Exercise prescription shows promise in fighting ‘chemo brain’

New research digs into the question of whether exercise can help with “chemo brain.”

Researchers recommended a tailored, scientifically validated exercise program to individuals receiving chemotherapy for cancer, and those who were on a two-week chemotherapy schedule and followed the exercise prescription were able to maintain their walking-step goals, use resistance bands, and stay mentally sharper compared to patients who did not exercise.

Led by Karen Mustian and Po-Ju Lin from the Wilmot Cancer Institute at the University of Rochester, the nationwide study on exercise and cancer is important because:

• Up to 75% of cancer patients report cancer-related cognitive difficulties or “chemo brain.” What is chemo brain? Patients report general brain fog, and trouble managing money, medications, or maintaining a household, for example. Although there is no gold standard treatment for chemo brain, studies have shown that consistent exercise may reduce it and improve executive functioning during and after cancer treatment.
• This study builds on prior research at Wilmot and elsewhere, showing that patients need only undertake mild-to-moderate exercise during cancer treatment to gain benefits. Exercise has an anti-inflammatory effect and promotes a healthy immune system, research confirms.
• In collaboration with American College of Sports Medicine exercise professionals, Mustian developed the exercise prescription (called EXCAP) used in this study. It was designed to provide safe exercise during chemotherapy, and to be practical, low-cost, home-based, and personalized to account for a patient’s physical abilities. It includes progressive aerobic walking and resistance band exercise prescriptions.

The study appears in JNCCN—Journal of the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

How exercise helps

“This is a safe and simple exercise prescription that can be an important part of supportive care for anyone going through chemotherapy,” says Mustian, dean’s professor of Surgery, Cancer Control, and associate director of Population Science at Wilmot.

“Cancer care providers should educate their patients about home-based options such as walking and resistance band exercises as part of optimal care, and when needed they should refer patients to exercise oncology specialists can tailor programs to individual capabilities,” she says.

In this phase 3 clinical trial, researchers reported secondary outcomes from an earlier trial that enrolled nearly 700 patients from 20 community oncology clinics across the US, who were all receiving chemotherapy for the first time for a variety of cancers.

They were randomized into two groups: standard care without exercise, or the six-week exercise prescription while undergoing chemotherapy. All participants recorded daily steps and exercises.

Prior to receiving chemotherapy, all patients walked an average of 4,000 to 4,500 steps a day. (During chemotherapy, people without a formal exercise prescription typically walk less due to fatigue, weakness, nausea, or other factors, the researchers note.)

In this study, many individuals in the exercise group were able to maintain their usual daily steps while taking chemotherapy, while those who were in the standard-care-without-exercise group reduced their daily steps by 53%.

Patients who exercised while on chemo reported they were also mentally sharper.

Lin believes that having a structured exercise prescription seems to be essential to a good outcome.

“It was striking to find that without a structured exercise prescription, patients receiving chemotherapy reduce their daily walking by half and experience notable increases in problems with thinking, memory, and mental fatigue,” says Lin, a research assistant professor and member of Wilmot’s Cancer Prevention and Control research program.

Why did some patients benefit Mmore?

The benefits of exercise while on chemo applied mostly to patients who received their treatment every two weeks, as opposed to patients who were getting chemotherapy on three- or four-week cycles.

Scientists are not sure why.

“This needs to be researched further, but speculating, the patients on two-week cycles of chemotherapy may be getting drugs that have different toxicities and less-severe side effects, which may allow them to remain more active,” Mustian says.

“Once a person starts lowering their activity levels, it is more difficult to get back to their baseline activity or maintain it. It may be possible that patients receiving chemotherapy on the three- or four-week cycles were experiencing more toxicity and more side effects.”

Lin emphasizes that regardless of the chemotherapy schedule, “non-pharmacologic” interventions, such as exercise, cognitive training, and mindfulness, are important for managing brain fog because they are safe, easy to use, and can often be delivered at low cost or even at home compared with expensive or clinic-based treatments.

The study was carried out through a unique mechanism: The University of Rochester/National Cancer Institute Community Oncology Research Program (NCORP) Research Base, which is a nationwide translational science network to conduct clinical trials.

Source: University of Rochester

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Is March Madness bracket success all luck?

Is picking a good March Madness bracket skill or luck?

In psychology, the concept of the illusion of control refers to the phenomenon where people believe their choices strongly affect an outcome, even though chance is doing most of the work.

The illusion of control is on full display during March Madness, where millions of people pick favorites and upsets as they fill out their bracket. So-called experts will offer their picks, and their choices feel smart but, in the end, luck still decides most of what happens. One bad game, one lucky shot, one untimely injury can bust a bracket.

Are people who accurately predict game outcomes good at what they do? Albert Cohen, director of Michigan State University’s graduate certificate in sports analytics, says that may be the case, but luck always factors into success in picking a bracket.

Cohen is director of the Actuarial Science Program, as well as a senior academic specialist in the College of Natural Science’s math department and the statistics and probability department. And while it may seem counterintuitive, statistics and actuarial science are more closely related to sports than you might think.

Here, Cohen digs into the illusion of control and how it applies to March Madness:

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Why people still care about the Oscars

A film professor has answers for you about the enduring influence of the Oscars.

“And the Oscar goes to…”

Those are the words many will tune in to hear on March 15 for the 98th Academy Awards. But the number of people viewing the broadcast is far below the peak—55 million watched in 1998 when Titanic won best picture. Last year the ceremony drew 18 million viewers.

Still, the Academy Awards haven’t lost their hold on us.

Below, David Tarleton, professor of film and chair of the film and media arts department in the College of Visual and Performing Arts at Syracuse University, breaks down the Oscars’ enduring influence and changes happening within the Academy to draw in viewers.

Still the pinnacle

Tarleton says the Oscars’ cultural influence starts with what the awards do for the people who win them.

“It makes people’s careers,” he says. “There are lots of cases of people where the Oscar is central to why an actor or filmmaker had the career they did. Frankly, even being nominated for an Oscar makes an enormous difference in terms of box office. That’s been true throughout the history of motion pictures, and it’s certainly true even today.”

An Oscar win can mean doubling your salary or more on your next project, he says.

“In the entertainment industry, it’s still enormously important and significant,” Tarleton says. “It’s still very much the pinnacle of awards.”

Tarleton says there have always been movies very few people see, until they win an Academy Award. The 2022 film Everything Everywhere All At Once, which started as a small project might have come and gone quietly, he says. Instead, it became an indie hit and took home seven Oscars.

“It was in the context of the Oscars that it became as big as it did,” he says.

More than movies

There’s no question the way people engage with the Oscars has evolved with the media landscape, Tarleton says. There are viewers who only tune in for the elements around the event—the ecosystem around the red carpet and the fashion or memes or highlights the next day.

“There’s all these other components to it,” he says. “The movies themselves are only part of it.”

There also is a generational divide for viewers that Tarleton says rivals the cultural age split seen in the 1960s.

“There’s this enormous difference between younger people and older people in terms of media consumption and who is famous to you?” he says. “Your average 50-year-old probably doesn’t know who Mr. Beast is, but your average 14-year-old certainly does. The opposite is also true—to what extent are movie stars important celebrities to younger people?”

The divide is part of a broader shift for the film industry that goes beyond the Oscars, he says. Theatrical attendance has been declining across all demographics for years, and the rise of streaming has fundamentally changed how people relate to movies.

“While I still personally appreciate watching movies in the theater, when you have a 75-inch TV and a decent sound system at home—with no need to pay for parking, a babysitter, or $18 popcorn—the case for leaving the house gets harder to make,” Tarleton says.

Yet, the Oscars still require a theatrical release as a condition for eligibility. Tarleton says he doesn’t see the Motion Picture Academy changing the requirement any time soon, since it’s part of how it maintains the allure of the Oscars’ exclusivity.

“I see the Academy more likely wanting to limit eligibility to theatrically released films more, to make it a little bit harder probably, rather than easier,” Tarleton says.

“Whether or not that works for them, we’ll have to see in the long term. Because the challenge is, if people aren’t going to the movie theater, are not seeing these movies in that way as much, does that make the Oscars even less relevant? That’s the danger.”

Evolving carefully

Tarleton says it’s clear the Academy knows it has work to do. Starting in 2029, the awards show will be exclusively streamed on YouTube. New categories have been added, and there’s awareness around pacing and creating moments during the ceremony that translate to social media.

The Oscars have also become more international, with non-English language films appearing more regularly—a shift Tarleton says reflects real changes in Academy membership and voting.

The Oscars are a measure of what members of the Academy thought best during any given year. Because of how the Academy typically admits new members—Oscar nominees can automatically join, or by being sponsored by existing members, not application—the average age of its membership is generally older. Which means the tastes tend to be more artistically conservative.

“Very young people aren’t usually represented at all, because generally it’s people who have gotten to a certain point in their careers, doing the kind of work that’s getting nominated, in order to be invited to join the Academy,” Tarleton says.

But recent movements, like the #OscarsSoWhite campaign, also brought in new members.

“There’s been a number of things that have opened up the Academy to a more diverse group of people, and that really helps in terms of the kind of work that’s being seen,” Tarleton says.

Whether the work the Academy is doing is enough to bring in new, younger audiences, remains to be seen.

“There’s no question that viewership is less in terms of real numbers, but it doesn’t mean that it’s not still significant in terms of cultural prestige or the aura around it,” Tarleton says. “Hollywood is very good at selling glamour.”

Source: Syracuse University

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How can you get rid of a phobia?

An expert has answers for you about what phobias are and how you can get rid of them.

In the Alfred Hitchcock classic film Vertigo, the protagonist John “Scottie” Ferguson, played by James Stewart, is plagued with acrophobia, or an extreme fear of heights. This condition impairs him to such a degree that he is forced to retire from his job as a police officer, and it creates emotional turmoil central to the movie’s plot.

Phobias.

Many suffer from them. Whether it is a fear of spiders (arachnophobia) or fear of enclosed spaces (claustrophobia) or fear of rats (musophobia), as many as 13% of the US population are affected by them.

Here, Jill Ehrenreich-May, professor in the psychology department at the University of Miami and director of the Child and Adolescent Mood and Anxiety Treatment program, explains more about phobias:

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Team turns DNA into a rewritable hard drive

Researchers are developing a rewritable DNA hard drive.

Around the world, scientists are exploring an unexpected solution to the growing data crisis: storing digital information in synthetic DNA. The idea is simple but powerful—DNA is one of the most compact, durable information systems on Earth.

But one issue has held the field back. Once data is written into DNA, it can’t be changed.

Now, researchers at the University of Missouri are helping solve that problem by transforming DNA from a one-time medium into a rewritable digital hard drive.

“DNA is incredible—it stores life’s blueprint in a tiny, stable package,” Li-Qun “Andrew” Gu, a professor of chemical and biomedical engineering at Mizzou’s College of Engineering, says.

“We wanted to see if we could store and rewrite information at the molecular level faster, simpler, and more efficiently than ever before.”

Why DNA?

Today’s computers store information as a series of zeros and ones. DNA-based data storage goes a step further by turning those bits into sequences of letters—A, C, G, and T—the same building blocks that make up DNA.

To store digital files in DNA, scientists translate the zeros and ones that make up photos, videos, and other data into sequences of those four chemical letters. Machines then build synthetic strands carrying that exact pattern.

DNA’s advantages are striking. It can hold huge amounts of information in tiny volumes—theoretically, all the world’s data could fit into something the size of a shoebox. When kept dry and cool, it remains stable for thousands of years. And storing data this way requires far less energy than running massive data centers.

Until now, however, DNA storage has been permanent. Once the data is encoded, it can’t be updated or reused—a major limitation for anything beyond long-term archiving.

That’s where Gu’s team comes in. They’ve developed a method that allows data stored in DNA to be erased and overwritten repeatedly. This rewritability is essential for any storage system meant for regular, everyday use.

Their method allows DNA to function less like a static archive and more like a modern hard drive—one with extraordinary storage density and longevity.

Retrieving the information requires reading the DNA sequence. The Mizzou team is developing a compact electronic device paired with a molecular-scale detector called a nanopore sensor. As the DNA passes through the sensor, it creates subtle electrical changes that software translates back into zeros and ones and, ultimately, the original data file.

Mizzou’s system is faster, simpler, and more environmentally friendly than existing methods. In the long term, Gu hopes to shrink the device into something about the size of a USB thumb drive.

High-capacity and ultra-secure

DNA stores information in three dimensions rather than on a flat computer chip, giving it unparalleled storage density. And because it exists as a physical molecule rather than a constantly connected electronic system, it offers additional protection against hackers.

“Think of it like a super-secure safe deposit box for your digital life,” Gu says. “DNA storage could protect everything from personal memories and important documents to scientific data and corporate archives—without the added cybersecurity concerns.”

While many research groups are advancing DNA storage, Mizzou’s work moves the field closer to a practical, rewritable system—a key milestone in making DNA a long-term replacement for some of today’s energy-hungry storage technologies.

The study appears in PNAS Nexus.

Source: University of Missouri

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Listen: Why is protein having a moment?

If you’ve walked the aisles of a grocery store, scrolled through social media, watched television, or set foot in a fast-casual restaurant chain in recent months, you know that protein is having its moment.

So, why are brands pushing protein? An International Food Information Council study found that 70% of adults are looking to increase their protein intake. But as it makes its way into more products than ever before, is it too much of a good thing?

Lesley Baradel is a registered dietitian, nutritionist, and lecturer in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech. In this episode of Generating Buzz, she digs into the protein-packed trend, with implications ranging from health and wellness to marketing and how the rise of GLP-1s factors into the increased focus on the macronutrient:

Georgia Tech · Generating Buzz: A Protein-Packed Industry

Source: Georgia Tech

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Life forms can catch rides to other planets on asteroid debris

Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets—including Earth—and survive, a new study finds.

The work demonstrates that a certain hardy bacterium easily withstands extreme pressure comparable to an ejection from Mars after an asteroid hit, as well as the inhospitable conditions it would face during the ensuing interplanetary journey.

The study in PNAS Nexus suggests that microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life. The work also has significant implications for planetary protection and space missions.

“Life might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another,” says senior author K.T. Ramesh, an engineer who studies how materials behave in extreme conditions.

“This is a really big deal that changes the way you think about the question of how life begins and how life began on Earth.”

Impact craters cover the surfaces of most bodies in the solar system. Mars, a planet that could harbor life, is one of the most cratered celestial bodies. We know asteroid strikes can launch material across space—and Martian meteorites have been found on Earth.

However, scientists have long wondered if life forms could also be launched from an asteroid impact. Tucked inside ejected debris, they might land on another planet—a theory called the lithopanspermia hypothesis.

Previous experiments to test the theory have been inconclusive, and targeted organisms widely found on Earth, rather than a life form that would suit the extreme environments of other planets.

To study how a microorganism would realistically handle the stress of a planetary ejection, the team devised a way to replicate the pressure and a singular biological model.

The team chose to test Deinococcus radiodurans, a desert bacterium found in the high deserts of Chile that is notorious for its ability to survive the most inhospitable, space-like conditions—everything from extreme cold and dryness to intense radiation. It has a thick shell and a remarkable ability to self-repair.

“We do not yet know if there is life on Mars, but if there is, it is likely to have similar abilities,” Ramesh says.

The experiment simulated the pressure of an asteroid strike and ejection from Mars by sandwiching the microbe between metal plates and then firing a projectile at it from a gas gun. The projectile hit the plates at speeds up to 300 mph, generating 1 to 3 Gigapascals of pressure.

For perspective, the pressure at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the Earth’s oceans, is a tenth of a Gigapascal. Even the lowest pressure in this experiment is more than ten times that.

After shooting the microbes, the team determined whether they survived and examined the survivors’ genetic material for clues to how they handled the pressure.

The bacteria proved very hard to kill. They survived nearly every test at 1.4 Gigapascal of pressure and 60% at 2.4 Gigapascals of pressure. The cells showed no signs of damage after the lower pressure hits, but after the higher pressure experiments, the team observed some ruptured membranes and internal damage.

“We expected it to be dead at that first pressure,” says lead author Lily Zhao, a graduate student. “We started shooting it faster and faster. We kept trying to kill it, but it was really hard to kill.”

In the end, what did die was the equipment. The steel configuration holding the plates fell apart before the bacteria did.

When asteroids hit Mars, ejected fragments experience a range of pressures, perhaps close to 5 Gigapascals, though some could see much higher. Here the microbe easily survived almost 3, much higher than previously thought possible.

“We have shown that it is possible for life to survive large-scale impact and ejection,” Zhao says. “What that means is that life can potentially move between planets. Maybe we’re Martians!”

The possibility of life spreading between planetary bodies has significant implications for planetary protection and space missions, the team says.

Space mission protocols evaluate the likelihood of life surviving on the target planet. When missions travel to planets that might sustain life, like Mars, there are tight restrictions and safety measures to prevent contaminating the planet with Earth life. And when a mission brings back materials from a planet, there are very strict measures to control the possible release of that life on Earth. Because this work demonstrates that materials from Mars might reach other bodies, particularly its two nearby moons that aren’t currently restricted, the team says policies might need to be reassessed.

Phobos, in particular, orbits so close to Mars that any ejecta that gets there is probably exposed to much less pressure than what is required to get to Earth, the team says.

“We might need to be very careful about which planets we visit,” Ramesh says.

The team next hopes to explore whether repeat asteroid impacts result in hardier bacterial populations—or whether bacteria adapt to this kind of stress. They’d also like to see if other organisms, including fungi, can survive these conditions.

The work was supported by NASA’s Planetary Protection program.

Source: Johns Hopkins University

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