Emphatic caps feel like the quintessential example of internet tone of voice. Sure enough, they’ve been around since the very early days online.
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Tuesday, July 23, 2019
Tyra Banks recalls the toxic way Naomi Campbell used to treat her during early days of modeling
We’re used to hearing stories of cattiness when it comes to super models and the toxic culture that comes with trying to be the baddest chick to hit the runway.
But when Black women are involved, we do expect them to fly above the fray and be each other’s keepers, right?
—Money moves: Tyra Banks to trademark ‘Smize’ Ice Cream—
According to Tyra Banks, that wasn’t the case when it came to one of the most influential supermodels to everhit the runway, Naomi Campbell. In fact, Banks reveals that Campbell was a real mean girl and did everything in her power to ruin her career early on in the 1990’s.
While the two are all good now and have let bygones be bygones, Banks, 45, has forgiven but hasn’t forgotten the days of ole’ filled with feuds, nastiness and the tension she felt trying to make a name for herself in an industry where Campbell was already thriving.
The America’s Top Model host recalls: “I had a very painful early days in Paris. As much as I was booking every single fashion show, people didn’t know I was going home at night crying my eyes out because a woman I was looking up to seemed like she just didn’t want me to be there,” Banks told the Wall Street Journal. “And was doing everything in her power to make me go away.”
That woman was Naomi “petty Betty” Campbell.
She continued, “I didn’t understand that as a young girl, like why is she doing this? This is so evil. This is so awful. The adult me understands that she was reacting to an industry that was all about a token. When I came on the scene, ‘Naomi look out, there’s another Black girl that’s going to take your spot,’” she said people cautioned.
Banks said she didn’t even feel like it was a “rivalry” especially since she wasn’t trying to compete with her.
—Tyra Banks hopes her new docu-series will ‘redefine the definition of beauty’—
“It wasn’t a rivalry,” Banks said. “And I’m very sensitive to that word because a rivalry is with two equals to me, where one was very dominant. She was a supermodel and I was just some new girl that got on a plane from Paris and was studying fashion in magazines at a fashion library.”
Back in 2005, Banks brought Campbell on her The Tyra Banks Show to bury the hatchet and get to the bottom of the contentious relationship.
“I had made peace with Naomi Campbell,” Banks said previously on the show. “Sisterhood is so important to me.”
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Sexy pics show Nicole Murphy kissing Lela Rechon’s husband and ‘Training Day’ director Antoine Fuqua in Italy
Jaws dropped when a photo of Nicole Murphy lip-locking with Training Day director Antoine Fuqua hit the internet—especially since Fuqua is reportedly married to actress Lela Rochon.
—Congrats? Eddie Murphy and fiancée welcome comedian’s 10th child—
Several photos posted by an Italian online outlet and B. Scott show Murphy in a teeny bikini, and sheer robe showing off her banging body while Fuqua is shirtless with just a towel wrapped around his waist.
But B. Scott spoke exclusively to Murphy who denied that the kiss was anything but an innocent display of affection between friends who are like family.
“Antoine and I are just family friends. I ran into him in Italy and we exchanged a friendly hello and that was it,” Murphy told the outlet.
Something tells me sis didn’t see these pics before making that comment.
The controversy has reportedly driven Rochon and Fuqua off social media for now as both have deleted their Instagram accounts.
Fuqua was in Italy for the Ischia Global Festival to receive an award for director of the year.
There’s no word if Rochon and Fuqua are separated but at last count they have been married since 1999 and have two children.
Sources told PEOPLE, that just a few weeks ago, Fuqua and Rochon were spotted attending a basketball game for their son.
They “were both together a few weeks ago at their son’s basketball game and looked like a happily married couple.”
—Teyonah Parris will play Monica Rambeau in ‘WandaVision’—
“She was wearing her ring and they seemed perfectly happy,” adds the insider.
Murphy has five children of her own with ex-husband Eddie Murphy.
Grio fam, what do you think? Do you kiss your close friends like this?
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Art Neville, member of Neville Brothers, Meters, dies at 81
Art Neville, a member of a storied New Orleans musical family who performed with his siblings in The Neville Brothers band and founded the groundbreaking funk group The Meters, died Monday. The artist nicknamed “Poppa Funk” was 81.
Neville’s manager, Kent Sorrell, said Neville died at his home.
“Art ‘Poppa Funk’ Neville passed away peacefully this morning at home with his adoring wife, Lorraine, by his side,” Sorrell said in an email.
The cause of death was not immediately available but Neville had battled a number of health issues including complications from back surgery.
“Louisiana lost an icon today,” Gov. John Bel Edwards said in a news release.
The Neville Brothers spent some of their childhood in the now demolished Calliope housing project in New Orleans and some at a family home in uptown New Orleans.
In a 2003 interview with Offbeat magazine, Art Neville described going to a Methodist church as a child where he had his first encounter with a keyboard.
“My grandmother used to clean the pulpit. She was in there cleaning it one day and I guess she was babysitting me ’cause I was in there with her. She went to one side and all of a sudden I was on the side where the organ was,” he said. “Something told me to turn it on. I reached up and pressed a bass note and it scared the daylights out of me!”
That experience helped kick off a lifelong career as a keyboardist and vocalist.
The Neville Brothers — Art, Charles, Cyril and Aaron — started singing as kids but then went their separate ways in the 1950s and ’60s. In 1954 Art Neville was in high school when he sang the lead on the Hawketts’ remake of a country song called “Mardi Gras Mambo.”
He told the public radio show “American Routes” how he was recruited by the Hawketts. “I don’t know how they found out where I lived,” he said in the interview. “But they needed a piano player. And they came up to the house and they asked my mother and father could I go.”
More than 60 years later, the song remains a staple of the Carnival season, but that longevity never translated into financial success for Art Neville who received no money for it.
“It made me a big shot around school,” Art said with a laugh during a 1993 interview with The Associated Press.
In the late ’60s, Art Neville was a founding member of The Meters, a pioneering American funk band that also included Cyril Neville, Leo Nocentelli (guitar), George Porter Jr. (bass) and Joseph “Zigaboo” Modeliste (drums).
The Meters were the house band for Allen Toussaint’s New Orleans soul classics and opened for the Rolling Stones’ tour of the Americas in 1975 and of Europe in 1976.
They also became known for their session work with Paul McCartney, Robert Palmer and Patti LaBelle and recordings with Dr. John.
The Meters broke up in 1977, but members of the band have played together in groups such as the Funky Meters and the Meter Men. And in more recent years The Meters have reunited for various performances and have often been cited as an inspiration for other groups.
Flea, the bass player for the Red Hot Chili Peppers, paid homage to The Meters when he invited members of the group onstage to perform with the Chili Peppers during a 2016 performance at the New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival.
“We are their students,” Flea said.
As The Meters were breaking up, The Neville Brothers were coming together. In 1978 they recorded their first Neville Brothers album.
Charles died in 2018.
For years, The Neville Brothers were the closing act at Jazz Fest. After 2005’s Hurricane Katrina, the four brothers — like many New Orleanians — were scattered across the country while the city struggled to recover. They returned to anchor the festival in 2007.
“This is how it should be,” Art Neville said during a news conference with festival organizers announcing their return to the annual event. “We’re a part of Jazz Fest.”
He shared in three Grammy awards: with The Neville Brothers for “Healing Chant,” in 1989; with a group of musicians on the Stevie Ray Vaughn tribute “SRV Shuffle in 1996; and with The Meters when they got a lifetime achievement in 2018.
“Art will be deeply missed by many, but remembered for imaginatively bringing New Orleans funk to life,” the Recording Academy, which awards the Grammys, said in a news release.
Neville announced his retirement in December.
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Lil Nas X ties Billboard record set by Mariah, ‘Despacito’
Lil Nas X has taken his horse to the old town road and ridden it to the top of the Billboard charts for 16 weeks, tying a record set by Mariah Carey and Luis Fonsi.
“Old Town Road” logs its 16th week at No. 1 on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart this week, matching the success that Carey and Boyz II Men’s “One Sweet Day” achieved in 1995-1996. Fonsi, Daddy Yankee and Justin Bieber’s “Despacito” accomplished the feat in 2017.
No song has spent more than 16 weeks at No. 1 on the all-genre Hot 100 chart in the 61-year history of the Billboard charts.
The country-rap “Old Town Road” was originally a solo song, but 20-year-old Lil Nas X added Billy Ray Cyrus to the track and it topped the charts, achieving most of its success through audio streaming.
Lil Nas X is looking forward to setting a new Billboard record next week. He posted a video Monday on social media of the “SpongeBob SquarePants” character Squidward Tentacles saying, “Please stream ‘Old Town Road.'”
“Me on the internet this whole week tryna break the billboard record,” he wrote in the caption.
“Old Town Road” initially was in a bit of controversy in March when Billboard removed it from its country charts, deeming it not country enough (it peaked at No. 19 on the country charts). But the drama didn’t hurt the song; it only propelled it.
“This song has been a uniter not a divider,” Cyrus said in a statement Monday. “I’m giving God the glory now for allowing me the gift to be part of such a special song. It’s a unique moment in time where people from all over the world and all walks of life find they have more in common than they do different. It’s a moment we’ve all shared and I’m grateful for it.”
“Old Town Road” appears on Lil Nas X’s debut EP “7,” which peaked at No. 2 on Billboard’s 200 albums chart earlier this month. The EP also features the Top 40 hits “Panini” and “Rodeo” with Cardi B.
“Old Town Road” is also spending its 16th week on top of both the R&B/Hip-Hop and rap songs charts. The song has several versions, including remixes featuring Diplo, Young Thug and Mason Ramsey; Billboard counts the original song and its remix versions as one when calculating chart position, thus helping “Old Town Road” stay on top.
A number of songs have debuted at No. 2 on the Hot 100 chart, unable to push “Old Town Road” out of its top position, including two tunes from Taylor Swift (“You Need to Calm Down,” ”ME!”); Ed Sheeran and Bieber’s “I Don’t Care”; and two songs from Shawn Mendes (“If I Can’t Have You,” ”Senorita” with Camila Cabello).
Swift’s “Look What You Made Me Do” stopped “Despacito” from reaching a 17th week at No. 1 when the pop smash jumped from No. 77 to No. 1 in 2017. Celine Dion’s “Because You Loved Me” ended Carey and Boyz II Men’s epic run in 1996.
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Sen. Kamala Harris proposes bill to decriminalize marijuana across the U.S.
On Tuesday, Sen. Kamala Harris announced a proposal for a landmark bill that would decriminalize marijuana at the federal level.
The “Marijuana Opportunity Reinvestment and Expungement Act,” is intended to support victims of the failed War On Drugs, by removing marijuana from the Controlled Substances Act. It specifically requires that people with marijuana convictions be resentenced or have their records expunged altogether.
“For decades, people of color have been disproportionately criminalized and excluded from economic opportunities due to the failed War on Drugs,” Sen. Harris said in an exclusive statement to theGrio.
“As the marijuana business becomes one of the fastest-growing industries in today’s economy, people of color should be the first in line to own businesses and get jobs. And prior convictions should not hinder them from getting on with their lives,” Harris continued.
The act also provides protection from discrimination for any formerly incarcerated people looking for public benefits, including housing. It also ensures marijuana charges or convictions aren’t used to adversely affect people under immigration laws (such as the way ICE has used marijuana charges to deport people previously).
Also notable is the bill’s commitment to supporting business owners from socioeconomically disadvantaged groups, in getting access to Cannabis grants to open businesses.
Black owners and new cannabis entrepreneurs have had a particularly difficult time getting approval for licenses. Take for example the controversy in 2015 when Maryland’s Medical Marijuana Commission only issued a license to one black person out of 15, despite the state having a large population of African-Americans.
“My bill is centered squarely on addressing the harm that discriminatory drug policies have caused Black and Brown communities, while also charting a more equitable path forward for all,” Sen. Harris told theGrio.
The bill also requires that 50 percent of tax revenue from the cannabis industry, be reinvested into job training, literacy, and youth mentoring for communities negatively impacted by the War On Drugs.
Sen. Harris teamed up with House Judiciary Chair Jerry Nadler to design the groundbreaking legislation.
Harris’ support for marijuana became national news after she told The Breakfast Club that she’d previously smoked weed and supported legalization in a February 12th interview this year.
“I believe we need to legalize marijuana,” she told hosts Charlamagne, Angela Yee and DJ Envy.
“Now, that being said — and this is not a ‘but,’ it is an ‘and’ — and we need to research, which is one of the reasons we need to legalize it.”
“But I am absolutely in favor of legalizing marijuana. We’ve got to do it.”
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Hundreds of Black men, women and children burned alive, shot, lynched by white mobs during Red Summer ignored century later
America in the summer of 1919 ran red with blood from racial violence, and yet today, 100 years later, not many people know it even happened.
It flowed in small towns like Elaine, Arkansas, in medium-size places such as Annapolis, Maryland, and Syracuse, New York, and in big cities like Washington and Chicago.
Hundreds of African American men, women and children were burned alive, shot, lynched or beaten to death by white mobs. Thousands saw their homes and businesses burned to the ground and were driven out, many never to return.
It was branded “Red Summer” because of the bloodshed and amounted to some of the worst white-on-black violence in U.S. history.
Beyond the lives and family fortunes lost, it had far-reaching repercussions, contributing to generations of black distrust of white authority. But it also galvanized blacks to defend themselves and their neighborhoods with fists and guns; reinvigorated civil rights organizations like the NAACP and led to a new era of activism; gave rise to courageous reporting by black journalists; and influenced the generation of leaders who would take up the fight for racial equality decades later.
“The people who were the icons of the civil rights movement were raised by the people who survived Red Summer,” said Saje Mathieu, a history professor at the University of Minnesota.
For all that, there are no national observances marking Red Summer. History textbooks ignore it, and most museums don’t acknowledge it. The reason: Red Summer contradicts the post-World War I-era notion that America was making the world safe for democracy, historians say.
“It doesn’t fit into the neat stories we tell ourselves,” said David Krugler, author of “1919, The Year of Racial Violence: How African Americans Fought Back.”
That could change. A monument has been proposed in Arkansas. Several authors have written about the bloody summer. A Brooklyn choral group performed Red Summer-theme songs like “And They Lynched Him on a Tree” in March to commemorate the centennial. At the National World War I Museum and Memorial in Kansas City, Mathieu and author Cameroon McWhirter plan to present some of their findings July 30.
Researchers believe that in a span of 10 months, more than 250 African Americans were killed in at least 25 riots across the U.S. by white mobs that never faced punishment. Historian John Hope Franklin called it “the greatest period of interracial strife the nation has ever witnessed.”
The bloodshed was the product of a collision of social forces: Black men were returning from World War I expecting the same rights they had fought and bled for in Europe, and African Americans were moving north to escape the brutal Jim Crow laws of the South. Whites saw blacks as competition for jobs, homes and political power.
“Ethnic cleansing was the goal of the white rioters,” said William Tuttle, a retired professor of American studies at the University of Kansas and author of “Race Riot: Chicago in the Red Summer of 1919.” ”They wanted to kill as many black people as possible and to terrorize the rest until they were willing to leave and live someplace else.”
The violence didn’t start or end in 1919. Some count the era of Red Summer as beginning with the deaths of more than two dozen African Americans in East Saint Louis, Missouri, in 1917 and extending through the Rosewood Massacre of 1923, when a black town in Florida was destroyed. All told, at least 1,122 Americans were killed in racial violence over those six years, by Tuttle’s count.
In 1919 alone, violence erupted in such places as New York; Memphis, Tennessee; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; Baltimore; New Orleans; Wilmington, Delaware; Omaha, Nebraska; New London, Connecticut; Bisbee, Arizona; Longview, Texas; Knoxville, Tennessee; Norfolk, Virginia; and Putnam County, Georgia.
In the nation’s capital, white mobs — many made up of members of the military — rampaged over the weekend of July 19-22, beating any black they could find after false rumors of a white woman being assaulted by black men spread.
“In front of the Riggs Bank the rioters beat a Negro with clubs and stones wrapped in handkerchiefs; the bleeding figure lay in the street for over twenty minutes before being taken to the hospital,” Lloyd M. Abernethy wrote in the Maryland Historical Magazine in 1963. “Sensing the failure of the police, the mob became even more contemptuous of authority — two Negroes were attacked and beaten directly in front of the White House.”
Carter G. Woodson, the historian who founded Black History Month in 1926, saw the violence up close.
“They had caught a Negro and deliberately held him as one would a beef for slaughter, and when they had conveniently adjusted him for lynching, they shot him,” Woodson wrote. “I heard him groaning in his struggle as I hurried away as fast as I could without running, expecting every moment to be lynched myself.”
In Elaine, Arkansas, poor black sharecroppers who had dared to join a union were attacked, and at least 200 African Americans were killed.
Ida B. Wells, a pioneering black journalist and one of the few reporters to interview victims, noted a woman named Lula Black was dragged from her farm by a white mob after saying she would join the union.
“They knocked her down, beat her over the head with their pistols, kicked her all over the body, almost killed her, then took her to jail,” Wells wrote in her report “The Arkansas Race Riot.” “The same mob went to Frank Hall’s house and killed Frances Hall, a crazy old woman housekeeper, tied her clothes over her head, threw her body in the public road where it lay thus exposed till the soldiers came Thursday evening and took it up.”
Black journalists like Wells played an important role in getting the story out.
“Black newspapers like the Chicago Defender were instrumental in providing an alternate voice that represented why African Americans deserved to be here, deserved equal rights and were, in some cases, justified in fighting,” said Kevin Strait, a curator at the Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture.
Red Summer also marked a new era of black resistance to white injustice, with African Americans standing up in unprecedented numbers and killing some of their tormentors. Returning black soldiers from World War I led the charge, using skills they refined in Europe.
“The Germans weren’t the enemy — the enemy was right here at home,” said Harry Haywood in his autobiography, “A Black Communist in the Freedom Struggle: The Life of Harry Haywood.”
In Washington, Carrie Johnson, 17, became a hero for shooting at white invaders in her neighborhood. She fatally shot a white policeman who broke into her second-story bedroom. She claimed self-defense, and her manslaughter conviction was overturned.
The NAACP gained about 100,000 members that year, said McWhirter, author of “Red Summer: The Summer of 1919 and the Awakening of Black America.” Soon, blacks were “going to Congress, they’re pressing congressmen and senators to pass anti-lynching legislation. At the same time, they’re fighting back in the courts, they’re filing lawsuits when people are being mistreated or railroaded.”
The lessons of Red Summer would reverberate after World War II.
“You have a similar situation where African Americans had done their part to make the world safe for democracy, and black veterans came home, and many of them were alive or had heard the stories of what happened in 1919,” Krugler said. “And they said, ‘Never again.'”
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True Crime: Manslaughter plea in Black Lives Matter activist’s death
A 27-year-old New Orleans man has pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the shooting of a Black Lives Matter activist known for his leap through police tape to try to seize a Confederate battle flag during a 2017 demonstration over Civil War monuments in South Carolina.
Roosevelt Iglus had been charged with second-degree murder in the death of 32-year-old Muhiyidin (muh-HEE’-ih-din) Moye, better known as Muhiyidin d’Baha, of Charleston, South Carolina. Conviction would have brought an automatic life sentence.
Moye’s sister approved the plea agreement, including a 17-year prison sentence, Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office said in a news release Monday. Iglus also pleaded guilty to obstruction of justice and possessing a firearm after a felony conviction.
“I am pleased we were able to obtain this defendant’s guilty plea and remove any uncertainty over who is responsible for Mr. d’Baha’s death,” Cannizzaro said in the emailed statement. “This outcome provides the victim’s family with the measure of justice they deemed appropriate.”
The agreement goes to a judge Tuesday.
Authorities said Iglus tried to knock d’Baha off his bicycle and shot at him as he rode away about 1:25 a.m. Feb. 6, 2018 in New Orleans. He was hit in the thigh and died about 6 hours after being taken to a hospital.
A police report said a bloody trail to the body circled two blocks, and a bloody bicycle lay across the street.
When Iglus was arrested about a year ago, police said a Crimestoppers tip helped them identify him as a suspect.
He was on probation after pleading guilty in 2016 to illegally carrying a weapon and possessing marijuana.
A possible motive for the incident hasn’t been discussed in court, but police investigators have speculated that d’Baha might have been mistaken for someone else, district attorney’s spokesman Ken Daley said in an email.
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Joe Biden announces criminal justice plan reversing part of 1994 crime bill that dogs his campaign
Joe Biden plans to propose a criminal justice agenda that would reverse key provisions of the 1994 crime bill that he helped write as a senator and that his rivals for the Democratic presidential nomination have blamed for the mass incarceration of racial minorities since then.
Most notably, the former vice president is endorsing an end to the disparity that placed stricter sentencing terms on offenses involving crack versus powder cocaine as well as an end to the federal death penalty, which the 1994 crime bill authorized as a potential punishment for an increasing number of crimes.
The criminal justice policy, which Biden plans to outline Tuesday during an appearance in New Orleans, comes as he works to reinforce his support among African American voters. The timing is important, especially after rival California Sen. Kamala Harris impugned Biden’s civil rights record during last month’s Democratic presidential debates. It also comes as Biden prepares for next week’s presidential debates , when he will face Harris and New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, both of whom have sharply criticized his role in the Clinton-era crime law.
Biden campaign chairman Cedric Richmond called the plan “the most forward-leaning criminal justice policy proposed.” Richmond, a Louisiana representative and former public defender, praised it for building on Virginia Democratic Rep. Bobby Scott’s SAFE Justice Act, which would reserve prison space for violent offenders and offer a wider range of non-prison sentencing alternatives. Scott’s bipartisan bill is co-sponsored by other members of the Congressional Black Caucus.
By building on Scott’s bill, Biden, who represented Delaware in the U.S. Senate for decades, is moving significantly to the left but not quite as far as endorsing the type of sweeping overhaul championed by Booker. Booker unveiled a proposal this year that would go beyond the criminal justice measure that President Donald Trump signed into law last year by slashing mandatory minimum sentences.
And Biden’s shift on the death penalty also puts him in line with every other Democratic presidential candidate except for Montana Gov. Steve Bullock. It’s a stark change of Biden’s previous approach to the issue: Touting the toughness of the crime bill in 1992, the then-Senate Judiciary Committee chairman joked that it would do “everything but hang people for jaywalking.”
Biden’s plan would seek to create a $20 billion grant program to encourage states to reduce incarceration by increasing spending on child abuse prevention, education and literacy, as long as states eliminate mandatory minimum sentencing for nonviolent crimes.
He also would expand the Justice Department’s role in rooting out institutional misconduct by police departments and prosecutors and would establish an independent task force to study prosecutorial discretion in an attempt to head off racial and ethnic discrimination.
The plan also includes spending $1 billion annually on changes in the juvenile justice system and identifies as a goal that all former inmates have access to housing when they leave prison.
Biden also plans to seek a renewed ban on assault weapons, an element of the 1994 crime bill he continues to promote, and a ban on high-capacity ammunition magazines.
Trump, a Republican, tweeted in May while championing his own criminal justice measure that “anyone associated with the 1994 Crime Bill will not have a chance of being elected. In particular, African Americans will not be able to vote for you.”
Since the last debate, Biden has focused his campaign speeches on his stint as vice president and has aggressively proposed policies in recent weeks that build on gains in President Barack Obama’s administration, including criminal justice.
Booker has hinted that he would renew his criticisms of Biden’s lead role on the 1994 crime bill when the two candidates share the stage during the second set of Democratic presidential debates in Detroit next week. The legislation that Biden passed “put mass incarceration on steroids,” Booker told CBS on Sunday.
Harris, too, has criticized Biden’s role in the 1994 bill. However, Biden plans to note during his speech Tuesday his time as a public defender before entering politics in the early 1970s.
Although Biden advisers say it’s not a subtle shot at Harris, who has been criticized by criminal justice reform advocates as being too tough on the accused during her tenures as the San Francisco district attorney and as California’s attorney general before she was elected senator.
Harris has answered those criticisms by saying she supports major changes to federal criminal justice.
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Monday, July 22, 2019
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Microfluidics device helps diagnose sepsis in minutes
A novel sensor designed by MIT researchers could dramatically accelerate the process of diagnosing sepsis, a leading cause of death in U.S. hospitals that kills nearly 250,000 patients annually.
Sepsis occurs when the body’s immune response to infection triggers an inflammation chain reaction throughout the body, causing high heart rate, high fever, shortness of breath, and other issues. If left unchecked, it can lead to septic shock, where blood pressure falls and organs shut down. To diagnose sepsis, doctors traditionally rely on various diagnostic tools, including vital signs, blood tests, and other imaging and lab tests.
In recent years, researchers have found protein biomarkers in the blood that are early indicators of sepsis. One promising candidate is interleukin-6 (IL-6), a protein produced in response to inflammation. In sepsis patients, IL-6 levels can rise hours before other symptoms begin to show. But even at these elevated levels, the concentration of this protein in the blood is too low overall for traditional assay devices to detect it quickly.
In a paper being presented this week at the Engineering in Medicine and Biology Conference, MIT researchers describe a microfluidics-based system that automatically detects clinically significant levels of IL-6 for sepsis diagnosis in about 25 minutes, using less than a finger prick of blood.
In one microfluidic channel, microbeads laced with antibodies mix with a blood sample to capture the IL-6 biomarker. In another channel, only beads containing the biomarker attach to an electrode. Running voltage through the electrode produces an electrical signal for each biomarker-laced bead, which is then converted into the biomarker concentration level.
“For an acute disease, such as sepsis, which progresses very rapidly and can be life-threatening, it’s helpful to have a system that rapidly measures these nonabundant biomarkers,” says first author Dan Wu, a PhD student in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. “You can also frequently monitor the disease as it progresses.”
Joining Wu on the paper is Joel Voldman, a professor and associate head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, co-director of the Medical Electronic Device Realization Center, and a principal investigator in the Research Laboratory of Electronics and the Microsystems Technology Laboratories.
Integrated, automated design
Traditional assays that detect protein biomarkers are bulky, expensive machines relegated to labs that require about a milliliter of blood and produce results in hours. In recent years, portable “point-of-care” systems have been developed that use microliters of blood to get similar results in about 30 minutes.
But point-of-care systems can be very expensive since most use pricey optical components to detect the biomarkers. They also capture only a small number of proteins, many of which are among the more abundant ones in blood. Any efforts to decrease the price, shrink down components, or increase protein ranges negatively impacts their sensitivity.
In their work, the researchers wanted to shrink components of the magnetic-bead-based assay, which is often used in labs, onto an automated microfluidics device that’s roughly several square centimeters. That required manipulating beads in micron-sized channels and fabricating a device in the Microsystems Technology Laboratory that automated the movement of fluids.
The beads are coated with an antibody that attracts IL-6, as well as a catalyzing enzyme called horseradish peroxidase. The beads and blood sample are injected into the device, entering into an “analyte-capture zone,” which is basically a loop. Along the loop is a peristaltic pump — commonly used for controlling liquids — with valves automatically controlled by an external circuit. Opening and closing the valves in specific sequences circulates the blood and beads to mix together. After about 10 minutes, the IL-6 proteins have bound to the antibodies on the beads.
Automatically reconfiguring the valves at that time forces the mixture into a smaller loop, called the “detection zone,” where they stay trapped. A tiny magnet collects the beads for a brief wash before releasing them around the loop. After about 10 minutes, many beads have stuck on an electrode coated with a separate antibody that attracts IL-6. At that time, a solution flows into the loop and washes the untethered beads, while the ones with IL-6 protein remain on the electrode.
The solution carries a specific molecule that reacts to the horseradish enzyme to create a compound that responds to electricity. When a voltage is applied to the solution, each remaining bead creates a small current. A common chemistry technique called “amperometry” converts that current into a readable signal. The device counts the signals and calculates the concentration of IL-6.
“On their end, doctors just load in a blood sample using a pipette. Then, they press a button and 25 minutes later they know the IL-6 concentration,” Wu says.
The device uses about 5 microliters of blood, which is about a quarter the volume of blood drawn from a finger prick and a fraction of the 100 microliters required to detect protein biomarkers in lab-based assays. The device captures IL-6 concentrations as low as 16 picograms per milliliter, which is below the concentrations that signal sepsis, meaning the device is sensitive enough to provide clinically relevant detection.
A general platform
The current design has eight separate microfluidics channels to measure as many different biomarkers or blood samples in parallel. Different antibodies and enzymes can be used in separate channels to detect different biomarkers, or different antibodies can be used in the same channel to detect several biomarkers simultaneously.
Next, the researchers plan to create a panel of important sepsis biomarkers for the device to capture, including interleukin-6, interleukin-8, C-reactive protein, and procalcitonin. But there’s really no limit to how many different biomarkers the device can measure, for any disease, Wu says. Notably, more than 200 protein biomarkers for various diseases and conditions have been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.
“This is a very general platform,” Wu says. “If you want to increase the device’s physical footprint, you can scale up and design more channels to detect as many biomarkers as you want.”
The work was funded by Analog Devices, Maxim Integrated, and the Novartis Institutes of Biomedical Research.
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'Terrifying prospect' of resistant malaria spreading
#ShoppingWhile Black: Georgia State Rep holds press conference to dispute #hatehoax claims she changed story about white man’s “go back to where you came from” attack
Georgia State Rep. Erica Thomas held a press conference at the State Capitol to stand by her story and dispute claims that she has ‘backtracked’ on blaming a white man for telling her to “go back to where she came from.”
—Pregnant Black Georgia lawmaker confronts racist who told her ‘go back where she came from’—
Over the weekend Thomas’ tearful video about a terrifying encounter she had with a Eric Sparkes in Publix went viral. She reported that the man confronted her and called her a bitch in front of her daughter for being in the 10-items-or-less line with 15 items. She says he then told her that she should go back to where she came from.
“Today I’m here to be very clear about what happened Friday: I want to make sure that everyone knows I’m not backtracking on my statement or retracting anything I said,” said Thomas flanked by her attorney Gerald Griggs and others supporting her.
“I was embarrassed. I was scared for my life. He left the grocery store and came back in to tell me a piece of his mind. … I’m fearing for my life about what I’ve seen all over this country,” Thomas said at the press conference.
“I was embarrassed. I was scared for my life. He left the grocery store and came back in to tell me a piece of his mind. … I’m fearing for my life about what I’ve seen all over this country.” #gapol pic.twitter.com/gS674q98nz
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) July 22, 2019
Both sides, however, are doubling down on their position of who took matters too far in the checkout line dispute. The man confronted Thomas at a previous press conference and denied saying “go back where you came from” although he admitted on camera that he called the pregnant politician a “lazy b****” in front of her daughter.
Today I was verbally assaulted in the grocery store by a white man who told me I was a lazy SOB and to go back to where I came from bc I had to many items in the express lane. My husband wasn’t there to defend me because he is on Active Duty serving the country I came from USA!
— Erica Thomas (@itsericathomas) July 20, 2019
Although Thomas initially tweeted with certainly that Sparkes told her to “go back to where she came from,” many thought she waivered from that statement, which caused some concern and sparked the hashtag #HateHoax to trend on Twitter.
She previously said about Sparkes, “He said ‘go back,’ you know, those types of words,” she said prompting critics to question the accuracy of her comments. “I don’t want to say he said ‘go back to your country’ or ‘go back to where you came from’ but he was making those types of references is what I remember.”
During the press conference reiterated her sentiments that Sparkes made the racially insensitive statement.
On Monday, Thomas’ attorney Gerald A. Griggs, wrote on Twitter that “it’s time for all the facts to come out.”
“At no point should a Black pregnant mother be called a B in front of her child,” Griggs wrote on social media with the hashtags #IStandWithErica and “Not A #HateHoax.”
At the conference Griggs said he has asked Publix to release the video tape of the confrontation and that there are witnesses willing and ready to corroborate her story.
—The bold way Mahershala Ali snagged Marvel’s ‘Blade’ Reboot—
A Georgia republican has joined the #hatehoax chorus calling for Thomas to resign.
Georgia Republican lawmaker calls on @itsericathomas to resign #gapol https://t.co/qTcpWOezAk
— Greg Bluestein (@bluestein) July 22, 2019
The post #ShoppingWhile Black: Georgia State Rep holds press conference to dispute #hatehoax claims she changed story about white man’s “go back to where you came from” attack appeared first on theGrio.
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