PISA 2018

Malaysia seems to be a laggard. Not surprising since the ministry is busy and occupied with issues of Khat and black shoes akin.

How alcohol addiction occurs: the brain 'learns' alcohol

Running into a former drinking buddy or passing a once-favourite bar can cause recovering alcoholics to relapse.

But the biology behind why those setbacks happen was a mystery to scientists until just recently.

Researchers from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania (Penn), Uni-ted States, found that alcohol directly affects the brain’s learning and memory system through a test on mice.

Drinking actually helps people’s brains “learn” alcohol – the bar they’re drinking in, the street they’re on and the people they’re with – said Dr Shelley Berger, a cell and developmental biology professor, who is the study’s senior author.

This learning can make people want to drink more when they’re in certain environments or with groups of people.

And unravelling how the learning happens opens the possibility of someday having treatments to block that action.

Prof Berger’s research is the latest addition to a growing body of research that alcohol and drugs can cause genetic changes that may reinforce addiction and affect future generations.

Earlier this year (2019), researchers from Rutgers University found that binge drinking can trigger genetic changes that make people crave alcohol even more.

In the new study, published recently in the journal Nature, researchers found that when alcohol is consumed, it goes to the liver, where it’s processed into the by-product acetate.

Acetate then travels to the brain, where it turns certain genes on and off in a cell by attaching to histones, the proteins that package DNA in a cell’s nucleus, said Prof Berger.

“DNA is about two feet long in every cell and it’s all folded up into the nucleus,” she said.

“There’s a packaging material that organises it in a really orderly way, and it turns the right genes on and off through these little chemical groups. Acetate is one of those chemical groups.”

It turns out that the enzyme responsible for depositing acetate into cells, called ACSS2, activates key memory genes important for learning.

To test this, researchers exposed mice to two differently patterned chambers – one with alcohol and one without.

After a “learning period”, the mice were allowed to roam freely between the two. They preferred the chamber that was paired with alcohol.

But after lowering the levels of ACSS2 in the mice’s brains, the researchers found that they spent an equal amount of time in both chambers.

Researchers also found that when a pregnant mouse consumed alcohol, acetate was delivered through the placenta and into the foetus’ developing brain.

This finding could lead to better understanding of foetal alcohol syndrome, said Prof Berger.

She said that this was the first empirical evidence showing that alcohol consumption affects how genes are expressed in the brain.

She’s now interested in using the information to make a drug that could be used to stop people from “learning” alcohol.

“When we learn something, there’s a process called reconsolidation,” Prof Berger said.

“That’s when something is really solidified and we feel that we really understand it now.

“We want to disrupt that after someone has been exposed to alcohol, but before they reconsolidate the information.”

Penn’s Center for Studies on Addiction director Dr Henry Kranzler said Prof Berger’s research is “intriguing” because it offers the potential of “filling in a missing piece in our understanding of the development and maintenance of heavy drinking”.

“Her research is consistent with the idea that addiction is a learned process,” he said.

“Importantly, it opens up the potential to identify specific targets in the brain to be modified therapeutically with medications, and perhaps also genetically, at some point.”

In other words, researchers may be able to make drugs to treat addiction that target specific areas of the brain that are affected by alcohol.

However, the next step is to conduct more research using animals before eventually moving on to humans.

“This is a really exciting, unexpected finding, that alcohol consumed would end up in the brain,” Prof Berger said.

“What this tells us is that acetate may be a very good thing for memory, but a lot might not be good, especially if you’re getting it in the context of something that’s not good for you.” – The Philadelphia Inquirer/Tribune News Service

Source: https://www.thestar.com.my/lifestyle/health/2019/11/13/this-is-how-alcohol-addiction-occurs#6obX73K09hkxaVGq.99

Advertisers emerge as buyers for ad tech

With venture capital money for ad tech and marketing technology businesses scarce and strategic buyers also hard to find, marketers are emerging as potential acquirers.

The slump in optimism around ad tech and martech businesses hasn’t been enough to deter a growing number of advertisers. So far this year, several high-profile advertisers have swooped for companies that sat on the periphery of the ad tech and mar tech sectors. McDonald’s bought personalization platform in March, Walmart snapped up ad tech startup Polymorph Labs to deliver more relevant ads to online shoppers in April, Nike bet on predictive analytics company Celect in August; travel startup OYO Hotels and Homes-bought Danamica, a Copenhagen-based startup that specializes in dynamic pricing through machine learning in September; and the same month MasterCard cut a deal for customer data platform SessionM.

As different as the acquired businesses are to one another, none of them can be described as a core part of an ad tech or martech stack — i.e., a demand-side platform, an ad server, a content marketing platform or search engine optimization tools. None of those types of businesses are easy to manage. Agencies and publishers have tried to make those deals work in the past and struggled to varying degrees. When mobile phone operator Three kicked off a search to acquire a DSP in the first quarter of the year, for example, the procurement process quickly ground to a halt, said one consultant with knowledge of the plan on condition of anonymity. With the latest wave of acquisitions, however, advertisers aren’t trying to shoehorn sprawling ad businesses that weren’t developed with them in mind. Instead, they’re eyeing smaller but arguably more strategic vendors that can turbocharge specific objectives. 

“We’re not talking about premium ad tech and martech businesses that are attracting the interest from advertisers,” said Tristan Rice, partner at M&A advisory SI Partners.

The motivations for these deals aren’t too dissimilar to why advertisers have bought agencies, built their own technology and hired internal specialists over the years. Data-driven personalization is a common thread that draws together many of the deals that have been completed by brands. Owning those types of companies directly could save time and money while also provide greater control over results.

Take Walmart’s acquisition of Polymorph Labs and McDonald’s deal for Dynamic Yield, for example. Walmart is able to serve highly targeted ads, and McDonald’s can offer diners individually tailored menus. The idea of using data and technology to enable a better customer experience and ultimately drive higher conversion rates is a key factor in many of these deals. 

Growing interest in ad tech and martech from advertisers is viewed as something of a lifeboat for entrepreneurs worried they weren’t going to see a payday for their businesses, which provide solutions to specific problems rather than the full-scale propositions of larger players in the ad tech and martech space. For a start, the companies that have caught the eye of advertisers are valued on the tech solutions needed rather than the strength of their financial models. The likes of Dynamic Yield are smaller vendors that haven’t been able to grow at the same rate as larger, more traditional ad tech and martech players have. The valuations between the two types of ad tech and martech businesses are worlds apart. McDonald’s bought Dynamic Yield for $300 million (£234 million), whereas AT&T acquired ad tech vendor AppNexus for $1.6 billion (£1.3 billion, for example).

“Brands and retailers at risk of being disintermediated by Google, Amazon, Facebook and Apple are actively fighting back,” said Julie Langley, partner at M&A advisory firm Results International. “We will undoubtedly see a lot of interest in tech businesses that can help physical retailers bridge the gap, and turn physical stores into a positive as part of their broader digital transformation.”

Source: https://digiday.com/marketing/advertisers-emerge-buyers-ad-tech/