From the Maine State Charter School Commission.
PORTLAND — The Maine State Charter School Commission held the first of three public input sessions on Monday, March 5 in Portland. About 55 members of the public turned out to suggest educational gaps in their regions that charter schools could potentially fill.
Schools that are authentically proficiency-based.
Schools that use project-based learning.
Focus on math and music, and music and language.
Hands-on experiences in areas that interest students.
Schools focused on science, technology, engineering and math (STEM).
Schools that offer more interdisciplinary learning.
The charter school commission's next public input session takes place Thursday, March 8 at United Technologies Center in Bangor from 6:30 to 8 p.m.
For more information about the State Charter School Commission and other public input sessions, visit the commission's website.
Those who are unable to attend a public session are invited to offer their input via email, at scscmaine@gmail.com.


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Raul Ramos Pays It Forward in His Home State of Texas
May 3, 2018 By sgoodacre
photo credit: Simon Goodacre
Helen Wong | Graduate School of Arts and Sciences
Raul Ramos, a fourth-year Ph.D. candidate in Neuroscience, spent the five-hour flight from Boston to Austin, Texas trying to think of what to say to a classroom full of adolescents who had been sentenced to juvenile detention, like he had been once when he was a teenager.
"I was trying to get into the mindset of it all," he says of those nerve-wracking hours before arriving in Austin. "I was trying to remember how I felt when I had been in their shoes." He had put together a talk and a script, but the moment he entered the first classroom at the Austin Alternative Learning Center, all of it went out the window. "Instead of giving a lecture, I had an actual conversation with the kids," says Ramos. "They could relate to me. I was someone who looked like them, talked like them, moved like them. So they listened when I told them about my story and how, despite what they were facing now, their outcomes could be different too."
Ramos first started working with high school students after he moved to Waltham. Anique Olivier-Mason PhD'12, Director of Education, Outreach and Diversity at the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center had arranged "Pizza Talks," a program where graduate students in the sciences visit classrooms at Waltham High School and discuss their decisions to pursue careers in science, their experiences as investigators and their research. The program has been a great success and now serves as the model for similar talks taking place nationally, sponsored by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Ramos volunteered to give a talk when he first heard about the program.
"Waltham High has a large Hispanic student population," says Ramos. "These groups underrepresented in science. I really liked going to speak to them and talking about my own journey and its relation to my identity." AAAS became aware of this community outreach and contacted the university to learn more. Ramos has always been open about the troubles in his own past, so when AAAS were looking for scientists to speak to students in alternative learning centers in Austin, they asked him if he would like to go. "I said yes, of course," says Ramos. "I'm from Texas originally, so I agreed to fly down and talk to the kids."
What began as originally just one or two schools became six upon his arrival in Austin as word got around of his visit. During the trip, Ramos gave sixteen talks and spoke to around two hundred students. "I went to juvie centers, alternative learning centers, drug rehabilitation facilities," he says. "The level of engagement was amazing. For every kid that didn't want to engage, there were a few more who wanted to talk to me and learn about how I'd gotten to where I am. One of the most frequent questions they asked me was, 'Sir, what do I do when I get out of here?' and I would tell them the truth. I told them that once they got out, they would have to actively avoid situations and people that would get them in trouble. I said that if that meant having to hole up in their room to study and get away from it all, then doing that would absolutely be worth it in the long run. Their environment matters."
But even after telling them his advice, Ramos knew that advice alone wasn't going to be enough for many of the kids he was speaking to. "You need a support network," he says. "A lot of these kids don't have that. Some of them are safer in detention than at home. So many of them are angry–why wouldn't they be? They're supposed to become upstanding members of society, but the way the system goes about that is to lock them up and isolate them. That's not how rehabilitation should work."
At some of the facilities he visited, Ramos saw kids as young as eleven or twelve being escorted by armed guards from classroom to classroom despite some of them being barely half his size. For Ramos, the sight was jarring. "It looks like overkill," says Ramos. "I know they're here because they did something wrong, but at the end of the day, they're just kids."
It also struck Ramos, as he made the rounds in each facility, that the kids incarcerated at these centers were all people of color despite Austin being in a majority white part of Texas. "Brandeis is all about recruiting underrepresented minorities into its science programs," he says. However, the challenges of recruiting students of color for doctoral programs in science are significant, and Ramos realized during his trip to Texas that "part of the reason for the absence of black and brown individuals in science was that so many of them, who could potentially be scientists someday, are stuck in juvie–stuck in environments that deprive them of opportunities and healthy role models.
"And people like me that manage to get an education, we make it out and we leave. We come over here to go to college, we leave Laredo [Ramos' hometown], and these kids don't get to have good role models. They make mistakes fueled by a terrible home environment and get stuck in the juvie-to-prison pipeline. They repent and feel bad in juvie, but once they get out, if they don't have a support network, it starts all over again. The system tries them as full adults at seventeen, when they're not even old enough to vote. Things have to change. I want to help make that happen and to show them that right now, there are still opportunities open to them."
Despite all of the system's shortcomings, the alternative learning centers and similar institutions are making a tangible difference. "The system's not perfect," says Ramos. "It's deeply flawed. But things are already better now than when I was in. Back then, I was put in what would conventionally be considered a prison cell. At least most of these kids get an education, space to walk, and are surrounded by people who care about them. Everyone working at the Austin Alternative Learning Center was so motivated and clearly cared about the kids."
Upon his return to Brandeis, Ramos decided that he would dedicate more time to community outreach and consider the possibility of working in science policy after earning his doctorate. He wants to do work that not only has value in the scientific world, but that also actively helps bolster diversity and inclusion in the field, helping fight back against larger societal and institutional structures that disadvantage people of color.
"We need representation to show kids that the journey is possible," says Ramos. "The cards feel like they're stacked almost the entire way through. I'm going to do whatever I have to do to get the message out there to those kids who are hardest to reach and who need to hear from us the most."
Filed Under: labs, Neuroscience Tagged With: grad students, neuroscience, Turrigiano lab
Recycling is good for your brain
August 25, 2016 By division-of-science
If you were able to remember where you put your keys on your way out the door this morning, it's because – somehow – synapses in your brain changed their properties to encode this information and store it until you needed it. This process, known as "synaptic plasticity", is essential for the continuity of our memory and sense of self, and yet we are only beginning to grasp the molecular mechanisms that enable this amazing feat of constant information storage and retrieval. Now a collaborative paper from the Turrigiano and Nelson labs just published in Cell Reports sheds important new light into how experience interacts with the genome to allow synapses to change their strength to store information.
Synapses are the connections between neurons, and it has long been appreciated that information is stored in large part through changes in the strength of these connections. Changes in strength at many synapses are in turn determined by the number of neurotransmitter receptors that are clustered at synaptic sites – the more receptors synapses have, the easier it is for neurons to excite each other to transmit information. Synapses are highly complicated molecular machines that utilize at least 300 different proteins that interact to traffic these receptors to synapses and sequester them there, and exactly how a change in experience alters the function of this nano-machine to enhance the number of synaptic receptors is still a matter of puzzlement.
In this study the Brandeis team devised a way to screen for candidate proteins that are critical for a particular form of synaptic plasticity: "synaptic scaling", thought to be especially important for maintaining brain stability during learning and development. They were able to induce synaptic scaling within specific labelled neurons in the intact mouse brain (layer 4 star pyramidal neurons), and then sort out those labelled neurons from the rest of the brain and probe for changes in gene expression that were correlated with (and potentially causally involved in) the induction of plasticity. This approach produced a small number of candidate genes that were up- or down-regulated during plasticity, to produce more or less of a given protein. The team then went on to show that – when upregulated – one of these candidates (known as µ3A) acts to prevent neurotransmitter receptors from going into the cellular garbage bin (the lysosomes, where proteins are degraded) and instead recycles them to the synapse. Thus increased µ3A flips a switch within cells to enhance receptor recycling, and this in turn increases synaptic strength.
A screen for genes with altered expression during synaptic plasiticity in specific neurons revealed that µ3A plays a critical role in the recycling of AMPA-type neurotransmitter receptors at the synapse. When this protein is upregulated, it prevents receptors from being trafficked into lysosomes, and instead allows them to be recycled back to synapses, increasing synapse number and enhancing synaptic strength.
It turns out that many other forms of synaptic plasticity use the same receptor recycling machinery as synaptic scaling, so it is likely that this mechanism represents an important and general way for neurons to alter synaptic strength. This study also raises the possibility that defects in this pathway might contribute to the genesis of neurological disorders in which the stability of brain circuits is disrupted, such as epilepsy and autism. So next time you complain about having to sort your garbage, consider that your neurons do it all the time – and what's good for the planet turns out to be good for your brain as well.
Steinmetz CC, Tatavarty V, Sugino K, Shima Y, Joseph A, Lin H, Rutlin M, Lambo M, Hempel CM, Okaty BW, Paradis S, Nelson SB, Turrigiano G. Upregulation of μ3A Drives Homeostatic Plasticity by Rerouting AMPAR into the Recycling Endosomal Pathway. Cell reports. 2016.
Filed Under: Biology, Neuroscience Tagged With: lysosomes, Nelson lab, neuroscience, synaptic scaling, Turrigiano lab
Sleep suppresses brain rebalancing
March 18, 2016 By division-of-science
Why humans and other animals sleep is one of the remaining deep mysteries of physiology. One prominent theory in neuroscience is that sleep is when the brain replays memories "offline" to better encode them ("memory consolidation"). A prominent and competing theory is that sleep is important for re-balancing activity in brain networks that have been perturbed during learning while awake. Such "rebalancing" of brain activity involves homeostatic plasticity mechanisms that were first discovered at Brandeis University, and have been thoroughly studied by a number of Brandeis labs including the Turrigiano lab. Now, a study from the Turrigiano lab just published in the journal Cell shows that these homeostatic mechanisms are indeed gated by sleep and wake, but in the opposite direction from that theorized previously: homeostatic brain rebalancing occurs exclusively when animals are awake, and is suppressed by sleep. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that different forms of brain plasticity – for example those involved in memory consolidation and those involved in homeostatic rebalancing – must be temporally segregated from each other to prevent interference.
The requirement that neurons carefully maintain an average firing rate, much like the thermostat in a house senses and maintains temperature, has long been suggested by computational work. Without homeostatic ("thermostat-like") control of firing rates, models of neural networks cannot learn and drift into states of epilepsy-like saturation or complete quiescence. Much of the work in discovering and describing candidate mechanisms continues to be conducted at Brandeis. In 2013, the Turrigiano Lab provided the first in vivo evidence for firing rate homeostasis in the mammalian brain: lab members recorded the activity of individual neurons in the visual cortex of freely behaving rat pups for 8h per day across a nine-day period during which vision through one eye was occluded. The activity of neurons initially dropped, but over the next 4 days, firing rates came back to basal levels despite the visual occlusion. In essence, these experiments confirmed what had long been suspected – the activity of neurons in intact brains is indeed homeostatically governed.
Due to the unique opportunity to study a fundamental mechanism of brain plasticity in an unrestrained animal, the lab has been probing the possibility of an intersection between an animal's behavior and homeostatic plasticity. In order to truly evaluate possible circadian and behavioral influences on neuronal homeostasis, it was necessary to capture the entire 9-day experiment, rather than evaluate snapshots of each day. For this work, the Turrigiano Lab had to find creative computational solutions to recording many terabytes of data necessary to follow the activity of single neurons without interruption for more than 200 hours. Ultimately, these data revealed that the homeostatic regulation of neuronal activity in the cortex is gated by sleep and wake states. In a surprising and unpredicted twist, the homeostatic recovery of activity occurred almost exclusively during periods of activity and was inhibited during sleep. Prior predictions either assumed no role for behavioral state, or that sleeping would account for homeostasis. Finally, the lab established evidence for a causal role for active waking by artificially enhancing natural waking periods during the homeostatic rebound. When animals were kept awake, homeostatic plasticity was further enhanced.
This finding opens doors onto a new field of understanding the behavioral, environmental, and circadian influences on homeostatic plasticity mechanisms in the brain. Some of the key questions that immediately beg to be answered include:
What it is about sleep that precludes the expression of homeostatic plasticity?
How is it possible that mechanisms requiring complex patterns of transcription, translation, trafficking, and modification can be modulated on the short timescales of behavioral state-transitions in rodents?
And finally, how generalizable is this finding? As homeostasis is bidirectional, does a shift in the opposite direction similarly require wake or does the change in sign allow for new rules in expression?
Authors on the paper include postdoctoral fellow Keith Hengen, Neuroscience grad student Alejandro Torrado Pachedo, and Neuroscience undergraduate James McGregor '14 (now in grad school at Emory).
Hengen KB, Torrado Pacheco A, McGregor JN, Van Hooser SD, Turrigiano GG. Neuronal Firing Rate Homeostasis is Inhibited by Sleep and Promoted by Wake. Cell. 2016.
Filed Under: grad students, Neuroscience, postdocs, Undergrads Tagged With: electrophysiology, homeostasis, neuroscience, sleep, Turrigiano lab, Van Hooser lab
Gina Turrigiano Named One of the "30 Most Influential Neuroscientists Alive Today"
August 28, 2014 By DivSciComm
Gina T urrigiano has been named one of the "30 Most Influential Neuroscientists Alive Today" by the Online Psychology Degree Guide.
The guidelines for selecting the neuroscientists include: leadership, applicability (neuroscientists that have created technologies that have improved people's lives); awards & recognition by the international science community and other notable accomplishments such as personal or educational achievements.
Gina Turrigiano is the author of numerous papers, has been awarded a MacArthur Foundation fellowship and the HFSP Nakasone Award, and in 2013 was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.
Filed Under: Biology, Neuroscience Tagged With: awards, faculty awards, neuroscience, neuroscience research, research, Turrigiano lab
Fast-spiking interneurons and the critical period
February 17, 2014 By division-of-science
How do children learn to play instruments and speak languages so much easier than adults, and why does brain damage result in worse outcomes in the mature brain vs. the young brain? These questions are central to the study of how "critical periods" are regulated in the brain.
Electron micrograph from a single 70 nm cross-section through a fast-spiking parvalbumin-containing (gold labeling = white dots) presynaptic terminal forming a synapse (red dots) with a pyramidal soma. Original colors are inverted, contours have been raised and membranous structures are highlighted in aqua for ease of visualization. Presynaptic vesicles (colored ovals) within perisomatic fast spiking terminals mostly cluster within ∼200 nm of the synapse, with a few close enough (≤2 nm) to be deemed docked.
Critical periods in brain development define temporal windows when neuronal physiology and anatomy are most sensitive to changes in sensory input or experience (e.g. sound, touch, light, etc.). The maturation of inhibitory cells that release the neurotransmitter GABA, especially a subset called fast-spiking (FS) interneurons, is thought to gate this period of neuronal 'plasticity' in the mammalian primary visual cortex. However, it has remained unclear what aspects of FS cell development are important for permitting this period of neuronal malleability in the visual cortex. A new paper in Journal of Neuroscience from the Turrigiano lab addresses the question.
To explore how FS cell development might be linked to critical period plasticity, Brandeis postdoc Marc Nahmani and Professor Gina Turrigiano employed a well-established assay for cortical plasticity in visual cortex called monocular deprivation (MD), and measured FS cell connections using confocal and electron microscopy, as well as optogenetic stimulation of the FS cell population (i.e. shining light onto FS cells possessing light-gated channels to make them fire action potentials).
Following up on previous work from the Turrigiano lab (Maffei et al., 2006), they found that MD induces a coordinated increase in FS interneuron to pyramidal cell (the major excitatory output cells of the cortex) pre- and postsynaptic strength. These changes occur if MD is performed during, but not before the critical period in visual cortex, suggesting they may play a role in gating this period of heightened neuronal plasticity. Future studies are aimed at determining the timeline for these changes across the extent of the critical period in visual cortex.
see: Nahmani M, Turrigiano GG (2014) Deprivation-Induced Strengthening of Presynaptic and Postsynaptic Inhibitory Transmission in Layer 4 of Visual Cortex during the Critical Period. Journal of Neuroscience 34:2571-2582.
Filed Under: Biology, Neuroscience, postdocs Tagged With: gaba, interneurons, neurodevelopment, neuroscience research, postdocs, Turrigiano lab, visual cortex
DeRosier wins Distinguished Scientist Award from Microscopy Society of America
Professor Emeritus of Biology (and current Turrigiano lab "postdoc") David DeRosier received the Distinguished Scientist Award (for Biological Science) at this year's annual meeting of the Microscopy Society of America.
story at BrandeisNOW
Filed Under: awards, Biology Tagged With: awards, DeRosier lab, electron microscopy, faculty awards, Turrigiano lab
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This Week in Gluttony
Exclusive wine boutique fills gap for deserving Dallas neighborhood
Ice Cream News
It's reservations-only at this Dallas vegan-friendly ice cream shop
Creative ice cream dish is served in a popcorn box. Photo courtesy of Ice Cream Wasted
A new ice cream business is opening in North Oak Cliff that will give the Bishop Arts District yet another completely unique experience. Called Ice Cream Wasted, it will open at 509 W. Davis St., down the block from Bolsa, where it will take a restaurant-like approach to the ice cream experience, offering sit-down tastings by reservation only.
Owner Bri Calloway is a former chemist who launched the business in 2016. She's been operating out of a shared kitchen in Plano, which she'll depart once she opens her permanent digs in Dallas in July.
"I had this idea back in college," she says. "I was bored as a chemist and decided to start experimenting in my spare time with one of those Cuisinarts where you freeze the bowl in your refrigerator. I did the R&D thing, exploring all of the components of sugar, salt, and water, and I learned how to freeze alcohol."
Creating the flavors was easy, she says. "I have aunts and uncles in the restaurant industry, and I've been cooking since I was 8."
She didn't want to do a scoop shop — "there's a million of those, you can go to Baskin Robbins for that," she says. "I've always been an artist, and I wanted do something that incorporated that along with my chemistry and restaurant background."
One of her creations, called the Golden Cone, has white chocolate cream layered with honey roasted hazelnuts and Guiness stout chocolate sauce wrapped in edible 24-karat gold.
Another called Three-Course Bubble Gum has purple majesty potato ice cream swirled with brown-butter marshmallow sweet tomato fluff topped with rainbow rice crisps and açaí blueberry preservatives drizzled with candied brown sugar bacon bubble gum syrup.
She does themed presentations with a four-course menu, like a chef's tasting. They run 90 minutes long, and cost $45. One recent one was circus-themed, and included candied kettle corn ice cream with caramel popcorn and brown butter, which she served in a popcorn box.
You make a reservation on her website — she's already sold out until mid-July.
"I like the fact that it's not a scoop shop, because I get people to try stuff they might not otherwise try," she says. "Also at my events, you're sitting down with up to 20 other people you might not have met otherwise, so you're having the experience and getting to know each other."
To grab people's attention at events, such as her grand opening on July 16, she serves ice cream spiked with alcohol.
"It's only at those events that I'm able to do the 80-proof stuff," she says. "If it's free, the TABC isn't looking at me."
"But my real focus is on creative flavors, and I concentrate on being egg- and dairy-free," she says, although her toppings are not all vegan. "There've been so many recalls these days, and so many people are lactose-intolerant and vegan. We use coconut milk, and it's a whole lot creamier."
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This is a simple but useful abstraction that helps you to time events in an installation or other context. The example included with this abstraction shows how to control the master amplitude of an installation. The abstraction listens for events, waits a certain amount of time without events, if that time has passed, the installation amplitude fades out.


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Impact Shares and YWCA Launch Women's Empowerment ETF on NYSE
HomeImpact Shares and YWCA Launch Women's Empowerment ETF on NYSE
WOMN ETF uses capital markets to further YWCA's mission of eliminating racism and empowering women
WASHINGTON D.C. / CHICAGO – August 27, 2018 – Today, Impact Shares and YWCA USA launch a first-of-its-kind ETF on the NYSE for investors to take action in the women's empowerment movement. The WOMN ETF allows investors to deploy capital in companies whose business practices align with gender-equality standards.
As societal demand for women's empowerment increases, so does the demand from consumers for socially conscious investment products. What the next generation of investors is asking for, the WOMN ETF seeks to answer.
"The WOMN ETF puts the power to empower women in everyone's hands. It allows us to leverage the capital markets to further our 160-year mission to eliminate racism and empower women. The entire YWCA network, made up of more than 200 local associations, is excited about this innovative product that provides investors the opportunity to generate both financial and social returns, and helps fuel the future of our work," said Alejandra Y. Castillo, CEO of YWCA USA.
Created by conflict-free, non-profit ETF sponsor Impact Shares, with backing from The Rockefeller Foundation's Zero Gap Portfolio, WOMN is designed to track the Morningstar Women's Empowerment Index, built with the gender equality data and scoring methodology of Equileap. The Index represents 200 companies, culled from 1,200 of the largest U.S.-listed publicly traded companies, based on each company's Gender Equality Score which is determined from a set of 19 gender equality criteria.
The opportunity to partner with Impact Shares was identified by YWCA Metropolitan Chicago who is working with YWCA USA to engage with companies inside and outside the Index. "We believe that the criteria used to evaluate the companies in the Index provides a roadmap for corporate America for the empowerment of the women in their workforces and will ultimately result in increased value creation for shareholders," said Dorri McWhorter, CEO of YWCA Metropolitan Chicago.
Impact Shares, itself a 501(c)(3) organization, will donate the net advisory fees from the management of the WOMN ETF to the YWCA who will use the revenue to increase impact nationally through direct service and advocacy.
"We believe this is an important step in the evolution of women's advocacy. YWCA has established themselves as a leading women's organization and the ETF provides them with the tools needed to expand their impact into the private sector and help companies demonstrate leadership on issues impacting women. We are excited to partner with the YWCA in providing investors access to a basket of companies that have strong policies and practices in support of women's empowerment and gender equality," said Ethan Powell, CEO of Impact Shares.
Potential investors can learn more at www.impactetfs.org, and can invest in WOMN through their online brokerage account or by contacting their financial advisor.
Shares of WOMN (the "Fund") are not sponsored, endorsed or promoted by YWCA. YWCA makes no representation or warranty, express or implied, to the owners of the shares of WOMN or any member of the public regarding the ability of WOMN to track the total return performance of the Underlying Index or the ability of the Underlying Index to track stock market performance. YWCA has no obligation or liability in connection with the administration, marketing or trading of shares of WOMN. YWCA is not an investment adviser.
Please see the fact sheet for further details on the fund.
About YWCA USA:
YWCA USA is on a mission to eliminate racism, empower women, stand up for social justice, help families, and strengthen communities. As one of the oldest and largest women's organizations in the nation, YWCA USA represents over 200 YWCAs in 46 states and the District of Columbia, serving over 2 million women, girls, and their families each year.
YWCA has been at the forefront of the most pressing social movements for 160 years — from voting rights to civil rights, from affordable housing to pay equity, from violence prevention to health care reform. Today, we combine programming and advocacy to generate institutional change in three key areas: racial justice and civil rights, empowerment and economic advancement of women and girls, and health and safety of women and girls. Learn more: www.ywca.org.
About YWCA Metropolitan Chicago:
Founded in 1876, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago is a social enterprise committed to eliminating racism and empowering women. We pursue gender equity and inclusion through services focused around three empowerment priorities: Safety and Wellness; Education and Training; and Economic Sustainability.
YWCA Metropolitan Chicago impacts more than 200,000 women and families annually and is the largest provider of sexual assault support services in the state of Illinois, offering crisis intervention, counseling, prevention education and medical and legal advocacy services. YWCA Metropolitan Chicago administers the state's second largest Child Care Resource and Referral program as well as an Early Head Start program offering services to families seeking child care and a variety of support resources for child care providers. The organization offers career, financial management, digital literacy and business services to help adults and youth achieve financial stability and obtain training to enter high-growth fields. Located in the third-largest U.S. city with the third-highest percentage of women in the U.S., YWCA Metropolitan Chicago serves as a national incubator for innovative programming, outreach and engagement in a diverse racial, economic and educational environment.
YWCA Representatives Available for Comment:
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Chief Executive Officer Chief Executive Officer
YWCA USA YWCA Metropolitan Chicago
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molly.silverman@ywcachicago.org
About Impact Shares
Impact Shares is a nonprofit fund sponsor and investment manager that is creating a new and innovative platform for clients seeking maximum social impact with market returns. Impact Shares' goal is to build a capital markets bridge between leading non-profits, investors and corporate America to direct capital and social engagement on societal priorities. Impact Shares is a tax-exempt non-profit organization under Section 501(c)(3) of the Internal Revenue Code. For more information about Impact Shares visit impactetfs.org.
Sales Contact:
Impact Shares
844-GIVE-ETF
info@impactetfs.org
Ryann Bucher, Gregory FCA for Impact Shares
impactshares@gregoryfca.com
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text:
David Debin
Dr. Peter Brill
Kenneth Pargament
Episode 22: Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy – Dr. Kenneth Pargament
The topic of religion has elicited powerful, passionate responses throughout history. So it's not surprising that Dr. Kenneth Pargament's latest study, which suggests that religious anxiety could increase the risk of death in the elderly, has garnered international attention.
Pargament, a professor of psychology who has taught at Bowling Green State University since 1979, has been interviewed by the Washington Post, New York Times, BBC and media from Norway and Japan since the controversial study was published in August.
"A number of studies have shown that religious involvement can help extend life expectancy," says Pargament, who is also an adjunct professor at Boston University.
"This is the first one that found certain types can be a risk factor for health and mortality. This just kind of shows the other side of religion, that religion can raise fundamental questions for people and pose difficulty for people who get stuck in their struggle."
Pargament was among the researchers who surveyed 596 elderly hospitalized patients in 1996. Patients who wondered if God had abandoned them, questioned God's love or thought the devil had a role in their illness were more likely two years later to have died than patients who did not hold such beliefs.
"Having questions about God is not an automatic death sentence," Pargament says, reiterating a point he has made in all those interviews with the media.
As a psychiatrist himself, Aging Gratefully's co-host, Dr. Peter Brill, studied at one of the best universities with the one of the broadest perspectives in the country. However, nowhere in his training was spirituality ever mentioned or accepted. And yet there were clear sacred moments that occurred when souls touched in therapy. Often these were the most important moments of all. Subsequently, it has become clear that spirituality is essential to life in the Third Age. Dr. Kenneth Pargament has spent his career working to integrate spirituality and psychotherapy. His new book is called Spirituality Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred.
This program is brought to you by personallifemedia.com
Peter Brill: Hallo and welcome to the Third Age with the doctor and the man from Hollywood. I'm the doctor, Peter Brill, and the man from Hollywood is David Debin. On this show we turn the myths of aging upside down, we sort out the scientific and the trendy, the medical and the cultural and we tell you everything you need to know about living in the third age. Remember we guarantee if you listen to us you will never grow old.
David Debin: Hi, I'm the man from Hollywood, David Debin. The third age usually starts somewhere around 45 or 50 and it's a time when you start to feel a strong desire for deeper meaning and fulfillment in your life. Your first age is childhood. Your second age is building your career and raising your family. And the third age is a major change or a transition to a whole new set of problems and values and opportunities. So join us as fellow explorers in this journey to discover what brings passion, purpose, joy into this uncharted time of life.
Peter: Well, as many of you know I'm a psychiatrist. I studied [BABY CRYING LAUGHTER] I don't know if they could hear that, David. David started screaming. [LAUGHTER]I think he went out the window. Which is pretty good from a windowless room. As many of you know, I'm a psychiatrist – you want to try it again? -- I studied at the best universities with the broadest perspective in the country. Yet nowhere in my training was spirituality ever mentioned or accepted. Yet there were clear sacred moments that happened when our souls touched in therapy and often these were the most important. Subsequently it became clear that spirituality is essential to life in the third age. People who come to our groups or coaching are often searching to find a deepening spirituality and a source of meaning and purpose in their lives. Our guest today, Dr. Kenneth Pargament, I hope I'm pronouncing it right, has spent his career working to integrate spirituality and psychotherapy. His new book is called Spirituality Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred. I pray you stay tuned.
David: That was cute. I like that. "I pray you to stay tuned." Well, talking about praying, I did some praying yesterday as it took me 11 hours to get from Las Vegas to my home. I think I could have walked…you know how they prostrate, the pilgrims that go to [INAUDIBLE] they prostrate themselves every step? I think I could have walked and prostrated myself every step and probably beat that.
Marissa: Does swearing count as praying too?
Peter: That's a good line, Rissie. Let me ask you this, David.
David: Yes. Do I look like a terrorist to you?
Peter: Yes. David, what were you doing in Las Vegas?
David: I was giving a speech to the American
Institute of CPA's about the third age. Many of them are in the third age and about also how to deal with people who are in the third age. And I found out some very interesting things.
Peter: What did you find out David?
David: I found out that most of them are surprised by the fact that it's more important to many of their clients for them to have a good personal feel of what their life is like than just to present them with a series of numbers about what they have and what they need.
Peter: All life can be reduced to numbers.
David: It's the universal language but somehow it doesn't reach deep enough in many relationships.
Peter: And in many professional relationships where you're dealing with people's lives and money. I mean, it's perfectly clear. Just think about yourself. I mean, you have a little more life than just the numbers that add up on your investments and taxes.
David: Absolutely. This was at Caesar's and it was really well done. There were about 1200 attending the entire 3-day conference, about $1000 a person, so they do pretty good, although their expenses are high. And this was a group of about, I would say, 200 CPA's and they were really interested. They said that this presentation was really exceptional because usually every speaker talks about the numbers, the business, what to invest, what not to invest, hard times, good times, whatever. This was one of the few times that they heard about the personal aspect of their client, dealing with their clients. So it was great. People loved it.
Peter: That's great. Well you know what time it is David?
David: Is it already time? No. It can't be time.
Peter: It is time David. I'm sorry. It's time.
David: It's time for the news story! Well, there's a couple things that I really want to talk about. One is, the first one is did you hear that story about the guy who fell 47 stories and survived? This is just a follow-up on it. He was discharged from the hospital to begin rehabilitation. This is not a funny story but this is just an amazing situation. Earlier this month he regained consciousness and incredibly, even began talking to his family and doctors. This was after falling -- it was a scaffolding -- 47 stories.
Peter: This is the funny news story?
David: Yeah, this is the funny news story. But you were talking about spirituality. The doctor said, if you're a believer in miracles, this would be one. But the real important news story of the day, in anticipation of Valentine's Day which is coming up next month, pretty soon. For the ladies out there who are interested in a new guy or meeting somebody, it turns out that a very famous person is looking to meet somebody. He is the World's Hairiest Man and he's looking for a new love on the internet after breaking up with his girlfriend. He's Yen Jen Wan, recognized as the World's Hairiest man by the Guinness Book of Records and he's using an online dating agency. World's Hairiest Man, there he is. You can't see him folks, but… [LAWNMOWER SOUND]
David: He met somebody and they went together for a while and they were going to get married. But he said, we got to know each other through the internet, they'd been seeing for three years but, unfortunately, their relationship came to an end. There are many reasons that I could speculate that might have happened…
Peter: All right. What are the reasons?
David: [LAUGHTER]…but I can't say any of them on the air without being kicked off by Les Carroll. He added "my whole body is covered with hair and my parents are worried I won't be able to find a wife. Many girls are shocked when they see me in person." You know what this is? This is a great reality show! Give the World's Hairiest Man $5,000,000 and see how many beautiful women we can get to marry him. What do you think? Don't you think this is a good idea? If you like that idea, call in, let us know, write to us, we're at the thirdagefoundation.com. Let us know if you like that idea, we'll get that reality show on the air as quick as possible. So, Marissa, you like this weather?
Marissa: I like it enough except that I have to walk in the rain to school.
David: I see. But it never rains in Santa Barbara, right.
Marissa: Not really.
David: Today is that day.
Peter: Our guest today is Kenneth Pargament who's a professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University and practicing clinical psychologist. He's published over 100 research studies on the topic of spirituality and health and has recently published a book entitled Spirituality Integrated Psychotherapy: Understanding and Addressing the Sacred. Welcome to the show Dr. Pargament.
Pargament: Thanks. It's great to be here.
Peter: I had a question, before we even got started, how do you define spirituality and what does it have to do with music and interpersonal experiences and the color of the sky and so forth. How are we defining spirituality?
Pargament: Well I think of spirituality as what people do to find something sacred in their lives. Not only to find something sacred but to build a relationship with it, hold onto it and at times, transform it. But it centers around the yearning for something that is greater than ourselves.
David: Is there an echo? We're getting a huge echo. Can you just say it?
Peter: Is there a radio on or is there anything that could be echoing through your…
Pargament: No. I don't think so. Not on my end here.
David: Okay. I'll try it. Actually it's very pleasing to me because I get to hear the sound of my own voice over and over and over, ad infinitum. [LAUGHTER] Sorry about that Dr. Pargament. Is it something that they want to find or something that they want to connect with and is it possible to connect with something that's bigger than yourself?
Pargament: Well, it seems to be something we may be born with, that kind of yearning for something beyond ourselves. I think as infants it may take the form of an all-protective and loving parent. But even children at a very young age have what we call spiritual experiences where they feel some kind of connection with something beyond themselves or some sense of deeper reality within themselves. And these experiences can be moving and even life changing for even young children. So I think it's something that we may take into the world or bring with us as we enter the world.
Peter: You say in your book "how the absence of spirituality can result in feelings of loss and emptiness, questions of meaning and purpose and a sense of alienation and abandonment and cries of injustice and unfairness." How is that true?
Pargament: Well, because I think we're motivated to have a relationship with something sacred. When we lose it, it may be the greatest loss of all. We're used to thinking major life traumas, accident, injury, death, natural disaster as events that affect us psychologically, socially and physically. But they can also affect us spiritually because they can challenge our deepest beliefs and sense of what's most important in life, particularly if we feel that's been shaken or lost. So a divorce, a death, whatever, it may be a fundamental loss of the things that we hold most sacred in our lives and that makes it all the more difficult to resolve.
Peter: But in the third age we find people that come to us continuously who may or may not have had any spiritual or religious background, some have, some haven't, but are on what seems to be a major spiritual quest and it has these exact feelings in it.
Pargament: It's so interesting that the questions and the doubts and the feelings of loss can be terrible sources of pain and problems but they can also be a fork in the road that leads to growth and renewal and transformation. And so what we find in our own research is that spiritual struggles are, in fact, this turning point in life. And some people use these struggles as platforms or launching pads for incredible growth. But we also find that some people get stuck in their struggles. They're not able to work them through. And they experience pain, loss and we've even found that spiritual struggles increase the likelihood of death if they're not resolved.
David: What did you think of the revelations from Mother Theresa's diary that she was forsaken for so many years and still tried to walk that path? Was that something that was interesting?
Pargament: Absolutely. And I think that was a wonderful example of the point that spiritual struggles can be again, a motivation for development and growth and wonderful acts but they can also be sources of pain and grief and struggle and loss and sometimes people experience both at the same time. What's remarkable to me about Mother Theresa's story is how she was able to persevere and persist in her faith in spite of the deep questions that she held. So I thought her story was actually pretty inspirational.
Peter: You know when I was trained in psychotherapy, many years ago, we never mentioned or asked a question about spirituality or religion. Except to try to free people, I suppose, if we had a Catholic we might think that they felt unusually guilty and try to find a way to free them from that guilt. That's about as far as we would pursue some of these questions. And yet you're advocating a change to that.
Pargament: This is a…you might even call it revolutionary change. Most students and graduate students and medical students have an average of zero classes in religion and spirituality and that's in spite of the fact that the patients they'll see are, in fact, on average, believers in God, church attendees and people who will draw on their religion and spirituality as one of their most important resources when they encounter troubles. So the lack of training in this area is really kind of shocking, even breathtaking.
Peter: Is there good evidence that spirituality makes a difference physically in terms of how long people live or how healthy they are or how well their marriages function?
Pargament: There's a lot of evidence that's accumulated over the last twenty years that show that persistent links between spirituality and health. For instance, a number of studies people have shown that people who attend church regularly live on the average seven years longer than infrequent church attenders. And actually for African-Americans it looks like there's a 14 year increase in life expectancy for frequent church attenders. It's not just one study. Those findings have been repeated. So people are interested now in well what is it about church attendance that may instill longer life. But a fascinating finding.
Peter: Do they drink less?
Pargament: Well possibly. That's one possibility that they drink less. Or maybe they have more social support or maybe they are able to have a better or a stronger resilience to life problems. My own theory is that it's the uplifting music. And particularly in African-American churches where you have really powerful emotions and music expressed. But you've got to keep in mind that if that's the case, then it's possible that bad church music could work the opposite way. It could kill you.
David: Or we could also say "dead heads live longer." A new bumper sticker.
Peter: You were interested in where you could get the study.
David: I was interested in what that study is. It really is fascinating to me.
Pargament: Well that study was published in a journal called Demography. But actually there's a review of probably about 20 studies of this kind that's been published as well in what they call, the fancy term is a meta-analysis, that's been published that shows these findings are pretty persistent and powerful. On the other hand, as I mentioned, the flip side is that people who report struggles with God, feeling punished by God, feeling that the devil is at work in their lives, we've shown that they are more likely to die over the next two years. So you can see that religion and spirituality can be a double-sided coin. That they can be resources for people but they can also be sources of trouble at the same time.
David: Okay, so now…what are we looking at? We've got a break coming up? I'm so fascinated, I didn't even see we were going on to take a break. Dr. Pargament, please stay with us.
Pargament: You're having a spiritual
David: That's right. We'll be right back with The Third Age. Don't go away.
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Peter: Well, welcome back to The Third Age. I'm one of your co-hosts, Dr. Peter Brill. I'm here with Marissa Scarvasi. And also tagging along is David Debin, the man from Hollywood. Our guest today is Dr. Kenneth Pargament, who's professor of psychology at Bowling Green State University, did I get it right that time? He's done over 100 research studies, published over 100 research studies on spirituality and health. You mentioned a study, maybe at our break next, you mentioned a meta-analysis of various studies that document longevity and health and spirituality. So we'll try to get that. David, you were in the midst of asking a question.
David: I was? I know what it was. I know what my question is. I was giving a speech yesterday. In our program, Dr. Pargament, we talk a lot about the importance of spirituality and the spiritual connection. And somebody asked me how do you make that spiritual connection? And I sort of gave him an answer but I think you could probably give them a better answer. How does someone who asks that question, how do you make a spiritual connection, what do you tell him to be able to enable him to do so?
Pargament: Well, what's interesting is that there are lots of paths to building a relationship with something spiritual or sacred. That's part of the power of spiritual life that people can approach it in so many ways. So part of the answer to the question depends on the kind of person that you are and which pathway resonates most with who you are. For instance, there's the pathway of experience and nowadays a lot of people try to foster a relationship with the sacred through some kind of spiritual experience. It may be an experience outdoors, listening to music, a mystical experience, meditation or prayer. For some people, spirituality is fostered by practices. And the practices may be being involved in altruistic activities, or volunteering in the community or being in loving relationships with family and friends. Other people, their way to spirituality is through study and understanding and their beliefs so it may take traditional forms like bible study or it may take non-traditional forms. For instance, I tend to think of my own interest in science as a spiritual activity, trying to make some sense out of the mysteries of the world and uncover them to some extent. So lots of paths to the sacred.
Peter: Let's go on to the therapy part of it. You tell a story in there…I'd like to try to find a way for our listeners…a lot of people have been in therapy or know about therapy. Why is spirituality important for therapy?
Pargament: Well, for a couple of reasons. One is, for some people spirituality may be one of the most potent resources that they have for resolving their problems. It's not something, as you noted earlier, that we're trained to address and yet for many people, it's the spiritual resource that may be key to the solution. And the second point is, on the flip side, is for some people coming to therapy, spirituality is involved in the problem itself. And so the problem they may be experiencing could be spiritual in nature. May be a loss of meaning, a loss of purpose or maybe feeling punished by God. These things, these kinds of problems can lie at the root of other problems that they're presenting -- depression and anxiety. But whether it's the solution or the problem, it needs to be part of the conversation in the therapy room.
Peter: I would love it if you'd tell Alice's story, briefly on the air, so people could get a feeling for it.
David: Is that something from the book?
Peter: Yeah. From the book.
Pargament: Oh sure. Well this is I think, one of the stories that's really moved me and guided me in my own work. Alice was a woman in her 40's who came to my office suffering from bi-polar illness. She'd been treated by a number of psychiatrists and psychologists over the years. Alice was a very plain looking woman, no make-up, but she did have a sparkle in her eyes and I liked her right away. She talked about a life of ups and downs, a real roller coaster of emotions from manic periods to periods of the deepest depression when she'd feel suicidal and end up in the hospital. And I worked with Alice for probably a year trying to help offer something different, but I wasn't any more successful than the legion of therapists and people before me and she was hospitalized a few times over the year. Initially when I asked Alice about her religious or spiritual interests she said that wasn't really relevant to her. But there was a moment about a year into the therapy, where she was again very depressed, crying hysterically and I thought "Oh gosh. She's talking about suicide. I'm going to have to hospitalize her again."
But this time she said, "Oh when will my suffering end?" And the way she said it, it sounded biblical, almost like a lamentation and so I responded in kind of like kind and I said, "Where do you turn to for solace in the midst of your suffering?" That's not the way I usually talk, by the way. I don't usually talk about turning to solace, but it seemed appropriate for Alice.
And she stopped and she said, "Well I never told anybody this before but the first time I was hospitalized when I was 13 or 14 I was in restraints and I was so frightened and so scared and then I had this warm feeling start through the center of my body and it spread through my chest. And that warm feeling spoke to me."
And I said, "Well what did that warm feeling say?" And she said, "It said: I'm with you. I'll always be with you. And I'll be with you for the rest of your life no matter how bad it gets."
I said, "Wow! Who did you think that feeling was? Who was that voice talking to you?"
She said, "That was God telling me that no matter, what he'd always be with me." A very moving moment. I said, "Have you ever had that feeling since?" She said, "Well yeah, sure. I have it whenever I'm at my worst moments and I have it when I'm with people who care about me. You know, like now. Don't you feel it?"
And you mentioned earlier sacred moments in therapy and that was one for me. And I told her, yeah. I did feel it. And the interesting thing was in this conversation that while she was talking about this mystical, sacred experience, she had stopped crying and we spent the rest of the session just talking about spirituality in her life and I didn't need to hospitalize her. And I asked her as we were leaving, I said "Alice, why haven't you talked about it with other people, with other therapists?" And she said, "Well they already think I'm crazy." And that was a turning point and after that moment we spent a lot of time speaking about spirituality and how she might be able to access it more fully in her life. And she was never hospitalized again, after that time, with one exception for just a brief period.
Peter: That's amazing, amazing story to me. The thing that I, I just want to clarify for our listeners. We're not necessarily talking about any particular religion here. We're not talking necessarily Christianity or…right? I mean we're talking spirituality.
Pargament: Well, that's right. And it's so fascinating what I find that for some people who come in and see themselves as devout people sometimes religious issues aren't really relevant to the problem or the solution. And then there are some people who see themselves as atheists or non-religious and non-spiritual and it turns out spiritual matters really lie at the heart of the problem.
Peter: How do you tell? As a clinician? How does a person tell in themselves?
Pargament: That's why therapy is such an art form. Because there is no easy answer. Just asking people direct questions about it often doesn't yield an answer because lots of time people don't even know or sometimes they're not willing to share something so intimate right away. It takes time to build a relationship and it takes time to help people discover really what's going on inside them. And it does take some practice and experience in learning how to talk about sacred matters and frankly showing a willingness and an interest on the part of the therapist to listen to someone's spiritual story. If we as mental health professionals are open to asking the questions and listening to people's rich spiritual stories, people have a lot to teach us.
David: Great. We're going to think about that for two minutes and then we're going to be back with Dr. Pargament who wrote this really fascinating book, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, Understanding
and Addressing the Sacred. We'll be right back.
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Peter: We're back. I'm Dr. Peter Brill. This is the Third Age. I'm here with David Debin, my co-host, and Marissa Scarvasi. Our guest today is Dr. Kenneth Pargament a professor who's written a book, Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, Understanding and Addressing the Sacred. Dr. Pargament, where can people get your book? Hallo? They couldn't hear you. Say it again. Where can they get your book?
Pargament: They can order it online from Amazon or they can order it from Guilford Press which is the publishing site. They can Google my name, Kenneth Pargament, and it's right there on the first page. It's actually called Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy.
Peter: I'm sorry.
Pargament: That's okay.
Peter: What I'd like to do now, I kind of see the progression that we do from the sick, the pathological sick, the normal, the super normal, transcendent, so forth and I'm wondering, for our listeners now, what the insights that you have derived from bringing psychotherapy which is a form of interaction of people about problems or about life, how they can use those insights in the general life to move from wherever they are, up that spectrum.
Pargament: I think what spirituality adds to psychology and psychotherapy is helping people come to terms with human limitations. Psychology, psychiatry are really good at helping people develop more control in their lives. Either through self-understanding or better communication, developing our personal strengths. But the fact is that not all problems are controllable and no matter how well we try to make the most of our skills, sooner or later we run into situations that reminds us we're limited and human. But in spirituality you hear a language that's unfamiliar to psychology. Things like letting go and surrender, humility, forgiveness and transformation. And I think almost all problems have elements of the controllable and the uncontrollable. And so integrating spiritual values and resources in our lives is I think what helps make us more completely human.
Peter: Let me give you an example and see if you agree with it. In all the studies and all the psychotherapy -- I had lots of psychotherapy, I'm a basket case. They had to treat me many, many times, all unsuccessfully. Anyway, the end result of it is through all that psychotherapy, not once did they ever mention something like say, gratitude or doing meditations, affirmations, that is speaking to yourself about what to be grateful for in your life. Now that's a change in perspective, right? A change in vocabulary. Is that what you're talking about?
Pargament: Absolutely. I think you've hit it on the head. When I went to grad school, like a lot of people, I went into the field because I was interested in what makes people tick, I wanted to get to the heart of really important issues. But in my training at least, I found that something was missing. We were taught that we're shaped by our environment, we're shaped by our early childhood, we're shaped by our biology but something is missing. And that something is that deeper aspect of ourselves. We also are people who strive and seek something beyond just the daily experience and there is a deeper dimension to ourselves and concepts like transcendence, and gratitude and letting go and transformation and forgiveness I think get at that deeper dimension that has been missing in psychology and psychiatry for a long time and it's exciting to see that it's finally catching on.
Peter: It really is. And David and I have a Seven Step model that we try to use for people in the Third Age. And the very first step is what we call Awareness of Spiritual Energy. You have to start there to get the energy to face this stage of life. So you'd agree with that?
Pargament: Absolutely. I think it's the core of who we are. How do you move people forward if you don't address the issues that are of deepest importance?
David: How do you think spirituality helps you after you die? [LAUGHTER] No I'm serious.
Peter: Does it help your longevity? Is that what you're saying?
David: Believe it or not, it's a serious question.
Pargament: Well it's the kind of question that we can't study through our scientific methods because there's no way of knowing scientifically what happens when people die. But certainly your beliefs and your faith in a life after death has implications for how you live your life. And implications for how other people come to terms with death as well. We know that people who have ways of putting life and death in perspective seem to live more fulfilling lives than people who don't really have a place to put it.
David: That's very true. But I'll tell you something that I found out just by working with the CPA's. Not that I found out that I knew. But that I found out that I knew. I opened my mouth and it came out. Spirituality can help you after you die by helping the people that you leave behind. In other words, when you're in touch with your spiritual center and your spiritual energy, there's a very deep love that you have access to and it's a bond that forms with the people in your life who you love and when you die, that's what's left of you. What's really left of you is that, and the word was legacy, because we were talking with estate planners, but there's a legacy there that you leave, just as interesting in many ways as life insurance that benefits the people who you love when you die, I think your spiritual connection is just as important. And yes, I know that we don't know what happens to you when you're gone but we certainly know that if you care about people when you're alive, certain people, those people will continue to be cared about after you're gone.
Peter: To add to what you're saying, David, the studies show that there is no correlation whatsoever above a certain income level or a certain amount of money whatsoever. So it may be far more important, that legacy that you're leaving them.
Pargament: That's a wonderful example. And actually thinking about your spiritual legacy isn't something that you should be doing simply at the latter part of your life. It's really a question that people can ask of themselves even in an earlier age. Adolescence. Young adulthood. Asking what is it that you want to leave behind? What are the values that you believe are permanent values? What is the message you want to pass on to the people who live behind you or following you? It's a wonderful question that can help shape more meaningful lives.
Peter: We're fortunate that we have a young person here, in our studio that we can ask that. What do you think, Marissa? What would be your answer to that question?
Marissa: I think for me I'd want to have a happy family, just be with people you like. I don't think money matters as much as happiness. Or, I don't know…I want to be able to be surrounded by those that will love me.
David: What about your spiritual legacy? What do you think about that?
Marissa: Spiritual legacy. That's a tough one.
Pargament: Marissa, that may be inherently spiritual. Talking about leaving loving relationships and people who love and care about you. That may be very much spiritually meaningful for you. For a lot of people, love is one of the central spiritual values. So love and the sacred are often intimately connected.
David: I think love is the sacred, one could say actually. We have really highly enjoyed this conversation. I hope it's been as good for you as it has been for us, spiritually speaking and in every other way. Your book is Spiritually Integrated Psychotherapy, Understanding and Addressing the Sacred. You are Dr. Kenneth Pargament. We are The Third Age and we want to thank you for being with us. And come back please sometime and talk to us again.
Pargament: My pleasure.
David: Hang in there. We'll be right back.
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Peter: Well, boy. I tell you. Talk about spiritual. Welcome back to The Third Age. I'm here with David Debin and Marissa Scarvasi. And we've been talking about spirituality and integrated psychotherapy, putting them together, badly needed, major change in the field. It was interesting, I was reading this book recently about extraordinary knowing which is this lady who had this incredible spiritual experience and she got together a section in the American Psychological Association, which they're talking about people having extraordinary spiritual events in their lives. And some of the most famous people in all of psychology came to talk about, and they were ashamed of their experiences, but they came to relate, and…. Also, she interviewed some people and there was a neurologist who's world famous, goes and operates on kings and famous people, and he had headaches and he came to her as a patient. And when she got into talking to him, it turned out he'd stopped teaching. And when she asked him about why he'd stopped teaching. And he said, "Well, my problem is before I operate I go down and sit at the patient's bed. And if there's not a white light around the patient's head I don't operate because I know it's not going to work. How do I tell my students that?"
David: That's a tough one. You'd be kicked out of school for that. Hey listen, if you're out there, if you've been listening to this really interesting discussion on psychotherapy, and life itself. You're going to really enjoy the workshop that we do. Actually there are two of them. One is on February 23, coming up, it's a Saturday. It's at Antioch University. There's going to be a lot of this spiritual discussion in terms of the third age. And also at City College, that's the Adult Extension, on March 22 at the Shot Center. We're doing another workshop at which we will also talk about how to integrate this very, very important aspect of life into your third age and maybe get you over some of the trials and tribulations that you're dealing with just in terms of what this change of life is bringing.
Peter: So that you can get the absolute most out of this stage of your life. By the way, you can find both these locations and also how to enroll by going to our website, www.thirdagefoundation.org. Or you can call us 805-969-9794
David: This is David Debin for Peter Brill and the Third Age…we have another minute? Stretch it out….These are some great people that are helping to bring us to you and some of this stuff that you're learning on this show, and we're learning along with you, is because these people are interesting.
Peter: We'll be back next time for another journey into the Third Age.
Find more great shows like this on personallifemedia.com


If your podcast is conversational, record the audio from Skype using a recorder app. I use Callnote Pro, which costs $10 a year. There are free or less expensive options, but I've been using it for years and it works for me. Otherwise, talk into literally any speaker. If you have a phone from this decade, it'll probably sound passable.
Edit the audio in Audacity, a free app on Windows, or Garageband, a free app built into Macs.
Upload the audio to two places: Soundcloud and Mixcloud. Keep the file backed up somewhere (I use Onedrive, but there are lots of options).
Tell people on Twitter and Facebook to listen to the audio on Mixcloud.
That's it. It's the simplest workflow I've ever seen for podcasts, and it costs next to nothing. If you're trying to get into podcasts but a) don't really know what you're doing, and b) don't really want to sink any money into it, this is all you really have to do.
But there are compromises. If you don't care about those, stop reading and go make some shows. But the next few sections of this blog will go into detail on that.
Obviously you'll need to setup accounts at Soundcloud and Mixcloudd. Both are pretty quick, but one aspect that will take some time is setting up an RSS feed at Soundcloud. This is the thing that makes your audio a podcast. Otherwise, you're just posting audio to the web.
###Wait, why is RSS important?
A bunch of audio files does not automatically become a podcast until an RSS enclosure is used. By allowing a file to be embedded in a post on a blog, listeners can subscribe and download the enclosure to a device. Depending on the app they use, the listener can see what episodes they've listened to, download older episodes than the first one, share episodes with others, etc.
The most important thing to remember about Soundcloud is that it's only free for a certain amount of time. The site gives you a bucket of about three hours. That bucket is reusable, so you can delete old episodes and then upload new ones. If you want this setup to be simpler, simply pay Soundcloud some money and they'll give you more storage. I'm not, which is why I also use Mixcloud.
Mixcloud's primary purpose is mixtapes. Ideally, you record a DJ set and upload it and then people can hear your presumably sweet mixes. But Mixcloud is fine with your podcast episode existing there, and there are no fees or upload limits. If you're wondering why I don't just use Mixcloud, well, they didn't have one major limitation: they don't offer RSS feeds, which basically means you can't actually use them to make a real podcast. So I treat Mixcloud as an archive for older episodes.
I'm absolutely what you'd call a consumer podcaster. None of my shows have ever had more than a thousand listeners, and most don't break a hundred. I mostly podcast for myself and my friends, so I've never tried to turn it into a business. This is entirely for fun.
I've been recording and distributing podcasts for ten years, and I've had three different workflows during that time. From 2006-2009, I used iWeb, which was an app that used to come built into every Mac. With a dot.mac account, you got a certain amount of storage you could fill up with iWeb pages. One of iWeb's features was a simple drag-and-drop attachment format for it's (very limited) blog page, which let you put audio files (or images, or PDFs) in the blog. When rendered in RSS, this file would become the "episode" that podcast apps could download.
Dot.mac/MobileMe was $100 a year. It wasn't terribly expensive, but it didn't actually give you a ton of space, and I ran out. So I went looking for a better solution, and found one with an unlimited hosting server plan.
This is where it became a business for a little while. I set up something called the Gredunza Podcast Network. I charged as little as I could and invited other podcasters to host their shows on my network. This was the most complicated option I've ever used, as I needed to setup a custom Wordpress install for every show. It was a lot of work, and anyone can tell you that maintaining more than a dozen Wordpress installs on a custom server is more work (and money) than is worth the trouble. In 2013, I shut down the network, because the time and cash commitment was too much.
All of my podcasts ended up on Squarespace, which is probably the simplest solution out there today. In addition to all the really great stuff a Squarespace site offers, their podcast implementation is incredibly easy. If you are fine with $10 a month for a website, don't bother with anything else and just use them. You might have to pay a little more for the unlimited storage options if you have a lot of episodes, but that's it.
But earlier this year I decided to pare down my recurring online billings. I was not using Squarespace to its potential, so I built a blog on Github (where you're reading this), and moved my podcasts to Mixcloud and Soundcloud. It's slightly more work than Squarespace, but it saved me $130 a year.
Depending on how you want to go, podcasts require either a lot of time or a lot of money, and sometimes both. You really can't make them happen for no money or time, so be prepared to shell out at least one of those things. It's still a blast, though, and I'm looking forward to making more.


text:
THE MEDITERRANEAN SEA: (UN)SUSTAINABLE TRAVEL DESTINATIONS
Nik Fes - Dec 10, 2018
Last week we spoke about the issue of (un)sustainable travelling, especially with regards to plastic and its huge amounts located in the Mediterranean. The issue was analyzed thoroughly with precise figures from a report made by WWF. This time we will build on it and look through how humanity is trying to deal with the issue of plastic wasting while on the road in order to prevent a natural catastrophe from striking our world.
Society is aware of this problem. Since 2018, the United Nations Environment Program has placed marine pollution by plastic as one of the six most serious environmental emergencies. In the case of the EU, a package of measures has been proposed to reduce the production of plastic by EU legislators. But what about individual countries?
France has banned plastic bags in supermarkets. Cotton swabs will be banned in 2020 and the country aims to achieve 100% recycled plastics by 2025. Even Italy has banned single use of plastic bags in supermarkets and it was recently extended to small bags for fruits and baked goods. The likes of Spain, Greece, Croatia and Turkey are also planning regulations in this direction to support their image of sustainable destinations.
What are non-European countries doing?
But obviously this is a global issue and thus, even outside Europe countries and officials are trying to find solutions. In the USA there are many cities and states tackling this issue. For example, Washington D.C. has tax on plastic bags and this measure led to a 85% fall in plastic bag consumptions. San Francisco, meanwhile, was the first American city to completely ban plastic bags already in 2007.
The Indian state of Karnataka has also banned plastic bags. Manufacturers in the state are prohibited from producing single-use plastic items. Kenya were even more harsh and in 2017 the African country launched a ban on plastic bags all over the country. The potential punishments for disobeying are large fines or even four-year jailtime. Chile, Australia, China are other non-European countries who have been attempting to tackle the issue.
A special case is Dominica. The Caribbean country's ambitious goal is to become the first "climate resilient" nation worldwide. The first step to achieving this goal is banning plastic single-use food containers. The idea is to do so by the beginning of next year. The island wants to protect its tourism industry but also become stronger and more resilient to hurricanes and become an example to the world.
What are tourism companies doing?
Tourism plays a key role in the pollution and consumption of plastic waste. Every year about 200 million tourists arrive in the Mediterranean basin, so the amount of waste increases by 40% during the summer in this area.
This is why it is important that companies in the sector are involved in reducing the consumption of plastics and contribute their grain of sand. And some of those companies have already taken action.
For example, Hilton has proposed to eliminate plastic straws from its 650 properties. They are going to replace them with paper or biodegradable straws. On the corporate side of the company, they are developing the "Meet with Purpose" project in which they have eliminated plastic bottles from meetings and events. Melia has also decided to replace single-use plastic with biodegradable materials throughout 2018.
Airlines are also contributing to an extent. For example, Iberia have removed plastic protection of their headphones and masks and now wrap them in paper. Meanwhile, Air Europe is studying replacing the protection of blankets and pillows and wrapping of cutlery. United Airlines have banned plastic straws on their flights.
A giant in the industry Thomas Cook is also planning to take measures in this direction. The company has promised to remove more than 70 million single-use items made of plastic like straws or cutlery from operation of their hotels and airlines. Their goal is to replace all single-use plastics with biodegradable or 100% recycled and recyclable options, with the planned date of achievement still not set.
It is obviously a long run, and everyone needs to make a little bit of effort for results to arrive globally and to increase the number of sustainable destinations. But it is important to make the population aware of this issue and those connected to it. It is necessary to educate people and explain that there is still time to reverse this negative trend in view of a more sustainable tourism industry and world.
TRAVEL DESTINATIONS ENDANGERED BY MARINE POLLUTION
CRUISE SHIP POLLUTION – UNPRECEDENTAL CONVICTION
DESTINATIONS TORN BETWEEN TOURISM AND PRESERVATION
Ecological Airport Becomes a Popular Tourist Attraction


text:
Павло́ Васи́льович Яце́нко — учасник Німецько-радянської війни, навідник гармати 5-ї батареї 378-го винищувально-протитанкового артилерійського полку 70-ї армії 1-го Білоруського фронту, сержант. Герой Радянського Союзу.

Біографія
Народився 30 жовтня 1920 року в селі Дептівка нині Конотопського району Сумської області України в сім'ї селянина. Українець. Член ВКП (б) / КПРС з 1944 року. Закінчив 7 класів. Навчався в Макіївському гірничопромисловому училищі. Працював електрослюсарем, а потім електромеханіком на шахті Ново-Бутівка в Донбасі.

У Червоній Армії з жовтня 1940 року. Служив у прикордонних військах на важливих кордонах країни.

Учасник Німецько-радянської війни з 1942 року. Воював на Сталінградському, Центральному, 1-му і 2-му Білоруських фронтах. Захищав Сталінград, бився на Курській дузі, брав участь у визволенні від фашистів Польщі, штурмував Берлін. Був поранений.

Навідник гармати 5-ї батареї 378-го винищувально-протитанкового артилерійського полку (70-а армія, 1-й Білоруський фронт) сержант Павло Яценко в боях з 17 по 18 липня 1944 при прориві оборони противника на річці Прип'ять у районі селища Ратне Волинської області України знищив ворожий дзот і 3 кулемета.

22 липня на річці Західний Буг у районі Кодень (південніше міста Брест) вступив у бій з ворожими танками і змусив їх відійти, що сприяло успішному форсуванню річки стрілецькими підрозділами.

Указом Президії Верховної Ради СРСР від 26 жовтня 1944 року за зразкове виконання бойового завдання командування в боротьбі з німецько-фашистськими загарбниками і проявлені при цьому мужність і героїзм, сержанту Яценко Павлу Васильовичу присвоєно звання Героя Радянського Союзу з врученням ордена Леніна і медалі «Золота Зірка» (№ 3117).

Після війни відважний артилерист продовжував службу в рядах Радянської Армії. У 1945 році закінчив курси молодших лейтенантів. З 1948 року лейтенант П. В. Яценко — в запасі.

Жив у селищі Дмитрівка Бахмацького району Чернігівської області України. З 1961 року був головою Дмитрівської селищної Ради. Був начальником вузла зв'язку, працював на інших адміністративно-господарських посадах.

Помер 8 жовтня 1993 року.

Нагороджений орденом Леніна (1944), орденом Вітчизняної війни 1-го ступеня (1985), медалями.

Джерела

Уродженці Конотопського району
Учасники Другої світової війни з СРСР
Персоналії:Дмитрівка (смт)

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaWikipedia


text:
Seqster pursues mission to bring patients to center of healthcare
December 21, 2021 -- Patient access to data is a critical mission for the healthcare industry, according to Ardy Arianpour, CEO and co-founder of Seqster, who recently spoke with ScienceBoard Editor in Chief, Samantha Black, PhD. The company is focused on developing much-needed data interoperability tools for the healthcare sector.
Arianpour co-founded Seqster in 2016 after working in the genomics space for 16 years. He noted that he was inspired to form the company by his mother who suffered from breast cancer and the work going on at the time around the BRCAI/II biomarkers. At this crossroads moment in his life when he was considering pursuing a PhD or MD degree, Arianpour decided to take a different path to pursue, mixing business and science.
Video loading ...
Seqster was founded to put the patient at the center of healthcare, according to Arianpour. The idea was to collect all electronic medical and health records, baseline genetic DNA data, continuous wearable monitoring data, etc., to generate a longitudinal health record in real time. Ultimately, the company's mission is to crack data interoperability.
What is data interoperability?
"I did not know that when I started Seqster that interoperability was going to be the No. 1 healthcare pain point problem," Arianpour said.
At its core, interoperability is the ability for different systems to communicate with each other. Arianpour explained that interoperability goes beyond clinical trial data and pharmaceutical companies -- it also encompasses information that physicians need to make informed treatment recommendations.
The pandemic shed light on how needed data interoperability tools are for the digital healthcare industry. Seqster's software as a service (SaaS) platforms and patient engagement solutions aggregate genomic data with all other medical data to provide accessible patient data.
Prior to co-founding Seqster, Arianpour was part of a successful business exit, which put him in a financial position where he could take risks. In 2016, he took the risk and invested $1 million in Seqster.
"My whole life's journey has been based on risk," he said. "I don't know how to do anything else."
Seqster was a "big gamble," Arianpour explained, but there was an X-factor at play. He knew that as long as he is behind it, he would be relentless in his mission and never deter from his efforts to place the patient at the center of healthcare.
Furthermore, he remains vigilantly focused on the journey and not the destination. Arianpour believes that dedication to building amazing products for patients by patients will ultimately result in business success. This is his plan A. Arianpour's No. 1 piece of advice for entrepreneurs is to always stick with plan A. "Plan A is execution, and failure has never been an option," he emphasized.
Seqster recently released its three major solutions: life sciences, real-world data, and patient engagement platforms. The company also announced a partnership with Olive to be listed in Olive's new universal marketplace, offering a solution that will automate health data integrations for Olive's enterprise payer and provider customers.
Arianpour concluded that Seqster is at an inflection point and will continue to form new partnerships. He hopes to bring interoperability to hyperspeed with exciting deals in the near future.
Do you have a unique perspective on your research related to genomics and data interoperability? Contact the editor today to learn more.
Elemental Machines acquires Tetra Lab Monitoring
Elemental Machines has acquired the Tetra Lab Monitoring business, including key hardware, talent, and novel asset integrations from TetraScience. The...
EY white paper details how the CGT industry can collaborate to advance the field
A transition from corporate individualism to teamwork and collaboration is necessary to meet the challenges that exist for companies in the cell and gene...
AI drug development market projected to reach $5.1B by 2025
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Fights are normal in fall camps on the NFL and college level. This weekend saw some fighting at Florida's camp potentially injuring a key defensive player, so it is clear the risks involved when tempers flare. Things reportedly took a bit of an ugly turn at UCLA practice on Monday, with star linebacker Myles Jack reportedly being kicked out of practice for the day following some rough stuff with sophomore offensive lineman Caleb Benenoch.
By most initial accounts on Twitter, it appears this was nothing too out of the ordinary for practice fights, but it is always best to remove a player or players involved in this sort of activity when possible to provide for the safety of each player involved. It would be a shame if UCLA lost such a talented player like Jack due to some heated moments in a practice in mid-August. The same rings true for an offensive lineman who started nine games for the Bruins a season ago.


Bitcoin (BTC) is digital, decentralized, anonymous payment network and at the same time crypto value that is used in this network. BTC is used for electronic payment service. In some places, it is possible to pay night in hotel chain, buy pizza, buy VPN service etc. Graduate paper is divided into two main parts: The first part explains what you need to know about Bitcoin. The second part explains some of the Bitcoin algorithm code.


text:
This library provides tools to help write tests for code that uses gcloud-java services.

### Testing code that uses Datastore

#### On your machine

You can test against a temporary local datastore by following these steps:

1. Start the local datastore emulator using `LocalGcdHelper`.  This can be done in two ways:
  - Run `LocalGcdHelper.java`'s `main` method with arguments `START` and (optionally) `--port=<port number>`.  This will create a temporary folder on your computer and bind `localhost:<port number>` for communication with the local datastore.  The port number is an optional argument.  If no port number is specified, port 8080 will be used.
  - Call `LocalGcdHelper.start(<project ID>, <port number>)` before running your tests.  Save the `LocalGcdHelper` object returned so that you can stop the emulator later.

2. In your program, create and use a datastore whose host is set host to `localhost:<port number>`.  For example,
  ```java
  DatastoreOptions options = DatastoreOptions.builder()
      .projectId(PROJECT_ID)
      .host("http://localhost:8080")
      .build();
  Datastore localDatastore = DatastoreFactory.instance().get(options);
  ```
3. Run your tests.

4. Stop the local datastore emulator.
  - If you ran `LocalGcdHelper.java`'s `main` function to start the emulator, run `LocalGcdHelper.java`'s `main` method with arguments `STOP` and (optionally) `--port=<port number>`.  If the port is not supplied, the program will attempt to close the last port started.
  - If you ran `LocalGcdHelper.start()` to start the emulator, call the `stop()` method on the `LocalGcdHelper` object returned by `LocalGcdHelper.start()`.

#### On a remote machine

You can test against a remote datastore emulator as well.  To do this, set the `DatastoreOptions` project endpoint to the hostname of the remote machine, like the example below.

  ```java
  DatastoreOptions options = DatastoreOptions.builder()
      .projectId(PROJECT_ID)
      .host("http://<hostname of machine>:<port>")
      .build();
  Datastore localDatastore = DatastoreFactory.instance().get(options);
  ```

Note that the remote datastore must be running before your tests are run.

### Testing code that uses Storage

Currently, there isn't an emulator for Google Cloud Storage, so an alternative is to create a test project.  `RemoteGcsHelper` contains convenience methods to make setting up and cleaning up the test project easier.  To use this class, follow the steps below:

1. Create a test Google Cloud project.

2. Download a JSON service account credentials file from the Google Developer's Console.  See more about this on the [Google Cloud Platform Storage Authentication page][cloud-platform-storage-authentication].

3. Create a `RemoteGcsHelper` object using your project ID and JSON key.
Here is an example that uses the `RemoteGcsHelper` to create a bucket.
  ```java
  RemoteGcsHelper gcsHelper = RemoteGcsHelper.create(PROJECT_ID, "/path/to/my/JSON/key.json");
  Storage storage = StorageFactory.instance().get(gcsHelper.options());
  String bucket = RemoteGcsHelper.generateBucketName();
  storage.create(BucketInfo.of(bucket));
  ```

4. Run your tests.

5. Clean up the test project by using `forceDelete` to clear any buckets used.
Here is an example that clears the bucket created in Step 3 with a timeout of 5 seconds.
  ```java
  RemoteGcsHelper.forceDelete(storage, bucket, 5, TimeUnit.SECONDS);
  ```

[cloud-platform-storage-authentication]:https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/authentication?hl=en#service_accounts

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaGithub