Peeken noted that fish exposed to microplastics have shown behavioral disorders and inflammatory reactions in muscle tissue. But other research showed no effect on marine life, as the small plastics just passed through the animals, she said.

Still, Lavers said this is no excuse to ignore the growing plastic pollution problem. Plastic never goes away, but just continues to break down into smaller pieces. For this reason, even individual actions, like throwing away a plastic bottle, are consequential. That bottle, she said, can become 10,000 imperceptible particles, floating in the sea.

“Just because you can’t see it, doesn’t mean it’s not there,” she said.

Wood Burning is Now Carbon Neutral Says EPA! Y7 Humanities Staff Little remains but stumps and puddles in what was once a bottomland hardwood forest on the banks of the Roanoke River in northeastern North Carolina.

Under a new Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) policy unveiled on Monday, burning forest products, known as biomass, will now be considered a «carbon neutral» fuel source.

The EPA’s action, which EPA administrator Scott Pruitt announced before an audience of Georgia timber industry leaders, for now settles the question of whether chopping down trees, turning them into wood pellets, and then shipping them to power plants where they’re burned for fuel will be counted as a renewable source of fuel like solar panels or wind turbines.

This action comes before the agency’s own Scientific Advisory Board could decide on how to account for the emissions of carbon dioxide, which is the main long-lived greenhouse gas responsible for global warming. Proponents of this policy, such as Pruitt, argue that regrowing forests after they are cut down absorbs carbon dioxide, and therefore balances out the emissions from cutting down and burning trees in the first place.

“Today’s announcement grants America’s foresters much-needed certainty and clarity with respect to the carbon neutrality of forest biomass,” Pruitt said in a press release.

While Pruitt and other proponents of counting wood-derived bioenergy as carbon neutral are right that trees grow back, and can become net absorbers, or “sinks,” of carbon again, the problem involves a mismatch in timescales. A forest that’s been cut down for wood pellets that are burned in a power plant in England, for example, might take 100 years to grow back to its full carbon absorbing potential. During that time, more carbon dioxide emissions would’ve caused global warming to worsen, with irreversible impacts.

Globally, forests absorb about one-third of annual human-caused carbon emissions, and in the U.S. that figure is about 11.2 percent, the EPA said. Cutting forests and burning them for energy would reduce that amount of absorption at a time when countries are struggling to cut emissions steeply enough to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, or 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit, above preindustrial levels by 2100.

In fact, a report last year from the UK-based Chatham House think tank found that, when emissions and carbon absorption are fully accounted for, along with the emissions from transporting wood pellets to power plants, bioenergy involves about as much carbon emissions as coal. Burning wood to produce steam for electricity may even be 50 percent more carbon intensive than coal per unit of electricity produced, the report found.

According to William Moomaw, a scientist specializing in forests’ role in climate change at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy at Tufts University, the EPA’s decision was made with “zero consultation” with agency scientists or its Science Advisory Board. “It’s pretty amazing,” he said, of the process that went into the policy announcement.

The EPA decision gives a boost to U.S. foresters that are clear-cutting forests to export wood pellets to Europe, which is the largest market for bioenergy. It also clears the path for more wood-burning within the U.S. “Between this and the Europeans it means no chance of staying within the 2-degree limit,” Moomaw said in an interview, “It’s just not possible.”

“It’s a bad idea because anything that has carbon in it produces carbon dioxide when you burn it,” he said.

“This is horrific.”

In a statement, Andres Villegas, the president and CEO of the Georgia Forestry Association said that EPA’s announcement, “Reflects the clear scientific consensus on forest biomass.”

“The Agency’s recognition of biomass as a renewable, carbon neutral source of energy will maintain and enhance markets for small-diameter trees, which encourages landowners to invest in forest health, and ultimately, to keep their land in trees,” Villegas said.

However, the lack of consensus on the EPA’s own Science Advisory Board indicates how controversial bioenergy policies are in the scientific community, with many researchers sharing Moomaw’s view that forests should be left intact, and renewables such as solar and wind should be encouraged instead.

Scientists and environmentalists who oppose the new policy say that there are few guarantees that landowners will maintain the land in such a way to allow forests to grow back to the exact state they’re in today,

and in fact climate change itself may make that impossible to do.

The scale of the bioenergy trade is growing, however. The British alone are spending about $1 billion a year to import wood pellets from the U.S., and are counting it as a carbon neutral form of energy, Moomaw said.

The U.S. has been exporting about 5 million tons of wood pellets per year, mostly from forests in Georgia and the Carolinas.

Moomaw pointed out that even if the forests regrow, by the time they will again be absorbing comparable amounts of carbon dioxide to today’s intact forests, it will be too late for the climate.

“If it regrows and we did get to climate neutrality sometime maybe 100 years from now the climate would have irreversibly changed a number of things,” he said. “The carbon dioxide in the air will have warmed the planet... When the tree regrows the glacier doesn’t regrow,” he said. “The climate change effects are irreversible.”

“Carbon neutrality is not climate neutrality.”

Amazon Trunk If you feel that giving Amazon access to your car is a good idea, this service could be for you.

BY RACHEL KRAUS Amazon is taking its relationship with its customers to the next level.

On Tuesday, Amazon announced that it is extending its Amazon Key delivery service from homes to personal vehicles.

With Amazon Key In-Car, Amazon couriers will be able to deliver packages inside signed up customers’ cars.

Amazon Key In Car isn’t available to everyone yet.

It is enabled in 2015 or newer General Motors or Volvo vehicles equipped with cloudconnected technologies (OnStar and Volvo on Call, respectively).

It’s only accessible to Prime members, and it has launched in 37 cities; Amazon customers can check whether they qualify here.

Customers can sign up their vehicles through the Amazon Key app. Then, while shopping on Amazon, they can select their car as their chosen delivery method whenever they want to. Cars have to be parked within a two-block radius of a specified address, and can’t be in a multi-level, underground, or restricted-access parking garage.

Amazon Key In-Car is an expansion of Amazon Key, which let couriers deliver packages directly inside people’s homes using keypad and smart locks and cameras. With Amazon Key, customers had to purchase the enabled keypads and cameras to qualify. But Amazon Key In-Car is available to anyone with OnStar or Volvo On Call access.

“Customers have also told us they love features like keyless guest access and being able to monitor their front door from anywhere with the Amazon Key App,” Peter Larsen, Amazon vice president of delivery technology, said in a statement. “In-car delivery gives customers that same peace of mind and allows them to take the Amazon experience with them. And, with no additional hardware or devices required, customers can start ordering in-car delivery today.”

Amazon has built in a number of safety features — which is a good thing considering the security hiccoughs they’ve already experienced with Amazon Key. In February of this year, an Amazon customer found an Amazon delivery man walking around his bedroom. And in November, security researchers found that a flaw in Amazon Key cameras made it vulnerable to being knocked out in an attack.

Cameras aren’t available with Amazon Key In-Car. But customers will be able to monitor the delivery process stepby-step from their own devices. A delivery person’s request to unlock goes through Amazon, then to OnStar or Volvo On Call. And couriers won’t be able to move on to their next delivery until they have scanned the package confirming delivery, and locked the vehicle back up.

Amazon, GM, and Volvo said that delivery people won’t be able to turn on or access any other electric features once they have access to the car. Volvo said that its cars equipped with Volvo On Call still need a physical key to actually drive it. GM said that OnStarequipped vehicles also require a key to drive anywhere. And, additionally, that the capability for Amazon couriers to lock and unlock vehicles is completely isolated from the rest of OnStar’s services.

love it.

“Select customers” have already had early access to the feature, and Amazon shockingly reports that they

So, if you trust Amazon enough to give it access to your home (as well as all of your data!), Amazon Key InCar could be an even more convenient option for you. .

How Can You Tell a Great Leader When You See One? Look for This 1 Uncommon Sign This is the stuff of which legacies are made, careers advance, and companies ultimately flourish.

Many of us have to make decisions that define who we are. It›s often arriving at the crossroads of choosing between towing the line or doing the difficult, unpopular thing. And sometimes, doing what you know is the right thing may lead to quitting a job, firing someone, severing a partnership, and even divorcing a spouse.

For leaders in work cultures that thrive, this idea of “doing the right thing” means walking the higher road of integrity and “moral authority.”

This is the stuff of which legacies are made, careers advance, and companies ultimately flourish. It should always be a non-negotiable. But there is a hard prerequisite.

The best leaders display their characters in full view To reach that state of loyalty where people trust you at your every word requires the daily act of exposing your values, beliefs, convictions, and morals to others in close quarters. When your actions are observed, and you know you can trust your own actions out in the open, your reputation is upheld. People never question your decisions or challenge you on an issue that opposes your character; they know where your stand.

Unfortunately, character can be fleeting at times and anyone is at risk from falling off the wagon. Warren Buffett once wrote this little gem of a statement in one of his annual letters to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders years back: «It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you›ll do things differently.»

Anyone’s reputation, whole career, or success can quickly fall like a house of cards, no matter the hard effort made or accolades won over the years. Just ask Martin Winterkorn, the former chief executive of Volkswagen, who resigned following the embarrassing diesel emissions deception and cover-up, for which he admitted responsibility.

Without character running through your veins as the source of your decision-making process, and without integrity as your internal GPS system navigating you through life, you’re going to eventually fail.

Working in integrity means that you don’t question your character, especially when the choice isn’t easy.

In his book, Uncommon, Hall of Fame football coach Tony Dungy writes «Integrity--the choice between what’s convenient, and what’s right.”

Character means staying true to yourself and your values, even when you’re faced with serious consequences for the right choices that you’re making--like, perhaps, losing a job. Is your character willing to take that hit? When you listen to your heart and make choices aligned with character, you simplify your life and live in peace.

Final thoughts Most of us have had some type of character and trust issue at one time or another in our lives which may have held us back. That doesn’t make you bad, broken, or inadequate. It just means you are human, and you’re forgiven. The good news is that we all can turn our past failures and shortcomings into opportunities to grow our character, develop trust with others, and build leadership capacity to influence people to do great things.

The Facebook Problem

By Dinah Rashid Its power to influence users makes Facebook a tool for “mass population control,” and Mark Zuckerberg’s utopian goals only increase the danger.

Mark Zuckerberg’s marathon date with Congress is over. It might as well never have happened.

For two days, Facebook’s CEO stuck to his bland talking points, claimed a degree of ignorance about his company’s operations that strains credulity, and made sure to preface every answer with “Senator” or “Congresswoman.” And for two days, no one landed a punch on him, for all the predictable reasons.

Politicians eager to appear tough cut off Zuckerberg’s answers, gifting him the opportunity to keep his mouth shut. They asked questions that felt like gotchas but weren’t, like Senator Dick Durbin’s grandstanding demand for the name of the hotel Zuckerberg was staying in. They betrayed a deep ignorance of how Facebook, and the internet in general, works, inviting Zuckerberg to deploy set-piece responses from deep within his comfort zone. («Senator, actually, Facebook doesn›t sell anyone›s data ... «) And that›s when they weren›t breaking character to thank Facebook for making so much money off its users and deplore their own jobs as regulators.

But there’s a deeper reason no one on Capitol Hill was able to call out Facebook in a way that stuck. No one there truly understands what makes Facebook, among all the big tech companies, uniquely dangerous.

Almost no one anywhere does.

Understandably, in the wake of revelations that a shady firm working for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign got backdoor access to as many as 87 million Facebook profiles, much of the questioning focused on Facebook›s privacy policies. But Facebook isn›t alone in vacuuming up all the data on consumers it can legally get its hands on.

Google amasses intel about its users at least as sensitive as anything Facebook knows, and considerably more of it. (When someone wants to know if that weird sore might be from an STD, that’s a query for a search window, not a status update.) Apple can guess where you’re going before you even get in your car by tracking your iPhone’s location. Amazon can literally hear what’s going on in your living room--or your bedroom, if you have an Echo smart speaker in there.

What sets Facebook apart isn’t the data it collects. It’s that it collects all this data on its users while simultaneously seeking to influence their behavior. No other company is doing both of these things on a scale remotely close to Facebook, and mixing the two of them is like combining nitric acid and glycerol: The result is something hard to handle safely.

Every product changes its users’ behavior in some way; that’s practically what it means to be a product. But while Facebook is very good at engineering behaviors that are good for its business--adding more friends, sharing more information with them, spending more time interacting with their content--it doesn’t stop there. The company has also induced users to vote who otherwise wouldn’t have. It got people to become organ donors. Now it’s trying to get people to become more active in their local organizations and support their local newspapers.

None of these things sounds terribly sinister. Rather, they’re expressions of a vaguely utopian worldview that infects much of Zuckerberg’s thinking. Because he thinks “human nature is basically positive,” if more people express their ideas or vote or volunteer, the results will ipso facto be basically positive. But Zuckerberg himself has said being too “focused on the positive” for the first 10 years of Facebook’s existence blinded the company to much of the abuse it was enabling as well as to emergent effects of social media like hyperpolarization.

And Facebook doesn’t even stop at modifying behavior. It tinkers with users’ thoughts and emotions as well. A notorious “emotional manipulation” study showed that the company could make users feel better or worse by altering the contents of their News Feeds. Recently, Facebook announced it will tweak its algorithms to encourage more «meaningful interactions» between friends because those cause its users to experience positive emotions, whereas passive content consumption leaves them feeling worse afterward.

Francois Chollet, a computer scientist who works on deep learning at Google, believes Facebook’s ability to both measure and alter its users’ behavior is dangerous, raising the specter of “mass population control.”

That’s because machine learning algorithms--an area where both Google and Facebook have invested heavily, and which Facebook uses to fine-tune the content of each user’s News Feed--are highly effective at connecting inputs and outputs in a recursive optimization loop. “The human mind is a static, vulnerable system that will come increasingly under attack from ever-smarter A.I. algorithms that will simultaneously have a complete view of everything we do and believe, and complete control of the information we consume,” Chollet tweeted.

Given Zuckerberg’s fuzzy good intentions, there’s no reason to think he’d ever dream of using power like this for anything other than good. That’s scary enough. We’ve already seen how a technology intended to make the world “more open and connected” instead divided it up into hostile tribes. Whatever laws Congress does or doesn’t pass in the wake of Zuckerberg’s testimony, he’ll remain subject to the law of unintended consequences. The only way to diminish the danger is to diminish the power.