I wanted to report this story last month, but I was too sick with COVID. My kid gave it to me. My colleagues on the health reporting team would have tackled the story, but they’ve been sick, too, thanks to their children. (Just last week, one colleague dropped off her daughter for her first day back at preschool after recovering from a bug, only to pick her up that same afternoon, sniffling from a new illness. Yikes.)
And we’re far from alone in our woes. “Like so many parents out there, you know, my husband and I have been sick all winter. We’ve been sneezing, coughing, had fevers. It’s gross,” says Dr. Rachel Pearson, a pediatrician at The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio and University Hospital. She’s also the mother of 2-year-old Sam.
“I feel like half the time he has a virus, has a runny nose, is coughing – to the point where my dad was like, ‘Is there something wrong with Sam?’ ” she says. With flu, RSV, colds and COVID all coming at once, it can feel like things may be worse than ever for parents of little kids. But as Pearson tells her dad – and the parents of her own young patients – this seemingly never-ending cycle of sniffles is normal, if miserable.
“When I counsel parents, I say you can have a viral infection every month. Some kids are going to cough for four weeks to six weeks after a virus. And so they’re going to catch their next virus before they even stop coughing from the last one.” In fact, if you’ve ever described your child as an adorable little germ vector, you’re not wrong, says Dr. Carrie Byington, a pediatric infectious disease specialist and executive vice president for the University of California Health System. And she’s got hard data to back that up.
“We all think it, but it was really incredible to have the definitive proof of it,” says Byington. The “proof” she’s referring to comes from a study she and her colleagues began back in 2009, when she was at the University of Utah. They wanted to understand the role kids play in the transmission of respiratory viruses in their homes. So they recruited 26 households to take nasal samples of everyone living in the home, every week, for an entire year. What they found was eye-opening.
“We saw as soon as a child entered the house, the proportion of weeks that an adult had an infection increased significantly,” Byington says. And more kids meant more infections. For families with two, three or four kids, someone at home had an infection a little more than half the year. Families with six kids had a viral detection a whopping 87% of the year. Childless households, on the other hand, only had a viral detection 7% of the year.
The findings also suggest that the youngest kids are the ones bringing germs home most often: Children under age 5 were infected with some kind of respiratory virus a full 50% of the year – twice as often as older kids and adults. And while a viral detection didn’t always translate into illness, when they were infected, the littlest kids were 1.5 times more likely to have symptoms, like fever or wheezing.
And that’s just respiratory viruses. As Byington notes, the study wasn’t even looking at other kinds of infections, such as strep throat, which is caused by bacteria. “So obviously, there could be other things that happened throughout the year to even make it seem worse,” she says.
Byington says all of this means that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s normal for kids to be getting all these viruses. But it’s all more intense right now because of the disruptions of the pandemic. Children were kept at home instead of going to daycare or school, where they would typically be exposed to viruses and bacteria one after another, she says.
As children returned to regular routines, “there were lots of kids ages 1, 2 and 3 who had never really seen a lot of viruses or bacteria,” Byinton says. “And so what might have been spread out in the past over 12 months, a year, they were now seeing it all at once in this very concentrated time.”
Byington says the pandemic also disrupted the seasonality of viruses. Flu season hit earlier than usual this year, as RSV and COVID were also circulating. Young children without prior exposure to these viruses were hit especially hard.
Pearson notes that’s because kids are likely to have a more severe course of illness the first time they encounter a virus like RSV, before they have some level of immunity. She says there’s a larger cohort of kids this year that didn’t have that prior exposure.
And there is evidence that younger kids who get multiple infections – say, COVID and RSV– at the same time can end up with more severe illness than if they’d gotten just one virus at a time. The end result is that many pediatric hospitals and care units have seen a surge in sick kids over the fall and winter. That includes University Hospital in San Antonio, where Pearson sees hospitalized kids in the acute care unit.
Nationwide, “pediatric care right now is at this point of strain,” Pearson says, not just because of the current surge but because of an underinvestment that predates the pandemic. And “the kids who get admitted to the hospital are the tip of the iceberg,” Pearson says. For every kid sick enough to be hospitalized, there are likely many more with the same virus recuperating at home, she says.
The good news is that the viral stew seems to be easing up. Recent data from the CDC show the number of emergency department visits for flu, COVID and RSV dropped to the lowest they’ve been since September for all age groups. But of course, the respiratory virus season isn’t over yet.
As for families who are currently living in what one headline memorably dubbed “virus hell,” Byington hopes the findings of the BIG-LoVE study should offer some comfort that eventually this, too, shall pass. “It’s nice to have done the study and to offer some real-world data to families that what they’re living through is normal and will pass and their children will be well,” she says.
By: Maria Godoy
Maria Godoy is a senior science and health editor and correspondent with NPR News. Her reporting can be heard across NPR’s news shows and podcasts. She is also one of the hosts of NPR’s Life Kit.
According to the US Department of Labor, workplace injuries cost an estimated $161.5 billion yearly. In Wholesale and Retail Trade (WRT) establishments, lost workday injuries are caused mainly by slips, trips, and falls. A study in the United States in 2020 found that falls accounted for 33% of nonfatal injuries, making it the highest cause of preventable workplace nonfatal injuries. Moreover, falls were the third highest cause of preventable fatal workplace injuries at 21%.
According to The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH), factors that can lead to workplace injuries include:
Workplace factors – Slippery surface, loose floor coverings, obstructed vision by boxes or containers, poor lighting, lack of maintenance of walking surfaces.
Work organization factors – High working pace that may cause workers to rush, tasks involving handling greasy or liquid materials that may make surfaces slippery.
Individual factors – Age, worker fatigue, and poor eyesight may affect vision and balance, and inappropriate footwear can cause tripping or slipping.
However, most WRT establishments have difficulty ensuring all health and safety protocols are adhered to both by employees and customers. The problem increases in a high-density environment with heavy human traffic. Managers are adopting innovative ways to complement the traditional solutions in the WRT stores.
Artificial Intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and Machine Learning (ML) have combined to detect, analyze, alert, and prevent hazards in the workplace. Workplace safety is significantly improved using real-time responses.
Computer vision
Computer vision uses digital inputs from images and videos to derive information meaningful to a computer. The computer then analyzes the information to detect defects.
SeeChange (AI provider) and Keymakr Inc. Inc. (data-annotation service provider) partnered to leverage AI in preventing slips, trips, and falls using existing CCTV cameras in Asda (supermarket chain in the UK) stores. Keymakr’s SaaS platform empowers SeeChange’s SpillDetect tool to detect liquid spills automatically. The system then sends notifications to the staff on the location of the hazard.
According to Michael Abramov, CEO of Keylabs, Keymakr’s Saas platform, “AI can be leveraged to detect accidents as soon as they happen and AI-based smart checkout systems can eliminate the human-error factor. Implementing AI can save buyers and business owners from such dangers.”
Abramov says that AI does not suffer from fatigue and can monitor non-stop. “The position of products on the shelves (and alert of a dangerous positioning) The condition of the floors (and report any incidents (spilled products, products that have fallen off shelves)). That’s not all of it as AI surveillance systems can monitor the entire store, providing insights into customer behaviors and preventing thefts.”
relEYEble solutions offer computer vision services and integrate with existing cameras to detect areas with the highest traffic in the store and monitor access to the premises. This feature helps reduce injuries caused by overcrowding and limited access and exits to a building in case of emergencies.
Fire detection systems traditionally have a response time of 3-5 minutes after detecting a fire. This time may be crucial, especially for large and fast-spreading fires, reducing the firefighting response time. Computer vision can detect fires from about 50m away and give an alert within 10-15 seconds. When connected to a PA system, the system can make an immediate announcement providing the fire’s exact location and the best exit route.
Ergonomic sensors
Injuries from manual handling of tasks are reduced through ergonomic training of workers. Optimum movement is sent to the worker to self-correct, paving the way for behavioral change.
One such company offering this solution is Soter Analytics. Soter devices worn on the shoulder, headset, helmet, and/or back monitor the risk of injury in real-time. The gadgets are paired with a mobile application to deliver tailored coaching to a specific worker for a particular task. Studies have shown that hazardous movement is reduced by 30-70%. Managers also have access to the data from the soter devices in real-time. The managers can then use the data to:
Identify hazards.
Filter hazard risk by task, department, or individual.
Identify priority areas requiring more focus.
According to Coca-Cola KO+0.4% Amatil Limited (CCA), they reduced the risk from manual handling by approximately 35% after using Soter’s SoterCoach and Clip&Go solutions for six months. Mr. Shawn Rush from Giant Eagle stated that the risk from the hazardous movement was reduced by nearly 50% for the team members who participated in the process.
Predictive data and analytics
Predictive analytics uses various data obtained from the organization and analyzes that data to forecast potential scenarios. The data collected and used in analytics include root causes and complaints and suggestions.
HGS Digital solutions collects, analyzes, and runs what-if scenarios to determine reasons for injury and provide corrective action to mitigate the problem. After entering the data into the program, the tool will analyze the information without being programmed.
Case management software
i-Sight is a case management software similar to HGS Digital Solution. Unlike HGS, I-Sight only collects, tracks, and provides comprehensive reports, and you have to use this information to prevent workplace injuries. I- sight tracks and reports incidents such as:
Accidents
Injuries
Slips and falls
Fatalities
Near misses
Dangerous exposures
Managers can use the i-Sight dashboard to monitor incident reports and possible trends to identify high-risk areas or employees that require urgent attention.
Self-braking trolleys
Autonomous vehicles (AVs) are usually associated with cars. According to Anthony Ireson from Ford of Europe, supermarket trolleys can also use the technology.
The trolley comes with a pre-collision assist to help customers avoid accidents or reduce the effect of a collision. The sensors on the trolley detect people and objects ahead in its path. The self-braking trolley automatically applies the brakes when it detects a potential collision.
Although the trolley is still a prototype in the Ford shop, its application will make run-away trolleys a thing of the past reducing accidents.
Robotics
Engineers from West Virginia University are developing robots to safeguard workers from workplace hazards. The robots detect risks found on floor surfaces in WRT establishments. Besides providing situational awareness, the robots would provide walkability maps and continually monitor the risks. Unlike other computer vision systems that use existing CCTV cameras in the establishment, the robots would be equipped with in-built cameras to reduce deception from surface appearance. The robots would also drive on the surface to better assess the slip risk.
The development of the robots focuses on three key factors:
Identification and evaluation of holistic risks involving the operation of the robots in the working spaces.
Use of robots in other aspects, such as shopping guides.
Effect of walkability maps and the robots on employees’ injury risk.
I’m a writer fascinated by the obvious and hidden dynamics between tech, culture and politics and how societies and habits are shaped by this interplay.
We’re all going to die eventually—but what if you knew when you’d be at risk for dropping dead, based solely on the way you walk? A new study shows that measurements taken with wrist-worn motion sensors can be used to predict one’s mortality risk up to five years later. As one of the largest validations of wearable technology to date, the research raises the possibility of one day using the motion detection system in smartphones to survey patient health without the need for in-person visits to the doctor’s office.
The study, published Thursday in the journal PLOS Digital Health, was run using data from over 100,000 Britons from the massive UK Biobank project, which began collecting health and biometric information from participants in 2006 and will follow them for another 14 years. From a week of wrist sensor data, researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign designed a model that pares down a person’s acceleration and the distance they traveled into six-minute chunks.
According to study author Bruce Schatz, a University of Illinois computer science researcher, the scientists chose this duration to mimic the six-minute walk test: a measurement of heart and lung function commonly taken during a medical appointment that tasks participants with walking at a normal pace for six minutes and compares their total distance traveled to benchmarks according to their age.
The test is “a very good external measure of what’s going on internally,” and could easily be replicated using the accelerometer present in a wrist sensor or a cheap phone, Schatz told The Daily Beast. “I know for a fact that these kinds of models will work with cheap phones.”
Predictions of future death made by the researchers’ model were correct 72 percent of the time after one year, and 73 percent after five years—a similar rate of accuracy found in a study published last year that analyzed the same data set but used hours, rather than minutes, of data. This new study, argued Schatz, is a more promising demonstration of passive monitoring technology like phone and wrist sensors as his team’s model requires less data and affords a great degree of privacy to the user.
“If you record all of the data, it’s true that people have characteristic walks and you can tell who the individual is. But it’s totally possible to take part of the signal, which is good enough to do the vitals but completely disguises who the person is,” he said.
“I know for a fact that these kinds of models will work with cheap phones.”
— Bruce Schatz, University of Illinois
Even so, using everyday technology to passively monitor patients could raise issues if users cannot give continuous informed consent, situations which could be complicated by degenerative illnesses or a lack of technological literacy.
These ethical issues, said Schatz, are still speculative, but deserve coordinated thought from scientists as the research moves forward. While the sensors used in the study were near-identical to the ones in both simple cell phones and smartphones, future work should validate this model in a large sample when users carry phones in their pockets, rather than wear sensors on their wrists.
Downloading an app that can measure your health as you go about your day-to-day could be a convenient and painless way to keep people healthier, longer. “If you want to raise the general health of the entire population, this kind of project is really important,” Schatz said.
Predicting all-cause mortality risk is challenging and requires extensive medical data. Recently, large-scale proteomics datasets have proven useful for predicting health-related outcomes. Here, we use measurements of levels of 4,684 plasma proteins in 22,913 Icelanders to develop all-cause mortality predictors both for short- and long-term risk. The participants were 18-101 years old with a mean follow up of 13.7 (sd. 4.7) years. During the study period, 7,061 participants died.
Our proposed predictor outperformed, in survival prediction, a predictor based on conventional mortality risk factors. We could identify the 5% at highest risk in a group of 60-80 years old, where 88% died within ten years and 5% at the lowest risk where only 1% died. Furthermore, the predicted risk of death correlates with measures of frailty in an independent dataset. Our results show that the plasma proteome can be used to assess general health and estimate the risk of death.
The ability to predict when someone will die is not something you would wish upon yourself or your friends. It could, however, prove useful in the delivery of healthcare and biomedical research. It is often possible to give a meaningful prediction of how long individuals with specific diagnoses will live1, but predicting when an individual will die from any cause is altogether a different matter.
Several diseases, lifestyle2,3,4, social and psychological factors5 associate with all-cause mortality. Commonly used risk factors for all-cause mortality are age, sex, traditional cardiovascular risk factors such as systolic blood pressure, cholesterol levels, smoking, and diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer, alcohol consumption, body mass index (BMI), and creatinine levels6,7,8. Among other biomarkers of all-cause mortality are brain age estimated from structural magnetic resonance images9, DNA methylation10, and telomere length11.
Recently, circulating metabolic biomarkers have been found to associate with the risk of all-cause mortality. In a study of 44,168 individuals, where 5512 died during follow-up, 14 metabolic biomarkers were found to improve 5 and 10-year all-cause mortality predictions over conventional risk factors8. Another study of 17,345 participants identified 106 metabolic biomarkers that improved short-term all-cause mortality risk prediction over established risk factors7.
In a study of 3523 participants from the Framingham Heart Study, 38 of 85 preselected circulating protein biomarkers associated with all-cause mortality and improved all-cause mortality prediction over cardiovascular risk factors12. Similarly, 56 peptides (31 proteins) correlated with 5-year mortality in a study of 2473 older men. A panel of those peptides improved the predictive value of a commonly used clinical predictor of mortality.
With the advent of new technology such as SOMAmers14 or proximity extension assays15, it is possible to simultaneously measure levels of thousands of proteins efficiently. Several studies using this technology have shown the plasma proteome to be heavily associated with age and life span16,17,18,19,20. A study of 997 participants associated 651 out of 1301 proteins with age, found that a 76-protein proteomic age signature associated with all-cause mortality independent of chronological age, and created a seven-protein mortality predictor18.
In a study of 1025 older adults, 754 of 4265 proteins were associated with age. A proteomic age model using the age-associated proteins predicted mortality better than chronological age19. Another study of 4263 participants measured 2925 proteins to evaluate how circulating protein profile changes over the life span20. Some studies have used large proteomics datasets to predict other health-related factors. A protein-based risk score for cardiovascular outcomes in a high-risk group was developed using 1130 candidate plasma proteins21.
In addition, ~5000 plasma proteins were used to predict health states, behavior, and incident diseases, with performance comparable to traditional risk factors, in 16,894 participants22. These studies underscore the value of using plasma levels of a large number of proteins to search for biomarkers in health and diseases..…To be continued….
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We asked a theoretical physicist, an experimental physicist, and a professor of philosophy to weigh in. During the 20th century, researchers pushed the frontiers of science further than ever before with great strides made in two very distinct fields. While physicists discovered the strange counter-intuitive rules that govern the subatomic world, our understanding of how the mind works burgeoned.
Yet, in the newly-created fields of quantum physics and cognitive science, difficult and troubling mysteries still linger, and occasionally entwine. Why do quantum states suddenly resolve when they’re measured, making it at least superficially appear that observation by a conscious mind has the capacity to change the physical world? What does that tell us about consciousness?
Popular Mechanics spoke to three researchers from different fields for their views on a potential quantum consciousness connection. Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: a theoretical physicist, an experimental physicist, and a professor of philosophy walk into a bar …
Quantum Physics and Consciousness Are Weird
Early quantum physicists noticed through the double-slit experiment that the act of attempting to measure photons as they pass through wavelength-sized slits to a detection screen on the other side changed their behavior.
This measurement attempt caused wave-like behavior to be destroyed, forcing light to behave more like a particle. While this experiment answered the question “is light a wave or a particle?” — it’s neither, with properties of both, depending on the circumstance — it left behind a more troubling question in its wake. What if the act of observation with the human mind is actually causing the world to manifest changes , albeit on an incomprehensibly small scale?
Renowned and reputable scientists such as Eugene Wigner, John Bell, and later Roger Penrose, began to consider the idea that consciousness could be a quantum phenomenon. Eventually, so did researchers in cognitive science (the scientific study of the mind and its processes), but for different reasons.
Ulf Danielsson, an author and a professor of theoretical physics at Uppsala University in Sweden, believes one of the reasons for the association between quantum physics and consciousness—at least from the perspective of cognitive science—is the fact that processes on a quantum level are completely random. This is different from the deterministic way in which classical physics proceeds, and means even the best calculations that physicists can come up with in regard to quantum experiments are mere probabilities.
“Consciousness is a phenomenon associated with free will and free will makes use of the freedom that quantum mechanics supposedly provides.”
The existence of free will as an element of consciousness also seems to be a deeply non-deterministic concept. Recall that in mathematics, computer science, and physics, deterministic functions or systems involve no randomness in the future state of the system; in other words, a deterministic function will always yield the same results if you give it the same inputs. Meanwhile, a nondeterministic function or system will give you different results every time, even if you provide the same input values.
“I think that’s why cognitive sciences are looking toward quantum mechanics. In quantum mechanics, there is room for chance,” Danielsson tells Popular Mechanics. “Consciousness is a phenomenon associated with free will and free will makes use of the freedom that quantum mechanics supposedly provides.”
However, Jeffrey Barrett, chancellor’s professor of logic and philosophy of science at the University of California, Irvine, thinks the connection is somewhat arbitrary from the cognitive science side.
“It’s really hard to explain consciousness, it is a deep and abiding philosophical problem. So quantum physicists are desperate and those guys [cognitive scientists] are desperate over there too,” Barrett tells Popular Mechanics. “And they think that quantum mechanics is weird. Consciousness is weird. There might be some relationship between the two.”
This rationalization isn’t convincing to him, however. “I don’t think that there’s any reason to suppose from the cognitive science direction that quantum mechanics has anything to do with explaining consciousness,” Barrett continues. From the quantum perspective, however, Barrett sees a clear reason why physicists first proposed the connection to consciousness.
“If it wasn’t for the quantum measurement problem, nobody, including the physicists involved in this early discussion, would be thinking that consciousness and quantum mechanics had anything to do with each other,” he says. At the heart of quantum “weirdness” and the measurement problem, there is a concept called “superposition.”
Because the possible states of a quantum system are described using wave mathematics — or more precisely, wave functions — a quantum system can exist in many overlapping states, or a superposition. The weird thing is, these states can be contradictory. To see how counter-intuitive this can be, we can refer to one of history’s most famous thought experiments, the Schrödinger’s Cat paradox.
Devised by Erwin Schrödinger, the experiment sees an unfortunate cat placed in a box with what the physicist described as a “diabolical device” for an hour. The device releases a deadly poison if an atom in the box decays during that period. Because the decay of atoms is completely random, there is no way for the experimenter to predict if the cat is dead or alive until the hour is up and the box is opened.
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Treating the cat, box, and device as a quantum system with two possible states—“dead” or “alive”—before the box is opened, means it is in a superposition of those states . The cat is both dead and alive before you open the container.
The problem of measurement asks what is it about “opening the box” — analogous to making a measurement — that causes the wave function to collapse, and this superposition to be destroyed, resolving one state? Is it due to the introduction of the conscious mind of the experimenter? Early quantum physicist Eugene Wigner thought so until shortly before his death in 1995.
Physical Body and Quantum Mind?
In 1961, Wigner put forward a theory in which a mind was crucial to the collapse of a wave function and the destruction of superposition which persists in one form or another to this day.
Wigner and other physicists who adhered to the theory of conscious collapses—such as John von Neumann, John Wheeler, and John Bell—believed that an inanimate consciousness-less object would not collapse the wave function of a quantum system and would thus leave it in a superposition of states.
That means placing a Geiger counter in the box with Schrödinger’s cat isn’t enough to collapse the system to a “dead” or “alive” state even though it is capable of telling if the poison-release atom had decayed.
The superposition remains, Winger said, until a conscious observer opens the box or maybe hears the tick of the Geiger counter.
This leads to the conclusion that there are two distinct types of “substances” in the universe: the physical, and the non-physical , with the human mind fitting in the latter category. This suggests, though, that the brain is a physical and biological object, while the mind is something else, resulting in so-called “mind-body dualism.”
For materialists like himself, Danielsson says the collapse of a wave function in quantum mechanics is a result of an interaction with another physical system. This means it’s quite possible for an “observer” to be a completely unconscious object. To them, the Geiger counter in the box with Schrödinger’s cat is capable of collapsing the superposition of states.
This fits in with the fact that quantum systems are incredibly finely balanced systems easily collapsed by a stray electromagnetic field or even a change in temperature. If you want to know why we don’t have reliable quantum computers, that’s a part of the reason—the quantum states they depend on are too easily disturbed.
Additionally, as Barrett points out, there are a number of ways of thinking about quantum mechanics that don’t involve the collapse of quantum superposition.
The most famous, Hugh Everett III’s many-worlds interpretation of quantum mechanics, suggests that when the experimenter makes a measurement, the wave function doesn’t collapse at all. Instead, it grows to include the experimenter and the entire universe, with one “world” for each possible state. Thus, the experimenter opens the box not to discover if the cat is dead or alive, but rather, if they are in a world in which the cat survived or did not.
If there is no collapse of superpositions, there is no measurement problem.
Clearly, with Noble Prize winners like Wigner and Roger Penrose persuaded that there may be something in a possible quantum-consciousness connection, however, the idea can’t be entirely dismissed.
Kristian Piscicchia, a researcher at the Enrico Fermi Center for Study and Research in Rome, Italy, certainly agrees. He is part of a team searching for a more profound understanding of the mind and the relationship between consciousness and the laws of nature.
This team recently set about testing one particular theory that connects consciousness to the collapse of quantum superposition — the Orchestrated Objective Reduction theory (Orch OR theory) — put forward by Nobel Laureate and Oxford mathematician Penrose and Arizona State University anesthesiologist Stuart Hameroff in the 1990s.
Testing Quantum Consciousness Theories
Orch OR theory considers quantum collapse to be related to gravity and argues this collapse actually gives rise to consciousness. According to some approaches to Orch OR theory, the superposition collapse mechanism underlying it should cause the spontaneous emission of a tiny amount of radiation. This distinguishes it from other quantum consciousness theories as it makes it experimentally testable.
“When a system is in a quantum superposition, an unstable superposition of two space-time geometries is generated which determines the wave function collapse in a characteristic time,” Piscicchia tells Popular Mechanics. “The mechanism takes place at the level of microtubules in the brain.”
Microtubules are a key element of eukaryotic cells that are critical for mitosis, cell motility, transport within cells, and maintaining cell shape. Hameroff’s theory sees microtubules in brain neurons as the seat of quantum consciousness, maintaining quantum effects just long enough to conduct computations giving rise to consciousness before collapsing.
“A sufficient amount of microtubule material would be in a coherent quantum superposition for a timescale of between half a second and ten milliseconds until a collapse event results in the emergence of a conscious experience,” Piscicchia says. “We designed an experiment being sensitive enough to unveil eventual signals of gravity-related spontaneous radiation, at the collapse time-scales needed for the Orch OR mechanism to be effective.”
He adds that the results the team obtained place a constraint on the minimum amount of microtubulins needed for this form of Orch OR theory. This limit was found to be prohibitively large, meaning the results indicate that many of the scenarios set out by Hameroff and Penrose’s quantum consciousness theory are implausible.
Piscicchia points out that the team’s work can’t rule out all possibilities, however, and further testing is needed.
Yet, the existence of the quantum consciousness concept itself—and the way it is represented in popular culture—could present a threat to further scientific investigation.
The mind-body dualism suggested by quantum consciousness can be a potentially slippery slope that has led some proponents away from science and into the supernatural.
The concept has also been seized upon to explain the existence of the soul, life after death, and even the existence of ghosts, giving rise to a cottage industry of “quantum mysticism.”
“There’s lots of literature that uses the authority of physics and in particular quantum physics in order to make all sorts of claims,” Danielsson explains. “You can earn a lot of money by fooling people in various ways to buy not only books but also various products. It gives the wrong view of what science is.”
“Quantum mysticism makes it very difficult for serious scientists to think about problems like quantum mechanics and consciousness.”
The physicist also believes that it is definitely the case that the rise of quantum mysticism is hurting legitimate research. “Quantum mysticism makes it very difficult for serious scientists to think about problems like quantum mechanics and consciousness,” he adds. “This is because there is a risk that you might get associated with things which are not so serious.”
Danielsson doesn’t rule out that even if the mind is a purely emergent property of the brain, and thus completely physical in nature, the phenomenon of consciousness may require new physics to explain it. He doesn’t necessarily think that this needs to be quantum mechanics, however.
“That doesn’t mean that there might be many interesting phenomena new to quantum mechanics that might appear in the living world, including in our brains,” he concludes. “One shouldn’t say that quantum mechanics is trivial and that there is no mystery to it.
“It’s just another fantastic property of the world that we are living in. It’s not mystical in a supernatural way.”
You’re always looking for positive ways to promote your B2B company. In your search, you’ve likely come across the following terms: earned media, owned media, shared media, and paid media. Whether you realize it or not, chances are you’re using at least one of these top PR strategies.
However, if you’re a bit fuzzy on what these terms actually mean, or if you just need a refresher course, read on — it’s coming your way.
In this post, we will:
Define Earned, Owned, Shared and Paid media
Discuss how to leverage each of them
Give you some B2B PR tips on how to combine all four methods to generate leads
Define the Top 8 tips to bring big ideas to your B2B PR strategy.
1. Earned, Owned, Shared, and Paid Media Defined
Earned Media
“A trusted referral is the Holy Grail of advertising.” – Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook
In a nutshell, earned media is:
Publicity gained from word of mouth, online reviews, and blogger, press, and influencer relations. It’s a third-party endorsement of your brand.
How to Leverage Earned Media:
We’ll start with earned media because it can be one of the trickiest to master. The reason is that you have less control over this type of media. You can’t simply ask someone to plug your product or service. As the name suggests, you must earn it.
How can you do this without sounding, well… sleazy, clingy, desperate?
Simply put, you need to to be a friend to get a friend.
If you want to get noticed by bloggers who will promote your brand, start by reaching out to those whose work you truly admire. These are the ones that whose email updates make it past your trash file. The ones who get you thinking about your industry and who inspire you.
Reach out to these bloggers via social media and leave comments on their posts. Next, join HARO (help a reporter out). This service notifies you when a reporter is looking for an industry expert to quote in a piece.
Lastly, make it easy for others to like you by responding graciously on social media sites, leaving positive LinkedIn endorsements for those you’ve collaborated with on projects, and promoting thought leaders on social media.
Owned Media
Owned media is content that you have created and that you own. Examples of owned media include:
Blog posts, whitepapers, videos, podcasts, case studies, ebooks, and your website.
How to Leverage Owned Media:
Owned media is your PR paradise. You have complete control over how to create and use each piece of content you create. However, there has to be a method to your madness.
“Think like a publisher, not a marketer.” – David Meerman Scott, marketing and leadership speaker
Here are a few tips to get your owned media going in the right direction:
Create a purpose for each piece of content. Are you trying to get new leads? Nurture existing leads? Increase brand awareness?
Include plenty of visual content, such as videos, images, GIFs, infographics. Mix it up a bit.
Write for both search engines and people. When you write a headline, ask yourself if you would click on it. Better yet, ask someone else.
Attach analytics to each piece of content in order to gauge interest in the topic you’re promoting.
Shared Media
Shared media, also known as social media, has become one of the most popular and cost effective PR platforms. It includes:
Postings to social sharing sites, such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Pinterest.
How to Leverage Shared Media:
With new changes to social platforms coming in almost daily, it can be hard to keep up. However, there are a few good rules of thumb that remain unchanged.
Paid Media
This one isn’t too difficult to figure out! However, it has changed over the years. While you might think of paid media as print, TV, or radio advertising, it has evolved into something much more digital and direct.
Today, effective means of paid media include:
Native advertising
Social media campaigns
Google Adwords
Retargeting
How to Leverage Paid Media:
Paid media is the one method many don’t want to acknowledge. Perhaps it’s because they see so many other effective PR methods that are virtually free.
However, paid media is equally important. One reason for this is because paid media is a better bet when searching for new buyers that never heard of your brand.
Paid social media campaigns for example can reach those who are interested in your industry, not just in your personal brand. These prospects may not be searching for you online, but now Facebook has made them aware of your presence without their ever navigating off the same page they use to communicate with loved ones.
Likewise, paying to have your blog posts distributed via native advertising allows your expertise to reach a wide audience. Learn more about how that works in my recent blog post on native advertising.
Each PR method can certainly be used as a stand alone product. However, they really shine when combined into a single effort. Let’s take a look at how that might work.
Let’s start with a great piece of owned media, say a blog post. In a perfect world, this blog post would attract your best leads and prospects all on its own. However, the truth is that it’s unlikely to be noticed unless you put a little effort into its promotion.
Next, you’ll want to promote the post on social, or shared, media. This isn’t a one-time deal, either. Rather, you need to promote the post over the following days, weeks, and even months in order for it to gain decent traction.
Once you see that your piece of content has been well-received, you’ll know that you’ve hit a hot topic. You can then begin to promote it using paid media, in the form of Twitter or Facebook campaigns.
Carefully gaining traction in this way adds to your credibility as a thought leader in your industry. It’s then that you’ll start to see your earned media come through for you.
Top 8 Tips to Bring Big Ideas to Your B2B PR
1. Work Backwards from a Clear End Goal
Start with your end vision. What would you like to accomplish as a company? A great way to bring an idea to life is by starting with the end-product. A key component to your vision might be to write down that dream headline that you would like to see when your vision comes to fruition.
For instance, would you like to get press coverage for your involvement in charity? Then start big. Imagine the successful headline that will put you on the front page. It could be something like, “Local B2B Firm Meets Goal of Feeding 1,000 Hungry Families.”
Have you already thought of your dream headline? Once you have it, work back from there. Set smaller, more manageable goals that will help you reach that big headline. You’ll find it easier to get more people on board and involved when you have a set end-goal to pursue.
2. Invite Influencers to Contribute to Your Content
Influencers are a big deal in niche industries, and can amplify your content’s reach. While it may be difficult to get an influencer on-board for a full guest post, it’s a much easier task to get a blurb or pro tip from an influencer that you can then leverage within your content.
Imagine the power behind such blog posts as,
“15 Pro Tips From the Security Industry’s Leading Experts” or “[Influencer’s name] Weighs in on the Biggest Problem Facing the Security industry.”
Once you have this content locked down, you can leverage your influencer involvement to promote it. Build anticipation for the content by talking it up on social media before it is released. Once it’s out, tag the influencers involved on social media so that they can share it with their audience. Share it several times to ensure that the maximum amount of people get a chance to read it.
3. Make Your Content Recyclable and Magnetic
Your content shouldn’t have an end-date. Once you hit publish, there’s plenty you can do to extend its usefulness. For example, make it easily shareable. Create click to tweet links of several important snippets of your content that people can easily share on Twitter. Create social media images with influential parts of your content that others in your industry will be interested in sharing.
4. Find Content That’s Already Popular…and Make It Better
It can sometimes feel like your competitors have all the successful content. But you can use this to your advantage. Use programs like BuzzSumo and SEMrush to find what content is currently blowing up within your industry. Then take that piece of content and give it an all-star upgrade. Amplify its value with a more modern design, in-depth content, and even additional pro tips.
Once you have a superior piece of content, it’s time to distribute it like crazy. Use social media and email marketing to get as many eyes on it as possible.
And don’t forget to use this content to shine a light on new content. Include a link to just-published content within your popular post. Think of it as the virtual equivalent of hanging out with the popular kids. The goal is that some of that fairy dust will end up on the new content.
5. Focus on Big Pieces of Content
One large, high-quality piece of content is going to outperform 10 other lower quality pieces of content put together. To accomplish this, your content creation should begin with a solid content strategy that aims at truly high-quality content, as well as promotion of that content. In-depth content such as eBooks and guides may take more time to put together, but in the end, will lead to increased credibility and owned media potential.
6. Leverage Special Content for Visitors Who Share
Sharing isn’t just for kids. When readers share your content on their social networks, this is PR gold. But how do you convince readers to share?
Instead of your traditional gated content that requires the user to input his or her contact information, why not make special content downloadable in exchange for a social share? People get the free e-book (or video, or case study) once they share their download announcement on social media. This gives them the content they want, and boosts the recognition of your brand at the same time—a clear win-win situation.
7. Test the Waters for Big Events
Events are a key way to establish yourself as a thought leader and industry authority. But this is sometimes easier said than done — it can be overwhelming to jump feet first into a large-scale event. Make it easier on yourself by testing the waters first with a smaller event.
It doesn’t have to be a large, fancy affair. Make it more intimate and less structured. Invite a wide range of people to participate — perhaps include an industry analyst, someone from the media, a business customer, and an author, to speak on a current industry topic or trend. This kind of environment can foster many thought leadership quality discussions that you will have been responsible for creating.
Then, if all goes well, you can start planning a larger-scale event that will no doubt garner more attention.
8. Become Part of a Niche Community
While it’s great to participate in larger industry communities, don’t ignore the power that the smaller niche communities (such as on LinkedIn) hold for your content promotion. Oftentimes, participating in smaller, niche communities can give you more of a chance to engage with and provide value to others in your industry.
Participation in these communities allows you to establish yourself as an industry expert, create brand awareness, and share your valuable content. There’s even a chance that your content may be chosen for syndication by other blogs and publications in your niche. In short, these smaller communities are a great stepping stone on your way to bigger, thought leadership opportunities.
Key Points to Remember in Your B2B PR
Include influencer input in small ways to attract more attention from a wider audience.
Use popular content from competitors to create even better, more in-depth content.
Prepare yourself for hosting a large event by starting with a small, intimate one.
Get involved in smaller, niche communities where you will have more opportunities to engage and be heard.
Just because you are a small B2B business doesn’t mean that your B2B PR ideas have to follow suit. Use these 8 B2B PR tactics to start thinking big and you’ll amplify your content’s influence and achieve thought leadership success.
Credit: Joy Ho for NPR
