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facility:king's college

  • @mad_meg
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    @hlc

    The #Opioid Timebomb: The #Sackler family and how their painkiller fortune helps bankroll London arts | London Evening Standard
    ▻https://www.standard.co.uk/news/health/the-opioid-timebomb-the-sackler-family-and-how-their-painkiller-fortune-

    We sent all 33 non-profits the same key questions including: will they rename their public space (as some organisations have done when issues arose regarding former benefactors)? And will they accept future Sackler philanthropy?

    About half the respondents, including the Royal Opera House and the National Gallery, where Dame Theresa Sackler is respectively an honorary director and a patron, declined to answer either question.

    Of the rest, none said it planned to erase the Sackler name from its public space. The organisations’ positions were more guarded on future donations.

    Only the V&A, Oxford University, the Royal Court Theatre and the National Maritime Museum said outright that they were open to future Sackler grants.

    The V&A said: “The Sackler family continue to be a valuable donor to the V&A and we are grateful for their ongoing support.”

    Millions for London: Where Sackler money has gone
    MUSEUMS AND GALLERIES

    Serpentine Galleries

    Grants received/pledged: £5,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Serpentine Sackler Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Tate

    Grants received/pledged: £4,650,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery, Sackler Escalators, Sackler Octagon
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Dulwich Picture Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £3,491,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Arts Education
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    V&A Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Courtyard
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    The Design Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £1,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Library and Archive
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    Natural History Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £1,255,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Biodiversity Imaging Laboratory
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    National Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £1,050,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Room (Room 34)
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    National Portrait Gallery

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Pledged grant still being vetted
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Being vetted. Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Garden Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £850,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Garden
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    National Maritime Museum

    Grants received/pledged: £230,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowships
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    Museum of London

    Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Hall
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Royal Academy of Arts

    Grants received/pledged: Refused to disclose grants received
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Wing, Sackler Sculpture Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    THE PERFORMING ARTS

    Old Vic

    Grants received/pledged: £2,817,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Productions and projects
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Opera House

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    National Theatre

    Grants received/pledged: £2,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Pavilion
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Shakespeare’s Globe

    Grants received/pledged: £1,660,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Studios
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Court Theatre

    Grants received/pledged: £360,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Trust Trainee Scheme
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    UNIVERSITIES/RESEARCH

    University of Oxford

    Grants received/pledged: £11,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Bodleian Sackler Library, Keeper of Antiquities
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Yes

    University of Sussex

    Grants received/pledged: £8,400,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    King’s College, London

    Grants received/pledged: £6,950,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Translational Neurodevelopment
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Francis Crick Institute

    Grants received/pledged: £5,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): One-off funds raised via CRUK to help build the Crick
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? N/A

    UCL

    Grants received/pledged: £2,654,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Institute for Musculo-Skeletal Research
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Royal College of Art

    Grants received/pledged: £2,500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Building
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    The Courtauld Institute of Art

    Grants received/pledged: £1,170,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Research Fellowship, Sackler Lecture Series
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Ballet School

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Imperial College London

    Grants received/pledged: £618,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Knee research
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Old Royal Naval College

    Grants received/pledged: £500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Gallery
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    OTHER

    Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew

    Grants received/pledged: £3,100,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Sackler Crossing footbridge
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Moorfields Eye Hospital

    Grants received/pledged: £3,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): New eye centre (pledged only)
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    The London Library

    Grants received/pledged: £1,000,000
    Used to fund (among other things): The Sackler Study
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    The Prince’s Trust

    Grants received/pledged: £775,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Programmes for disadvantaged youth
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Subject to vetting that typically takes into account “reputational risk” and “all relevant new information about the donor in the public domain”

    Westminster Abbey

    Grants received/pledged: £500,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Restoration of Henry VII Chapel
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? Won’t say

    Royal Hospital for Neurodisability

    Grants received/pledged: £350,000
    Used to fund (among other things): Won’t say
    Will you accept future Sackler grants? No reply

    cc @hlc

    mad meg CC BY
    • @mad_meg
      mad meg CC BY

      Rob Reich, an ethics professor at Stanford University, has said that non-profits taking future Sackler donations could be seen as being “complicit in the reputation-laundering of the donor”.

      La liste ci dessus ne concerne que la GB mais en France la liste doit être longue aussi et encore plus aux USA et probablement un peu partout dans le monde.

      But our FoI requests revealed that at least one major Sackler donation has been held up in the vetting process: namely a £1 million grant for the National Portrait Gallery.

      The gallery said: “The Sackler Trust pledged a £1 million grant in June 2016 for a future project, but no funds have been received as this is still being vetted as part of our internal review process.

      Each gift is assessed on a case-by-case basis and where necessary, further information and advice is sought from third parties.”

      It added that its ethical fundraising policy sets out “unacceptable sources of funding” and examines the risk involved in “accepting support which may cause significant potential damage to the gallery’s reputation”.

      mad meg CC BY
    • @mad_meg
      mad meg CC BY

      What do the Sacklers say in their defence? The three brothers who founded Purdue in the Fifties — Arthur, Mortimer and Raymond — are dead but their descendants have conflicting views.

      Arthur’s daughter Elizabeth Sackler, 70, said her side of the family had not benefited a jot from OxyContin, which was invented after they were bought out in the wake of her father’s death in 1987. She has called the OxyContin fortune “morally abhorrent”.

      Her stepmother, British-born Jillian Sackler, who lives in New York and is a trustee at the Royal Academy of Arts, has called on the other branches of the family to acknowledge their “moral duty to help make this right and to atone for mistakes made”.

      But the OxyContin-rich branches of the family have remained silent. Representatives of Mortimer’s branch — the London Sacklers — said nobody was willing to speak on their behalf and referred us to Purdue’s communications director, Robert Josephson. He confirmed that the US-based Sacklers — Raymond’s branch — would not speak to us either, but that a Purdue spokesman would answer our questions.

      We asked the Purdue spokesman: does Purdue, and by extension the Sacklers, acknowledge the opioid crisis and a role in it?

      “Absolutely we acknowledge there is an opioid crisis,” he said, from Purdue’s HQ in Stamford, Connecticut. “But what’s driving the deaths is illicitly manufactured #fentanyl from China. It’s extremely potent and mixed with all sorts of stuff.”

      –—

      Philip Hopwood, 56, whose addiction to OxyContin and other opioids destroyed his £3 million business and his marriage, said: “If the Sackler family had a shred of decency, they would divert their philanthropy to help people addicted to the drugs they continue to make their fortune from.

      “The non-profits should be ashamed. At the very least they should be honest about the source of their funds.

      The V&A should rename their courtyard the OxyContin Courtyard and the Serpentine should call their gallery the OxyContin Gallery.

      “The money that built these public spaces comes from a drug that is killing people and ruining lives. They can no longer turn a blind eye. I’d feel sick to walk into a Sackler-named space.”

      mad meg CC BY
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  • @erratic
    schrödinger

    TED - “You can grow new brain cells” - Sandrine Thuret, October 2015

    ▻https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B_tjKYvEziI

    It turns out that adults do grow new brain cells. It’s called Neurogenesis, and it happens in the hippocampus.

    http://polemie.com/gustav/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/amygdala-hippocampus.jpg

    The hippocampus is important for
    • Learning & memory
    • Mood & emotion

    It turns out we (as adults) produce 700 new neurons per day in the hippocampus.

    There seems to be a clear link between depression and neurogenesis; people with depression have a lower level of neurogenesis. If we give anti-depressants, we increase the nevel of neurogenesis. Also, if you block neurogenesis, you also block the efficacy of the anti-depressant.

    We can control neurogenesis.
    Some activities increase it, such as:
    • Learning
    • Sex
    • Running (but it is not know if it is the running itself, or the effect of it on the oxigenation of bloodflow towards the brain)

    Some decrease it:
    • Stress
    • Sleep deprivation
    • Getting older

    What you eat will also impact neurogenesis:
    Postitive:
    • Reserveratrol (in red wine. But careful, alcohol also decreases it)
    • Omega 3 fatty acids (fatty fish like salmon)
    • Calorie restriction
    • Folic Acid
    • Zinc
    • Flavonoids (Dark chocolate, blueberries
    • Caffeine
    • Curcurmin
    • Intermittent fasting (space time between meals)

    Negative:
    • Deficiency in vitamins A, B, E
    • High sugar
    • High saturated fat
    • Soft diet (food that is soft, as opposed to food requiring mastication)
    • Ethanol (alcohol)

    Diet modulates memory & mood in the same direction as it modulates neurogenesis. So, what helps neurogenesis also helps mood (eg depression) and vice versa.

    Image A: Hippocampus section of a mouse with no running wheel in its cage. -The black dots are newborn neurons
    Image D: Hipoocampus section of a mouse that had a running wheel in its cage.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CTUQq6LUYAADbPM.png

    Sandrine Thuret

    Neural stem cell researcher in AHN - Adult Hippocampal Neurogenesis, King’s College London
    ▻https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/sandrine.1.thuret.html

    #neurogenesis
    #brain
    #neuron
    #TED

    schrödinger
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  • @odilon
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    BBC News - Child’s drawing ’predicts later intelligence’
    ▻http://www.bbc.com/news/education-28852471

    Researchers asked 7,752 pairs of twins to draw a picture of a child which was then scored by the number of features such as head, legs, hands and feet.

    The children were also asked by the King’s College, London team to complete intelligence tests at age four and 14.

    They found a moderately strong link between higher drawing scores and the later intelligence test results.

    Identical twins share all their genes with each other, while non-identical twins share only 50% of their genes.

    However, both usually share the same family background and upbringing.

    As the drawings from identical twins were more similar to one another than those from non-identical twin pairs, the researchers concluded that drawing ability had a genetic link.

    http://news.bbcimg.co.uk/media/images/77033000/jpg/_77033438_bf3cec5b-61cc-41a8-9da1-d61a0b63687a.jpg

    #dessin #intelligence #étude_récente

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  • @sabah
    Sabah
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    Up to 600 Europeans fighting in Syria: study | Al Akhbar English
    ▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/600-europeans-fighting-syria-study

    As many as 600 Europeans have joined the rebels fighting government forces in Syria, a British study found.

    Jihadists from 14 European countries including France, Germany, Britain and the Netherlands are among those to enter the conflict, according to research published Tuesday by the International Center for the Study of Radicalization (ICSR) at King’s College London.

    “Between 140 and 600 Europeans have gone to Syria since early 2011,” said researcher Aaron Y. Zelin.

    Up to 441 Europeans are still in the country, he added.

    The ICSR’s lowest estimates consist solely of confirmed individuals, while higher estimates include unverified estimates provided by government and media sources.

    The ICSR based the figures on some 250 “martyrdom notices” posted on jihadi websites as well as hundreds of Arab and Western media reports.

    It estimated that as many as 134 fighters from Britain have headed to Syria, along with up to 107 from the Netherlands, 92 from France and 85 from Belgium.

    Others came from Denmark, Germany, Ireland, Finland, Spain, Sweden, Albania, Austria, Bulgaria and Kosovo.

    “There is no ’true census’ of foreign fighters, and publicly available sources are inevitably incomplete... and will probably remain so for years to come,” said Zelin.

    The study dismissed Syrian government claims that many of the fighters battling against troops loyal to President Bashar al-Assad are foreigners, estimating that they make up less than ten percent of the opposition.

    Zelin also stressed that not all foreigners fighting in Syria are Muslim extremists.

    “Not everyone who has joined the Syrian rebels is Al-Qaeda, and only a small number may ever become involved in terrorism after returning to Europe,” he said.

    “That said, it would be wrong to conclude that individuals who have trained and fought in Syria pose no potential threat.”

    Last month the Netherlands raised the threat of a terror attack to “substantial”, saying the increased risk stemmed mainly from jihadi returning from fighting in Syria.

    (AFP)

    Sabah
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