Big Data Probably Knows More About You Than Your Friends Do
A representation of the digital lifestyle prevalent today that enables the collection of a wealth of data.
Data is the new oil. It is highly valuable, and it is everywhere, even if you're not aware of it. For example, it's there when you use social media. Sharing pictures on Facebook lets its facial recognition software peg you and your friends. Thanks to that software, now anywhere you visit that has installed cameras, your face can be identified and your actions recorded.
The big data revolution is advancing much faster than the ones before, and it carries both promises and perils for humanity.
It's there when you log into Twitter, posting one of the 230 million tweets per day, which up until last month were all archived by the Library of Congress and will be made public for research. These social media data can be used to predict your political affiliations, ethnicity, race, age, how close you are with your family and friends, your mental health, even when you are most likely to be grumpy or go to the gym. These data can also predict when you are apt to get sick and track how diseases are spreading.
In fact, tracking isn't limited to what you decide to share or public spaces anymore. Lab experiments show Comcast and other cable companies may soon be able to record and monitor movements in your house. They may also be able to read your lips and identify your visitors simply by assessing how Wi-Fi waves bounce off bodies and other objects in houses. In one study, MIT researchers used routers and sensors to monitor breathing and heart rates with 99% accuracy. Routers could soon be used for seemingly good things, like monitoring infant breathing and whether an older adult is about to take a big tumble. However, it may also enable unwanted and unparalleled levels of surveillance.
Some call the first digital pill a snitch pill, medication with a tattletale, and big brother in your belly.
Big data is there every time you pick up your smartphone, which can track your daily steps, where you go via geolocation, what time you wake up and go to bed, your punctuality, and even your overall health depending on which features you have enabled. Are you close with your mom; are you a sedentary couch potato; did you commit a murder (iPhone data was recently used in a German murder trial)? Smartphone-generated data can be used to label you---and not just you, your future and past generations too.
Smartphones are not the only "things" gathering data on you. Anything with an on and off switch can be connected to the internet and generate data. The new rule seems to be, if it can be, it will be, connected. Washing machines, coffee makers, medical appliances, cars, and even your luggage (yes, someone created a self-driving suitcase) can and are often generating data. "Smart" refrigerators can monitor your food levels and automatically create shopping lists and order food for you—while recording your alcohol consumption and whether you tend to be a healthy or junk food eater.
Even medicines can monitor behaviors. The first digital pill was just approved by the FDA last November to track whether patients take their medicines. It has a sensor that sends signals to a patient's smartphone, and others, when it encounters stomach acid. Some call it a snitch pill, medication with a tattletale, and big brother in your belly. Others see it as a major breakthrough to help patients remember to take their medications and to save payers millions of dollars.
Big data is there when you go shopping. Credit card and retail data can show whether you pay for a gym, if you are pregnant, have children, and your credit-worthiness. Uber and Lyft transactional data reveal what time you usually go to and leave work and who you regularly visit (Uber data has been used to catch cheating spouses).
Amazon now sells a bedroom camera to see your fashion choices and offer advice. It is marketing a more fashionable you, but it probably also wants the video feed showing your body measurements—they're "a newly prized currency," according to the Washington Post. They help retailers create more customized and better fitting clothes. Amazon also just partnered with Berkshire Hathaway and JPMorgan Chase, the largest bank in the United States by assets, to create an independent health-care company for their employees--raising privacy concerns as Amazon already owns so much data about us, from drones, devices, the AI of Alexa, and our viewing, eating, and other purchasing habits on Amazon Prime.
Data generation and storage can also be used to make the world better, safer and fairer.
Big data is arguably a new phenomenon; almost all the world's data (90%) were produced within the last 2 yearsor so. It is a result of the fusion of physical, digital, and biological technologies that together constitute the fourth industrial revolution, according to the World Economic Forum. Unlike the last three revolutions, involving the discoveries of steam power, electrical energy, and computers—this revolution is advancing much faster than the ones before and it carries both promises and perils for humanity.
Some people may want to opt out of all this tracking, reduce their digital footprint and stay "off the grid." However, it is worth noting that data generation and storage can be used for great things --- things that make the world better, safer and fairer. For example, sharing electronic health records and social media data can help scientists better track and understand diseases, develop new cures and therapies, and understand the safety and efficacy profiles of medicines and vaccines.
While full of promise, big data is not without its pitfalls. Data are often not interoperable or easily integrated. You can use your credit card practically anywhere in the world, but you cannot easily port your electronic health record to the doctor or hospital across the street, for example.
Data quality can also be poor. It is dependent on the person entering it. My electronic health record at one point said I was male, and I was pregnant at the time. No doctors or nurses seemed to notice. The problem is worse on a global level. For example, causes of death can be coded differently by country and village. Take HIV patients: they often develop secondary infections, like TB. Do you record the cause of death as TB or HIV? There isn't global consistency, and political pressure from patient groups can exert itself on death records. Often, each group wants to say they have the most deaths so they can fundraise more money.
Data can be biased. More than 80 percent of genomic data comes from Caucasians. Only 14 percent is from Asians and 3.5 percent is from African and Hispanic populations. Thus, when scientists use genomic data to develop drugs or lab tests, they may create biased products that work for only some demographics. Take type 2 diabetes blood tests; some do not work well for African Americans. One study estimates that 650,000 African Americans may have undiagnosed diabetes, because a common blood test doesn't work for them. Using biased data in medicine can be a matter of life and death. Moreover, if genomic medicine benefits only "a privileged few," the practice raises concerns about unequal access.
Large companies are selling data that originated from you and you are not sharing in the wealth.
We need to think carefully and be transparent about the values embedded in our data, data analytics (algorithms), and data applications. Numbers are never neutral. Algorithms are always embedded with subjective normative values--sometimes purposely, sometimes not. To address this problem, we need ethicists who can audit databanks and algorithms to identify embedded norms, values and biases and help ensure they are addressed or at least transparently disclosed. Additionally, we need to determine how to let people opt out of certain types of data collection and uses—and not just at the beginning of a system, but also at any point in their lifetimes. There is a right to be forgotten, which hasn't been adequately operationalized in today's data sphere.
What do you think happens to all of these data collected about us? The short answer is the public doesn't really know. A lot of it looks like what is in a medical record—i.e. height, weight, pregnancy status, age, mental health, pulse, blood pressure, and illness symptoms--- yet, it isn't protected by HIPPA, like your medical record information.
And it is being consolidated into the hands of fewer and fewer big players. Large companies are selling data that originated from you and you are not sharing in the wealth.
A possible solution is to create an app, managed by a nonprofit or public benefit corporation, through which you could download and manage all the data collected about you. For example, you could download your credit card statements with all your purchasing habits, your Uber rides showing transit patterns, medical records, electric bills, every digital record you have and would like to download--into one application. You would then have the power to license pieces or the collection of your data to users for a small fee for one year at a time. Uses and users could be monitored and audited leveraging blockchain capabilities. After the year is up, you can withdraw access.
You could be your own data landlord. We could democratize big data and empower people to better control and manage the wealth of information collected about us. Why should only the big companies like Amazon and Apple profit off the new oil? Let's create an app so we can all manage our data wealth and maybe even become data barons—an app created by the people for the people.
How sharing, hearing, and remembering positive stories can help shape our brains for the better
Across cultures and through millennia, human beings have always told stories. Whether it’s a group of boy scouts around a campfire sharing ghost stories or the paleolithic Cro-Magnons etching pictures of bison on cave walls, researchers believe that storytelling has been universal to human beings since the development of language.
But storytelling was more than just a way for our ancestors to pass the time. Researchers believe that storytelling served an important evolutionary purpose, helping humans learn empathy, share important information (such as where predators were or what berries were safe to eat), as well as strengthen social bonds. Quite literally, storytelling has made it possible for the human race to survive.
Today, neuroscientists are discovering that storytelling is just as important now as it was millions of years ago. Particularly in sharing positive stories, humans can more easily form relational bonds, develop a more flexible perspective, and actually grow new brain circuitry that helps us survive. Here’s how.
How sharing stories positively impacts the brain
When human beings share stories, it increases the levels of certain neurochemicals in the brain, neuroscientists have found. In a 2021 study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), Swedish researchers found that simply hearing a story could make hospitalized children feel better, compared to other hospitalized children who played a riddle game for the same amount of time. In their research, children in the intensive care unit who heard stories for just 30 minutes had higher levels of oxytocin, a hormone that promotes positive feelings and is linked to relaxation, trust, social connectedness, and overall psychological stability. Furthermore, the same children showed lower levels of cortisol, a hormone associated with stress. Afterward, the group of children who heard stories tended to describe their hospital experiences more positively, and even reported lower levels of pain.
Annie Brewster, MD, knows the positive effect of storytelling from personal experience. An assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and the author of The Healing Power of Storytelling: Using Personal Narrative to Navigate Illness, Trauma, and Loss, Brewster started sharing her personal experience with chronic illness after being diagnosed with multiple sclerosis in 2001. In doing so, Brewster says it has enabled her to accept her diagnosis and integrate it into her identity. Brewster believes so much in the power of hearing and sharing stories that in 2013 she founded Health Story Collaborative, a forum for others to share their mental and physical health challenges.“I wanted to hear stories of people who had found ways to move forward in positive ways, in spite of health challenges,” Brewster said. In doing so, Brewster believes people with chronic conditions can “move closer to self-acceptance and self-love.”
While hearing and sharing positive stories has been shown to increase oxytocin and other “feel good” chemicals, simply remembering a positive story has an effect on our brains as well. Mark Hoelterhoff, PhD, a lecturer in clinical psychology at the University of Edinburgh, recalling and “savoring” a positive story, thought, or feedback “begins to create new brain circuitry—a new neural network that’s geared toward looking for the positive,” he says. Over time, other research shows, savoring positive stories or thoughts can literally change the shape of your brain, hard-wiring someone to see things in a more positive light.How stories can change your behavior
In 2009, Paul Zak, PhD, a neuroscientist and professor at Claremont Graduate University, set out to measure how storytelling can actually change human behavior for the better. In his study, Zak wanted to measure the behavioral effects of oxytocin, and did this by showing test subjects two short video clips designed to elicit an emotional response.
In the first video they showed the study participants, a father spoke to the camera about his two-year-old son, Ben, who had been diagnosed with terminal brain cancer. The father told the audience that he struggled to connect with and enjoy Ben, as Ben had only a few months left to live. In the end, the father finds the strength to stay emotionally connected to his son until he dies.
The second video clip, however, was much less emotional. In that clip, the same father and son are shown spending the day at the zoo. Ben is only suggested to have cancer (he is bald from chemotherapy and referred to as a ‘miracle’, but the cancer isn’t mentioned directly). The second story lacked the dramatic narrative arc of the first video.
Zak’s team took blood before and after the participants watched one of the two videos and found that the first story increased the viewers’ cortisol and oxytocin, suggesting that they felt distress over the boy’s diagnosis and empathy toward the boy and his father. The second narrative, however, didn’t increase oxytocin or cortisol at all.
But Zak took the experiment a step further. After the movie clips, his team gave the study participants a chance to share money with a stranger in the lab. The participants who had an increase in cortisol and oxytocin were more likely to donate money generously. The participants who had increased cortisol and oxytocin were also more likely to donate money to a charity that works with children who are ill. Zak also found that the amount of oxytocin that was released was correlated with how much money people felt comfortable giving—in other words, the more oxytocin that was released, the more generous they felt, and the more money they donated.
How storytelling strengthens our bond with others
Sharing, hearing, and remembering stories can be a powerful tool for social change–not only in the way it changes our brain and our behavior, but also because it can positively affect our relationships with other people
Emotional stimulation from telling stories, writes Zak, is the foundation for empathy, and empathy strengthens our relationships with other people. “By knowing someone’s story—where they come from, what they do, and who you might know in common—relationships with strangers are formed.”
But why are these relationships important for humanity? Because human beings can use storytelling to build empathy and form relationships, it enables them to “engage in the kinds of large-scale cooperation that builds massive bridges and sends humans into space,” says Zak.
Storytelling, Zak found, and the oxytocin release that follows, also makes people more sensitive to social cues. This sensitivity not only motivates us to form relationships, but also to engage with other people and offer help, particularly if the other person seems to need help.
But as Zak found in his experiments, the type of storytelling matters when it comes to affecting relationships. Where Zak found that storytelling with a dramatic arc helps release oxytocin and cortisol, enabling people to feel more empathic and generous, other researchers have found that sharing happy stories allows for greater closeness between individuals and speakers. A group of Chinese researchers found that, compared to emotionally-neutral stories, happy stories were more “emotionally contagious.” Test subjects who heard happy stories had greater activation in certain areas of their brains, experienced more significant, positive changes in their mood, and felt a greater sense of closeness between themselves and the speaker.
“This finding suggests that when individuals are happy, they become less self-focused and then feel more intimate with others,” the authors of the study wrote. “Therefore, sharing happiness could strengthen interpersonal bonding.” The researchers went on to say that this could lead to developing better social networks, receiving more social support, and leading more successful social lives.
Since the start of the COVID pandemic, social isolation, loneliness, and resulting mental health issues have only gotten worse. In light of this, it’s safe to say that hearing, sharing, and remembering stories isn’t just something we can do for entertainment. Storytelling has always been central to the human experience, and now more than ever it’s become something crucial for our survival.
Want to know how you can reap the benefits of hearing happy stories? Keep an eye out for Upworthy’s first book, GOOD PEOPLE: Stories from the Best of Humanity, published by National Geographic/Disney, available on September 3, 2024. GOOD PEOPLE is a much-needed trove of life-affirming stories told straight from the heart. Handpicked from Upworthy’s community, these 101 stories speak to the breadth, depth, and beauty of the human experience, reminding us we have a lot more in common than we realize.
A new type of cancer therapy is shrinking deadly brain tumors with just one treatment
MRI scans after a new kind of immunotherapy for brain cancer show remarkable progress in one patient just days after the first treatment.
Few cancers are deadlier than glioblastomas—aggressive and lethal tumors that originate in the brain or spinal cord. Five years after diagnosis, less than five percent of glioblastoma patients are still alive—and more often, glioblastoma patients live just 14 months on average after receiving a diagnosis.
But an ongoing clinical trial at Mass General Cancer Center is giving new hope to glioblastoma patients and their families. The trial, called INCIPIENT, is meant to evaluate the effects of a special type of immune cell, called CAR-T cells, on patients with recurrent glioblastoma.
How CAR-T cell therapy works
CAR-T cell therapy is a type of cancer treatment called immunotherapy, where doctors modify a patient’s own immune system specifically to find and destroy cancer cells. In CAR-T cell therapy, doctors extract the patient’s T-cells, which are immune system cells that help fight off disease—particularly cancer. These T-cells are harvested from the patient and then genetically modified in a lab to produce proteins on their surface called chimeric antigen receptors (thus becoming CAR-T cells), which makes them able to bind to a specific protein on the patient’s cancer cells. Once modified, these CAR-T cells are grown in the lab for several weeks so that they can multiply into an army of millions. When enough cells have been grown, these super-charged T-cells are infused back into the patient where they can then seek out cancer cells, bind to them, and destroy them. CAR-T cell therapies have been approved by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to treat certain types of lymphomas and leukemias, as well as multiple myeloma, but haven’t been approved to treat glioblastomas—yet.
CAR-T cell therapies don’t always work against solid tumors, such as glioblastomas. Because solid tumors contain different kinds of cancer cells, some cells can evade the immune system’s detection even after CAR-T cell therapy, according to a press release from Massachusetts General Hospital. For the INCIPIENT trial, researchers modified the CAR-T cells even further in hopes of making them more effective against solid tumors. These second-generation CAR-T cells (called CARv3-TEAM-E T cells) contain special antibodies that attack EFGR, a protein expressed in the majority of glioblastoma tumors. Unlike other CAR-T cell therapies, these particular CAR-T cells were designed to be directly injected into the patient’s brain.
The INCIPIENT trial results
The INCIPIENT trial involved three patients who were enrolled in the study between March and July 2023. All three patients—a 72-year-old man, a 74-year-old man, and a 57-year-old woman—were treated with chemo and radiation and enrolled in the trial with CAR-T cells after their glioblastoma tumors came back.
The results, which were published earlier this year in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), were called “rapid” and “dramatic” by doctors involved in the trial. After just a single infusion of the CAR-T cells, each patient experienced a significant reduction in their tumor sizes. Just two days after receiving the infusion, the glioblastoma tumor of the 72-year-old man decreased by nearly twenty percent. Just two months later the tumor had shrunk by an astonishing 60 percent, and the change was maintained for more than six months. The most dramatic result was in the 57-year-old female patient, whose tumor shrank nearly completely after just one infusion of the CAR-T cells.
The results of the INCIPIENT trial were unexpected and astonishing—but unfortunately, they were also temporary. For all three patients, the tumors eventually began to grow back regardless of the CAR-T cell infusions. According to the press release from MGH, the medical team is now considering treating each patient with multiple infusions or prefacing each treatment with chemotherapy to prolong the response.
While there is still “more to do,” says co-author of the study neuro-oncologist Dr. Elizabeth Gerstner, the results are still promising. If nothing else, these second-generation CAR-T cell infusions may someday be able to give patients more time than traditional treatments would allow.
“These results are exciting but they are also just the beginning,” says Dr. Marcela Maus, a doctor and professor of medicine at Mass General who was involved in the clinical trial. “They tell us that we are on the right track in pursuing a therapy that has the potential to change the outlook for this intractable disease.”