Moreover, the results show individuals who binge drink and possess certain genetic traits are six times more likely to develop alcohol-related cirrhosis. The team notes this is a groundbreaking report for evaluating how drinking patterns, genetic profiles, and the presence of Type 2 diabetes influence the risk of developing alcohol-related cirrhosis (ARC).

Study authors have observed that the manner of drinking is more critical than the quantity consumed. This is especially true when genetic factors and Type 2 diabetes coexist in drinkers, offering a more precise method to identify those at heightened risk for liver disease.

Globally, liver disease ranks as a leading cause of premature death. Cirrhosis, or liver scarring, affects up to three percent of the world’s population.

Since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, alcohol-related deaths have surged by 20 percent, according to the scientists.

For this study, researchers from University College London (UCL), the Royal Free Hospital, and the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge analyzed data from over 312,000 actively drinking U.K. adults. The team evaluated the impact of drinking patterns, genetic susceptibility, and Type 2 diabetes on the likelihood of developing ARC.

A baseline hazard ratio (HR) of one was established using data from participants who drank within daily limits, had a low genetic predisposition to ARC, and did not have diabetes. Individuals who engaged in heavy binge drinking, defined as consuming 12 drinks per day (equivalent to four pints of beer or six standard glasses of wine) at least once a week, were three times more likely to develop ARC.

The risk was four times higher for those with a significant genetic predisposition and twice as high for individuals with Type 2 diabetes.

“Many studies that look into the relationship between liver disease and alcohol focus on the volume of alcohol consumed. We took a different approach by focusing on the pattern of drinking and found that this was a better indicator of liver disease risk than volume alone. The other key finding was that the more risk factors involved, the higher the ‘excess risk’ due to the interaction of these factors,” says Dr. Linda Ng Fat, a first author of the study from UCL Epidemiology & Public Health, in a university release.

Dr. Ng Fat adds that when heavy binge drinking and a genetic predisposition for liver problems were at play, the risk of developing ARC was up to six times higher than the risk for a baseline drinker.

“Only one in three people who drink at high levels go on to develop serious liver disease. While genetics plays a part, this research highlights that pattern of drinking is also a key factor. Our results suggest, for example, that it would be more damaging to drink 21 units over a couple of sessions rather than spread evenly over a week. Adding genetic information, which may be widely used in healthcare over the coming years, allows an even more accurate prediction of risk,” explains Dr. Gautam Mehta, a senior author of the study from UCL Division of Medicine and the Royal Free Hospital.

“As liver disease, particularly alcohol-related fatalities, has seen a significant surge since the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is imperative that we adopt innovative strategies to address this escalating crisis. This study equips us with novel tools that are essential in pinpointing individuals at highest risk, thereby enabling us to direct interventions more effectively towards those who stand to benefit the most,” adds Dr. Steven Bell, a senior author of the study from the University of Cambridge.

“This research is important because it reveals that it’s not just how much you drink overall but the way that you drink matters. Drinking a lot, quickly, or drinking to get drunk can have serious consequences for your liver health,” concludes Pamela Healy, the chief executive of the British Liver Trust.

The findings are published in the journal Nature Communications.

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During meditation, you focus your attention and eliminate the stream of jumbled thoughts that may be crowding your mind and causing stress. This focus can result in enhanced physical and emotional well-being.

Many people may think of mindfulness meditation as "sitting on a pillow, being still, with eyes closed." This may work for some, but there are many ways to practice mindfulness meditation.

Practicing mindfulness involves using breathing methods, guided imagery, and other strategies to relax the body and mind to help reduce stress.

To try focused breathing meditation, sit down, take a deep breath and close your eyes. Focus on your breath as it moves in and out of your body. Sitting and breathing slowly for even just a minute can help.

As you start meditating, try these structured mindfulness exercises:

• Body scan meditation: Lie on your back with your legs extended and arms at your sides, palms facing up. Focus your attention slowly and deliberately on each part of your body, in order, from toe to head or head to toe. Be aware of any sensations, emotions or thoughts associated with each part of your body.

• Sitting meditation: Sit comfortably with your back straight, feet flat on the floor and hands in your lap. Breathing through your nose, focus on your breath moving in and out of your body. If physical sensations or thoughts interrupt your meditation, note the experience and then return your focus to your breathing.

• Walking meditation: Find a quiet place 10- to 20-feet long and walk slowly. Focus on the experience of walking, being aware of the sensations of standing and the subtle movements that keep your balance. When you reach the end of your path, turn and continue walking, maintaining awareness of your sensations.

Often, mindfulness meditation is recommended as part of a comprehensive treatment for physical and mental health conditions. It's considered a type of mind-body complementary medicine. You can incorporate mindfulness meditation into your busy routine to improve your overall health.

There are many benefits of mindfulness meditation engaging the brain. Think of it as a form of brain exercise. Just as physical exercise keeps your body healthy, mindfulness meditation keeps your brain fit. Research has shown that just five to 15 minutes of daily meditation is all you need to begin experiencing benefits.

After decades of research into the practice, these benefits have been found to include an increase in:

• Cognitive flexibility

• Diabetes control

• Emotion regulation

• Empathy

• Focus and attention

• Immune system response

• Memory

• Positive emotions

• Positive relationships

• Relaxation

• Self-compassion

• Self-esteem

The practice also affects many negative physical and mental symptoms, including decreases in:

• Addictive behaviors

• Anger and hostility

• Anxiety

• Burnout

• Depression

• Emotional reactivity

• Insomnia

• High blood pressure

• Need for pain medications

• Physical pain

• Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms

• Stress

Mindfulness is a supportive strategy to help manage many health issues. It pairs well with other medical treatments and counseling. It's a simple strategy that doesn't require a prescription or special equipment and can be practiced anywhere.

2023 Mayo Clinic News Network. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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The speed of the glacier's retreat and the rate that is has been losing ice has led to concerns about how stable the region is. Model results show that this region of west Antarctica could collapse in the future. If it does, then it could raise global mean sea level by several metres.

There have been periods of rapid global sea-level rise in the past (by 1cm–2cm per year). This probably happened because glaciers were losing mass at an accelerated rate. One of the key mechanisms responsible for this is known as "marine ice sheet instability".

When glaciers, like those in west Antarctica, experience a small retreat due to some change in the climate, they can continue retreating even if the change is reversed. Essentially, the glacier gets pushed beyond a tipping point, whereby it experiences rapid mass loss until it reaches a new state.

This kind of retreat is irreversible because the change in climate needed for the glacier to recover its original position is much greater than what initially caused it to retreat.

This instability mechanism is well understood in theory, and models show it could happen in west Antarctica in the future. But until now there has been no proof that it had happened in the past.

In a new study, we found that Pine Island Glacier experienced irreversible mass loss and retreat, starting in the 1940s. Our model suggests that a temporary increase in melting under its floating ice shelf was enough to push the glacier past a tipping point.

This phase of accelerated retreat had finished by the 1990s. But, in a separate study where we used the same model, we found that the glacier will cross future tipping points unless global warming is kept within safe limits.

What happened?

Before the 1940s, Pine Island Glacier extended further than it does today. Its grounding line – the point at which glacial ice begins to float in the ocean rather than being in contact with the ground – was situated 40 km further downstream on a shallow ridge on the seabed. This ridge provided a stable position for the glacier, keeping it in place, possibly for at least 5,000 to 10,000 years.

Recent observations show that ocean conditions beneath the floating ice shelf change from year to year. Every so often, warmer waters come into contact with the floating underside of the ice, causing a lot of melting from below.

In the 1940s, a climate anomaly in west Antarctica, which has been linked to a large El Niño event, possibly triggered a temporary change in ocean conditions.

We found that an increase in melting due to changed ocean conditions beneath the ice shelf would have led to the thinning of its grounded ice further upstream. This caused a gap to open between the grounded glacier and seabed, allowing warmer ocean waters to flow beyond the ridge.

These results are supported by evidence recovered from the sediments under the present-day ice shelf.

Once warmer waters circulate beneath the newly exposed ice, it triggers further melting and thinning, at an even faster rate.

Our model shows that this sparked rapid retreat and accelerated ice flow over the following two to three decades, culminating with the detachment of the ice shelf from the ridge between the late 1970s and the early 1980s. The pattern and timescale of retreat shown in our model is consistent with observations of changes in the glacier.

Irreversible change

After the ice shelf detached from the ridge, there was a slowdown in ice flow and a more gradual retreat. This retreat only stopped when the grounding line reached a shallow section of bedrock in the early 1990s.

Our analysis shows that the phase of rapid retreat between the 1940s and 1970s was irreversible. If ocean conditions cooled and there was lower melting beneath the shelf during that period, then this would have been unable to stop the ongoing mass loss.

These results show us that if there is a significant increase in melting at the base of a glacier's floating ice shelf, it can retreat past a tipping point. This means that even if conditions cool down, the loss of ice mass may be irreversible.

The future implications of this are clear. What occurred before could happen again. If we cross future ice sheet tipping points, simply reverting back to the previous climate conditions might not be enough to fix the damage.

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Now you can save yourself a trip. Apple announced this week that its Diagnostic troubleshooting suites are available for iPhone and Mac as part of its Self Service Repair program. Apple explains that the tool is “intended for users with the knowledge and expertise to repair Apple devices,” and “will give customers the same ability as Apple Authorized Service Providers and Independent Repair Providers to test devices for optimal part functionality and performance, as well as identify which parts may need repair.”

Along with the new tool (which requires iOS 17 or macOS Sonoma 14.1 and later), Apple also announced that all iPhone 15 models and M2 Macs are now able to be self-repaired. The tools are available in the U.S. and will expand to Europe in 2024.

To use the new tool, you’ll need to put your iPhone or Mac into diagnostics mode and then enter its serial number to check which Diagnostic suites are available for your device.

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In a series of six papers published online in Lancet Global Health on December 12, the researchers compared various aspects of health system performance globally, including people’s confidence in their health system and views on the quality of care they’ve received, inequities in coverage and quality, and links between health system quality and COVID-19 vaccination rates.

The studies used data captured in 2022 and 2023 from more than 25,000 adults across 15 countries: Argentina, Colombia, Ethiopia, Greece, India, Italy, Kenya, Laos, Mexico, Peru, South Africa, South Korea, United Kingdom, United States, and Uruguay. Participants were contacted through the People’s Voice Survey, a new instrument designed by the Quality Evidence for Health System Transformation (QuEST) Network, a multicountry research consortium based at Harvard Chan School.

Through the survey data, the researchers were able to get a better picture of how health systems actually function, said Todd Lewis, research associate in the Department of Global Health and Population, a co-author on several of the papers, and People’s Voice Survey lead researcher. “While many surveys focus on the experience of recent patients, our analyses examine the views of the entire population. This provides a much more comprehensive snapshot of population sentiment about the health system and can be powerful information for policymakers.”

The overarching message coming out of the survey is that people across the world are not confident that their health systems can meet their needs. Only one-quarter of respondents said their system worked well, and fewer than half were confident that they could get and afford good quality care if they were to become sick—even in countries with universal insurance systems.

“The level of unhappiness in the health systems of high-income countries was surprising,” said Margaret Kruk, professor of health systems and director of the QuEST Network. For example, 70% of Ethiopians think their health system has been improving over the past two years while just 6% of Britons and 15% of Americans do. Kruk, also a co-author on multiple papers and principal investigator of the People’s Voice Survey, thinks this is in part due to dissatisfaction around governments’ responses to COVID, in addition to other factors such as staffing problems in the health workforce.

Other key findings from the series:

• Women and people with post-secondary education, and, in some countries, young people, were more pessimistic about their health systems than respondents with lower education levels, men, and people older than 30 years.

• People who recently received high quality care and reported feeling confident in their health system were more likely to have received a COVID-19 vaccination, whereas people who had unmet health needs or experienced discrimination from a provider were less likely.

• In countries with a public primary care system, only four in ten people use public primary care as their usual provider. Others rely on private providers and secondary care facilities such as hospitals.

• The availability of public health insurance in Africa and Asia isn’t necessarily leading to more people receiving important preventive services. For example, people with public insurance aren’t much more likely to receive blood pressure checks than people without insurance and are less likely to receive them than people with private insurance.

• In Latin America where health insurance coverage is high, inequities in care persist. While people reported high access to care, only one in three respondents had a high-quality source of care. Only one quarter of respondents said that their mental health needs were met. 

Kruk said that the pessimism expressed across countries by people with higher incomes and more education, and by young people, “bodes poorly for future support for publicly financed insurance, including efforts for universal health coverage, as these groups are essential contributors to any such scheme.” She and her colleagues suggest that governments will need to gain trust from their populations before moving ahead with health system reforms.

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Breathing therapy is fairly common these days. People experience positive effects when dealing with stress and anxiety, but in science there was hardly any attention for this. Roderik Gerritsen changed that. Yet that was not the intention when he started his Ph.D. research. "Many studies have been done on meditation, from Zen meditation to loving kindness and transcendental meditation. These report positive effects on physical and mental health. My question was: what leads to those effects?"

Studying all that research, Gerritsen missed something. "I suddenly thought: why is nobody talking about breathing? In all those meditation forms, your breathing also changes, but nobody brought that up."

Gerritsen got into it, and came up with a possible explanation for the effects of breathing differently. For instance, paying attention to your breathing, which is usually done in meditation, activates the parasympathetic nervous system. This is the part of your nervous system that causes organs to enter a state of rest and recovery. With slower breathing, often a result of breathing with attention, your heart rate drops. In fact, this is the way you tell your body not to react to threats.

Reduction in stress levels can do a lot for body and mind

As a cognitive psychologist, Gerritsen was particularly curious whether breathing differently can bring improvements at the cognitive level, such as attention, concentration, planning and keeping yourself to that planning. Not enough research has been done on this yet, Gerritsen emphasizes, but he can imagine that it works. "These breathing patterns put you in a relaxed state that allows for greater mental flexibility in various contexts."

Apart from literature research, Gerritsen also conducted experiments himself with groups of elderly people doing tai chi, for example. "Not much came out of that, it was before I came up with the theory on the background of the effects of breathing. Now I would really like to do experiments with people who get as close as possible to a certain breathing rhythm, for example by having them look at a little ball that grows and shrinks at the desired breathing rhythm."

It is difficult to then investigate long-term effects as well, but that will certainly happen after Gerritsen's inception. "Other labs are already taking it up."

Practice at a quiet moment first

Does Gerritsen have any advice, can we all work on our breathing? "People who often feel stressed or have burnout can definitely benefit from changing their breathing." In that case, they need to practice it at calm moments first, otherwise it can actually increase stress. Some students who practiced belly breathing for the first time in one of my experiments found it difficult and stressful. So practice quietly first, and focus first on a fairly low frequency of breathing.

"Breathe slowly and deeply, about six times a minute, so ten seconds per breath. If you do this regularly, the frequency of your basic breathing also drops, and that lowers stress."

If you have mastered slower breathing a bit, you can try it in situations where you notice you are stressed. "That low frequency is the most important thing. In addition, you can try to make the exhaling take a little longer than the inhaling."

That makes for a greater variation in your heart rate variation (hrv) and that is healthy. It also activates that calming parasympathetic nervous system more. "Finally and really less important than the low frequency, it's interesting to pay attention to the fact that your belly expands when breathing in and not your chest."

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New research published in the Christmas issue of BMJ -- the journal of the British Medical Association -- dispels the myth that this purported remedy can help clear a blocked esophagus.

Cola is often given to patients when food gets stuck in the esophagus, the study's lead author, Dr. Arjan Bredenoord, a professor of gastroenterology at Amsterdam University Medical Centers in the Netherlands, told UPI via email.

Physicians have recommended it and patients also have tried it. Yet, "the efficacy of this approach was unknown," Bredenoord said in explaining why he undertook the study.

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"We already knew that many water birds react strongly, but now we also see the effect on other birds throughout the Netherlands," says ecologist Bart Hoekstra of the University of Amsterdam. In the journal Frontiers in Ecology and the Environment, the researchers therefore argue for large fireworks-free zones.

On New Year's Eve, an average of 1,000 times as many birds are in the air close to where fireworks are set off as on other nights, with peaks of 10,000 to 100,000 times the normal number of birds. The effects are strongest within the first 5 km of fireworks, but up to 10 km, there are still an average of at least ten times as many birds flying as normal.

"Birds take off as a result of an acute flight response due to sudden noise and light. In a country like the Netherlands, with many wintering birds, we are talking about millions of birds being affected by the lighting of fireworks," says Hoekstra.

Weather radar and bird counts

Last year, other researchers at IBED discovered that geese are so affected by fireworks that they spend an average of 10% longer looking for food than normal during at least the next 11 days. They apparently need that time to replenish the lost energy or to compensate for the unknown foraging area in which they have ended up after fleeing from the fireworks.

Hoekstra's study looked at which species take off after fireworks and when this occurs. He used information from Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute weather radars during both a clear New Year's Eve and on other normal nights. He combined this with distribution data from Sovon—the Dutch Centre for Field Ornithology—based on bird counts by hundreds of volunteers.

"We already knew that many water birds react strongly, but it was still unclear how birds outside these waterbodies react to fireworks. Through the counts, we know exactly where which birds are, and using the radar images, we can see where they actually take off because of fireworks." Using the data, Hoekstra was able to calculate how many birds take off immediately after the start of the fireworks, at what distance from fireworks this happens, and which species groups mainly react.

Panic in the air

The analysis makes it clear that in the study areas around the radars in Den Helder and Herwijnen alone, almost 400,000 birds take off immediately at the start of the fireworks during New Year's Eve. Moreover, it appears that larger birds in open areas, in particular, fly around for hours after and at remarkable altitudes.

Hoekstra says, "Larger birds such as geese, ducks, and gulls fly to a height of hundreds of meters due to the large-scale discharge of fireworks and remain in the air for up to an hour. There is a risk that they will end up in bad winter weather, or that they will not know where they are flying due to panic and accidents could occur."

'Restrict fireworks in central areas'

Because 62% of all birds in the Netherlands live within a radius of 2.5 km of inhabited areas, the consequences of fireworks are high for all birds throughout the country.

"Flying requires a lot of energy, so ideally, birds should be disturbed as little as possible during the cold winter months. Measures to ensure this are especially important in open areas such as grasslands, where many larger birds spend the winter. The effects of fireworks on birds are less pronounced near forests and semi-open habitats. In addition, smaller birds such as tits and finches live there, which are less likely to fly away from disturbance."

The authors argue for fireworks-free zones in areas where large birds live. Hoekstra says, "These buffer zones could be smaller in areas where light and sound travel less far, such as near forests. Furthermore, fireworks should mainly be lit at central locations in built-up areas, as far away from birds as possible. It would be best for birds if we moved towards light shows without sound, such as drone shows or decorative fireworks without very loud bangs."

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For the first time, the scientists identified improvements in metabolism and liver and kidney function as reasons for the positive effects of a healthy plant-based diet, in addition to the associated lower likelihood of obesity. The study results were recently published in the journal Diabetes & Metabolism.

According to analyses by the research team, a healthy plant-based diet with plenty of fresh fruit and vegetables and whole-meal products reduces the risk of diabetes by 24%, even in the presence of a genetic predisposition and other diabetes risk factors such as obesity, advanced age or a lack of physical activity. Unhealthy plant-based diets with a high proportion of sweets, refined grains and sugary drinks, on the other hand, are associated with an increased risk of type 2 diabetes.

Key biomarkers identified

The research was carried out with 113,097 participants in the large-scale British cohort study (UK Biobank) over an observation period of 12 years.

According to their findings, the reasons behind the anti-diabetic effect of a healthy plant-based diet go far beyond the well-known lower body fat percentage and waist circumference.

"Our study is the first to identify biomarkers of central metabolic processes and organ functions as mediators of the health effects of a plant-based diet," says Tilman Kühn, Professor of Public Health Nutrition at MedUni Vienna and the University of Vienna, who led the study in close collaboration with researchers from Queen's University Belfast. The investigations confirmed that normal values for blood lipids (triglycerides), blood sugar (HbA1c), inflammatory parameters (CRP) and the insulin-like growth factor (IGF1) are associated with a low risk of diabetes.

Further benefits discovered

It has also been demonstrated how important the full function of the liver and kidneys is in diabetes prevention. Both organs play a major role in people who already have diabetes.

"However, our research has now shown that a healthy plant-based diet can improve liver and kidney function and thus reduce the risk of diabetes," says Kühn, outlining a previously underestimated benefit of a conscious plant-based diet.

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The study reviewed a data set of 674,320 digitized records from 94 wildlife centers throughout North America running from 1975 to 2019. The records contain information about all kinds of animals, but Eastern cottontail rabbits, Eastern gray squirrels, Virginia opossums, American robins and raccoons were most frequently admitted to wildlife rehab centers, although species varied by region.

Researchers pinpointed several leading reasons for animal injuries, including human disturbances such as collisions with vehicles, injuries and illness; predators; and poisonous substances.

Nearly 40 percent of all cases were caused by humans, and vehicle collisions were the main cause of injury, affecting 12 percent of animals admitted, the study says. Other dangers included fishing, collisions with buildings or windows, and run-ins with domesticated dogs and cats, researchers found. Reptiles suffered the highest proportion of human-caused rehab admissions.

Overall, human activities have “a large, negative impact on wildlife,” the researchers concluded.

Just 32.5 percent of animals ended up being released back into the wild, and about 9 percent were transferred to another facility or otherwise being treated; the rest died or were euthanized. More mammals were eventually released than any other type of animal.

Humans’ presence could be felt throughout the study, even in cases in which they did not directly injure the animals.

Lead poisoning and the effects of human-caused climate change also put animals in danger, with heat stress, die-offs and other issues linked to the extreme weather thought to be fueled by human activity. These factors affected different animals in different ways: For example, bald eagles were dramatically more likely to be admitted for lead poisoning than other animals, and red-tailed hawks bore the brunt of pesticide exposure.

The researchers called for wildlife centers across the continent to standardize their systems to enable more research. Overall, they write, such records are “an excellent source of data for identifying threats to wildlife health and establishing management and conservation priorities and responses.”

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Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has made immigration his main weapon to blunt Canada's big challenge of an aging and slowing population, and it has also helped fuel economic growth. That drove Canada's population up at its fastest clip in more than six decades this year, Statistics Canada said.

But now a reversal of that trend is gradually taking hold. In the first six months of 2023 some 42,000 individuals departed Canada, adding to 93,818 people who left in 2022 and 85,927 exits in 2021, official data show.

The rate of immigrants leaving Canada hit a two-decade high in 2019, according to a recent report from the Institute for Canadian Citizenship (ICC), an immigration advocacy group. While the numbers went down during pandemic lockdowns, Statistics Canada data shows it is once again rising.

While that is a fraction of the 263,000 who came to the country over the same period, a steady rise in emigration is making some observers wary.

For a nation built on immigrants, a rising trend of people leaving Canada risks undermining one of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau government's signature policies, which granted permanent residency to a record 2.5 million people in just eight years.

Reuters spoke with a half a dozen people who have either left the country or are preparing to do so, because of the high cost of living.

Cara, 25, who came to Canada in 2022 as a refugee from Hong Kong, now pays C$650 ($474) in monthly rent for a single-room basement apartment in Scarborough in eastern Toronto, which is about 30% of her monthly take-home salary.

"I never realized that living in a Western country, you can only afford renting a room in the basement," she said. She declined to give her real name because she fled Hong Kong after participating in the 2019 protests triggered by a now-abandoned extradition bill.

Cara works three part-time jobs, making Ontario's minimum wage of C$16.55 per hour, and goes to an adult learning school to earn university credits.

"I almost use every single penny," she said, while in Hong Kong she was able to save about a third of her monthly salary.

To be sure, emigration as a percentage of Canada's overall population touched a high of 0.2% in the mid 1990s, and currently stands at about 0.09%, according to official government data.

While the numbers are small now, lawyers and immigration consultants warn that a pick-up could cast a shroud over Canada's appeal as the one of the favoured destinations for newcomers.

"There's a real importance in creating positive experiences in those early years" so that people decide to stay, said Daniel Bernhard, CEO of ICC.

Immigrants blame the sky-rocketing housing costs as the biggest reason for their decision to consider a new country.

On average in Canada about 60% of household income would be needed to cover home ownership costs, a figure that rises to about 98% for Vancouver and 80% for Toronto, RBC said in a September report.

Myo Maung, 55, migrated to Canada from Myanmar over three decades ago and made a successful career as a real estate agent and a restaurateur.

But he plans to retire in a country like Thailand since he cannot see himself maintaining his living standard in Canada on his retirement income.

Phil Triadafilopoulos, a political science professor specializing in immigration at the University of Toronto (UofT), said rapid immigration is exacerbating the housing shortage.

"It's not surprising then that people who have options... either go to another country or go back home having had a taste of the situation in Canada," Triadafilopoulos said.

Last month Trudeau's government capped its target for new residents at a half million per year from 2025 onwards to ease pressure on the housing market.

But for some it is too little too late.

Justinas Stankus, 38, who came to Canada from Lithuania in 2019 to pursue a doctorate in political science at the UofT is considering relocating to Southeast Asia where the cost of living is lower and where he could still pursue his research.

Stankus, who pays C$2,000, including utilities, for a one-bedroom apartment, said increasing living expenses has made it difficult to afford basic necessities.

"With a graduate student's budget, it is not sustainable," Stankus said.

Cara from Hong Kong says she feels trapped and wants to go. "Whenever I get a chance to leave, I will take the chance."

($1 = 1.3718 Canadian dollars)

(This story has been corrected to address Canada Prime Minister Justin Trudeau by his full name and title, and to add that Scarborough is part of Toronto in paragraph 9)

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You wake up in the middle of the night, shivering. You're experiencing a fever — a temporary spike in body temperature. 

Fevers can arise as the body's defense system fights off an infection, but they can also be triggered by other things, including autoimmune diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, or occur as a side effect of certain drugs.

But what happens in the body during a fever?

Human body temperature varies slightly from day to day and from person to person, but it's normally maintained at around 98.6 degrees Fahrenheit (37 degrees Celsius). This creates the perfect environment for our cells to work efficiently. Part of the brain called the hypothalamus acts like a thermostat, constantly monitoring the body's temperature and turning internal dials to rein it back to roughly 98.6 F. 

During an infection, when our immune cells detect foreign invaders such as bacteria or viruses, they release fever-inducing chemicals called pyrogens. These chemicals travel to the brain, where they act on temperature-sensitive neurons in the hypothalamus, essentially telling it that it's time to raise the temperature in the house, Dr. Paul O'Rourke, an assistant professor of medicine at Johns Hopkins University, told Live Science. 

As a result, these neurons release hormone-like substances called prostaglandins — specifically, one called PGE2 — to twist the dial on the body's thermostat and initiate a fever. 

"We typically consider a fever when you're reaching temperatures greater than 38 degrees Celsius [100.4 F]," O'Rourke said. 

The hypothalamus can raise body temperature in several ways. For instance, it directs blood vessels to constrict, which reduces the amount of heat that dissipates through the surface of the skin. It also induces shivering to generate as much heat as possible. 

These physiological processes collectively form part of the body's first line of defense against infection, known as acute inflammation. The main aim being to bring infection under control and stop it from spreading. 

Paradoxically, people may have chills alongside a fever, even though their body temperature is rising. This is because the hypothalamus has temporarily increased the body's internal thermostat to a higher "normal" level. As your body tries to reach this new baseline, you feel comparatively cold. 

So why does the body need the heat?

One possible reason is to make it harder for bacteria or viruses to replicate and infect our cells, O'Rourke said. A higher body temperature may also turn the immune system into a better "fighting machine," he said. For example, when our body temperature rises, cells produce heat shock proteins (HSPs), which activate immune pathways to fight off infection. HSPs are normally upregulated by cells during inflammation, as the body strives to protect itself against foreign invaders. 

"For your average older child or adult, you may experience a degree of fever for a few days, certainly two or three days, without necessarily needing to get a lot of medical attention," Dr. Kitty O'Hare, a consulting associate in the Department of Medicine at Duke University, told Live Science. 

But if you are concerned about your symptoms or they don't seem to be improving, you should contact your healthcare provider, she said. 

Sometimes when children get a high fever, for instance, they can experience convulsions called febrile seizures. Although these may be frightening, they generally last only a few minutes and are usually harmless. Nevertheless, parents should call their healthcare provider anytime their child has a seizure, even if it is during a fever, O'Hare said. 

The degree of fever also matters, O'Hare said. "It's good to get advice from your own health care provider based on your health history on how much of a fever would be problematic for you," she said. 

Depending on your age, an over-the-counter medication such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen can help alleviate the symptoms of fever. Removing a layer of clothing, taking a cold bath and drinking cool liquids can also help the fever to improve, she said. 

Increasing your body temperature during a fever takes a lot of effort — for every 1.8 F [1 C] increase in body temperature, you expend an additional 10% more energy than you would normally use to maintain your temperature. So it is important to stay well rested, O'Rourke said. 

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The Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption of 2022 was a dramatic exception. Its furious explosion from shallow waters broke the ocean surface and punched through the stratosphere, generating supercharged lighting and an atmospheric shock wave that circled the globe several times.

But there was far more to the fallout than satellite images could possibly capture or observers could report.

We know the human toll this explosion took, but now a new study investigating the underwater impacts of the Hunga-Tonga eruption has detailed just how ferociously the explosion tore open the seafloor, ripped up undersea cables, and smothered marine life.

"The eruption causes dramatic changes to nutrient and oxygen levels in the water which could have feedbacks that we are yet to understand," says first author Sarah Seabrook, a marine biogeochemist at the New Zealand National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research.

Based in New Zealand, a country closely acquainted with undersea volcanoes, Seabrook and her colleagues compared seafloor mapping surveys conducted three months after the January 2022 eruption with data collected from the same area between 2015 and 2017.

"While ocean impacts resulting from volcanic eruptions are typically hidden from view," the researchers write in their paper, "we show they can have major consequences, including widespread loss of marine life and damage to critical seafloor telecommunication links, with knock-on socioeconomic impacts."

The team also compiled a trove of data from ship-based sonar, sediment cores, geochemical analyses, water column samples, and video footage to chart the devastatingly powerful upheaval.

"No such data previously existed for an event on the scale of the 2022 Hunga volcano eruption," Seabrook and colleagues write.

"Most submerged volcanoes are poorly mapped," they add, describing the underwater impacts of shallow-water volcanoes near populated islands as a "major blind spot" in risk assessment and preparedness.

Their analyses show at least 6 cubic kilometers (km3) of seafloor was lost from within the caldera – 20 times the eruptive volume of the 1980 Mount St. Helens eruption – and an additional 3.5 km3 of material was blasted out of the Hunga volcano's submerged flanks.

To put that in perspective, previous studies of the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha'apai eruption estimated that 1.9 km3 (or 2,900 megatonnes) of material was ejected into the atmosphere.

That leaves roughly four-fifths of the ejected material in the ocean; material that was funneled into fast-moving density flows that scoured out tracks 30 meters deep in the seafloor and accumulated 22 meters (72 feet) thick in some places.

Video footage showed much of the seafloor near the caldera was devoid of marine life or smothered in ashfall three months after the eruption.

But some wildlife refugia were discovered on nearby seamounts where the topography had protected animals from the outward blast. These refugia may aid the recovery of seafloor communities, although the researchers expect the recovery to be slow.

Very fine volcanic ash was found to be muddying the water column at depths of 200 meters (655 feet) up to 20 kilometers from the caldera. If those plumes persist, it could have as-yet unknown impacts on food security for Pacific Island nations.

"Future monitoring, of both the volcanic edifice itself and the surrounding seafloor and habitats, is necessary to robustly determine the resilience and recovery of both human and natural systems to major submarine eruptions," says Seabrook.

"It will also help more broadly assess the risks posed by the many similar submerged volcanoes that exist worldwide."

In 2012, scientists nearly missed the largest deep-ocean eruption in recorded history. The blast erupted out of the previously little-known Havre Seamount in the Kermadec Islands that arc northward of New Zealand towards Tonga.

At least we've got our eye on these two now, but there are an estimated 100,000 uncharted undersea volcanoes still out there in the abyss.

The study has been published in Nature Communications.

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The check issued by the Wells Fargo Bank was dated July 23, 1976, around three months Apple after was founded, and it was payable to Radio Shack for $4.01. In the address field, it mentions the location of an answering machine and mail drop service which Jobs and Wozniak used at the time when they operated from Jobs' family garage.

1976 was the same year when Apple released its first product: Apple 1. The computer was initially intended as a kit to be soldered and assembled by the end user. But The Byte Shop owner Paul Terrell offered to buy 50 units of Apple 1, for $500 each, if it was delivered as a finished product.

Radio Shack played a significant role in the duo's history. The American retail chain was the place where Steve Wozniak purchased the TRS-80 Micro Computer System he used to build the 'blue box' that facilitated illegal long-distance calls.

Jobs and Wozniak managed to sell around 200 such boxes for $150 each and the partnership laid the foundation stone of a computer company now known as Apple Inc. The check signed in 1976 may have sold for thousands of dollars in 2023, but it's still less than half of the selling price of another check Jobs wrote in the same year.

One common thing is both the checks were signed by Jobs as "Steven Jobs." Nonetheless, it adds to the list of Apple memorabilia which includes a hard to find sealed 4GB original iPhone, an 8GB iPhone 1 that sold for $63,000, and one with a "Lucky You" sticker that managed to sell for $40,320.

The Steve Jobs Archive published a free memoir on the life of the late Apple co-founder earlier this year. It's a digital e-book that includes Jobs' past speeches, interviews, emails, some rarely-seen internal meeting transcripts, and childhood photos.

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The power outage began Saturday evening and continued for several hours.

“Step by step restorations are underway and it may take few hours to completely restore the power supply,” said the ministry in a statement.

Sri Lanka largely depends on hydro power for power generation, while coal and oil are used to cover the balance. During the dry season, the country is compelled to use more thermal power for generation of electricity.

Sri Lanka experienced several hours of daily power cuts last year for several months due to plunging water levels powering hydroelectric dams. The power crisis worsened as Sri Lanka faced difficulty in importing sufficient stocks of oil and coal after the country’s foreign reserves were depleted during an unprecedented economic crisis.

Sri Lanka plunged into am economic crisis in 2022, creating severe shortages and drawing strident protests that led to the ouster of then-President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. It declared bankruptcy in April 2022 with more than $83 billion in debt - more than half of it to foreign creditors.

Under new President Ranil Wickremesinghe, a continuous power supply has been restored. But there has been growing public dissatisfaction with the government’s efforts to increase revenue by raising electricity rates and imposing heavy new income taxes on professionals and businesses.

Sri Lanka has sought the support of the International Monetary Fund to rescue the economy.

The IMF agreed in March to a $2.9 billion bailout package, releasing the first payment shortly thereafter. However, the IMF delayed the second tranche, citing inadequate oversight and debt restructuring.

An IMF review in September said Sri Lanka’s economy was recovering but the country needed to improve its tax administration, eliminate exemptions and crack down on tax evasion.

Sri Lankan government officials have expressed confidence over the last two weeks that the IMF would provide the $334 million installment before the end of the year since the island nation received required financial assurances from its bilateral creditors, including China, Japan and India.

Copyright © 2023 The Washington Times, LLC.

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DUBAI — Global temperatures are poised to surpass a key climate threshold many thought was still years away — so quickly that some climate activists and scientists say world leaders should give up on the pretense they can still prevent disastrous levels of warming.

The United Kingdom’s Met office on Thursday warned that next year’s average global temperature could breach a key planetary warming benchmark: 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) above preindustrial levels. While it would not mark a permanent crossing of that barrier — natural fluctuations could make temperatures dip back below it the following year — remaining above it over a longer period of time would induce catastrophic sea level rise and make extreme heat a threat to life for 2 billion people. This year, the planet is on its brink.

And yet, as global leaders start their second week of talks at the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Dubai, the 1.5C warming target, which nations adopted in Paris in 2015, remains central.

“Yes, you must make compromises. But not on 1.5 degrees,” Simon Stiell, executive secretary of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, said Friday. U.S. climate envoy John F. Kerry called it a “critical guidepost.” The president of this year’s climate summit, Sultan Al Jaber of the United Arab Emirates, called it his “North Star,” meanwhile downplaying how dramatically humans would need to curtail fossil fuel to achieve it.

Others now deem the goal little more than wishful thinking.

Glen Peters, a senior researcher at the Cicero Center for International Climate Research in Norway, called it “increasingly embarrassing” to say the 1.5C goal is still within reach. Famed climate scientist James Hansen recently called 1.5 “deader than a doornail” and on Friday said anyone who claims otherwise is “lying.”

It “now looks inevitable” that global warming will surge past the 1.5C mark, said Pierre Friedlingstein of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute. That might suggest climate talks should instead hinge on whether and how humans could one day bring global temperatures back down below that threshold, instead of averting it altogether.

The emphasis on the 1.5C goal adds a note of dissonance about what is possible as policymakers at the U.N. conference, known as COP28, search for ways to cut emissions. Some speakers in Dubai have delivered their remarks about 1.5C with a pep talk fervor, and banners around the venue recite platitudes such as “Hope inspires Action.”

Climate watchers say they understand why the messaging has not kept pace with the dire science. The 1.5C goal is an issue of politics and even, for some nations, survival. Smaller, low-lying countries fought to include that target in the Paris accords, and scientists have worried about how society might respond if there is widespread acknowledgment that the 1.5C target is lost. Some fear public disengagement, or a relaxation of emissions-cutting policies, if defeat is admitted.

For now, the target is being used as a cudgel. Because extreme weather risks will continue to grow with every fractional degree of warming, the world still needs action to reduce planet-warming emissions.

“If you’re a pilot on an airplane that might crash, at some point you have the obligation to tell your passengers to brace for impact,” said Alex Flint, who has been to five COPs and runs the Alliance for Market Solutions, a conservative group in Washington that advocates for carbon taxes as a solution to climate change. “Well, it’s time to brace for impact.”

An unexpected surge of global heat

A surge of global temperatures that began this summer provided an initial picture of how a planet 1.5 degrees hotter will look: Unprecedented heat at the limits of human survival. Antarctic sea ice astonishingly far below its record minimum. Devastating floods, fires and other weather extremes that have been linked to climate change.

Then, temperature anomalies continued to accelerate through Northern Hemisphere autumn, and scientists said that planetary temperatures probably surpassed 2 degrees Celsius of warming above preindustrial levels for at least a couple of days.

The warming is especially alarming because it has been more extreme than scientists expected at the start of the year.

In March, a monthly analysis by Berkeley Earth climate scientist Robert Rohde, for example, suggested 2023 would “most likely” end up the third-, fourth- or fifth-warmest year on record. Rohde added that “considerable uncertainty remains, including the possibility of 2023 becoming a record warm year.”

But the chances of record annual average global temperatures skyrocketed to 81 percent halfway through the year, Rohde calculated, and a record became a virtual certainty after July became the Earth’s hottest single month on record.

The World Meteorological Organization, a U.N. agency, said this month that 2023 is indeed certain to break an annual global warmth record set in 2016 and tied in 2020. WMO predicted average global temperatures will end up at least 1.3 degrees Celsius warmer than a preindustrial reference period, but shy of 1.5 degrees of warming.

As countries gathered at COP28 this week, a study by the Global Carbon Project found that efforts to transform worldwide energy usage aren’t making a dent in greenhouse gas emissions. The team of scientists projected that the temperature of the planet could consistently exceed the 1.5C threshold within seven years if emission levels hold.

And then the U.K. Met Office on Friday predicted that, in 2024, global temperatures stand a chance of averaging more than 1.5 degrees higher than from 1850 to 1900, a benchmark period from before humans’ fossil fuel consumption began adding greenhouse gases to the atmosphere and warming the planet.

Current trends and an expected acceleration from an ongoing El Niño climate pattern are likely to mean that in 2024, global temperatures average somewhere between 1.34 and 1.58 degrees Celsius above preindustrial norms, the Met Office predicted.

Nick Dunstone, a Met Office scientist who led the forecast, said that level of warming “would certainly be a milestone in climate history.”

Many alarmed by speed toward 1.5C

Even if the planet warms beyond the 1.5-degree mark next year, it wouldn’t mean the world has missed the ambitious target set in Paris in 2015 to limit warming to that level. The goal would not be considered out of reach until global temperature averages rise above that threshold for multiple years in a row, something scientists project will occur around 2030 unless greenhouse gas emissions drastically diminish in the next few years.

But the speed with which the planet has begun to flirt with the 1.5C mark is nonetheless raising alarm.

Though there is a theoretical pathway for the world to meet the 1.5 goal, it would require such dramatic and immediate emissions cuts that scientists say it is virtually inconceivable. Scientists convened by the United Nations say the world would have to cut greenhouse gas emissions 43 percent by 2030. That would mean annual reductions that mirror what happened in the aftermath of the coronavirus pandemic, which coincided with the greatest economic crisis in more than a century.

“The math, I suppose you can say it’s technically possible,” said Alden Meyer, a senior associate at the climate think tank E3G who has attended 27 of 28 summits. “But it is politically impossible.”

Far more than the rhetoric, the detailed policymaking of COP reflects the harsh trajectory ahead. World powers are increasingly recognizing they need to step up funding for adaptation and the losses and damage climate change has inflicted on poor and vulnerable countries — which became the near-focal point of COP27 last year in Egypt.

The latest sign came Friday evening, in a newly released public update on the draft of the final agreement under debate in Dubai. In a call with reporters, researchers at E3G and the World Resources Institute said it contained much stronger additions for such money, especially adaptation funding.

It gave more detail on how urgent the need is for this funding in the developing world, and that accelerated support is critical to raising more money and protecting these countries, they said. It also made a new call for stimulus packages for developing countries, likely to become more common in the debate over climate finance, said Tom Evans, a policy adviser at E3G.

These changes are being driven by an increasing recognition of how far the world is away from reaching the 1.5-degree goal, said Gabrielle Swaby, a research associate at the World Resources Institute. The severe damage caused to developing countries has forced leaders to acknowledge the problem and grapple with the fact that the further out of control global warming gets, the more it adds to the cost of everything – reducing emissions, adapting to climate change and compensating hard-hit countries, she said.

“Science is telling us, showing us how much less of the carbon budget is available,” Swaby said. “The costs of inaction are greater than the costs of action at this stage.”

Scientists say it’s conceivable that the planet warms above 1.5 but that temperatures come back down later, either because of natural systems over decades and centuries or with the help of technology that pulls carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Gavin Schmidt, director of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, compared the 1.5C target to other goals of which society keeps falling short.

“We don’t want anybody to die of car accidents. We don’t want to have anybody die of preventable disease,” he said. “But still they do. Does it mean we should not strive to reduce the number of deaths from car accidents or preventable diseases? No. We have to keep on pushing for the lowest number we can get.”

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