Cocaine and other drugs of abuse hijack the natural reward circuits in the brain. In part, that’s why it’s so hard to quit using these substances. Moreover, relapse rates hover between 40 and 60 percent, similar to rates for other chronic conditions like hypertension and Type 1 diabetes.
University of Pennsylvania behavioral pharmacologist and neuroscientist Heath Schmidt studies how long-term exposure to drugs such as cocaine, nicotine, and prescription opioids affects the brain and how these changes promote relapse in someone who has kicked the habit. A recent paper, published in the Nature journal Neuropsychopharmacology, investigated a novel treatment for cocaine addiction, something that touches 900,000 people in the United States annually.
“As a basic scientist I’m interested in how the brain functions during periods of abstinence from cocaine and other drugs and how neuro-adaptations in the brain promote relapse back to chronic drug taking,” he explains. “From the clinicians’ perspective, they’re looking for medications to try to prevent relapse. Our goal as basic scientists is to use animal models of relapse to identify novel medications to treat cocaine addiction.”
.
The green fluorescent ‘dots’ above show where Exendin-4, an FDA-approved drug used to treat diabetes and obesity, ends up in the brain. The drug activates receptors for glucagon-like peptide 1 or GLP-1, a hormone that reduces food intake. The blue and red coloring indicate neurons and astrocytes, respectively. Credit: University of Pennsylvania
Warning: Major spoilers ahead. Major! You’ve been warned.
.
Ten years and 19 movies into the ever-ballooning Marvel Cinematic Universe, the fabled Avengers have left their respective dwellings and greeted the interplanetary crusaders whose storylines haven’t yet interacted with their own. “There’s an Ant-Man and a Spider-Man?” Mark Ruffalo’s Bruce Banner, aka the Hulk, asks incredulously in one of the more relatable moments from “Avengers: Infinity War,” which opens this weekend to an expected $225 million intake.
At last, all our friends ― the ones whose disparate adventures have yielded “Iron Man,” “Thor,” “Guardians of the Galaxy,” “Spider-Man: Homecoming,” “Black Panther” and other assorted tentpoles ― are acquainted. How special. Naturally, there’s no better time to kill most of them off.
Except that’s only sort of what happens at the end of “Infinity War.” After more than two hours of wham-bam chaos, the movie slows to an emotional lull. The culminating battle royal results in the deaths of Black Panther, Spider-Man, Bucky Barnes, the Scarlet Witch, Doctor Strange, Star-Lord, Groot, Drax, Falcon, Mantis, Nick Fury and Maria Hill, each of whom dissolves into a pile of dust at the hands of a purple colossus named Thanos. The how and why hardly matter. What matters is that the final 20 minutes are meant to be a gut punch, testing the tear ducts of Marvel disciples who’ve waited so long to see the OG Avengers collaborate with the franchise’s rookies. Their wishes are granted and denied in the same fatal breath.
.
Disney
Benedict Cumberbatch, Robert Downey Jr., Mark Ruffalo and Benedict Wong in “Avengers: Infinity War.”
“How,” a woman next to me muttered, “can you have mimosas and no orange juice?”
We were at the bottomless mimosa refill station at BrunchCon, a sprawling brunch festival that will stop in four cities this spring and summer, and for a brief moment, the orange juice had run dry. The brunchers were restless.
We dared not say it aloud, but without that sunny splash of citrus, the elegant facade of brunch would collapse. Without juice, this was just drinking.
“You can never have too many mimosas,” Lincoln Powell, 35, visiting from Ahoskie, N.C., explained as his wife posed for photos in front of an ivy-covered BrunchCon backdrop and organizers located more OJ.
Actually, I protested, it is entirely possible to have too many.
“You can?”
.
VIP ticket holders enjoy their first drink while arriving at BrunchCon, a festival dedicated to the boozy hybrid weekend meal that has made Sunday mornings look a lot like Saturday night. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
Bill Gates says the U.S. government is falling short in preparing the nation and the world for the “significant probability of a large and lethal modern-day pandemic occurring in our lifetimes.”
In an interview this week, the billionaire philanthropist said he has raised the issue of pandemic preparedness with President Trump since the 2016 presidential election. In his most recent meeting last month, Gates said he laid out the increasing risk of a bioterrorism attack and stressed the importance of U.S. funding for advanced research on new therapeutics, including a universal flu vaccine, which would protect against all or most strains of influenza.
Gates, who co-founded Microsoft and now leads a foundation on global health, said he told Trump that the president has a chance to lead on the issue of global health security. Trump encouraged him to follow up with top officials at the Health and Human Services Department, the National Institutes of Health and the Food and Drug Administration, Gates said.
.
The Gates Foundation released an animation April 27, showing what would occur if a highly contagious airborne pathogen, like the 1918 flu, would happen today.(The Gates Foundation)
Long before we stood on line to watch our salad bits tossed by assembly-line hands and stuffed into biodegradable bowls, we ordered chopped salads in restaurants.
Chefs in those kitchens took care to balance crunch with creamy, tangy and savory. The reds of radishes and tomatoes, the burnish of crisped bacon and bright greens of beans and hardy lettuces showed through milky dressings that coated each piece. Precise knifework guaranteed a democratically diverse representation of vegetables in every forkful, bestowing an ironically elevated status on the whole genre.
And we ordered chopped salads in great numbers, expecting to see them on menus as an all-American option.
. Jimmy’s Special Chopped House Salad. (Photo by Stacy Zarin Goldberg for The Washington Post; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky)
Danish inventor Peter Madsen has been found guilty of the mutilation and murder of Swedish journalist Kim Wall, and sentenced to life in prison.
Madsen was found guilty on all three charges he faced: premeditated murder, the indecent handling of a corpse and “sexual relations other than intercourse of a particularly dangerous nature,” evidenced by stab wounds inside and outside Wall’s genital area.
.
During the sentencing at a court in Copenhagen Wednesday, the judge, Anette Burkoe, described the crime as “a cynical and planned sexual murder of a severe brutal nature against a random woman.”
.
Madsen has appealed the verdict to Denmark’s High Court.
The Food and Drug Administration says it is re-examining the safety of a medication that was approved despite concerns that not enough was known about the drug’s risks.
In response to questioning at a budget hearing last week, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb told members of Congress that he would “take another look” at Nuplazid, which is the only drug approved to treat hallucinations and delusions associated with Parkinson’s disease psychosis. The medication has been cited as a so-called “suspect” medication in hundreds of deaths voluntarily reported by caregivers, doctors and other medical professionals since it hit the market, as highlighted in a recent CNN report.
.
The FDA told CNN this week that the agency had already begun conducting a new evaluation of the medication when Gottlieb was questioned about it at the hearing. The agency said the review had started several weeks ago.
.
“What does it take for a drug like this to be taken off the market?” asked US Rep. Rosa DeLauro, a member and former chair of the congressional subcommittee responsible for funding and overseeing the FDA.
Iconic entertainer Bill Cosby was convicted on three counts of sexual assault Thursday, a decision that punctuates one of the most thundering falls from grace in American cultural history.
The courtroom rocked with emotion as the jury foreperson, a slender woman with long graying hair and glasses, said those three words — guilty, guilty, guilty — for assaulting Andrea Constand, the only woman among dozens of accusers to bring criminal charges against the disgraced comedian. Two women who have accused Cosby of sexual assault but did not testify at the trial burst out in loud sobs from their seats in one of the back rows of the cramped and tension-filed courtroom.
They were escorted from the courtroom by security officials, but their tears — tears of joy, sadness and exhaustion after a frustrating years-long struggle — still filtered into the courtroom through the closed, heavy wooden doors.
.
A jury in Pennsylvania convicted comedian Bill Cosby on all three counts of drugging and sexually assaulting Andrea Constand in 2004.(Patrick Martin, Ashleigh Joplin/The Washington Post)
President Donald Trump responded to Kanye West’s recent Twitter spree, expressing his gratitude.
The rapper tweeted on Wednesday that his wife, Kim Kardashian West, had instructed him to make it “clear to everyone” that he doesn’t “agree with everything Trump does.”
He also said he doesn’t “agree 100%” with anyone but himself.
Ford said on Wednesday the only passenger car models it plans to keep on the market in North America will be the Mustang and the upcoming Ford Focus Active, a crossover-like hatchback that’s slated to debut in 2019.
That means the Fiesta, Taurus, Fusion and the regular Focus will disappear in the United States and Canada.
Ford will, however, continue to offer its full gamut of trucks, SUVs and crossovers.
.
Car buyers these days love SUVs. They don’t, however, love actual cars like hatchbacks and sedans –as Ford has learned.
Film and Writing Festival for Comedy. Showcasing best of comedy short films at the FEEDBACK Film Festival. Plus, showcasing best of comedy novels, short stories, poems, screenplays (TV, short, feature) at the festival performed by professional actors.
VIP ticket holders enjoy their first drink while arriving at BrunchCon, a festival dedicated to the boozy hybrid weekend meal that has made Sunday mornings look a lot like Saturday night. (Astrid Riecken/For The Washington Post)
Jimmy’s Special Chopped House Salad. (Photo by Stacy Zarin Goldberg for The Washington Post; food styling by Lisa Cherkasky)
.
.
Kanye West
Car buyers these days love SUVs. They don’t, however, love actual cars like hatchbacks and sedans –as Ford has learned.
James' World 2 