STEM-Talk

Today’s episode features an important interview with Dr. Jeff Volek, a researcher who has spent the past 20 years studying how humans adapt to carbohydrate-restricted diets. His most recent work, which is one of the key topics of today’s interview, has focused on the science of ketones and ketogenic diets and their use as a therapeutic tool to manage insulin resistance.

In 2014, Volek became a founder and the chief science officer of Virta Health, an online specialty medical clinic dedicated to reversing diabetes, a chronic disease that has become a worldwide epidemic. The company’s ambitious goal is to reverse type 2 diabetes in 100 million people by 2025.

Earlier this year, The JMIR Diabetes Journal published a study coordinated by Volek and Virta that showed people with type 2 diabetes can be taught to sustain adequate carbohydrate restriction to achieve nutritional ketosis, thereby improving glycemic control, decreasing medication use, and allowing clinically relevant weight loss. These improvements happened after just 10 weeks on the program that Virta designed for people.

In addition to his role at Virta, Volek is a registered dietitian and full professor in the department of human sciences at Ohio State University. He is a co-author of “The New Atkins for a New You,” which came out 2010 and spent 16 weeks on The New York Times best-seller list. The book is an updated, easier-to-use version of Dr. Robert Atkins’ original 1972 book, “Dr. Atkins’ Diet Revolution.”

Volek has co-authored four other books, including “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living” and “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Performance.” Both books are co-authored with and delve somewhat deeper than “The New Atkins” did into the science and application of low-carb diets.

Volek received his bachelor’s degree in dietetics from Michigan State University in 1991. He went on to earn a master’s in exercise physiology and a PhD in kinesiology and nutrition from Pennsylvania State University. He has given more than 200 lectures about his research at scientific and industry conferences in a dozen countries. In addition to his five books, he also has published more than 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers.

Although numerous studies have confirmed the validity and safety of low-carb and ketogenic diets, Volek and others who support carbohydrate restriction are often criticized for being so one-sided that their work comes across as more advocacy than science. But in “The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living,” Volek writes:

“What is the proper response when three decades of debate about carbohydrate restriction have been largely one-sided and driven more by cultural bias than science? Someone needs to stand up and represent the alternate view and science.”

As Volek explains in episode 42 of STEM-Talk, this has become his mission.

Links:

“New Atkins for a New You” — http://amzn.to/2uOjLkF

“The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Living”– http://amzn.to/2hh1W9k

“The Art and Science of Low-Carbohydrate Performance” — http://amzn.to/2f2oPMV

New York Times article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/11/well/live/tackling-weight-loss-and-diabetes-with-video-chats.html?_r=0

JMIR DIABETES paper:
http://assets.virtahealth.com/docs/Virta_Clinic_10-week_outcomes.pdf

https://www.virtahealth.com

Show notes:

3:016: Ken and Dawn welcome Jeff to the show.

3:32: Dawn asks Jeff when and how he first became interested in science.

5:24: When Jeff was studying to be a dietitian, he was looking at a low-fat, high-carb diet. But when he began to work with diabetics, something did not seem right. Dawn asks Jeff if that is what led him to begin studying low-carb diets.

6:39: Ken comments on how diabetes is perhaps the greatest healthcare challenge we face as a society, which drives costs to more than $300 billion a year.

7:59: Dawn asks Jeff about the effectiveness of traditional treatment and management approaches for people with diabetes.

8:27: Dawn asks Jeff to talk about Virta Health, a company Jeff helped found, and a recent paper and JMIR Diabetes Journal. The paper reported on the results of a study that looked at whether sustained carbohydrate restriction and nutritional ketosis could be part of a comprehensive intervention that would allow people with type 2 diabetes to improve their health.

11.54: Dawn asks Jeff why this approach would work at the cellular level, ...

Dr. Leonard Wong, a research professor at the Strategic Studies Institute (SSI) of the U.S. Army War College, led an important study titled: “Lying to Ourselves: Dishonesty in the Army Profession.” The study, which was published in 2015 generated much discussion as well as some consternation and reflection.

www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1250.pdf

In this episode, Host Dawn Kernagis and IHMC’s Director Ken Ford talk with Wong about his study and its implications. Wong also lectured about his study at IHMC in Pensacola last September:

http://www.ihmc.us/lectures/20160907/.

Wong’s research focuses on the human and organizational dimensions of the military and includes topics such as leadership development in the military profession. He is a retired Army Officer and taught leadership at West Point. He is also an analyst for the Chief of Staff in the Army. Wong’s research has led him Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Kosovo and Vietnam. He has testified before Congress and has been featured widely in the media, including the New Yorker, the Washington Post, the New York Times, PBS, NPR, 60 Minutes and CNN.

Wong is a professional engineer and holds a Bachelor’s from the U.S. Military Academy. He also has a Master’s and a Ph.D. in business administration from Texas Tech University.

1:43: Ken reads five-star iTunes review from “CC Rider,” which is entitled “Intelligent Podcast: What a Relief:” “What a pleasure to hear intelligent, articulate people discussing worthwhile topics.”

2:17: Dawn describes Wong’s bio.

3:18: Dawn welcomes Wong and Ken.

3:42: Wong describes his role at the U.S. Army War College, as well as the College’s structure. When Army leaders arrive at the War College, they’ve generally been in the Army for twenty years. They’re at the point of thinking strategically about leadership and their roles.

5:27: Wong’s research into this topic started over a decade ago, with the question of how to build more time into the schedule of junior offices to facilitate innovation. Wong and his colleagues discovered an overwhelming amount of requirements, which were stifling Innovation. In the back of his mind, Wong concluded: ‘If we require more than they can possibly do, what are we reporting?’

6:36: Wong, in conversation with his colleague Steve Gerras, once asked him what he was doing on his computer. He was supposedly doing mandatory training, but not really. He said, ‘I know, I’m just saying I did it.’ Wong realized then ‘how casually we approach lying, but we don’t call it lying.’

7:15: The theory of Wong’s subsequent study came from a book entitled “Blind Spots: Why We Fail to Do What’s Right and What to Do About It,” by Max Bazerman and Ann Tenbrunsel (http://amzn.to/2gBJtib), along with what David Messick called ethical fading. The methodology was to use focus groups from various ranks throughout the Army, including staff officers at the Pentagon.

8:12: Dawn mentions that Wong’s study had a precedent: In 1970, the U.S. Army War College published a study showing that lying in the Army was pervasive. Digitization, the audit culture, and downsizing have made it worse today.

8:43: Wong says, “The Army is like a compulsive hoarder. It collects requirements, and it never gives any up. We always add more. We keep adding to the pile. Technology has made a huge influence on this.” Now, with email and Internet, we can ask people to provide digital signatures, and do various online trainings.

9:42: Wong characterizes another part of the problem: “The Army has had a giant emphasis on being a profession. It’s a good thing, but it’s made us believe that we are better than we are. We forget that we are humans. We forget that we are talking about people who can fall to the same temptations, go the same route, as an ordinary human.”

10:35: Ken asks about Wong’s description of people in the Army being so overwhelmed that they have to prioritize.

10:50: Wong says, “One of the ways to ethically fade is you take away moral aspects.... So you are void of all the baggage that an ethical dilemma brings.” Euphemisms are a common way around this, and prioritize is one way of saying you lied. “Prioritize means taking a risk: We didn’t do it, but are going to still report that we did it. Prioritize is a convenient way to convince ourselves that we haven’t lied.”

12:00: “What this study isn’t saying is we have an institution full of liars, or a cohort of people with low ethics. We’ve created an institution with a bureaucracy...with a system that is putting an onerous burden on people to do everything and report they’ve done it. Inadvertently it creates a culture in which we have to tell a system what it wa...

If you want to feel like an astronaut, lie in bed all day. That may seem counter-intuitive, but the body experiences the two scenarios in a similar way. The absence of gravity in space mimics the affects of lying down flat—and not using gravity to our physiological advantage.

Gravity expert Joan Vernikos talked about this and other insights on how gravity affects us, in this episode of STEM-Talk, hosted by Dawn Kernagis and Tom Jones. Vernikos spoke to them right before her IHMC lecture in Pensacola, entitled, “Gravity is Our Friend”

Vernikos’ first mentor in life was her father, who at 17 years of age, left his native Greece for France, determined to study medicine, which he did. His specialization in infectious diseases took him to Egypt, where Joan and her sister were educated at English boarding schools. Her sister became a physician, while Joan “chickened out,” becoming a pharmacologist instead.

After entering academia, she was recruited to NASA, where she became the director of the Life Sciences Division.

Since retiring from NASA 16 years ago, Vernikos says that she’s had “a lot more time to think.” She is the author of the provocatively-titled book, “Sitting Kills, Moving Heals,” which was published in 2011. Her forthcoming book, “Designed to Move,” is about how sedentary lifestyles contribute to poor health and early death; and how movement that challenges gravity can dramatically improve life and longevity.

A dynamic speaker, Dr. Vernikos has given dozens of lectures, some of which can be found at https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=YouTube.com%2FDrJoanVernikos. You can also check out her web site at www.joanvernikos.com

00:47: Ken Ford describes Vernikos as a pioneer in how living in a micro-gravity environment adversely affects astronauts, compared to the benefits of gravity for those of us on earth. “Living in space is like accelerated aging,” she says—which might be instructive for thinking about preventing and treating age-related conditions such as sarcopenia and osteoporosis.

2:01: IHMC Director Ken Ford reads a 5-star iTunes review from “Fellow Musician”: “Unlike the majority of podcasts I find, STEM-Talk is a long format show with extremely in-depth discussions. I can’t believe how much serious information was packed into the first few episodes. A plus.”

2:25: Dawn gives a brief bio of Vernikos, as the former director of life sciences at NASA, who pioneered research in how living in a micro gravity environment adversely affects the health of astronauts. She also studied the effects of microgravity on the physiology of astronauts in space and aging on earth.

3:37: Vernikos talks about the influence of her physician-father, her first mentor. “I learned by apprenticeship, which is the best way to learn.”

5:05: “What I learned from father, which is fundamental to my approach, is that you listen, you ask questions, and you diagnose .... He would discuss cases at the dinner table; he would ask us, what would we do in that case. That was a fantastic preparation that served me well.”

6:24: In Egypt, which was then a British protectorate, Vernikos went to an all-girls’ English school, with other girls of 27 different nationalities. She studied pharmacy at the University of Alexandria, and then pharmacology in the U.K.

8:00: Vernikos talks about a Greek woman physician who was also a mentor. This woman developed the first drugs that lower blood pressure. “She was very unusual...headstrong...attractive...She insisted we go to the hairdresser every week.”

10:23: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience.

10:50: Vernikos describes her jump from academia to NASA. She was teaching pharmacology at Ohio State, and the physiology chair there was hired at NASA to start a group in biology/biomedical sciences. He needed someone in the stress business, and picked Joan.

12:36: Vernikos talks about her frustrations in pitching gravity as a medical issue to physicians. “To this day, the word gravity has not made it into the medical school textbooks.”

12:57: “I was very fortunate in my career; I never had to apply for a job. Somehow or other, I was invited to do something and it happened.” As such, she was tagged to become the Life Sciences Division Director a...

When Kelvin Droegemeier watched the Wizard of Oz as a child, the tornado scenes scared him so much that he didn’t want to look. Today, the esteemed meteorologist watches storms for a living—with a particular interest in tornados.

From his upbringing in central Kansas—where he grew up marveling at weather and storms—to his undergraduate internship with the National Severe Storms Lab, Droegemeier was primed for a brilliant career in meteorology.

Droegemeier is currently the vice president for research at the University of Oklahoma, where he is also Regents Professor of meteorology; Weathernews Chair Emeritus; and Roger and Sherry Teigen Presidential Professor.

He is also the vice-chairman of the national science board at the National Science Foundation. In 1989, he co-founded CAPS, the Center for the Analysis and Prediction of Storms. This center pioneered storm scale numerical weather prediction with data simulation, which ushered in a whole new science of studying the weather.

Droegemeier talks with STEM-Talk Host Dawn Kernagis and co-host Tom Jones about the past, present and future of weather prediction, both in the U.S. and globally.

For more information on Droegemeier, check out his home page at the University of Oklahoma: http://kkd.ou.edu as well as his biography at the National Science Board: http://tinyurl.com/zwwvav9.

Here is also the report that came out of that, entitled “Hurricane Warning: The Critical Need for a National Hurricane Research Initiative: http://www.nsf.gov/nsb/publications/2007/hurricane/initiative.pdf

00:47: Ken Ford describes Droegemeier as a pioneer in understanding thunderstorm dynamics and predictability, computational fluid dynamics, aviation weather, modeling and predicting of extreme weather, among other areas.

1:13: Dawn says: “Kelvin has greatly shaped the scientific landscape in meteorology and storm prediction and tracking. His work has no doubt saved many lives.”

2:00: Ford was co-chairman on the National Science Board Task Force on Hurricanes, Science and Engineering in 2005-06. “Living in Pensacola and having just experienced Hurricane Ivan, and then Hurricane Katrina, I was highly motivated to work on this problem.... Around here we’ve come to fear hurricanes with Russian names like Ivan and Katrina.”

3:20: Ford reads iTunes review from “ARFO6C”: “Brilliant, just brilliant.”

4:37: “Growing up in central Kansas, I was exposed to interesting weather year-round. I remember as a child being fascinated by the power and the grandeur of the atmosphere, and how quickly the weather could change.”

7:00: Droegemeier is especially interested in spring storms and wind. “To me, the perfect day is 60 degrees, low clouds, winds at 40 mph.... [There is something] so wonderful and powerful about the wind.”.

11:06: As a child, Droegemeier was interested in science, but it wasn’t until his undergraduate work study job at the National Severe Storms Lab, where an advisor suggested graduate school, that his academic interest in weather was sparked.

12:35: He went to graduate school at the University of Illinois to work with a person who was a pioneer in using super computers to make 3D models of thunderstorms. They looked at storms’ rotation, or the pathways to understanding how tornados form.

13:50: He describes “seminal changes in the last 20-30 years in meteorology, driven by high-performance computing.”

15:04: Twenty years ago, the first national network of Doppler weather radar also emerged. This allowed sensing the directional movement of precipitation particles.

17:30: He says the data simulation models have “dramatically improved over the last two decades. We are able to predict up to 72 hours more precisely than what we were able to do twenty years ago [predicting] up to 36 hours.”

18:00: CAPS is one of the first 11 science/technology centers funded by the NSF. It was selected out of 323 applicants. The premise was the following question: ‘Could you use a computer model to predict thunderstorms in advance of their occurrence?’

21:45: Droegemeier talks about project Hub-CAPS, with American Airlines, to predict storms. They then created a private company to commercialize the forecasting technology to different types of industries worldwide, including communications and transportation. That company was called Weather Decision Technologies, Inc.

22:49: Commercial break: STEM-Talk is an educational service of the Florida Institute for Human and Machine Cognition, a not-for-profit research lab pioneering ground-breaking technologies aimed at leveraging human cognition, perception, locomotion and resilience.

26:05: Climate models are much more driven by boundary conditions t...

In today’s episode, Ken and Dawn interview their colleague Dr. Peter Neuhaus, a senior research scientist here at IHMC. Peter is an engineer well-known for his work on wearable robotic devices. In particular, Peter has focused on lower extremity exoskeleton devices and their applications for mobility assistance for paraplegics and other people with disabilities or partial paralysis.

In 2016, Peter lead an IHMC team that won a silver medal in the international Cybathlon, a competition conducted in Zurich in which people with disabilities used advanced assistive devices, including robotic technologies, to compete against each other.

In today’s interview, Peter talks about IHMC’s humanoid robotic efforts as well as his work with NASA designing an exercise machine for a human mission to Mars or other missions beyond low earth orbit.

Peter also describes the work he is doing with IHMC High-Performance Director Joe Gomes, the former Oakland Raiders strength and conditioning coach. Peter and Joe as well as others at IHMC are designing exercise technologies to extend the resilience of high-performing humans, such as astronauts and elite warfighters. Many of these technologies will eventually be able to be utilized by the general public.

Links:

Peter Neuhaus IHMC page:

https://www.ihmc.us/groups/pneuhaus/

DARPA Robotics Challenge videos:

http://robots.ihmc.us/drc/

Cybathlon videos:

http://robots.ihmc.us/cybathlon/

IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine article about Cybathlon:

https://arxiv.org/pdf/1702.08656.pdf

IHMC newsletter article about Cybathlon:

https://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/IHMCNewslettervol10iss3.pdf

IHMC newsletter article about DARPA Robotics Challenge:

https://www.ihmc.us/wp-content/uploads/2017/07/IHMCnewslettervol13iss1.pdf

Show notes:

3:03: Dawn asks Peter about growing up in New York City.

3:33: Ken mentions that after high-school, Peter enrolled at MIT. Ken asks Peter what led him there.

4:04: Ken asks why Peter decided to major in mechanical engineering.

4:35: Dawn asks Peter what led him to travel across the country to attend the University of California, Berkeley for graduate school after he graduated from MIT.

5:10: Dawn asks what it was like for Peter to teach science to 5^th– and 6^th-graders as well as high-schoolers in Brooklyn after he received his master’s degree from Berkeley.

6:23: Peter talks about how after two years of teaching, he decided his window of opportunity to get a doctorate was shrinking and that it was essentially “now or never,” which led him back to Berkeley.

7:02: Dawn mentions that once Peter finished his doctorate, he went to work for a startup as a mechanical engineer. She asks what sort of work he did there.

7:47: Dawn talks about how a year and a half after getting his doctorate Peter met his future wife, who eventually led him to Pensacola, and in a roundabout way, to IHMC. She asks if he could share how that all came about.

9:22: Ken comments on how since joining IHMC in 2003, Peter has focused on wearable robotics systems and legged robots. Ken further mentions that Peter was one of the lead IHMC researchers participating in the DARPA Learning Locomotion project, where he helped develop quadrupedal locomotion algorithms for the Little Dog robot. Ken asks if Peter could talk about his work on this project?

11:08: Dawn, continuing with the discussion about DARPA projects, mentions that Peter played an important role in both the development of technology and in the management of IHMC’s humanoid robotics effort for the DARPA Robotics Challenge that was held between 2013 and 2015. IHMC placed second and brought home $1 million in prize money. Dawn asks what that experience was like.

12:10: Ken mentions there were three competitions that were part of the robotics challenge, and asks Peter to talk about IHMC’s performance in each of the competitions.

12:57: Dawn mentions that for more than a decade, Peter has been working on exoskeletons, wearable robotic devices that assist people with paralysis and other disabilities. She asks Peter how he got interested in this, and if he could give an overview of what is involved in the development of exoskeletons.

14:39: Ken comments on how wearables are a challenging application for roboti...