By: Lifestyle Desk | New Delhi | Published: May 5, 2020 6:20:10 pm The most important thing to do when youre an asthmatic is to know what your triggers are. (Photo: Getty Images/Thinkstock)

World Asthma Day, celebrated on the second Tuesday of May every year, is a campaign which has been created with the objective of making people more aware about the condition and the dangers it poses. This year, it also highlights how in the current health climate, with the COVID 19 pandemic, people with asthma need to be more vigilant, maintain social distancing and ensure they have access to their medication.

The most important thing to do when youre an asthmatic is to know what your triggers are. Once those have been identified it will be easier for you to either deal with them or avoid them or having a solution handy in case an attack happens. Triggers can be internal and external. Internal triggers can be obesity, hypertension, while external triggers include dust mites, mold allergens, pollen, perfumes, cold temperatures, explains Dr Manoj Goel, Director & Head, Pulmonology, Critical Care & Sleep Medicine, Fortis Memorial Research Institute, Gurugram.

Asthma often results in wheezing, coughing, heaving chest, difficulty in breathing/shortness of breath, blurred vision, chapped lips, dry mouth and an intense feeling of discomfort and claustrophobia. This is because the airways to your lungs have narrowed making it difficult for the oxygen to reach it, he adds.

During the covid 19 pandemic asthmatic patients are certainly vulnerable. Dr Goel says that while there are no studies indicating that asthmatic patients are more prone to covid 19, it is believed that since the two are respiratory ailments they only complement each other. If you an asthmatic patient who is struggling with the COVID 19 pandemic, please wear a mask. That is your first line of defense against the virus followed by hand sanitizer and gloves, he says.

So, what do you do to keep yourself from suffering from an asthma attack?

Ensure you have your inhaler around you. If you dont then make sure you do not panic. Sit upright, take deep breaths and try to reach the nearest hospital. The most important thing is to ensure you have removed yourself from the trigger. As asthma patients there are other things you need to keep in mind such as not smoking and not being in the presence of secondhand smoke. Chemicals in tobacco only aggravate asthmatic conditions. It is said that the lung function of an asthmatic smoker is 30 percent less than that of a non-asthmatic smoker.

Secondly, if you are an asthmatic and love working out, there is no reason you shouldnt. Swimming, aerobics walking, jogging are all good exercise options for asthmatic patients. Have an action plan that can be deployed in case you do have an attack. Thirdly do not overexert yourself if you are an asthmatic patient, take it slow.

In the end my advice to you would be constant vigilance. Do not be lax about your condition, it is debilitating and needs to be considered when making decisions. Have a treatment plan ready so that I case of any emergency you can avail of it and take the necessary help, he says.

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Excerpt from:
World Asthma Day 2020: Things asthma patients must keep in mind - The Indian Express

RESEARCH over the past couple of years has shown that early sown, longer-season varieties of canola have the potential to perform well during a dry finish, largely due to their root depth.

The 2018 and 2019 seasons showed researchers from CSIRO that stored moisture from summer rain could be capitalised on by sowing canola earlier with varieties that will still flower at the right time to miss heat and frost.

The past two years have confirmed observations from the Optimised canola profitability project, a collaborative study between CSIRO, the Grains Research Development Corporation and others.

The project had suggested that earlier sown, slower-maturing varieties had a yield advantage over later varieties in seasons where there is stored soil moisture but it turns dry in the spring.

CSIRO farming systems agronomist John Kirkegaard said they found that a range of canola varieties were growing down at about two centimetres per day from sowing to flowering.

"After flowering they were slowing to about 1cm per day, so that was getting them well down to three to four metres when they were on soils that had that depth," Dr Kirkegaard said.

"We were getting roots taking up significant water down to around three metres, it was often 25 to 30 millimetres of water from down there that these earlier sown varieties were capturing.

"They were often converting that into up to one tonne of yield, so you're looking at very high water usage efficiencies, up to double what you'd expect from a total seasonal water point of view."

On average, across about 20 trials, in yield ranges from 1.5 to 3.5t, the research team was getting a 0.4 tonnes a hectare advantage from the earlier sown varieties.

However, there are agronomic issues to consider, especially the impact on deep stored soil moisture that may no longer be available to the following crop.

Dr Kirkegaard said while it's great to be able to sow one of the early varieties, capture that soil moisture and make quite a bit of profit, that canola is going to use a lot of water and nitrogen.

He said if growers then went into a very dry summer and a very dry autumn, they may need to rethink what the crop sequence was going to be.

"Starting the season with a completely dry profile, for some of the options growers might have been looking at, is risky," he said.

"What we suggest is to think about crops that might be more successful from a later sowing to give yourself time to capture some soil moisture, things such as barley or grain legumes which can be sown later with success.

"One of the other considerations to keep in mind is how much cover is left.

"If you've got a lot of cover, maybe a grain legume is an option because they don't tend to produce a lot of cover.

"Whereas if you don't have cover you may well want to lean towards a barley or a cereal, something that is going to produce more cover and get that crucial level of cover back up."

Another agronomic issue is that canola is a big user of nitrogen, so longer season, earlier sown crops will not only use the water but also use the nitrogen.

Dr Kirkegarrd said sequencing into these crops with something like a grain legume was a good option as they stored water and nitrogen.

"Those two resources are then available to the canola crop," he said.

"Canola needs about 80 kilograms of nitrogen per tonne of grain expected, so that supply needs to be there."

While yield is the main advantage of the earlier sown crops, in an Australian system there is the added bonus that generally they produce a lot more biomass early and through the autumn

"If growers have animals in their enterprise, they can graze those crops in the winter, providing they get the animals off at the right time, they won't have an impact on the grain yield, so that biomass just contributes to profit," Dr Kirkegarrd said.

"The winter canola will, from a March sowing for example, put on a lot of biomass which provides good grazing in the autumn, allows you to get the animals off the pasture and give them a rest."

Overall, a lot of summer rain and stored soil moisture gives growers both the opportunity and the confidence to sow canola early, with a slower maturing variety, knowing they've got a bank of water at depth for the roots to access.

Go here to see the original:
Deep-rooted canola holds on in the dry - Farm Weekly

In a paper originally published last October and accepted to the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) 2020, researchers affiliated with Google and the University College London propose an AI model that enables control of speech characteristics like pitch, emotion, and speaking rate with as little as 30 minutes of data.

The work has obvious commercial implications. Brand voices such as Progressives Flo (played by comedian Stephanie Courtney) are often pulled in for pick-ups sessions to address mistakes, changes, or additions in voiceover scripts long after a recording finishes. AI-assisted voice correction could eliminate the need for these, saving time and money on the part of the actors employers.

A previous study investigated the use of so-called style tokens (which represented different categories of emotion) to control speech affect. The method achieved good results with only 5% of labeled data, but it couldnt handle speech samples with varying prosody (i.e., intonation, tone, stress, and rhythm) and fixed emotion. The work from Google and the University of College London addresses this limitation.

The researchers trained the system for 300,000 steps across 32 of Googles custom-designed tensor processing units (TPUs), a scale of compute exceeding that used in previous work. They report that using 30 minutes of labeled data allowed for a significant degree of control over speech rate, valence, and arousal, and that affect accuracy didnt degrade noticeably with at least 10% of labeled data. The researchers said that just 3 minutes of data allowed for control of speech rate and extrapolation outside data seen during training a result the researchers claim beat out state-of-the-art baselines.

The researchers system taps a trained generative model that can synthesize acoustic features from text. Similar to Googles Tacotron 2, a text-to-speech (TTS) system that generates natural-sounding speech from raw transcripts, the new system can produce visual representations of frequencies called spectrograms by training a second model such as DeepMinds WaveNet to act as a vocoder, a voice codec that analyzes and synthesizes voice data. (This system uses WaveRNN.)

An annotated data set comprising 72,405 roughly 5-second recordings from 40 English speakers, amounting to 45 hours of audio, was used to train the system. The speakers, all of whom were trained voice actors, were prompted to read text snippets with varying levels of valence (emotions like sadness or happiness) and arousal (excitement or energy). From these sessions, the researchers obtained six possible affective states, which they modeled and use as labels along with labels for speaking rate (here defined as the number of syllables per second in each utterance).

Heres one of the voices the system modified (which sounds not unlike the default Google Assistant voice, interestingly) to have high arousal and an angry valence:

And heres that same voice with high arousal and a happy valence:

And low arousal and sad valence:

The studys coauthors acknowledge that the work might raise ethical concerns because it could be misused for misinformation or to commit fraud. Indeed, deepfakes media that takes a person in an existing image, audio recording, or video and replaces them with someone elses likeness using AI are multiplying quickly, and have already been used to defraud a major energy producer. In tandem with tools like Resemble, Baidus Deep Voice, and Lyrebird, which need only seconds to minutes of audio samples to clone someones voice, its not difficult to imagine how this new system might add fuel to the fire.

But the coauthors also assert that in this case, since the focus of this work is on improved prosody with potential benefits to human-computer interfaces, the benefits likely outweigh the risks. We urge the research community to take seriously the potential for misuse both of this work and broader advances in TTS, they wrote.

See the article here:
Googles AI can adjust voice emotion, pitch, and speed with 30 minutes of data - VentureBeat

Dr. Adia Gooden, director of community programs and outcome measurement at The Family Institute at Northwestern University.

Dr. Christine Somervill, director of programs for NAMI Cook County North Suburban

Everyone who is feeling out-of-sorts, apprehensive, uncertain about the future because of the Coronavirus may be relieved to know that is not so unusual.

Its normal for mental health symptoms to be exacerbated by a time of stress and crisis. And I think its really important to acknowledge that, said Dr. Adia Gooden, director of community programs and outcome measurement at The Family Institute at Northwestern University.

Dr. Gooden joined Dr. Christine Somervill, director of programs for NAMI Cook County North Suburban, at a City of Evanston Facebook Live Q&A session on April 20 that focused on mental health.

Both serve on the Coronavirus Task Force which Evanston Mayor Stephen Hagerty established to bring together representatives from various sectors of the City to coordinate Evanstons response to the virus.Mayor Hagerty served as moderator of the April 20 Q&A session, noting the growing significance of mental health as the crisis goes on.

The mayor has raised concern about the Citys mental health needs during so-called normal times.

And here we are facing a crisis of global proportions, he said, leading off the session, and I know that anxiety is high, stress is high, he said.

One question that frequently comes up, he said, is how one takes care of ones self at a time when so many restrictions are in place on activities.

Self-care becomes an important issue during a time like this, and getting proper rest is part of the core of self-care, Dr. Gooden said.

For most adults, that means seven to eight hours of sleep, and kids and teenagers need even more than that, maybe nine to ten hours, she said. That [proper res] boosts our immune system, which we really need right now. It allows our system to sort of regulate and calm down and relax, so prioritizing getting enough sleep, is important. So is making sure you are eating regularly and eating foods that are nourishing to the body.

Limiting the amount of caffeine and alcohol can make sense during this period, too, she said, because those things can sort of shift our moods in ways that can be unhelpful and exacerbate anxiety or depression.Taking time for oneself is another good practice, she said. So if you are in a house with your whole family, and its really hard to get space, maybe considertaking a walk by yourself, or if you have a car, sitting in the car.

Dr. Somervill said establishing a daily routine is important, too.

Just making your bed in the morning, putting on clothes that you would put on if you were going outside make yourself feel like youre living a normal life, she suggested.

If youre working from home, its important to create structure, she said. Dedicate some space in your home to do that. Make sure you schedule breaks so that you get up and move around and have lunch. Maybe connect with coworkers, via whatever tools you have.

"Also, you might consider not spending too much time talking about Covid-19 because, you know, I think were all consuming that information. And its important that were consuming reliable information and that we dont get overwhelmed.

Dr. Gooden spoke about people making use of their self-agency function, as they go about their day.In fact you should be doing them with purpose and intentionality I would say get up and lay out your day, she said. Know that youre going to have certain times when youre going to do certain things that will work for you.

Along with establishing a daily routine, she said, I think its can be helpful to sort of shrink the window when you start thinking about whats going to happen six months from now, or eight months from now. That [thinking of the far-off future] is when we start to get more overwhelmed, and can start to catastrophize, or think about the worst possible outcome. But if you sort of shrink it down and say, Okay, whats going to happen the next day or two, or maybe even the next month, but sort of shortening everything. The more anxious and overwhelmed and out-of-control you feel, the shorter your timeline should be.

If thoughts start rolling out worst-case scenarios, bringing it back and trying to let go of those thoughts and sort of check in with yourself: How do you feel now? Do you feel healthy in this moment, can you breathe in at this moment is one technique you might use.

People who start to feel anxious and overwhelmed, for example, at a grocery store, might do a grounding technique that we call noticing, she said, taking note of five things in your immediate environment to get your mind to settle into the present moment.

Connecting resources to people is harder now these times because were at home and cant go out and look for them, Dr. Somervill noted.

Earlier this month, Mayor Hagerty notes, Illinois Governor J.B. Pritzker announced a Call-4-Calm program a free emotional support text line where people can speak with a mental health professional. Any Illinois resident with a mobile phone can opt in by texting TALK to 552020 or texting HABLAR for service in Spanish to the same number.

Locally, more and more therapy practices are providing teletherapy options in response to the shelter-at-home directive, said Dr. Gooden. And so that may be a really helpful resource, to learn new coping strategies for depression. Depression can cause us to self-isolate, [which] can exacerbate depression, she said, and we have to sort of make more of an effort to reach out more than we might normally, because we dont have the normal ways of interacting that we usually have.

For that matter, said Dr. Somervill,during these difficult times, make sure you have the contact information, or the phone numbers and email addresses of people who are maybe in your close social circle , as well as people you dont talk to often, or havent seen for a while.

Reach out to them, she suggested, because one of the things thats really helpful to an individual who may be struggling is to do something that you know is helping another individual, so caring for other people, while you need it yourself, is a really good strategy.

And also ask for help when you need it, she said. I think part of the thing that people struggle with sometimes is they feel like theyre all alone ... and they should be able to handle things and dont ask for help when they need it.

Just share that feeling with people that you really trust, she urged. Take that chance, open up, be vulnerable and let the people who care for you help you in that way.

The Q&A in its entirety is available atcityofevanston.org/covid19.

See the original post:
'Take Deep Breaths, Make Your Bed' Therapists Offer Tips for Maintaining Mental Health During the Coronavirus - Evanston RoundTable

LOUISVILLE, Ky. When I say the word meditation, what comes to mind? Maybe some monks in Tibet, chanting with bells while incense burns around them? If so, just know that this was exactly my reaction a few years ago, too, and because of that I was scared off trying it for quite a while (no disrespect to Tibetan monks, by the way, because Ive met quite a few and theyre awesome).

As it turns out, meditation isnt some lofty, unreachable practice exclusive to guys with man buns (again, no disrespect)its actually simple, approachable, and has all kinds of amazing benefits backed by science. It can help fight depression and anxiety, improve sleep, lower blood pressure, help your body deal with pain, and a lot more.

Still, it can seem intimidating when you first dive in, so I talked to Joyce Scherdin, a licensed therapist in Louisville, to get some tips. She uses meditation with her clients.

In it's simplest, most basic form, mindfulness is being aware of where your mind isthats it, said Scherdin. It's just being aware, which is a practice.

Most people that I begin meeting with are really out of tune with what the body is experiencing. Shortness of breath, tightness of breath, shallow breathing--all of that is a real indication that we're stressed, and just paying attention to that is enough to bring awareness so that we begin slowing the breath down or taking a slightly deeper breath.

Scherdin said a simple way to start incorporating mindfulness into your life is by working two check-ins each day. Sometime mid-morning and mid-afternoon, take a moment to check in with your thoughts and tension that may be building up in your body. Usually, just a few deep breaths will be enough to make you feel less stressed.

"So many people have this misconception that we have to have nothing in our mind, said Scherdin. Well, what I have to say about that is good luck. Not likely to happen.

I like to call in monkey mind--you know, we sit with our breath, and we begin practicing, but our mind just wants to go in every direction. That's what [meditators] are going to notice at first . But a client taught me this beautiful phrase the power of pause. They now have that power to pause, be aware of what their reaction is and then choose their response. And that for me is such a beautiful place to live life from."

If youd like to give meditation a try, Scherdin recorded a short introductory session for our Facebook page.

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Contact reporter Rob Harris atrjharris@whas11.com. Follow him onTwitter (@robharristv)andFacebook.

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How to meditate if you have never tried before - WHAS11.com