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The Daisy Keech ab workout has had over 23 million views on YouTube since it went live last year. Keech claims that by doing the ab workout every day, you could carve yourself the perfect hourglass waist, but Im sceptical. Exercise alone is highly unlikely to change your body shape various other factors are at play, like genetics and nutrition (check out our complete guide on how to get a smaller waist) so to promise a cinched waist through a single workout seems deductive. Plus, theres so much more to be gained from performance goals over aesthetic ones the sense of accomplishment and confidence that comes with lifting heavier when strength training, for example.

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Granted, the Daisy Keech ab workout may well contribute to more muscle definition, if thats what youre after, and if you enjoy the routine, then were not saying you should give it up. Its more that we wouldnt recommend following a workout routine purely for aesthetic reasons.

Whats more, weve been unable to confirm whether or not Keech is a certified personal trainer, which is why we called upon two fitness experts for their verdicts: Anthony Fletcher, a PT and biomechanics expert, and Sarah Winterbottom, Senior Trainer at Barry's Bootcamp, and a trainer on Courtney Blacks app. Heres everything they have to say about the Daisy Keech ab workout, after I tried it every day for a week.

Heres exactly whats involved in the Daisy Keech hourglass abs workout. Every exercise is done back to back, no rest for 10 minutes.

The chances of it garnering an hourglass waist like it claims are slim. Fletcher explains: 'The shape of your waist is mainly determined by the amount of tissue you have in the area, the shape of your rib cage, your pelvis, and the gap between your pelvis and the ribs. How small or big your waist looks will also depend on how broad your shoulders are.

'We can't affect any of these by exercise alone, and doing just 10 minutes a day won't influence the amount of tissue you have. Most of these factors are down to genetics.'

That said, Fletcher adds that while maintaining a core routine probably won't do much for said "hourglass" figure, it could be useful in other ways. 'There is lots of evidence that suggests keeping your muscles around the spine (i.e. your core) active could protect your spine from harm. However, the Daisy Keech hourglass routine is solely focussed on the front of your abdominals and hip flexors, which may create an imbalance in the stability of your spine, if this is the only form of training you do.

'The upshot is that you may have greater endurance in the anterior muscles of your trunk, neck and hips, but it won't provide an "hourglass" shape.'

Winterbottom adds: 'The hourglass workout is focussed on the upper and lower abs. It can be useful to isolate these specific muscle groups, but improving overall core strength should be the goal, and to do this you need to include all three planes of motion (up, down, side to side, and forwards and backwards). The exercises in Daisy Keech's ab workout cover only the up and down movement.'

Besides an intro and outro, Daisy doesnt speak during any of the exercises. No form cues, no technique advice. Nada. She does let you know when its time to move onto the next exercise, but all she gives is the name of the move. Theres so much to think about when doing ab exercises if you want to do them properly and without injury, and, IMO, its the coachs job to take you through them. Instead, I found myself craning my neck to try and get a closer look at her technique for me to imitate. Not the one.

During her intro, Keech mentions that she doesnt do oblique exercises because she doesnt want to build her waist out, rather cinch it in. From all the fitness experts I've interviewed and research I've done in my time, this was a big red flag. I've always been told that a balanced body is the one that will serve you best, so to disregard a certain area of your core purely for aesthetic reasons seemed wild.

Granted, a week wasnt long enough for me to notice any issues, but Id hedge my bets that if I never did oblique exercises, Id struggle with other workouts, like yoga and reformer Pilates, which require full body strength.

Fletcher tells me this would almost certainly be the case, adding that neglecting oblique work could increase the risk of injury. 'Training your obliques is usually done in a lateral direction. If you don't practice exercises in this plane of motion you could reduce your stability and therefore increase your risk of injury.

'Your obliques also play a major role in protecting your spine. Every muscle in your trunk, including your obliques, protect your spine by distributing forces through their connective tissue, which reduces stress on the discs of your spine. If you don't strengthen them, you'll run the risk of injuring your back.'

Winterbottom wagers that ignoring the oblique area could be particularly problematic in our day and age, when most of us spend a lot of time working from home, which can lead to a 'more sedentary lifestyle'. 'Having strong obliques can help reduce lower back pain, which I'm seeing a lot more of nowadays, when a lot of my clients spend more time than ever sitting at a desk,' she explains, adding that oblique exercises are also key for good posture and balance.

I dont know about you, but doing the same exercises day in, day out, quickly got tedious. Theres certainly something to be said for practicing the same moves repeatedly (its the only way youll get better at them, after all), but there are plenty of other ab exercises that could work the same area.

Fletcher recommends adding in the following moves to your core routine: 'A simple side plank to increase the capacity of the muscles at either side of your spine would be a good option to add in, as well as a bird dog to train your endurance and neural connections between the lower back muscles, hips and upper back. And a kneeling shoulder tap to train your muscles to resist rotation and keep your spine in a potentially safer position than your usual seated twists.'

And Winterbottom? 'The most effective core exercises are functional ones that'll help you move more effectively and efficiently in day-to-day life, and I always make sure my clients' workouts cover all planes of movement. My favourite core exercises for this are hollow holds, planks, oblique crunches, jackknives and deadlifts.'

Not only does Keech not allow rest between exercise sets, youre not permitted any days off. This could hinder muscle growth. Several studies have shown that neglecting rest days and overtraining can cause an increase in cortisol (the main stress hormone in the body), which can lead to a reduction of growth hormone (GH) release, which is related to reduced muscle mass and strength.

Fletcher explains how a lack of rest during sets of exercises could also be detrimental. 'The more burn you feel, the weaker you're likely to feel, and if this weakness compromises technique then you'll run the risk of injury, and won't reap the rewards of the workout.'

He cites one particular study in which one group of rugby players who were pushed to use a weight to failure were compared to another, who did a few reps, followed by a small rest, then repeated another set of reps. The study showed that the group who took rest breaks was just as strong as the group who didn't. Go figure.

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Winterbottom concurs: 'It's especially important to maintain form when training your core, as if your muscles fatigue and you let your technique slip, your lower back can start to overcompensate, which is where injury may come in.'

And not taking any rest days? 'Muscle soreness is produced from muscle damage and the damage must repair before your muscles can function optimally again,' Fletcher says. 'If you don't feel sore the next day, then there was potentially little damage created, and you might be good to go again. But damage and recovery are important factors in getting stronger. I don't advocate people pushing their muscles hard everyday, as this could potentially disrupt the recovery process and could lead to injury.'

We're not about the whole 'transformation' rhetoric (they're often associated with quick fixes, and sustainable, lifestyle habits should always come first), but I wanted to share my 'before and after' results, to prove that following the Daisy Keech ab workout every day for a week may not do much at all for your body shape, if that's what you're looking for.

I can, however, vouch for the workout working your ab muscles, in that mine definitely ached each day. So, if you take our advice and punt for performance and skill-based goals over aesthetic ones, the Daisy Keech ab workout may well come in useful - just keep in mind our points on form, taking rest if needed and incorporating exercises that target every muscle in your core.

If you, or anyone you know, is struggling with an eating disorder, contact Beat, the UK-based charity who hope to end the pain and suffering caused by eating disorders.T: 0808 801 0677E: help@beateatingdisorders.org.uk, under-18s: fyp@beateatingdisorders.org.uk

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'I did the Daisy Keech ab workout every day for a week, here's everything I learned' - Women's Health UK

COLLEGE STATION Only mid-way through June and Texas has already seen extreme heat and very little rain this summer, with the trend predicted to continue. The anticipation of drought can bring many thoughts to mind from water shortages to increased wildfire risk, but what do drought conditions mean for our trees?

Drought is defined by a relatively long duration with substantially below-normal precipitation, usually occurring over a large area, and Texas is no stranger to drought. According to the US Drought Monitor, in 2011 more than 80% of Texas experienced exceptional drought conditions. This drought killed an estimated 300 million trees, 5.6 million being urban shade trees.

According to experts at Texas A&M Forest Service, tree fatalities occur during a drought because drought is a significant stress to trees.

A stress is anything that reduces the capacity of the tree to function efficiently and grow vigorously, said Karl Flocke, Texas A&M Forest Service woodland ecologist. Stresses are things that can affect growth, nutrient uptake, the ability of the tree to photosynthesize and ultimately the ability of the tree to defend itself against pathogens things like heat, cold, predation from animals, insects and diseases a number of different things.

Drought alone may not kill your trees, though it could be the tipping domino of tree mortality and should be cause for concern.

Most trees usually die from a combination of different stresses, said Courtney Blevins, Texas A&M Forest Service urban forester. One of the biggest stresses we see in Texas is drought. When that happens, stresses build up and secondary pests or diseases can establish in trees.

Secondary pests and diseases are those that attack a tree that is already stressed by something else, such as a drought or a winter storm. Hypoxylon and most boring insects are considered secondary pests and diseases with the exception of the Emerald Ash Borer, which attacks both healthy and stressed ash trees.

When a tree is already stressed, then these types of insects and diseases will increase and according to Blevins, these secondary insects and diseases not only increase during the time of drought, but for years after a drought or other large stressor event has ended as it takes time for trees to recover.

Drought-stressed trees

So, what happens to trees during a drought? Ultimately, the lack of water causes trees to photosynthesize less, or make less food, which leads to a lack of nutrients needed to survive.

Plants generate their own food through photosynthesis and one of the key components of photosynthesis is water, said Flocke. Water is necessary for the chemical reactions that create sugars, its also necessary to help move the needed materials around in the tree and finally, to utilize those materials.

Without water, a tree cannot generate sugars and cannot utilize those sugars a necessary part for the entire process of tree growth. When this happens, trees will start to show physical symptoms of the lack of nutrients. While these symptoms can vary from species to species, most trees will begin to show signs of water stress through their leaves.

The things to look for on your tree are leaves dropping or wilting, small or malformed leaves, yellowing of the leaves and browning tips of the leaves, said Blevins. Some species, like junipers, may totally brown out, losing all of their leaves.

Just because leaves begin to fall from your tree, does not mean the tree is dead though. For small trees, you can simply use your thumb nail and scrape some of the smaller twigs - if there is still green underneath, then the tree is not dead. Within a few weeks, it may leaf back out. If you are concerned your tree is dead, contact a certified arborist for a professional opinion.

Reducing tree stress

The most helpful way to reduce stress to your tree during drought conditions is to give supplemental water though the amount and how often you water will depend on your specific tree and area.

Watering is going to depend on the tree; the size, species and age of the tree as well as the soils you have in your area, said Flocke. If you have established trees that are well-adapted to your location, its very likely that they might not need supplemental water at all. But I would monitor them to look for signs of stress.

If you begin to see signs of stress in your trees and the ground under your trees is extremely dry, its time to begin watering. To test the dryness of the soil, you can take a long screwdriver and stick it in the ground. If the screwdriver doesnt go easily six to eight inches into the soil, its time to water.

Start by watering the area around the canopy of the tree, said Flocke. Not just at the base of the tree and not just around the edge of the dripline but water the entire area underneath the canopy of the tree until the point where you have water start pooling and running off the surface.

Watering can be done with a water hose, soaker hose, sprinkler or bucket each way being efficient so long as the tree is getting the water it needs. A good guideline for the amount of water your tree needs is two to three gallons per one inch trunk diameter.

According to Blevins, a general rule of thumb for newly planted trees during the heat of the summer is to water them up to three times per week, in the absence of precipitation. Though, you want to make sure the soil is not completely saturated with water at all times.

Larger, established trees may not need much water at all but extremely high temperatures and lack of precipitation may warrant watering them every couple of weeks.

When watering your trees, adhere to any water use restrictions you may have in your area and try to maximize the water you do give.

The most important thing is to avoid watering during the heat of the day because much more water is going to be lost in evaporation, said Flocke. Either early in the morning or later in the evening is the best time to water.

An easy tip for watering trees during a drought is to try and mimic what a typical summer looks like for your trees, watering every 10 days to two weeks and knowing that its okay to not be on a set schedule - just like normal summer rain.

Another way you can help your trees manage drought stress is by mulching. Mulch is an easy and inexpensive option to help your trees because it conserves water, regulates soil temperatures, reduces competition from other plants and improves soil health.

In general, apply a layer of mulch no more than two to three inches deep, said Flocke. In reality, the entire area under the canopy could be mulched, but mulching out several feet around the base of the tree, being sure not to let the mulch touch the base of the trunk, will help.

Avoiding tree stress

During times of drought, be extremely cautious not to add additional stresses to your tree, making them more susceptible to secondary insects and diseases. First, do not prune your trees unless absolutely necessary.

What youre trying to do is reduce stress to the tree, so pruning, even when you have to, is adding stress because you are wounding the tree, said Blevins. If youre pruning out live branches or live leaf areas of the tree, youre removing food and the site where the trees root growth hormone is developed, affecting root growth and further stressing the tree at a time where its already too stressed.

According to Blevins, the exception to pruning trees during drought is a completely dead branch or one that is a hazard to its surroundings.

Another common mistake that can be harmful to your trees during a drought is putting out fertilizer.

Just generally applying fertilizers without knowing if there is a deficiency is a really bad idea, said Blevins. If there is not a nutrient deficiency then its not going to help anything and it can actually hurt things and make the tree worse.

During the summer heat, and especially when experiencing drought conditions, monitor your trees for stress symptoms, adding supplemental water when necessary, and continue to enjoy the values that trees add to our lives.

Trees provide an enormous value to us in our landscape, said Flocke. Keeping trees, especially near our homes, can help to reduce overall energy bills, keep us healthier and provide shade for the house. If we lose those trees, we potentially lose benefits that have taken decades to accumulate.

For additional information on caring for your trees during drought conditions, visit tfsweb.tamu.edu/afterthestorm/Drought/ .

View drought conditions in your area at tfsfrd.tamu.edu/ForestDrought/ .

To contact a certified arborist, visit isatexas.com/for-the-public/find-an-arborist/ .

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STRESSING OUT: Drought and trees, explained | Local News | weatherforddemocrat.com - Weatherford Democrat

Clinicians don't cease diagnosing patients once our clinical work is done. Most of us can recall debating whether to point out an atypical mole or another concerning finding to a stranger in public.

Like the doctor back in 2018, who saw a lump on the neck of a woman on TV and reached out via a video on Facebook, which found its way to her. She was eventually diagnosed with thyroid cancer.

Patients even recognize their own experiences and help lead others to clinical care.

And our diagnostic abilities can sometimes prove entertaining when interpreting plotlines in all sorts of storytelling, with endocrinology often making appearances in literature and film.

For instance, much debate has ensued about what Tiny Tim probably suffered from in Dickens's A Christmas Carol; a combination of tuberculosis and rickets makes the most sense to me, as detailed in a report in JAMA.

Malcolm Gladwell pointed out that Goliath in the biblical story probably got his stature and his inability to miss a shepherd boy's slingshot from a pituitary tumor. And the plot of Steel Magnolias revolves around type 1 diabetes.

Most recently, I began to see endocrinology everywhere in probably the most successful series of stories of recent times: the Harry Potter chronicles.

If, like me, you have a Potter-obsessed household, you might have watched the Return to Hogwarts special on HBO earlier this year. One of the observations that piqued my attention was when Emma Watson and Daniel Radcliffe joked about the hormones running rampant as the characters and actors who played them navigated adolescence, growing from children to teens as they made successive movies.

Popular culture has picked up on the comedy of these sometimes awkward pubertal transitions, repeatedly skewered by Saturday Night Live. However, this line made me ponder other less-famous hormones that could explain some of the fantastical findings of the wizarding world.

Hormones invisible chemical messenger are truly magical. They are most famous for sexual development but also empower growth, bone strength, fluid homeostasis, weight, carbohydrate metabolism, salt balance, blood pressure regulation, and any other function you can imagine; indeed, thyroid hormone is crucial for almost every system of the body.

Perhaps, the notable transformation of the main characters through puberty isn't the only hormonal influence we should credit. (This article may contain spoilers: My husband didn't read the Harry Potter series until we read it to our second grader so sadly learned at the age of 37 about the tragedy that befell Dumbledore.)

Just for fun, here are some other hormonal diagnoses that could explain some of the dark arts represented in the series.

Could Hagrid the giant have acromegaly? Clinical signs include enlarged hands and feet as well as excess growth of the ears and nose. A good way to check for these changes is to compare old photographs with the present condition. The actor who plays Hagrid, Robbie Coltrane, looks very different from the character after his transformation. Someone check his IGF-1 the hormone that manages the effects of growth hormone!

Neville Longbottom, the series' late bloomer, is the poster child for teens with constitutional delay of growth and puberty. This often frustrating but benign condition that plagues the "slow developer" tends to run in families and causes those who have it consternation as they wait to grow while their peers surpass them in stature and other ways; it also leads for them to be underestimated, as we witness with Neville in the Harry Potter series.

Voldemort: Depicted without a nose, if He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named had congenital central abnormalities, he should be screened for central pituitary hormone deficits because the pituitary gland shares common embryology with other midline structures. (His evil has nothing to do with his possible underlying endocrinopathies.)

The Weasley family: if any of these redheaded wizards presented with adrenal insufficiency and rapidly progressive obesity, a POMC (proopiomelanocortin) mutation should be considered.

Nearly Headless Nick's near-decapitation might have affected his thyroid or parathyroid glands Hogwarts physician Madame Pomfrey should pay special attention to his thyroid stimulating hormone and calcium levels, at least if she is willing to take advantage of Muggle remedies.

Moaning Myrtle, who was killed by the Basilisk in the girls' lavatory, continues with tantrums and moans as she haunts the same bathroom at Hogwarts. Could it be that Myrtle's groans and psychiatric overtones were a sign of hypercalcemia, and she was using the facilities as she tried to pass a kidney stone? At the very least causes of polyuria should be investigated, including diabetes insipidus and diabetes mellitus. A unifying diagnosis of never being able to leave the bathroom and vision changes requiring serious glasses like hers would be untreated septo-optic dysplasia or other causes of pituitary malformation or disruption.

And though Dolores Umbridge doesn't have an obvious endocrine disorder, she seems like the kind of person who would visit an endocrine office after doing loads of "her own research" and arrive with a list of labs she demands.

Severus Snape provides a good opportunity to point out someone with excessively greasy skin and abnormal sweating (hyperhidrosis) as an adult, symptoms that perhaps would be best managed by our colleagues in dermatology.

The Dementors: These demons clearly work for insurance companies, tormenting the young wizards with denials and prior authorization requests.

Enzyme names sound a lot like spell incantations. Iodothyronine deiodinase? HMG CoA reductase? Future authors looking for new spells need look no further than their closest endocrine textbook.

Please note, I consider all my patients to be miraculous and worthy of admiration these comparisons are all in good fun and in no way diminish the weight of these conditions.

As Rubeus Hagrid himself said, "I am what I am, an' I'm not ashamed. 'Never be ashamed,' my ol' dad used ter say, 'there's some who'll hold it against you, but they're not worth botherin' with.'"

Like magic, endocrinology can't be seen with the naked eye, but it's everywhere we look, if only we choose to look.

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Harry Potter's World Similar to the Magic of Endocrinology - Medscape

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Scientists demonstrate that they can control the properties of lab-grown plant material, which could enable the production of wood products with little waste.

Because of deforestation, the world loses about 10 million hectares of forest an area about the size of Iceland each year. At that rate, some researchers predict the worlds forests could disappear in 100 to 200 years.

A hectare is an area equal to a square with 100-meter sides, or 10,000 m2, and is primarily used in the measurement of land. One hectare contains about 2.47 acres and an acre is about 0.405 hectares. 100 hectares makes one square kilometer.

In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab, which could enable someone to grow a wooden product like a table without needing to cut down trees, process lumber, etc.

These researchers have now demonstrated that, by adjusting certain chemicals used during the growth process, they can precisely control the physical and mechanical properties of the resulting plant material, such as its stiffness and density.

They also show that, using 3D bioprinting techniques, they can grow plant material in shapes, sizes, and forms that are not found in nature and that cant be easily produced using traditional agricultural methods.

In an effort to provide an environmentally friendly and low-waste alternative, researchers at MIT have pioneered a tunable technique to generate wood-like plant material in a lab. Credit: Courtesy of the researchers

The idea is that you can grow these plant materials in exactly the shape that you need, so you dont need to do any subtractive manufacturing after the fact, which reduces the amount of energy and waste. There is a lot of potential to expand this and grow three-dimensional structures, says lead author Ashley Beckwith, a recent PhD graduate.

Though still in its early days, this research demonstrates that lab-grown plant materials can be tuned to have specific characteristics, which could someday enable researchers to grow wood products with the exact features needed for a particular application, like high strength to support the walls of a house or certain thermal properties to more efficiently heat a room, explains senior author Luis Fernando Velsquez-Garca, a principal scientist in MITs Microsystems Technology Laboratories.

Joining Beckwith and Velsquez-Garca on the paper is Jeffrey Borenstein, a biomedical engineer and group leader at the Charles Stark Draper Laboratory. The research is published recently in the journal Materials Today.

To begin the process of growing plant material in the lab, the researchers first isolate cells from the leaves of young Zinnia elegans plants. The cells are cultured in liquid medium for two days, then transferred to a gel-based medium, which contains nutrients and two different hormones.

Adjusting the hormone levels at this stage in the process enables researchers to tune the physical and mechanical properties of the plant cells that grow in that nutrient-rich broth.

In the human body, you have hormones that determine how your cells develop and how certain traits emerge. In the same way, by changing the hormone concentrations in the nutrient broth, the plant cells respond differently. Just by manipulating these tiny chemical quantities, we can elicit pretty dramatic changes in terms of the physical outcomes, Beckwith says.

In a way, these growing plant cells behave almost like stem cells researchers can give them cues to tell them what to become, Velsquez-Garca adds.

They use a 3D printer to extrude the cell culture gel solution into a specific structure in a petri dish, and let it incubate in the dark for three months. Even with this incubation period, the researchers process is about two orders of magnitude faster than the time it takes for a tree to grow to maturity, Velsquez-Garca says.

Following incubation, the resulting cell-based material is dehydrated, and then the researchers evaluate its properties.

They found that lower hormone levels yielded plant materials with more rounded, open cells that have lower density, while higher hormone levels led to the growth of plant materials with smaller, denser cell structures. Higher hormone levels also yielded plant material that was stiffer; the researchers were able to grow plant material with a storage modulus (stiffness) similar to that of some natural woods.

Another goal of this work is to study what is known as lignification in these lab-grown plant materials. Lignin is a polymer that is deposited in the cell walls of plants which makes them rigid and woody. They found that higher hormone levels in the growth medium causes more lignification, which would lead to plant material with more wood-like properties.

The researchers also demonstrated that, using a 3D bioprinting process, the plant material can be grown in a custom shape and size. Rather than using a mold, the process involves the use of a customizable computer-aided design file that is fed to a 3D bioprinter, which deposits the cell gel culture into a specific shape. For instance, they were able to grow plant material in the shape of a tiny evergreen tree.

Research of this kind is relatively new, Borenstein says.

This work demonstrates the power that a technology at the interface between engineering and biology can bring to bear on an environmental challenge, leveraging advances originally developed for health care applications, he adds.

The researchers also show that the cell cultures can survive and continue to grow for months after printing, and that using a thicker gel to produce thicker plant material structures does not impact the survival rate of the lab-grown cells.

I think the real opportunity here is to be optimal with what you use and how you use it. If you want to create an object that is going to serve some purpose, there are mechanical expectations to consider. This process is really amenable to customization, Velsquez-Garca says.

Now that they have demonstrated the effective tunability of this technique, the researchers want to continue experimenting so they can better understand and control cellular development. They also want to explore how other chemical and genetic factors can direct the growth of the cells.

They hope to evaluate how their method could be transferred to a new species. Zinnia plants dont produce wood, but if this method were used to make a commercially important tree species, like pine, the process would need to be tailored to that species, Velsquez-Garca says.

Ultimately, he is hopeful this work can help to motivate other groups to dive into this area of research to help reduce deforestation.

Trees and forests are an amazing tool for helping us manage climate change, so being as strategic as we can with these resources will be a societal necessity going forward, Beckwith adds.

Reference: Physical, mechanical, and microstructural characterization of novel, 3D-printed, tunable, lab-grown plant materials generated from Zinnia elegans cell cultures by Ashley L. Beckwith, Jeffrey T. Borenstein and Luis F. Velsquez-Garca, 7 March 2022, .DOI: 10.1016/j.mattod.2022.02.012

This research is funded, in part, by the Draper Scholars Program.

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MIT Pioneers Technology To Grow Customizable Wood Products in the Lab With Little Waste - SciTechDaily

By Diana Outlaw, Associate Professor, Biological Sciences, Mississippi State University

To my fellow parents and community members in rural America,

After the schools closed in March, 2020, we sat out the remainder of the 2020-2021 school year, opting to keep our exceptional child safe at home. Its not so much that we were worried about her being more vulnerable to Covid but that her poor adaptive skills and general lack of hygiene awareness made us extremely apprehensive about the germ-ridden cesspool of an elementary school.

You see, Arya has encephalopathy, essentially widespread brain damage that affects every aspect of her functioning, from her cognitive level to her understanding of time, from understanding her bodys cues to being able to find something that is right in front of her. She can be trained, but she doesnt understand why. She learns through repetition, and her reasoning is always circular.

We had no choice for the 2021-2022 school year except to send her back. But we practiced with masks, and she showed us that she was exceptionally compliant. One upside of perseverance! We got her vaccinated as soon as she was eligible, and she was thrilled. She gets a subcutaneous growth hormone shot every day, so needles are not a big deal to her.

Arya is in a self-contained classroom, which means that most if not all of her classmates also have poor adaptive skills. Which translates to mean the most vulnerable students in the school, which further translates to the families of her classmates being more vulnerable than most because they are often the only care and safety that her classmates have. If one of their family members gets sick, the children will suffer.

Literally, the kids had no class to go to, so that meant that someone had to be home caring for those kids, probably missing work, missing income, missing food.

But, one night earlier this year, I got a text from Aryas teacher, informing me that everyone in Aryas class (students, teachers, aides) had been in close contact with someone who had tested positive for Covid. In that moment I was beyond upset for my own family, and for the families of the rest of the students in the class.A caregiver goes down, and ward of the state may be the only choice for these kids. Everyone had to quarantine for five days, which really meant seven because it was a three-day weekend. Literally, the kids had no class to go to, so that meant that someone had to be home caring for those kids, probably missing work, missing income, missing food. The reality is that no one will likely ever know what the impact was. And, my cynical side believes that no one cares.

Let me just get really clear and blunt here. I am a privileged, well-educated white woman with multiple safety-nets. I can work from home and have all the benefits as a salaried state university employee. So, we quarantined and I worked when I could, with zero concern about our livelihood. Zero. Oktibbeha County in Mississippi, like most of Mississippi is rural, with limited internet access, limited access to transportation, limited access to health care. In a study examining the early impact of the pandemic in Mississippi, which has the poorest score of all 50 states on the economic hardship index, . . [taking] into account unemployment, dependency, education, income, crowded housing, and poverty,1 rural Mississippians had significantly higher case rates and mortalities than non-rural Mississippians. In this context of rurality and poverty, essential employees at the university and in the community had no choice over the course of the pandemic. They couldnt work at home. They couldnt be home to make sure their kids got their schoolwork done.For most of the families in Aryas class, another 5 day quarantine has real, and quite likely economic, consequences consequences that could be prevented with widespread vaccination.

For most of the families in Aryas class, another 5 day quarantine has real, and quite likely economic, consequences consequences that could be prevented with widespread vaccination.

So please if you can, get vaccinated, and get your kids vaccinated.We Can Do This! For yourselves, for kids and families like those of Aryas classmates.The caregivers of vulnerable children thank you very much. For more information about vaccinations, go to vaccines.gov.

1Zhang, L., Mcleod, S. T., Vargas, R., Liu, X., Young, D. K., & Dobbs, T. E. (2020). Subgroup comparison of Covid-19 case and mortality with associated factors in Mississippi: findings from analysis of the first four months of public data.Journal of biomedical research,34(6), 446457. https://doi.org/10.7555/JBR.34.20200135

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Commentary: The Importance of Covid Vaccination in Rural Schools - Daily Yonder