Omega-3s: Do you really know what they are?

Each day we are bombarded with heaping helpings of health headlines - the latest, must-know, must-do health advice. Sometimes the tips seem obvious; but often, it's quite difficult to understand what will produce health benefits - especially when headlines and social media can make legitimate advice seem irrelevant in a moment.

Over the years, we've seen more conflicting advice around omega-3 fatty acids such as eicosapentaenoic (EPA) and docosahexaenoic (DHA). Thousands of published scientific studies have shown the benefits, and we know that the human body needs them to function but can't create them on its own. Among their numerous benefits, EPA and DHA have been associated with overall heart health and improving eye, brain and joint performance.

Yet most are confused

Unlike many other important measures of health, most people have no awareness of their omega-3 levels.

Omega-3s are found in fatty fish such as salmon, sardines and mackerel. But the reality is, many people have difficulty achieving optimal levels with diet alone. And according to one recent study, even among people who believed they were eating a balanced diet, 98 % had levels of omega-3s that were below the optimal level.

"I had heard fish oil was critical to a balanced diet," said Schnelle "Nellie" Acevedo, a fitness blogger and mom of three. "As an avid runner and working mom, making smart choices about my health is really important to me. As I learned more about omega-3s and their health benefits, I started worrying that I could be omega-3 deficient and wondering what kind of toll that could be taking on my health."

What we can do

Today, there are resources available to help us get an answer on where our levels stand - the Omega-3 Index test is a simple blood test that unveils what percentage of red blood cells contain EPA and DHA.

There's also a brief quiz online that provides a general guide for individual omega-3 scores. The five-question quiz at www.knowyouromega3s.com was launched by MegaRed, an omega-3 supplement brand dedicated to helping support overall health. By answering the simple questions, you can determine if your levels might be low, and learn helpful tips and actions to ensure you are getting enough omega-3s.

When it comes to health, knowledge is just the first step

Every health journey is unique, so regardless of the latest trend, it's key to act to determine where you stand and the changes that work for you. Like understanding your cholesterol or blood pressure levels, knowing your omega-3 levels is an important marker of health.

"It's tough to be sure of your health and fitness choices, but I got an answer when it comes to omega-3s. Last year, I sent in a test to check my omega-3 levels. When I got my results, my numbers were not nearly where I want to be. I needed to supplement my diet to get my numbers up!" said Acevedo. "It's important for you to know whether or not you are getting enough omega-3s, and what you can do to fix it!"

A history of cancer: Focus is on immunotherapy

When the Cancer Research Institute (CRI) was founded in 1953, little was known about cancer and even less about the immune system. CRI was the first - and for many decades the only - research funding organization that believed that we could one day harness the immune system as a powerful weapon against cancer. Since then, the field of cancer immunology has blossomed and immunotherapy has revolutionized how cancer is treated, thanks in part to work funded by CRI.

This year marks CRI's 65th anniversary. As part of the celebration, the nonprofit dedicated to cancer immunotherapy research released a list of 30 of the most important CRI-funded scientific breakthroughs. Each milestone can be traced directly back to CRI, which has supported more than 3,200 scientists and doctors at top institutions around the world.

Though distinct, each of these breakthroughs provided crucial pieces to the complex puzzle that CRI has long sought to solve: how the immune system can be used to save the lives of those with cancer.

Foundational discoveries

Many CRI-funded foundational discoveries helped establish immunotherapy as a viable treatment approach for cancer. One particularly important discovery occurred in 1976, when a team led by Lloyd J. Old, M.D., CRI's founding scientific and medical director, revealed the existence of spontaneously occurring anti-tumour immune responses in cancer patients.

Many of today's advancements in cancer treatment are direct of result of these foundational breakthroughs, made possible in part by the $384 million in donor support that CRI has invested in scientists over the last six decades.

Checkpoint immunotherapy

Checkpoint inhibitors that target the PD-1/PD-L-1 pathway have been approved for eleven major cancer types in the United States and around the world, thanks in part to early work funded by CRI. While working in the Emory University lab of Rafi Ahmed, Ph.D., CRI-funded fellows E. John Wherry, Ph.D., and David Masopust, Ph.D., laid the groundwork for these therapies by showing that targeting this pathway could restore the activity of "exhausted" T cells.

These treatments, however, weren't the first checkpoint immunotherapies approved by the FDA. The first, which targets CTLA-4, was approved in 2011 after a breakthrough in phase III clinical trial with advanced melanoma patients. CRI-funded postdoctoral fellow Dr. Frank Borriello was part of Dr. Arlene Sharpe's team at Harvard Medical School that was one of the first to help clarify the role of CTLA4 in immune responses, while James P. Allison, Ph.D., 2018 Nobel Prize recipient, current director of CRI's Scientific Advisory Council, and chair of the Department of Immunology and the executive director of the Immunotherapy Platform at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, is regarded as a pioneer and one of the driving forces behind the clinical development of anti-CTLA-4 immunotherapy.

Expanding immunotherapy's applications

Beyond checkpoint inhibitors, immunotherapies like vaccines can educate patients' immune systems about what cancer "looks like," while others incorporate patients' immune cells directly. These cell-based immunotherapies continue to show great promise and are improving survival for many patients, including children, living with cancer.

In 2002, Dr. Cassian Yee, a CRI-funded clinical grantee at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center in Seattle (now at MD Anderson Cancer Center), helped lead groundbreaking work that was among the first to show that cancer patients' immune cells could be removed, enhanced in the lab, and then used to help fight their tumours. This work launched the development of many adoptive T cell immunotherapy approaches - including chimeric antigen receptor (CAR) T cell therapy, an approach recently approved by the FDA for the treatment of some types of leukaemia and lymphoma.

Bacteria and viruses

People often associate bacteria and viruses with the infections that can arise from these organisms. However, because of their ability to stimulate the immune system, bacteria and viruses can also promote immune responses against cancer. In fact, the first use of immunotherapy in the 1890s - by CRI's "grandfather" Dr. William B. Coley - involved infecting cancer patients with bacteria to help stimulate their bodies to attack cancer.

Since then, we've learned much more about the roles these microorganisms play in the context of cancer immunotherapy. In 2015, CRI postdoctoral fellow Dr. Leticia Corrales, while working in the lab of the University of Chicago's Dr. Thomas F. Gajewski - a member of CRI's Scientific Advisory Council - discovered that mice with "good" bacteria were better protected against tumour development and responded much better to checkpoint immunotherapy. Subsequent work by Dr. Gajewski showed that this same connection exists in human cancer patients too, spurring a number of bacteria-based prognostic and therapeutic approaches being evaluated right now.

Looking to the future

Over the past 65 years, CRI has focused on cancer research with one goal in mind: to unleash the immune system's power to cure all cancers.

"Many people living with cancer today have been able to live longer, healthier lives thanks to the power of immunotherapy and we're now seeing decades of research come to fruition," said Dr. Jill O'Donnell-Tormey, chief executive officer and director of scientific affairs at the Cancer Research Institute. "We're thrilled to have been a major part of the progress made to date, but more research needs to be done and that's why those of us at the Cancer Research Institute will continue to fund the best, most promising scientists in cancer immunotherapy research until all cancer patients benefit from these treatments."

The stats are in: Credit card fraud is down 75 % because of chip technology

The Reserve Bank of India (RBI) has mandated all banks to replace all existing magnetic stripe-only cards with EMV chip cards by December 31, 2018. Banks are replacing the cards free of cost. The process that began three years ago (in 2015) is now finally culminating by month-end.

The directive is applicable to all domestic as well as international cards, and the older magnetic stripe-only cards will not be valid after the deadline. The cards need to be replaced even if their validity date ends after December 31, 2018.

Named after its original developers Euro-pay, MasterCard and Visa (EMV), this technology features payment instruments (cards and mobile phones) with embedded microprocessor chips that store and protect cardholder’s data.

Unlike magnetic stripe cards that require just a swipe on a point of sale (PoS) device to complete a transaction, chip and PIN cards require the same to complete a transaction. This provides an extra level of security.

The whole idea behind integrating EMV® chips into credit and debit cards was to make transactions safer and more secure for consumers and merchants. A recent report by Visa shows that it has hit the mark. Visa took a look at the numbers, comparing chip card use by consumers and adoption by merchants from the initial rollout of chip cards in 2015 to now.

What they found is pretty staggering. Counterfeit fraud, where a criminal steals your payment card number and imprints it onto another card to use in-person at their favourite store, is down 75 per cent from September 2015 to March 2018 at U.S. merchants that are chip-enabled.

The sharp drop illustrates that the chip technology is doing its job as intended. That's important because criminals are always on the prowl searching for an easy way to get money.

Data that travels through a payment network when you insert your chip card is different than the data that is sent when you swipe your payment card using its magnetic stripe. The chip generates a one-time code that can only be used for one transaction. If cybercriminals steal your card number from the merchant's system or from a data breach, it is essentially impossible to commit counterfeit payment card fraud because the one-time code cannot be re-used and the card number alone is not enough to complete a transaction at a point-of-sale (POS) machine.

So chip cards and terminals protect the customer from his or her stolen payment card number being counterfeited and protect the merchant from having to refund the money while losing their merchandise. In the end, everyone wins except for the fraudster.

Some other findings from the Visa study include:

More than 3.1 million U.S. merchant locations or 67 per cent of U.S. storefronts are now fully chip-enabled and accepting chip cards. As recently as September 2015, only 392,000 merchants were accepting chip transactions. That's a 680 per cent increase since chip technology debuted in the U.S. About 97 per cent of overall U.S. payment volume in June 2018 was on chip-enabled cards. In September 2015, $4.8 billion was spent on chip transactions. In June 2018, that figure had jumped to $76.7 billion. Reasons for merchants to switch to the chip

More and more merchants are accepting chip card transactions, but some, especially smaller merchants, have been slow to adopt the technology. But there are good reasons for updating to accept chip card payments, not the least of which is customer expectation. People who have chip cards expect the payment security they provide, and not accepting chip payments might be seen as a negative with consumers.

Other reasons for adopting chip technology include:

Implementing chip-based POS terminals is easier than ever before. It has become standard technology among many merchants and their technology suppliers. Transactions involving chip-based payment cards at many merchants are faster than when EMV chip cards first became available thanks to Visa Quick Chip technology. Implementing and investing in chip-based POS systems in many cases can also support new payment technologies like contactless payments.

3D printing is reimagining the way we live today

When additive manufacturing technology - better known as 3D printing - was first invented more than 30 years ago it was intended to make the product design and manufacturing process more efficient. At that time, 3D printing was used primarily as a way to create prototypes to validate and perfect product design, but the inventor, Chuck Hull, had no idea how it would change the way we live.

Today, 3D printing has evolved beyond product prototypes only used by industrial designers and engineers. Manufacturers all over the world now rely on additive manufacturing to produce final parts and products that are purchased and experienced by mainstream consumers across the marketplace. This includes parts in automobiles and appliances, medical and dental implants, custom prosthetic limbs and food, and has also become an important component in the interior design, reinventing what you think is possible.

The 3D printed future

When Kallista, a division of Kohler, sought to execute its new Grid Sink Faucet design, the company quickly realized the idea could not be executed via traditional manufacturing methods. Rather than sacrifice the design, the team turned to 3D printing. Working with 3rd Dimension - an additive manufacturing services provider - Kallista employed a layer-by-layer production approach on 3D Systems 3D printing technology to manufacture the faucet to the exacting specifications of the designer. The resulting faucet is significantly stronger and more durable than if it had been produced using traditional manufacturing methods. By carrying through the designer's vision, Kallista created a faucet that shifted away from excessive decoration and materials to instead expose a design that boasts the clean, understated lines of the minimalist form.

The result was a faucet that delivers on its design without compromising functionality.

Additional benefits of 3D printing

While 3D printing solutions are inspiring designers everywhere, giving them the opportunity to expand their creativity, 3D printing also offers several other benefits to companies and consumers, including:

A single source of efficiency and strength. "Some assembly required" is a catchphrase synonymous with traditional manufacturing and it is that assembly that also exposes the end product to errors in the pieces, poor construction and added time to fabricate the object. However, because 3D printed objects are made in one solid piece, they solve many of these issues. They are structurally stronger, free of connection weaknesses and expertly assembled to specifications.

Environmental consciousness. While traditional manufacturing takes raw materials and trims them down to the finished product, 3D printing builds the desired piece by adding material as the process goes along. This means it essentially utilizes only the amount of material necessary to create the object. The result is less waste and a reduced environmental impact.

Faster results, favorable returns. The 3D printing process offers a new level of accuracy and rapid part production with the ability to reduce - and in many cases, eliminate - material waste, which also favorably impacts a project's overall bottom line.

Reimagining what's possible

Since its creation, the Kallista Grid Faucet has been nominated for and won seven awards, including "Best In Show" at the Kitchen & Bath Industry Show in 2018. It is proof that the technology of 3D printing is reimagining the rules for manufacturing and design. As 3D printing continues to evolve, it will push the boundaries in product design and production. 3D printing is transforming manufacturing and the doors to what is possible are suddenly wide open.