Senior Women Web

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  • “Truly finishing the human genome sequence was like putting on a new pair of glasses.” Critical for Understanding Human Genomic Variation and Genetic Contributions to Certain Diseases

    April 12, 2022 

    At a Glance

    • Researchers finished sequencing the roughly 3 billion bases (or “letters”) of DNA that make up a human genome.
    • Having a complete, gap-free sequence of our DNA is critical for understanding human genomic variation and the genetic contributions to certain diseases.
    • Below, Researchers completed the first gap-free sequence of the entire human genome.vitstudio / Shutterstock
    Illustration of DNA and human forms
    nk”>Human Genome Project, completed in 2003, covered about 92% of the total human genome sequence. The technologies to decipher the gaps that remained didn’t exist at the time. But scientists knew that the last 8% likely contained information important for fundamental biological processes.
     
    Since then, researchers have developed better laboratory tools, computational methods, and strategic approaches. The final, complete human genome sequence was described in a set of six papers in the April 1, 2022, issue of Science. Companion papers were also published in several other journals.

    The work was done by the Telomere to Telomere (T2T) consortium. T2T is led by researchers at NIH’s National Human Genome Research Institute (NHGRI), the University of California, Santa Cruz, and the University of Washington, Seattle. NHGRI was the primary funder.

    “Short-read” technologies were originally used to sequence the human genome. These provide several hundred bases of DNA sequence at a time, which are then stitched together by computers. Such methods still leave some gaps in genome sequences. 

    Over the past decade, two new DNA sequencing technologies emerged that can read longer sequences without compromising accuracy. The PacBio HiFi DNA sequencing method can read about 20,000 letters with nearly perfect accuracy. The Oxford Nanopore DNA sequencing method can read even more — up to 1 million DNA letters at a time — with modest accuracy. Both were used to generate the complete human genome sequence.

    In total, the new project added nearly 200 million letters of the genetic code. This last 8% of the genome includes numerous genes as well as repetitive DNA sequences, which may influence how cells function. Most of the newly added sequences were in the centromeres, the dense middle sections of chromosomes, and near the repetitive ends of each chromosome.

    The complete genome sequence will be particularly valuable for studies that aim to understand how DNA differs from person to person. For example, T2T researchers used the sequence as a reference to discover more than 2 million previously unknown sequence variants in the human genome. These included variants within many medically relevant genes. 

    “This complete human genome sequence has already provided new insight into genome biology, and I look forward to the next decade of discoveries about these newly revealed regions,” says Dr. Karen Miga, a co-chair of the T2T consortium at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

    “Truly finishing the human genome sequence was like putting on a new pair of glasses,” says consortium co-chair Dr. Adam Phillippy, whose group at NHGRI led the effort. “Now that we can clearly see everything, we are one step closer to understanding what it all means.” 

    This accomplishment can now serve as a model for sequencing genomes from globally diverse people — a goal researchers are pursuing. Further work is also needed to finish the complete sequence of the Y chromosome, which was not contained in the cells used for this study.

    “This foundational information will strengthen the many ongoing efforts to understand all the functional nuances of the human genome, which in turn will empower genetic studies of human disease,” says Dr. Eric Green, director of NHGRI.

  • GAO, Tax Filing: 2021 Performance Underscores Need for IRS to Address Persistent Challenges

    GAO-22-104938; Published: Apr 11, 2022. Publicly Released: Apr 11, 2022. 
     

    IRS faced an unprecedented workload during the 2021 filing season. It began with a backlog of 8 million returns from the prior year. IRS reduced the backlog, but still had millions of new 2021 returns to process by year’s end. Taxpayers faced refund delays due to an unprecedented volume of returns requiring manual review — most with similar tax credit errors.

    During the 2021 filing season, taxpayers also struggled to get help from IRS as:

    • Telephone demand skyrocketed
    • Online refund information was scant
    • Correspondence nearly tripled
    • In-person service declined

    We recommended that IRS address these issues.

    During the 2021 filing season, taxpayers also struggled to get help from IRS as:

    • Telephone demand skyrocketed
    • Online refund information was scant
    • Correspondence nearly tripled
    • In-person service declined

    We recommended that IRS address these issues.

    Collage with a paper income tax form, 300 dollars and pen

    What GAO Found

    The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) experienced multiple challenges during the 2021 filing season as it struggled to respond to an unprecedented workload that included delivering COVID-19 relief. IRS began the filing season with a backlog of 8 million individual and business returns from the prior year that it processed alongside incoming returns. IRS reduced the backlog of prior year returns, but as of late December 2021, had about 10.5 million returns to process from 2021. Further, IRS suspended and reviewed 35 million returns with errors primarily due to new or modified tax credits. As a result, millions of taxpayers experienced long delays in receiving refunds. GAO found that some categories of errors occur each year; however, IRS does not assess the underlying causes of taxpayer errors on returns. Doing so could help reduce future errors, refund delays, and strains on IRS resources.

    IRS has paid nearly $14 billion in refund interest in the last 7 fiscal years, with $3.3 billion paid in fiscal year 2021. Using IRS data, GAO identified some characteristics of refund interest payments, such as amended returns. However, IRS does not identify, monitor, and mitigate issues contributing to refund interest payments. Accordingly, IRS is missing an opportunity to reduce costs.

    Challenges with IRS Customer Service during the 2021 Filing Season

    Challenges with IRS Customer Service during the 2021 Filing Season

     

    IRS answered more phone calls than in prior years, but taxpayers had a difficult time reaching IRS due to high call volumes. IRS urged taxpayers to access its “Where’s My Refund” online tool to get refund status information; yet this tool provides limited information on refund status and delays. IRS does not have plans to modernize “Where’s My Refund,” although this could help IRS better serve taxpayers, lower call volume, and reduce costs. IRS’s correspondence inventory was 5.9 million by the end of the filing season, and grew to more than 8 million by the start of 2022. IRS does not have a plan or estimates for reducing this backlog; doing so could help reduce demands on IRS. Finally, in-person service has significantly declined since 2015 and IRS has not fully considered alternatives for its current in-person service model. IRS’s plans to improve the taxpayer experience—such as by expanding virtual services—may further contribute to the decline in in-person visits.

    (more…)

  • Justice Department Secures Agreement with CVS Pharmacy, Inc. to Make Online COVID-19 Vaccine Registration Accessible for People with Disabilities


    Justice department doors

    The US Justice Department today announced that it has secured a settlement agreement with CVS Pharmacy, Inc., that will help people with disabilities get information about COVID-19 vaccinations and book their vaccination appointments online. The agreement, which requires CVS to confirm its COVID-19 vaccine content to the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines Version 2.1, will help ensure that individuals with disabilities who use screen readers and those who have difficulty using a mouse can privately and independently book their potentially life-saving vaccination appointments online. Today’s resolution is the department’s fifth agreement on the critical issue of COVID-19 vaccination website accessibility, following a November 2021 settlement with Rite Aid Corporation; a December 2021 settlement with Hy-Vee, Inc.; a January 2022 settlement with The Kroger Co.; and a February 2022 settlement with Meijer, Inc. To find out more about this agreement or the ADA, visit ada.gov or call the Justice Department’s toll-free ADA information line at 1-800-514-0301 or 1-800-514-0383 (TDD).

    Today’s resolution is the department’s fifth agreement on the critical issue of COVID-19 vaccination website accessibility, following a November 2021 settlement with Rite Aid Corporation; a December 2021 settlement with Hy-Vee, Inc.; a January 2022 settlement with The Kroger Co.; and a February 2022 settlement with Meijer, Inc. To find out more about this agreement or the ADA, visit ada.gov or call the Justice Department’s toll-free ADA information line at 1-800-514-0301 or 1-800-514-0383 (TDD).


  • The Grolier Club, A Former Exhibition: A Century of Dining Out, The American Story in Menus, 1841-1941

    Menus are minor, transient documents that tell us how people have dined outside the home over time. Examine one and be transported back to the everyday life of the past – whether to a lavish banquet in the Gilded Age or a food-relief eatery during the Great Depression. They aid our cultural memory by providing historical evidence, not only of what people were eating, but what else they were doing and with whom they were doing it; and what they valued.

    Dining Out

    In the United States, menus came into general use in the 1840s when hotels and restaurants began to replace the old inns and taverns that served a limited choice of domestic-style meals. Dining among strangers in quasi-public spaces became a new and novel kind of entertainment in which the menu played a central role, offering diners choice and anticipation for the first time. Menus suddenly appeared in all types of venues and forms of transportation. 

    Since menus reflect all aspects of society, it was possible to weave a literary thread through the exhibition, including rare examples from a haunt of Edgar Allan Poe, Mark Twain’s seventieth birthday party at Delmonico’s, and a long-forgotten reception for French zoologist Paul B. Du Chaillu in the New Mexico Territory. The annual dinners of the American Booksellers Association and the Bibliophilic Society recall the social world of book dealers and prominent collectors in New York at the turn of the last century.

    The menu is an art form that aims to please. While most were intended for short-term use and not meant to be saved, others were finely crafted by high-society stationers such as Tiffany’s and Dempsey & Carroll. Even when kept as personal mementos, however, they were frequently discarded by later generations for whom they had no special meaning. As with other types of ephemera, part of their appeal lies within the notion of their improbable survival.

     

    The COVID-19 pandemic has hit the restaurant industry very hard, rendering our memories of dining out to be even more nostalgic. Though we have had to delay the exhibition originally scheduled to open in the ground floor gallery this September (Editor’s Note: Last September?) , I offer a preview in the form of more than a hundred items. While nothing beats seeing the real thing, every media has its advantages. May you enjoy the freedom online viewing affords.


  • Kaiser Health News: Why Black and Hispanic Seniors Are Left With a Less Powerful Flu Vaccine

    By Arthur Allen April 6, 2022Whiteman Walker sign

     

    At Whitman-Walker Health, Dr. David Fessler and his staff administer high-dose influenza vaccine to all HIV-positive and senior patients. Although the vaccine is roughly three times as expensive as standard flu vaccine, it seems to do a better job at protecting those with weakened immune systems — a major focus of the nonprofit’s Washington, D.C., clinics.

    At the University of New Mexico Hospital in Albuquerque, meanwhile, Dr. Melissa Martinez runs a drive-thru clinic providing 10,000 influenza vaccines each year for a community made up largely of Black and Hispanic residents. It’s open to all comers, and they all get the standard vaccine.

    These different approaches to preventing influenza, a serious threat to the young and old even with covid-19 on the scene, reflect the fact that federal health officials haven’t taken a clear position on whether the high-dose flu vaccine — on the market since 2010 — is the best choice for the elderly. Another factor is cost. While Medicare reimburses both vaccines, the high-dose shot is three times as expensive, and carrying both vaccines for different populations requires additional staffing and logistics.

    “We’ve focused on giving the standard-dose vaccine, trying to get as many people vaccinated as possible,” Martinez said. And they will keep doing so, she added, until the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices decides whether to preferentially recommend the enhanced vaccines.

    The CDC historically has been reluctant to pick winners among manufacturers’ competing products to prevent or treat disease. It recommended all three licensed covid vaccines after establishing that each met its disease-fighting goals. In a given year, most influenza vaccines are not very effective. Drug companies vying for market share aren’t generally motivated to compare them, since they might lose out. And federal officials generally don’t fund such studies, so they are left to rely on research offered by the companies.

    In the meantime, older minority patients, especially Black seniors, are getting the short end of the stick, say some advocates for eliminating racial disparities in health care. Blacks are about 20% less likely than whites to get flu shots, although they are at higher risk of severe flu. Even those who get the vaccine are about 30% less likely to get the high-dose version.

    “Since you have an increased risk of diabetes and heart disease in the African American community, it inherently disadvantages this population to give them the standard-dose vaccine,” said Dr. Keith Ferdinand, a cardiologist and professor of medicine at Tulane University. While the data on the high-dose vaccines is not ironclad, “any tool we have in our toolbox to reduce ethnic/racial disparities should be embraced,” he said.

    A CDC workgroup has been investigating the issue since before the pandemic, with plenty of covid-caused delays. On Feb. 23, committee members heard evidence that the high-dose flu vaccine and two other “enhanced” vaccines — one containing an immune-boosting substance, the other a recombinant protein — were better than low-dose vaccine produced in hens’ eggs, the standard product for the past 80 years.

    The committee may vote at its next meeting, probably in June, on the matter. At February’s meeting, one CDC official estimated that switching to those vaccines for seniors could reduce influenza-related hospitalizations by thousands a year.

    But even a June vote would be too late to affect vaccinations before the fall flu season. Pharmacies and health systems have already ordered next season’s vaccine, and drug companies are committing their facilities now to meet the demand, said Dr. Michael Greenberg, a Sanofi vice president.

    Sanofi stands to gain from expanded use of its more expensive high-dose vaccine (it also produces a standard-dose version). Germany, Canada, and other countries provide the vaccine free to residents of long-term care facilities, but not to all seniors. In the United States, an estimated 75% of elders who are vaccinated receive an enhanced shot.

    But the remainder, who get the standard vaccine, are disproportionately members of ethnic and racial minorities, according to a study of the 2015-16 flu season.

  • A Ferocious Predator of Its Day: T. Rex’s Short Arms May Have Lowered Risk of Bites During Feeding Frenzies

    T rex short arms

    A lifesize cast of T. rex in the atrium of UC Berkeley’s Valley Life Sciences Building shows how peculiarly short the forearms were, given that the creature was the most ferocious predator of its day. (Photo by Peg Skorpinski)

    Over the two decades paleontologist Kevin Padian taught a freshman seminar called The Age of Dinosaurs, one question asked frequently by undergraduates stuck with him: Why are the arms of Tyrannosaurus rex so ridiculously short?

    He would usually list a range of paleontologists’ proposed hypotheses — for mating, for holding or stabbing prey, for tipping over a Triceratops — but his students, usually staring a lifesize replica in the face, remained dubious. Padian’s usual answer was, “No one knows.” But he also suspected that scholars who had proposed a solution to the conundrum came at it from the wrong perspective.

    Rather than asking what the T. rex’s short arms evolved to do, Padian said, the question should be what benefit those arms were for the whole animal.

    In a new paper appearing in the current issue of the journal Acta Palaeontologia Polonica, Padian floats a new hypothesis: The T. rex’s arms shrank in length to prevent accidental or intentional amputation when a pack of T. rexes descended on a carcass with their massive heads and bone-crushing teeth. A 45-foot-long T. rex, for example, might have had a 5-foot-long skull, but arms only 3 feet long — the equivalent of a 6-foot human with 5-inch arms.

    “What if several adult tyrannosaurs converged on a carcass? You have a bunch of massive skulls, with incredibly powerful jaws and teeth, ripping and chomping down flesh and bone right next to you. What if your friend there thinks you’re getting a little too close? They might warn you away by severing your arm,” said Padian, distinguished emeritus professor of integrative biology at the University of California, Berkeley, and a curator at the UC Museum of Paleontology (UCMP). “So, it could be a benefit to reduce the forelimbs, since you’re not using them in predation anyway.”

    Severe bite wounds can cause infection, hemorrhaging, shock and eventual death, he said.

    Padian noted that the predecessors of tyrannosaurids had longer arms, so there must have been a reason that they became reduced in both size and joint mobility. This would have affected not only T. rex, which lived in North America at the end of the Cretaceous period, he said, but the African and South American abelisaurids from the mid-Cretaceous and the carcharodontosaurids, which ranged across Europe and Asia in the Early and Mid-Cretaceous periods and were even bigger than T. rex.

    “All of the ideas that have been put forward about this are either untested or impossible because they can’t work,” Padian said. “And none of the hypotheses explain why the arms would get smaller — the best they could do is explain why they would maintain the small size. And in every case, all of the proposed functions would have been much more effective if the arms had not been reduced.”

    He admitted that any hypothesis, including his, will be hard to substantiate 66 million years after the last T. rex became extinct.

    Arms and the T. rex
    When the great dinosaur hunter Barnum Brown discovered the first T. rex fossils in 1900, he thought the arms were too small to be part of the skeleton. His colleague, Henry Fairfield Osborn, who described and named T. rex, hypothesized that the short arms might have been “pectoral claspers” — limbs that hold the female in place during copulation. This is analogous to some sharks and rays’ pelvic claspers, which are modified fins. But Osborn provided no evidence, and Padian noted that the T. rex’s arms are too short to go around another T. rex and certainly too weak to exert any control over a mate.

  • Sexual Assault: DOD and Coast Guard Should Ensure Laws Are Implemented to Improve Oversight of Key Prevention and Response Efforts

    GAO-22-103973
    Published: Mar 28, 2022. Publicly Released: Mar 28, 2022. 

  • CDC’s First Nationally Representative Survey of High School Students During the Pandemic Can Inform Effective Programs

    healthy youth image

    Adolescent Behaviors and Experiences Survey (ABES)

    https://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/data/abes.htm?s_cid=tw-zaza-2022-abes  

    New CDC analyses shine additional light on the mental health of U.S. high school students during the COVID-19 pandemic, including a disproportionate level of threats that some students experienced.

    According to the new data, in 2021, more than a third (37%) of high school students reported they experienced poor mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic, and 44% reported they persistently felt sad or hopeless during the past year. The new analyses also describe some of the severe challenges youth encountered during the pandemic:

    • More than half (55%) reported they experienced emotional abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including swearing at, insulting, or putting down the student.
    • 11% experienced physical abuse by a parent or other adult in the home, including hitting, beating, kicking, or physically hurting the student.
    • More than a quarter (29%) reported a parent or other adult in their home lost a job.

    Before the pandemic, mental health was getting worse among high school students, according to prior CDC data.pdf icon

    “These data echo a cry for help,” said CDC Acting Principal Deputy Director Debra Houry, M.D., M.P.H. “The COVID-19 pandemic has created traumatic stressors that have the potential to further erode students’ mental wellbeing. Our research shows that surrounding youth with the proper support can reverse these trends and help our youth now and in the future.”

    Lesbian, gay, and bisexual youth and female youth reported greater levels of poor mental health; emotional abuse by a parent or caregiver; and having attempted suicide than their counterparts.

    In addition, over a third (36%) of students said they experienced racism before or during the COVID-19 pandemic. The highest levels were reported among Asian students (64%) and Black students and students of multiple races (both 55%). The survey cannot determine the extent to which events during the pandemic contributed to reported racism. However, experiences of racism among youth have been linked to poor mental health, academic performance, and lifelong health risk behaviors.

  • Chicago History Museum, Pullman Women at Work: From Gilded Age to Atomic Age

    Pullman resisted hiring women and did his best to keep attention away from the company’s female employees.
    Women sewing fabric for seats at Pullman Works, Chicago, Illinois.
    Women sewing fabric for seats at Pullman Works, Chicago, Illinois.

     

    via Chicago History Museum
    By: Sarah Buchmeier 

     

    March 30, 2022
     
    In 1880, George M. Pullman, a railroad mogul who had made his fortune building luxury rail cars, embarked on a new social experiment — a town (named for himself) south of Chicago that housed an expansive factory flanked by modern homes and amenities for his workers. If you know something about the history of Pullman, it’s probably related to the strike in 1894, when thousands of factory employees halted operations for nearly three months and inspired a nationwide boycott of Pullman trains orchestrated by the American Railway Union. Or perhaps you know about the Pullman Porters, the African-American employees who provided service to the passengers on the trains, making up the sleeping berths, shining shoes, carrying luggage, and even providing entertainment here and there. In 1925, they would form the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and in 1937, would become the first African-American labor union to win a contract with a major corporation in the U.S.
    Of course, since the beginning, women both defined and defied the social experiment that was Pullman.

    When these stories are told, they tend to center on the men. Between images of striking carpenters, painters, and blacksmiths; charismatic union leaders like Eugene V. Debs and A. Philip Randolph; and sharply dressed porters, the work of women at the Pullman company has remained largely invisible. Even Almont Lindsey’s 1939 article, which focuses particularly on the ways in which paternalism guided the design and management of the company town, has nothing specific to say about the Pullman women. And in some ways, that’s precisely what Pullman would have wanted. Pullman resisted hiring women and did his best to keep attention away from the company’s female employees. Of course, since the beginning, women both defined and defied the social experiment that was Pullman.

    In the Shops

    As Douglas Pearson Hoover suggests in his thesis “Women in Nineteenth Century Pullman,” the town was planned with the intention that women’s primary role would be “to mother children and raise them in an air of middle-class respectability on a working-class family’s budget.” The homes were designed with domestic work in mind—indoor plumbing, garbage outlets, and a “covered arrangement of clotheslines” in the back. The pedestrian scale of the neighborhood made it possible for men to have lunch at home and find rest in the domestic environment.

    Rose Szczerbiak BarlogRose Szczerbiak Barlog cleaned the inside of cannon shells with steel wool. She poses in her uniform in front of her Pullman house on Langley Ave. Courtesy of the Quiroz family

  • Shhhhhh by Ferida Wolff

    baby crib

    Photo by Ajay Suresh from New York, NY, USA, via Wikimedia Commons

    by Ferida Wolff

    I was babysitting my two-year-old grandson a number of years ago while my daughter and son-in-law went off for a needed weekend away. I had been in charge at other times but only during the day and not over an extended period. Three decades have passed since I had full charge of a child. I hoped I remembered my mothering skills. How different could it be? I wondered.

    Everything was fine during the day. I changed diapers as necessary and had no problem keeping him entertained. We went to the playground where he toddled up the steps and flung himself down the slide. We rode the elevator up and down in the store as we shopped in the local market. He had a two-hour nap after lunch and woke up happy. We took a walk in the afternoon and watched the trucks rattle along the road, a highlight of his day.

    Easy, I thought.

    Even dinner was a breeze. My daughter said he wouldn’t eat cheese but he gobbled up a whole finger of string cheese. He ate two meatballs dipped in gobs of ketchup, a double helping of applesauce with cinnamon, and tasted a green bean, which he didn’t eat but he didn’t throw on the floor either — a definite plus. After his bath, my sweet grandson snuggled into my lap for a story. We read the book the traditional multiple times and then it was bedtime. I put him in his crib, shut the light, and was ready to leave when I heard the plaintive call.

    “Up,” he said.

    “It’s time to sleep,” I answered in a whisper.

    “No, up,” he repeated.

    “Goodnight,” I crooned.

    I gently patted his back until he settled down. When I heard his breathing get deeper, I thought it was safe to tiptoe out of the room as I had done so many years ago with my tiny toddlers. I didn’t reckon on my joints. My toes cracked with my first step. How could anything so little sound so loud? It was loud enough to wake him.