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Preliminary microbiome results showed striking differences between MEBO/PATM community members with active
condition compared to those who learned to control the condition.
December 4, 2019The Anna Karenina Principle: SutterellaRead moreNovember 30, 2019Concluding MEBO-uBIOME studyRead moreSeptember 4, 2019The Anna Karenina Principle: AlloprevotellaRead moreAugust 29, 2019Identifying subtypes of a stigmatized medical conditionRead moreAugust 28, 2019Saving The PondRead moreAugust 19, 2019The Elusive Balance: EpulopisciumRead moreAugust 14, 2019Friends and StarsRead moreAugust 5, 2019Microbiome and TMA metabolismRead moreJuly 21, 2019How are you feeding your microbiome?Read moreJune 24, 2019Does blood type matter?Read moreApril 1, 2019Technologies you wish existedRead more Research study: Dynamics of the Gut Microbiota in Idiopathic Malodor Production
Before you decide whether to participate in this research study, you should review: 1. The purpose of the research study 2. The study procedures 3. How long your involvement in the research will last 4. Any procedures that are experimental 5. Any reasonably foreseeable risks, discomforts, and benefits of the research 6. Any potentially beneficial alternative procedures or treatments 7. How the confidentiality of your data will be maintained 8. The possibility of unforeseeable risks 9. Any added costs to you 10. What happens if you decide to stop participating 11. New findings that may affect your willingness to participate 12. How many people will be in the study
We are starting pre-screening our candidates to find qualified participants, based on prior test results and ability to accurately report information.
Participants will be asked to submit their samples to uBiome on as different days in terms of their well-being/mood/symptoms as possible. MEBO is a condition of ups and downs. One day you may be completely odor-free, the next day you may have severe odor episodes - called flares. Our participants will be asked to submit their first sample if they felt they experienced symptoms, or had a day or two different from average. Study participants will be asked to submit responses to our questionnaire about those days. We will privately follow up with suggestions to improve their wellbeing. Our new Life-quality Test questionnaire will provide a measure for severity of Metabolic Breath and Body Odor and PATM symptoms. Here is the first version and we welcome all suggestions and ideas the community may have.  Some April Fool's jokes come true. Back in 2004, an electronic product review site Pocket Lint pranked about a new Apple phone add-on for the iPod. The first-generation iPhone was released in 2007. "Ratatattle" a real-time map of rat infestations in restaurants, announced by Cnet on April 1, 2007, was actually implemented by the government of New York City in 2009. Ultrasound-based network for unborn babies (2007) was prototyped in form of a wearable belt Kickbee in 2008. The product got a lot of press coverage but ceased to exist in 2015. Some 1st-April jokes have the potential to be prophetic or ominous. Like Google's Smartbox (2015) fusing physical mail with electronic kind and sorting everything into subject-specific categories. Or electro-fitness shoes (2016) that would never let you stop moving. And a full-body wearable (2017) monitoring the body and keeping you connected 24x7x365. In addition to non-wearable technologies recording all your bathroom activity. Some April Fool's products we really wish existed. Such as a Duolingo pillow (2016) teaching us a new language overnight. Or Ab-hancer grid (2012) quickly developing ab muscles when placed over the midsection. And a holograph-projecting drone to attend meetings instead of you.  The best April Fool's technology stories of 2018 focused on car tech, genomics, sensory perception and wearables. Toyota's luxury car division Lexus announced a new personalized car design based on 23andme data. Likelyhood to consumer higher levels of caffeine, for example, would translate into larger cupholders, susceptibility to back pain would add dozens of controls to front seats and new-car smell will be genetically personalized to match expression of olfactory receptors.  A new 4d6andMe Stat Discovery Kit will use genetic information to quantify your charisma, saving throws, ability modifiers, skill proficiencies, hit die, passive wisdom, and initiative all in one easy-to-read form - a Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition character sheet. A taste-bud analyzing attachment to a smartphone and Artificial-Intelligence software will help to select a perfect Hummus dish for everyone - thanks to Hummus API from Google Israel.  A Czech automobile manufacturer Skoda's new QuarrelKancel technology identifies the first signs of an argument and starts to filter out backseat bickering and sibling squabbles, to let the driver concentrate on the driving. As part of global-wide push within the motoring industry to run cars using sustainable energy sources and help reduce vehicle emissions, MG Motor UK has announced a new engine running on alpaca waste.  If you want to be even more environmentally friendly, walk instead of driving - Jabra Sneakers will also help you to develop dance skills, providing Hi-Fi audio grade quality on the go with voice activation, stereo sound, dust certification and wireless charging with unique Foot Mat.
Online tutor company Chegg is offering the Chegg Osmosis Pillow that will not only adapt to the shape of your head, but also pack your memory with actual knowledge. And you can also make money while you sleep by renting out the unused space in your bed. Mattress company Lucid just launched a cheaper version of Airbnb, the ShareBED app. There exist potential for new applications in sharing economy. Which new technologies offer the most potential? Only time will tell.  Human odors depend on many extrinsic (such as food or clothing) and intrinsic factors - localized or systemic. In recent years, microbes responsible for localized malodors - bad breath caused by oral bacteria and axillary odor - have been mapped using next generation sequencing approaches. However, Intestinal microbes responsible for systemic malodor (whole-body and extraoral halitosis), remain to be identified. Our preliminary analysis of culture-, PCR- and 16S-RNA-based data donated by MEBO and PATM community members show that there are no easy answers.  "Lower Firmicutes to get firm and cute," says a news headline. MEBO population is low in Firmicutes and higher in Bacteroidetes. In fact, the very low F/B ratio is just about the only thing in common across the population in the Genova PCR-based microbiome analyses. The figure above shows typical representatives of MEBO "sweet" (on the left) and "non-sweet" (on the right) groups, as defined in our previous posts, video presentations and reports.  uBiome data, including SmartGut and Explorer, shows that MEBO community doesn't really have too many smellier bacteria, and likely has lower trimethylamine-producing potential than the average population. Many odoriferous bacteria - such as Odoribacter (ammonia odor), B. crossotus (rancid butter) and Desulfovibrio piger (rotten eggs) are often low in numbers, in at least one of the tests for every participant. But the composition of "scent tones" differs from normal.  This phylogenetic tree shows some of the bacteria found in abnormal levels in the MEBO community (underlined). Other bacteria displayed were found to cause (red) or compensate for (green) halitosis and underarm odors. TMA- and/or sulfide-producers are shown in brown. Some of them - like Staphylococcus hominis - produce additional volatiles like thioalcohols responsible for the characteristic unpleasant body odor smell. As seen from the figure, many bacteria can be either good or bad smell-wise on species level. This means that our 16S-RNA-based data doesn't always have sufficient resolution and might not adequately uncover the odor-producing potential.
Our preliminary findings show that "sweet" group of MEBO community is high in Anaerotruncus colihominis - indole (fecal smell) producing bacteria that utilises sugars glucose and mannose. Everyone seems to be low in Ruminococcus albus - a primary cellulose degrader that produces hydrogen and sweet-smelling acetate. 60% are low in Oxalobacter formigenes. Many participants had higher levels of Proteobacteria - but everyone had their own species - such as E.coli, Citrobacter freundii, Enterobacter Cloacae, Klebsiella or Aggregatibacter. Butyric acid-producing Butyrivibrio crossotus was abnormal in all of our samples: either too high or (mostly) too low. We also observed cases when the gut microbiota was significantly unstable - similar to Crohn's disease (even when patients are in remission). We owe much of our general good health to the results of bacterial wars when the "good" species are destroying the "bad" invaders. Could it be that systemic malodor arises from bacterial wars that have no real purpose? Our research is only just beginning.  Healthcare is evolving from one-size-fits-all to personalized, from reactive to preventive, from intuitive to data-driven, from paternalistic to participatory. Can crowdsourcing facilitate this transformation?
2018 should be very exciting for science and technology. As seen in the diagram below, recent years were filled with groundbreaking projects and the stars may be aligning for something really big, driven by advances in software and hardware.  Last year, artificial Intelligence software hit the mainstream. In 2018 it will be more prolific, more creative and invade every corner of our life. The current, second, wave of AI is not quite ready to break and deep learning will continue to dominate this year . Deep learning is driving the future of autonomous vehicles. Fully automated self-driving cars (level-5, as defined by the Society of Automotive Engineers and depicted in the figure below) won't take over the roads this year or next, but we'll see plenty of highly automated vehicles in 2018. Models of ownership will be also changing - perhaps to a monthly subscription service vs lease or traditional ownership.   Machines will be taking on more responsibilities in education, getting more heavily involved in the evaluation and counselling of students. Massive open online courses, or MOOCS, did not meet the great expectations everybody had. But e-learning learned to overcome the challenges, smaller private online courses started to gain more popularity and many traditional universities are already at risk to become obsolete. Seven years ago, in his book The Innovative University, world-renowned innovation expert Clayton Christensen predicted that as many as half of American universities would close or go bankrupt within 10 to 15 years. This year AICTE (All India Council for Technical Education) will be shutting down around 800 engineering colleges as students can get comparable or better educations over the internet. Only the most technology-advanced Universities will evolve, find ways to reduce the cost of education, perhaps even build programs for specific companies, and survive.  MOOCs is an example of mass collaboration - as is Wikipedia or Citizen Science. The model has many other flavors and names - the sharing economy, the gig economy, the peer, platform or on-demand economy. It enabled brands like Uber and Airbnb to become world giants. Virtually any industry could be disrupted by Uberisation, through sharing of assets and human resources. And labor market is quietly transforming traditional job structures into on-call microjobs without benefits. The gig economy is lonely and it often turns over-educated individuals into low skilled workers. Could we develop a better platform to utilize complex technical skills, social abilities and cultural competences? Could we create a new social safety net where the new age workers can rely on each other?  In 2018, Amazon and robots will be moving into health and wellbeing, and telemedicine will become mainstream. Fitbits did not take over the world, but an "immersive fitness" trend is paving the way to the new gym-less future of fitness. Small accessories such as AliveCor's Kardiaband EKG reader detecting atrial fibrillation are already recognized as medical devices. Omron's HeartGuide smartwatch can measure blood pressure on the go and will seek FDA approval later this year. AI has shown its ability to screen for eye diseases and skin cancer. The cost of genome sequencing - touted as the future of healthcare - was rapidly plummeting until we realized that the quality remains a problem and much remains to be learned. In 2018, the ambitious 100K Genomes project will be completed and the 100K Foodborne Pathogen Genome project will release more data. Technological advances made it possible to sequence pathogen genomes rapidly with portable devices such as MinION. As two landmark technologies of genome editing and immune engineering - CRISPR/Cas9 and CAR-T - had critical milestones, there will be new and exciting advances in gene therapy. The health industry is poised to enter the next phase of digitization: a phase of hyper-personalization. Hyper-personalization already infiltrated social networks contributing to political polarization. It might lead to mixed results in retail - that hopes to use ur biometric data for better sales. But the more personalized and precise healthcare is, the better it is for all of us.  Virtual and digital worlds will continue to blur leading to marketplace consolidation. And there will be also an increase in consolidation in healthcare, life insurance, gig economy and science.
It will be even more challenging to succeed as an entrepreneur. Big business will continue to getting bigger, swallowing up the resources, market share, and consumer support that used to be more evenly distributed among all types of companies. But the stars may be aligning up for new breakthroughs, entrepreneurs will rise up, come up with new ingenious ideas and be the driving force behind economic growth. |
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