With the new program, patients using Amazon Pharmacy will no longer have to search for and manually enter coupons from the three largest insulin makers, Novo Nordisk (NOVOb.CO), Eli Lilly (LLY.N), and Sanofi (SASY.PA), to lower the cost of their insulin to as little as $35 for a month's supply, the company said.

Novo, Lilly and Sanofi announced in March that they would slash their insulin prices by at least 70% by or in 2024, but a report from Senator Elizabeth Warren released last month said some patients were finding it difficult to get already discounted generic insulin from pharmacies at the promised lower price.

Despite Lilly lowering the list price of its Insulin Lispro to $25 per vial in May, patients were still being quoted as much as $330 for the medicine, were not being told about cheaper options when they went to pharmacies, and were finding it difficult to use Lilly's savings program, Warren's report found.

Vin Gupta, Amazon Pharmacy's Chief Medical Officer, said the report highlighted the need to make it easier for patients to get their insulin at the lowest possible prices.

"It's not easy to actually figure out how to get that low cost, even though manufacturers and Congress have moved towards that direction. Transparency here is really key," he said.

Amazon Pharmacy will also automatically apply available discounts to diabetes-related medical devices from manufacturers Dexcom and Insulet, including continuous glucose monitors and pumps, as well as to other cardiometabolic medicines such as Novo's powerful weight-loss drug Wegovy.

American Diabetes Association Chief Executive Officer Charles Henderson said Amazon's automated discounting would help the 37 million Americans with diabetes more easily access the treatments they need.

"We want those in the diabetes community to be able to make informed decisions about their diabetes care and medication costs," he said.

Amazon has worked to lure customers away from more established pharmacies like CVS and Walgreens since launching its healthcare business in late 2020, announcing this month that it had doubled its active pharmacy users over the past year.

"Customers have got a lot of choices out there, and they're going to choose what's best for them. So, we're going to create options that gives them access to these medications," Amazon Pharmacy Vice President John Love told Reuters.

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These include cancers of the head and neck, esophagus, stomach, pancreas, liver, bowel, kidney, and lung.

Cardiorespiratory fitness refers to a person's ability to do aerobic exercise, such as running, cycling, and swimming for sustained periods, or even to climb stairs. It's known to be associated with lower risks of certain cancers, but few large, long term studies of multiple cancer sites have been reported.

The researchers therefore drew on linked Swedish registry data up to the end of 2019, covering background information, medical diagnoses, and deaths for conscripts who started their military service between 1968 and 2005.

At the start of their stint, when they were aged between 16 and 25, conscripts underwent a standard battery of assessments. These included height, weight (BMI), blood pressure, muscular strength and cardiorespiratory fitness.

Conscripts with a low level of cardiorespiratory fitness were slightly more likely to be obese, more likely to have a history of alcohol and substance misuse, and to have parents with lower educational attainment than conscripts with a higher fitness level.

In all, 365,874 conscripts had a low level of cardiorespiratory fitness; 519,652 had a moderate level; and 340,952 had a high level.

The final analysis included more than 1 million men (1,078,000), 84,117 (7%) of whom subsequently developed cancer in at least one site during an average monitoring period of 33 years.

Compared with men with a low level of fitness at conscription, higher cardiorespiratory fitness was linearly associated with a lower risk of developing specific types of cancer.

It was associated with a 5% lower risk of rectal cancer (2337); a 12% lower risk of pancreatic cancer (1280); an 18% lower risk of bowel cancer (3222); a 19% lower risk of head and neck cancer (2738 men); a 20% lower risk of kidney cancer (1753); a 21% lower risk of stomach cancer (902); a 39% lower risk of food pipe cancer (689); a 40% lower risk of liver cancer (1111); and a 42% lower risk of lung cancer (1635).

But higher cardiorespiratory fitness was also associated with a 7% heightened risk of prostate cancer (14, 232 men) and a 31% heightened risk of skin cancer (23, 064). Prostate cancer screening and exposure to sunlight might account for these findings, suggest the researchers.

This is an observational study, so no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect, and the researchers acknowledge that they didn't have full data on other potentially influential lifestyle risk factors, such as diet, alcohol intake, and smoking, in particular. Nor were they able to track any changes in cardiorespiratory fitness over time or gather any genetic information on participants.

Nevertheless, their findings are reflected in the American Society of Clinical Oncology guidelines on exercise during cancer treatment, they point out.

And they conclude, "This study shows that higher fitness in healthy young men is associated with a lower hazard of developing 9 out of 18 investigated site-specific cancers, with the most clinically relevant hazard rates in the gastrointestinal tract."

"These results could be used in public health policymaking, further strengthening the incentive for promoting interventions aimed at increasing [cardiorespiratory fitness] in youth."

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In 1938, two German chemists, Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann, discovered nuclear fission. Fission is the reaction in which the nucleus of an atom splits into two or more smaller nuclei, releasing huge amounts of energy.

Harness this power, physicists said, and you could create a bomb so powerful it could flatten entire cities.

Almost immediately, German scientists commenced work on an atomic bomb project. Backed by a strong German industrial base and military interest, the Uranverein (uranium club) employed some of the world's top nuclear experts. 

Although the project was secret, word got out via scientists fleeing persecution in Nazi Germany. Among them was Albert Einstein, who warned US President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1939.

Anxiety over the development of a Nazi secret weapon rippled around the world.

The US response was The Manhattan Project. Led by J. Robert Oppenheimer, the program began in summer 1942, researching ways to build a fission bomb using the elements uranium and plutonium.

Fear of the rival Nazi project spurred the US government on. With huge financial backing, it took just three years for Oppenheimer and his team to successfully test their first nuclear weapon. The first "live fire" nuclear weapon hit Hiroshimathree weeks later.

Farm Hall recordings

"I don't believe a word of the whole thing," said Werner Heisenberg, then-head of the German nuclear research program, when he heard the news about Hiroshima.

At the time, Heisenberg and the nine other senior nuclear physicists working on the German project were incarcerated in an English estate called Farm Hall. The British secretly recorded the scientists, hoping to discover secrets of the Nazi nuclear projects.

The other German physicists shared his incredulity. Most believed it was a bluff to induce a Japanese surrender. "I didn't think it would be possible for another twenty years," Otto Hahn had said.

Heisenberg and Hahn's reactions show just how far the German program was from developing a nuclear weapon.

"The US completely overestimated the German development of the Uranproject. It wasn't until Farm Hall they understood that," Takuma Melber, a historian at Heidelberg University in Germany, told DW.

Nuclear program scrapped

By the time the The Manhattan Project was up and running, the German nuclear weapons program was already dead. The German researchers knew they would be unable to separate the isotopes necessary for creating an atomic bomb in less than five years. They never achieved a successful chain reaction and had no method of enriching uranium.

The nuclear weapons program was scrapped in July 1942, with the research splitting into nine different institutes around Germany.

"Before 1942 it was a military project, but then it became only a civil project," Melber told DW.

From then on, the goal shifted away from a nuclear weapon to building a nuclear reactor that could sustain nuclear fission on a smaller scale.

Heisenberg moved his research to a cave laboratory under a castle in Haigerloch, Germany, where he and his team built an experimental nuclear reactor comprised of uranium cubes dangling from wire and submerged in a tank of heavy water.

This experiment was the furthest the German nuclear program progressed, but the reactor never worked — there wasn't enough uranium present in the reactor's core to achieve a chain reaction.

But they were close. Scientists now believe that if the reactors had contained 50% more uranium, Heisenberg could have created the first nuclear reactor.

Werner Heisenberg's experimental nuclear reactor paved the way for the development of nuclear power stations in the mid-20th century.

German disorganization and persecution

With a head start and brilliant scientists working on the project, why did Germany fail to develop its nuclear program?

For one, Germany was bleeding scientists. Many Jewish and Polish scientists like Lise Meitner, a Jewish physicist who played an instrumental role in Hahn and Strassmann's discovery of nuclear fission, fled persecution.  A number of these refugees fled to the UK and US, where they worked on the Manhattan Project. 

Other scientists were drafted into the German army. 

Wartime pressure in Germany also rendered scarce some of the resources necessary for the research, like sufficient amounts of enriched uranium, said Melber. Water, which is needed to cool nuclear reactors, was also in short supply.

"Heavy water production was underway in Nazi-occupied Norway, but Allied and Norwegian forces attacked these facilities," said Melber.

But ultimately it was the lack of political support that halted progress.

"Hitler had difficulties understanding the project" and cut support of it in 1942, Melber said. Without this backing, the nuclear program had very few resources to draw on, especially compared to the US Manhattan Project, which employed 500,000 people, about 1% of the US workforce, and cost the US government around $2 billion (today around $24 billion, or €22 billion).

By comparison, the Uranverein and subsequent programs involved fewer than a thousand scientists and were budgeted at 8 million reichsmarks, equivalent to about $24 million dollars today.

A congress of international scientists in 1927. Among them are Werner Heisenberg, who led the German nuclear project, and Niels Bohr,

who worked on the rival Manhattan Project

Make reactors, not bombs

The Farm Hall tapes also provide another reason for the German failure — the scientists themselves were morally opposed to the atomic bomb and secretly sabotaged the effort. 

One of the scientists, Carl Friedrich von Weizsaecker, said, "I believe that the reason we didn't do it was because all the physicists didn't want to do it, on principle. If we had all wanted Germany to win the war, we would have succeeded."

Heisenberg himself was opposed to the idea of a nuclear bomb, saying "at the bottom of my heart I was really glad it was to be an engine and not a bomb."

The German scientists at Farm Hall went on to hope that "history will record… Americans and the English developed this ghastly weapon of war… and that the Germans produced a workable engine."

Eighty years on, the irony is that the modern German state hosts US nuclear weapons, believing them vital for Germany's security, but is vehemently opposed to nuclear power.

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The idea of gravity as we know it has been around for a long time. More than 300 years ago, Isaac Newton first shared his theory of gravitation, describing how massive objects are attracted to each other. Then, around a hundred years ago, Albert Einstein refined and expanded upon Newton’s ideas to create the theory of relativity—explaining gravity as the way objects, especially at the extremes across the universe, warp the fabric of space around them.

But there are still a few mysteries in the cosmos that even the well-tested ideas of relativity can’t explain. The biggest one? Dark matter, the most notorious problem in astronomy today. Many scientists think dark matter is some kind of yet-unknown particle that obeys traditional laws of gravity.

Others think the issue is actually gravity itself. In that view, perhaps we need a modified theory of gravity—also known as MOND, for MOdified Newtonian Dynamics—where, at the largest and smallest scales, gravity acts differently from the usual Newton or Einstein theories.

MOND is often met with significant skepticism, because Newton and Einstein’s ideas of gravity have had so much success. But new observations recently published in The Astrophysical Journal claim to provide evidence for modified gravity by taking a detailed look at the ways binary stars move around each other. 

“The new results provide direct evidence that Newton’s theory simply breaks down” at certain scales, explains Kyu-Hyun Chae, astronomer at Sejong University in Seoul, South Korea and author of the new paper claiming evidence for MOND. Chae used data from the European Gaia satellite, which has been measuring the positions and motions of stars with unprecedented precision over the past decade. In particular, he looked at binary stars with particularly wide, far-apart orbits to measure their accelerations, for which MOND and traditional theories predict different values. 

These spaced-out stars move pretty slowly, enabling tests of gravity where there are tiny accelerations. These small accelerations are where the two theories of gravity diverge, and modified gravity predicts the stars will move 30 to 40 percent faster than they would under “normal” gravity—precisely what Chae claims to have seen in the data. At the small scales of binary stars, too, according to Chae, dark matter can’t really have an effect, so it can’t explain the observed differences from the predictions of traditional gravity.

Xavier Hernandez, an astronomer at the National Autonomous University of Mexico who first proposed the idea of testing gravity with wide binary systems but wasn’t involved in the new work, has confidence in these new results, especially since they complement his past work. “Two largely independent and complementary approaches have been shown to yield the same result,” he says, emphasizing that this a clear example of the scientific process.

The best explanation for Chae’s observations is a particular flavor of modified gravity theories, called AQUAL MOND. But just because gravity might not be a perfect match to one theory, doesn’t mean we need to throw out everything we have. “There are many versions of modified gravity because it can be anything that goes beyond Einstein’s theory of general relativity,” said physicist Sergei Ketov in a news release from the University of Tokyo Kavli Institute. “Modified gravity does not rule out Einstein’s theory, but it shows its boundaries.”

Not all in the scientific community are convinced this is actually a “smoking-gun” for MOND, though. “The quick answer is that this result is a confluence of three things: good science, bad science, and the ugly state of science news,” wrote science communicator Ethan Siegel on Friday in his column Starts with a Bang. Siegel and other scientists have expressed concerns about the reliability of the observations used in Chae’s study—with some even publishing contradictory research—and discontent with news articles creating the impression that this work is a decisive victory for modified gravity. Depending on what stars scientists include in their analysis, the results vary, and these scientists currently disagree on what assumptions are the correct ones to make.

“If anyone is truly skeptical, he/she should try to disprove my results,” counters Chae. However, he empathizes with the motivation for some of the disbelief. Current modified gravity theories are “like the Bohr model of atoms without quantum physics developed yet. But, we need to remember that quantum physics was eventually developed,” he adds. (The Bohr model is the classic elementary-school science view of an atom, with electrons orbiting a nucleus, which was later replaced by the much fuzzier and probabilistic view of quantum mechanics.)

Only time and many other tests will be able to determine which theory will come out on top, and if dark matter is a particle or just a tweak to gravity. “We have these binary stars orbiting each other in front of us, and not doing what Newton said they should be doing,” says Hernandez. “Not considering modified gravity is no longer an option.”

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A recent retrospective study, however, suggests the thymus gland is not nearly as expendable as experts once thought.

US researchers found that those who get their thymus removed face an increased risk of death from any cause later in life.

They also face an increased risk of developing cancer.

The study is purely observational, which means it cannot show that removing the thymus directly causes cancer or other fatal illnesses.

But researchers are concerned by their findings. Until we know more, they argue that preserving the thymus "should be a clinical priority" where possible.

"The magnitude of risk was something we would have never expected," oncologist David Scadden told Anne Manning at the Harvard Gazette.

In childhood, the thymus is known to play a critical role in developing the immune system. When the gland is removed at a young age, patients show long-term reductions in T-cells, which are a type of white blood cell that combats germs and disease.

Kids without a thymus also tend to have an impaired immune response to vaccines.

By the time a person hits puberty, however, the thymus shrivels up and produces far fewer T-cells for the body. It can seemingly be removed without immediate harm, and because it sits in front of the heart, it is often taken out during cardiothoracic surgery.

But while some patients with thymus cancer or chronic autoimmune diseases, like myasthenia gravis, require a thymectomy, in which the thymus is surgically removed, the gland isn't always a hindrance.

It could even be a big help.

Using patient data from a state healthcare system, researchers in Boston compared the outcomes of patients who had undergone cardiothoracic surgery: more than 6,000 people (controls) who did not have their thymus removed and 1,146 people who did have their thymus removed.

Those who underwent a thymectomy were almost twice as likely as controls to die within 5 years, even after accounting for sex, age, race, and those with cancer of the thymus, myasthenia gravis, or postoperative infections.

Patients who had their thymus removed were also twice as likely to develop cancer within 5 years of surgery.

What's more, this cancer was generally more aggressive and often recurred after treatment compared to the control group.

Why these associations exist is unknown, but researchers suspect a lack of thymus is somehow messing with the healthy function of the adult immune system.

A subset of patients in the study who had undergone a thymectomy showed fewer diverse T-cell receptors in their bloodwork, which could possibly contribute to the development of cancer or autoimmune diseases after surgery.

"Together, these findings support a role for the thymus contributing to new T-cell production in adulthood and to the maintenance of adult human health," the authors of the study conclude.

Their results, they say, strongly suggest that the thymus plays a functionally important role in our continued health, right up to the bitter end.

The study was published in The New England Journal of Medicine.

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How do you put EPA mileage numbers to the test? You could buy a wind tunnel and a lab and start doing a massive science experiment. Or you could find 20 auto writers, put them in 20 different cars, and tell them they're in a contest of efficiency where the winner gets bragging rights.

 

Every year, the Automobile Journalists Association of Canada does the latter. About 20 of the country's top journalists come to take part in EcoRun, an event where automakers are invited to bring their most efficient models to one place for three days of fighting to use less.

 

In the past, it was all gas and diesel, but as the market has changed, so has the EcoRun lineup. This year, every vehicle had some form of electrification, and about half were fully electric.

 

EcoRun 2023 had 10 legs. Each driver swapped to another car at the end of each leg. Consumption of fuel and electricity were recorded. Rotating 18 drivers through the 18 vehicles (each driver drove 10 cars) cancels out most of the influence of one driver who doesn't care about winning. But all these auto enthusiasts care about winning.

 

Driving every vehicle on the same days and the same route in the same conditions levels the playing field almost as well as a test cell. That's why I'm calling this the best way to show how some of the most efficient vehicles on the market compare to their official estimates. Here they are, ranked from worst-performing to best, in relation to their EPA combined estimates.

 

Oh, and all of the PHEVs started each day with no battery charge. It was the best way to make it fair and was also the most representative of the long road trips this event is meant to simulate.

Toyota Prius Prime: 48 mpg

When Toyota redesigned the Prius, it finally made the car stylish; there's no denying the new car turns heads. Toyota also decided to emphasize performance over outright efficiency and gave the Prius Prime 220 hp (164 kW) and a 2.0L gas engine.

 

The Prime has an impressive EPA fuel economy figure of 52 miles per gallon (4.5 L/100 km), the best of any vehicle on this test. But on the road, the car delivered 48.1 mpg (4.9 L/100 km), 7.5 percent below its window sticker. Prime's best single segment was 62 mpg (3.8L/100 km), and its worst was 33 mpg (7.1 L/100km).

Hyundai Tucson: 34.5 mpg

The Hyundai Tucson offers conventional, hybrid, and PHEV drivelines, giving buyers plenty of choice. We had what was probably the best one for road tripping, the Tucson Hybrid, with a 1.6L turbocharged engine and 59 hp (44 kW) electric motor. The combination makes for 226 hp (169 kW) and 258 lb-ft (350 Nm) of torque. Hyundai uses a conventional six-speed automatic (minus a torque converter) for its hybrid drive system, and that makes it feel much more like a gas-only vehicle than the usual somewhat mushy CVTs used in other hybrids.

 

Pairing a turbocharger with a hybrid motor is unconventional since it adds complexity and cost to the system. Here it might also take away from the vehicle's fuel efficiency. Against an EPA rating of 37 mpg (6.4 L/100 km), the Tucson hybrid returned 34.5 (6.8 L/100 km). At 6.7 percent under estimates, it was the second of just two vehicles that didn't beat the official rating. Tucson faired worst in the uphill climb sections where fuel economy dipped to 24 mpg (9.7 L/100 km), a figure more in line with the bigger SUVs. On flat ground, it dropped to around 47 mpg (5 L/100 km).

Toyota Mirai: 74.7 MPGe

Next on the list was the Toyota Mirai fuel cell electric vehicle. Toyota continues to push the hydrogen fuel cell vehicle, but despite the massive automaker backing it, the technology and infrastructure needed to bring hydrogen to the mass market still seems awfully far away.

 

If you forget about filling stations, it's hard to deny that the Mirai is an amazing vehicle. It's quiet and smooth—basically a zero-emissions Avalon that's much better-looking. It also promises gas-like fill-ups instead of longer EV charge sessions. And it's efficient, returning 74.7 MPGe (2.22 mi/kWh) against an official rating of 74 (2.2 mi/kWh). One percent better than the estimate and just 0.84 kilograms of hydrogen for every 100 km 62 miles) of driving.

Honda Accord Hybrid: 44.7 mpg

Honda has redesigned the Accord for 2023, and that included a more powerful hybrid drive system that now delivers 247 lb-ft (335 Nm) of torque. Honda's front-drive system is unique in that it doesn't use a transmission at all. Instead, one of the two motors powers the front wheels in nearly every situation. In those rare situations where it doesn't, the gas engine drives the wheels directly thanks to a clutch pack. This happens at highway speeds, where many vehicles would use a 1:1 transmission ratio anyway. Honda says that this unusual arrangement is more efficient. It's probably also cheaper since it leaves out one of the most expensive components in a vehicle.

 

The Accord Hybrid Touring has an EPA-estimated 44 miles per gallon, and on EcoRun, it returned 44.7 mpg (5.3 L/100 km), 1.7 percent better than expected. Accord was also extremely consistent, with most legs of the trip posting numbers right around 53 mpg (4.4 L/100 km). Its worst leg was a mountain climb where the Accord delivered 30 mpg (7.8 L/100 km).

Honda CR-V: 38.5 mpg

Look under the hood of the 2023 Honda CR-V and you'll find the same hybrid drive system as the Accord, but with some extra hardware to deliver all-wheel drive. The AWD system and CR-V's larger frontal area cut into fuel efficiency, but the two return similar figures compared with their official estimates.

 

The CR-V Hybrid has an EPA estimate of 37 mpg (6.4 L/100 km), and we saw 38.5 (6.1 L/100 km), 4 percent better than estimated. Interestingly, it was about 6 mpg behind the Accord on each leg.

Toyota Corolla Hybrid AWD: 50.7 mpg

The most impressive part of the Toyota Corolla's figure? It had higher fuel economy than the Prius Prime, despite the extra weight of all-wheel drive. Corolla's 1.8 L engine and the electric motors driving the front and rear wheels on this AWD model deliver just 138 hp (103 kW), well under Prime's figure, and that may be what led to it scoring 50.7 mpg (4.6 L/100 km) on the test. That's 5.7 percent better than the 48 mpg (4.9 L/100 km) official estimate.

Lexus RX 500h: 28.6 mpg

Lexus sent the RX 500h hybrid, a model it calls a performance hybrid. Instead of the 2.5 L four-cylinder normally found in the larger Toyota and Lexus hybrids, including the RX 350h, the RX 500h applies hybrid drive to the company's 2.4 L turbocharged four-cylinder. The result is 376 hp (280 kW) and some rapid acceleration for a Lexus.

 

Its fuel economy estimate is 27 mpg (8.7 L/100 km), which isn't exactly high up on this list of fuel sippers. On the road, the Lexus RX 500h delivered 28.6 mpg (8.2 L/100 km), beating its estimate by 6.1 percent. It returned the worst single-segment figure—20 mpg (11.9L/100 km)—which was matched by the Range Rover PHEV on the same leg.

Polestar 2: 108.5 MPGe

The first electric vehicle on this list is the Polestar 2. We drove a dual-motor long-range model that promises 100 MPGe (3 mi/kWh, 20.7 kWh/100 km) and an official EPA range of 260 miles. On the test, the dual-motor car returned the lowest efficiency of any of the EVs, but it's hard to call 108.2 MPGe (3.2 mi/kWh, 19.4 kWh/100 km) a disappointment. That number suggests the Polestar 2 would be able to manage closer to 280 miles on a charge, which is a significant difference.

Kia Niro PHEV: 54.4 mpg

Kia's Niro PHEV returned the best economy of all of the combustion-engine vehicles on the EcoRun test. The boxy crossover shape doesn't look like it would cut through the air, but the lack of interior noise suggests it's quite smooth. It also shows that the polarizing rear side blades do their job of channeling air around the rear of the vehicle.

 

Niro's 1.6 L four-cylinder and electric motor return 180 hp (134 kW) and 195 lb-ft (265 Nm) of torque. With that powertrain, it returned 54.5 mpg, 11.1 percent better than the 49 mpg (4.8 L/100 km) rating. The Niro turned in better than 52 mpg (4.5 L/100 km) on every leg, with a best of 71 mpg (3.3 L/100 km), the best of the entire event. Niro PHEV's estimated electric range is 33 miles.

 

Oh, and the Niro PHEV was on snow tires for some reason, making the figure even more impressive.

Hybrid fuel economy tricks

Driving hybrids from Honda, Kia, Hyundai, and Toyota in succession showed that Toyota's vehicles operate very differently from the rest. In a Toyota, I've always found it easy to cruise along at around 60–80 mpg (3–4 L/100 km) in steady-state driving with it more difficult to engage EV-only mode.

 

In the Honda, Kia, and Hyundai, the instantaneous fuel economy was either at zero or 25 mpg (10 L/100 km). There was little to no middle ground. It was much easier to drive these vehicles in electric-only mode, even at highway speeds, and easy to do it for a longer time. Though they go about it in different ways, they seemed to achieve a similar result but required different driving styles. Toyota's was less work.

Lexus RZ 450e: 120.5 MPGe

When Lexus announced the range for its first EV, the RZ 450e, the reception was less than enthusiastic. The company promised just 196 miles from a 71.4 kWh battery, but at the time, it touted the vehicle's efficiency as being more important than overall range.

 

In EcoRun testing, the car managed to beat its 102 MPGe (3.0 mi/kWh 20.7 kWh/100 km) rating by 18.2 percent. That's efficient, but its 3.6 miles per kWh (17.3 kWh/100 km) consumption figure was matched by some much larger, more powerful, and longer-range EVs.

Range Rover P440e: 25.1 mpg

The Range Rover P440e was by far the heaviest and bulkiest vehicle in this test, and it was also the most expensive, which explains how it manages an EPA range of just 48 miles from a 38 kWh battery pack. Using the combustion engine on the road, the Range Rover managed 25.1 mpg (9.4 L/100 km), 19.4 percent better than its 21 mpg (11.2 L/100 km) EPA rating. Crucially, that figure is 40 percent better than the similarly powerful V8 Range Rover is estimated to get on the combined cycle, so this big bruiser will save fuel compared to is petrol-powered siblings.

Mazda CX-90: 30.0 mpg

Mazda's first plug-in hybrid, the three-row CX-90, also had a solid showing in the road trip test. The CX-90 managed 30 mpg (7.8 L/100 km), 5 better than its 25 mpg (9.4 L/100 km) EPA combined rating, for a 20 percent increase. Mazda also offered one feature that no other vehicle in this test did: It had separate gauges to show instantaneous gas consumption and electric power use.

 

The same dial showed the average consumption for each power source. This made it easier to tell what power source you were using at any given moment. It also made hypermiling a lot easier, and I give the gauge more than a little credit for my own 39-mile-per-gallon (6.0 L/100 km) stint in the CX-90.

Hyundai Ioniq 6: 128.5 MPGe

Hyundai brought two Ioniq 6 sedans to EcoRun, and this showed two strange results: One car consistently returned higher efficiency, from a low of 10 percent to a high of 35 percent when the same legs were compared. The high result demonstrated just how much of a difference an individual driver could make. The lower result seems to be a difference between individual vehicles.

 

The only obvious difference between the two Ioniq 6 cars was that the one with less efficiency wore shiny paint versus the matte gray better-performing one. Some wind tunnel testing might be in order to find out more about the effect, but that's beyond the scope of this event (and shouldn't account for such a big difference anyway).

 

The efficiency of Ioniq 6's streamlined shape is immediately obvious at highway speeds—not from the gauges but from the sounds it doesn't make. Compared with the other EVs here, there is almost no wind noise.

 

To make the Ioniq 6 even more efficient, Hyundai lets you reduce maximum power output by picking the Eco drive mode. You can power down the front axle on dual-motor trims as well, which again makes it use less electricity.

 

The two Ioniqs averaged 129 MPGe (3.8 mi/kWh, 16.3 kWh/100 km), 25 percent better than the official estimate of 103 (3.1 mi/kWh, 20.0 kWh/100 km).

Hyundai Ioniq 5: 122.1 MPGe

Hyundai's boxier Ioniq 5 is estimated to hit 98 MPGe (2.9 mi/kWh, 21.4 kWh/100 km) on the EPA's combined cycle, just five fewer than the Ioniq 6 despite being much boxier and taller. On the road, the Ioniq 5, which shares its Eco drive mode tricks with the 6, averaged 122 MPGe (3.6 mi/kWh 17.3 kWh/100 km). Like the Ioniq 6, that's 25 percent better than its rating, showing that Hyundai might be being deliberately conservative in its range ratings.

Mercedes-Benz EQE 500 4Matic: 118.6 MPGe

The Mercedes-EQ EQE 500 4matic sedan is big and bulky, and it's as strangely shaped outside as it is luxurious inside. The EQE's odd shape clearly cuts through the air, helping it to deliver 119 MPGe (3.5 mi/kWh, 17.8 kWh/100 km) versus an EPA estimate of 94 (2.8 mi/kWh, 22.2 kWh/100 km). That's 26 percent better, just edging out the Hyundai Ioniqs.

Genesis Electrified GV70: 119.5 MPGe

Automakers keep chasing aerodynamic efficiency, but models like the Genesis Electrified GV70 show there's more to the formula than just the wind tunnel. The electric GV70 is wider and taller than the EQE, with more ground clearance, and those are great ways to ruin your total aerodynamic drag figure. Still, the GV70 beat the EQE and nearly matched the Lexus RZ with 120 MPGe (3.5 mi/kWh, 17.8 kWh/100 km). That figure is 31 percent above its 91 MPGe (2.7 mi/kWh, 23 kWh/100 km) EPA rating.

Kia Niro EV: 156.2 MPGe

Kia completely redesigned the Niro last year, and it once again kept the uncommon combination of EV, PHEV, and hybrid models. The unassuming Niro EV managed the highest overall score on this test with a 156 MPGe (4.6 mi/kWh. 13.5 kWh/100 km) average. It was second for beating its EPA estimates as well, 38 percent better than its 113 MPGe (3.4 mi/kWh, 18.3 kWh/100 km) window sticker figure. That shows the Kia could have managed 350 miles instead of the 253 miles the EPA suggests, which is very impressive.

Jeep Wrangler Unlimited 4xe: 28.2 mpg

What vehicle fared best compared with its window sticker figure? The one that's shaped like a brick and has a suspension lift and knobby all-terrain tires: the Jeep Wrangler 4xe.

 

The 4xe's window sticker shows that it should only manage 20 miles per gallon (11.8 L/100 km) on the EPA's combined cycle. In this test, the 4xe managed 28.2 mpg (8.3 L/100 km)—that's 41 percent better than suggested. It's the second-worst fuel economy score of the group, just beating out the Range Rover PHEV (and just behind the RX500h), but using half the expected amount of fuel in a seriously thirsty vehicle is an important accomplishment.

 

The Wrangler doesn't use any special tricks to improve its efficiency. It simply relies on how much more efficient electric motors are compared with a gas engine to boost economy from miserable to acceptable.

The defending champion

I said up top that the prize for EcoRun entrants was bragging rights, but there was more than just the knowledge of winning on the line. Each year, the winner gets a green jersey to rub in the faces of everyone else at the event. OK, we don't take it that seriously. The jersey is more like a trophy that sits in your closet instead of a shelf. This year, I took home the green jersey, becoming the event's first repeat winner and letting me blow my own horn just a bit. Until next year, at least, because there's always someone who tries a little harder.

 

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One example of this is the “Blessing Strangers” trend on TikTok, where content creators surprise unsuspecting strangers with gifts. Even high-profile, mainstream celebrities like Drake have embraced this format, as seen in his 2018 music video for “God’s Plan,” where he gave away nearly a million dollars to people in need in Miami.

While there are certainly ethical considerations with using people’s reactions to kindness for online clout, these documented acts of kindness validate one thing that science has repeatedly pointed out: it may not always be obvious to us, but people are highly receptive to random acts of kindness.

For example, a recent study published in Current Directions in Psychological Science explored how people perceive the impact of their acts of kindness on others. The study involved 101 children aged 4 to 17 and 99 adults visiting a museum in Chicago. Each participant was given two pencils and encouraged to give one away to another visitor. Afterward, they were asked to predict how the recipient would perceive their act of kindness and how it made them, the giver, feel. The results showed that both children and adults tended to underestimate the positive impact of their small act of kindness, which can hold them back from engaging in prosocial behavior.

This highlights the importance of questioning the barriers to kindness that exist in our minds and being more aware of the potential impact of our kindness on others.

Here’s how the viral trend of giving reveals two science-backed benefits of kindness for ourselves and others.

1. Spontaneity Is Underrated, Especially When It Comes To Being Kind

One of the benefits of kindness is that it can make us feel good about ourselves. When we do something nice for someone else, we activate the reward system in our brain, which releases feel-good hormones like oxytocin and dopamine. These hormones can enhance our mood, lower our blood pressure and strengthen our immune system.

One 2020 meta-analysis published in Psychological Bulletin reviewed 201 independent studies and found that there was a link between prosocial behavior and well-being. The strength of this link depended on many factors, including the type of kindness, the definition of well-being and the giver’s age, gender and other demographic factors.

Interestingly, the results of the analysis showed that between unplanned acts of kindness (like helping a blind stranger cross the road) and organized acts of kindness (like volunteering in a soup kitchen), informal helping had more well-being benefits. This is likely because informal helping is more casual and may more easily lead to forming social connections. Informal helping is also more varied and less likely to become stale or monotonous, which means we can do more of it while minimizing burnout and maximizing well-being.

At the end of the day, helping someone is not a zero-sum game, where one person’s gain is another’s loss. In reality, it is a win-win situation, where both the giver and the receiver benefit from the exchange.

2. Kindness Is Highly Contagious

Even one act of kindness can potentially spark a chain-reaction that spreads joy and positivity through the community.

One classic 2010 study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences found that cooperative behavior can spread through social networks by degrees of separation. The study used a series of experiments to show that when one person behaves generously, it inspires others to behave generously later, toward different people.

For example, if Alice is kind to Bob, Bob may be inspired to be kind to Carol, who may then be kind to Dave, and so on.

In this way, kindness can spread across social networks and communities, creating a ripple effect of positivity that persists over time, with people who have been exposed to kindness continuing to be more generous even weeks later.

Conclusion

Kindness is a skill that can be learned and practiced. By being kind to others, we can improve our own well-being and happiness, as well as inspire more kindness and cooperation in our communities. The social media trend of giving shows us how contagious kindness can be, and how much joy it can bring to ourselves and others. So the next time you see someone performing an act of kindness on social media, remember that you too have the power to spontaneously spread joy and positivity through your own actions.

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For anyone paying the slightest bit of attention this shouldn't be a surprise. The heartbreaking disasters still cascading around the world have converted Earth's fever into a painful reality.

"NASA data confirms what billions around the world literally felt: temperatures in July 2023 made it the hottest month on record. In every corner of the country, Americans are right now experiencing firsthand the effects of the climate crisis," says NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

"The science is clear. We must act now to protect our communities and [our livable] planet; it's the only one we have."

From July 3 to August 7 we experienced 36 days straight of temperatures higher than the previous record.

The mass of fossil fuels we've poured into our atmosphere, coupled with Earth's shift from La Nino to El Niño, has forced tens of millions of people to direcftly endure the severe heat of recent few months. Many in China have sought refuge from the heat in air raid shelters, while hundreds succumbed to heat-related illnesses.

That excess energy has wrought havoc on Earth's atmospheric, glacial, and ocean systems. As fires ravage Canada, Russia, Europe, Africa, and Hawaii, storm and monsoon-fueled floods struck parts of the US, Middle East, Asia and Europe.

Temperature anomalies for July 2023. (NOAA)

In light of these records NOAA predicts 2023 has a 50 percent chance of being the hottest year we've experienced since we humans began keeping records.

"2023 to date has been the third warmest on record," NOAA chief scientist Sarah Kapnick told AFP .

"It is virtually certain – over 99 percent chance – that 2023 will rank among the five warmest years on record with a nearly 50 percent probability that 2023 will rank warmest on record."

We are in uncharted territory.

"The biggest impact of El Niño will actually occur in 2024," director of the NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies, Gavin Schmidt, told AFP. "So we're anticipating that not only is 2023 going to be exceptionally warm and possibly a record warm year, but we anticipate that 2024 will be warmer still."

All this is happening at only about 1.1°C of warming and we've currently locked in about 0.4°C more. It's already too late for many animals, ecosystems, some homes, and many individual people.

Coral reefs off the US coast experienced 100 percent mortality during this heat, which also interrupted attempts to aid reef recovery and increase their resilience.

But this doesn't mean it's too late to act. Every fraction of a degree we can mitigate will save countless future lives.

What's more, while frightening, these extremes and their associated events are well within expected climate model projections when the El Niño conditions are accounted for.

"Just because things are not "worse than we thought" in terms of global temperatures does not mean that the problem is not severe and getting worse," explains Berkley climatologist Zeke Hausfather in a blog post.

After decades of warnings, stopping fossil fuel emissions still remains the top priority, yet the companies responsible continue to reap mind-blowing profits with continued support of world leaders.

Unless we make some drastic, system-wide changes, Earth's fever is here to stay.

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Other authors of the work come from Brigham & Women's Hospital, the University of Chicago, and Analog Devices.

The work, reported in the journal Nature, significantly advances earlier research reported in a 2018 issue of Science.

The current pill is more than six times smaller than the prototype reported in Science, conforming to safe, ingestible dosage forms on the market. It has also been designed to detect key biological molecules, such as nitric oxide and byproducts of hydrogen sulfide, which are important signals and mediators of the inflammation associated with bowel diseases.

Current techniques for diagnosing diseases inside the gut can be invasive (think of a colonoscopy or other endoscopic procedure), and can't detect molecular biomarkers of disease in real time. The latter is a problem because several important biomarkers are very short-lived, so they disappear before current techniques can detect them.

The new pill, which has been successfully tested in pigs, combines specially-engineered living bacteria with electronics and a tiny battery. When the bacteria sense a molecule of interest, they produce light (the bacteria by themselves have also been successfully tested outside of animals and in mice). The pill electronics then convert that light into a wireless signal that can be transmitted through the body to a smart phone or other computer in real time as the pill travels through the gut.

"The inner workings of the human gut are still one of the final frontiers of science. Our new pill could unlock a wealth of information about the body's function, its relationship with the environment, and the impact of disease and therapeutic interventions," says Timothy Lu, an MIT associate professor of biological engineering and of electrical engineering and computer science. Lu, who is also affiliated with MIT's Materials Research Laboratory and Senti Biosciences, is a senior author of the work described in Nature.

A potential game changer

Roughly seven million people around the world suffer from inflammatory bowel diseases (IBDs) like colitis or Crohn's disease.

"One of the most challenging aspects of monitoring IBDs is the anticipation of clinical flares that often happen in these patients and that dictate pharmacological management of their diseases. At the moment we have no robust biomarkers that predict an upcoming inflammatory flare and, therefore, patients often experience severe symptoms that require hospitalization to be properly managed," says Professor Alessio Fassano, MD, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health. Fassano was not involved in the research.

"This system may represent a game changer in the management of IBDs in terms of early diagnosis, interception of disease flare ups, and optimization of a therapeutic plan," Fassano says.

In the Nature paper, the researchers showed that the smart pill could detect nitric oxide, a short-lived molecule that is associated with many IBDs.

Importantly, the sensors could also detect different concentrations of nitric oxide. "That will allow us to differentiate between a normal situation and disease," says Maria Eugenia Inda, a Pew Postdoctoral Fellow in MIT's Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS) and Department of Biological Engineering (BE). It's also important because biomarker levels vary greatly among patients.

Understanding the gut

The team says the pill could be tweaked to detect other key biomarkers. As a result, Inda is also excited about the potential for the system to give scientists a much better understanding of the gut microbiome, or the delicate environment that harbors the microbes key to digesting food.

Currently the gut is like a black box. "We still don't fully understand it because it's difficult to access and study. We lack the tools to explore it," she says. "Knowing more about the gut chemical environment could help us prevent disease by identifying factors that cause inflammation before the inflammation takes over."

Beyond the gut, the team's combination of microbes and electronics could have broad use for health monitoring. "We played to the strengths of the biology and the electronics—our tiny pill shows what is possible when we can bridge bacterial sensing with wireless communication," says Miguel Jimenez, a research scientist in MIT's Department of Mechanical Engineering (ME). Inda and Jimenez are co-first authors of the paper.

"Through this development we describe a unique platform for the evaluation of the GI tract which we anticipate can help many," says Giovanni Traverso, an associate professor in ME, a gastroenterologist at Brigham and Women's Hospital, and one of the senior authors of the study.

A fantastic voyage

Inda compared the research to The Fantastic Voyage, a 1966 film about four scientists who shrink themselves to fit into a tiny submarine that travels through the arteries of a sick man to treat a problem in his brain. "We scientists can't do that," she says with a smile, "but now we can send bacteria to do something similar. Rapid advances in synthetic biology are allowing us to harness the information-processing abilities of living cells to diagnose disease in such difficult-to-access environments."

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Four years after it was formed, the US Space Force has begun deploying its first satellite network. For the military, it marks a significant shift from relying on a handful of powerful, expensive satellites to a swarm of smaller, cheaper ones. From the Pentagon’s perspective, they’ll be a harder target for rivals to strike; a missile or a laser attack might take out an individual satellite, but would do little to weaken a whole swarm.

“Historically, the Department of Defense has been investing in billion-dollar Battlestar Galacticas that are big juicy targets,” says Derek Tournear, director of the Space Force’s Space Development Agency. “We wanted to go to an architecture that gave us resilience against threats and that we could upgrade rapidly every two years.”

The new satellites are for defensive purposes, focused primarily on missile tracking, data transfer, and communications between the satellites and their ground systems. The first 10 members of the fleet were lofted into low Earth orbit on April 2, and 13 more are planned to launch in late August from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.

The agency plans to accumulate 28 satellites for the batch to be launched this year, which they call “Tranche 0.” These will mainly be used for testing and demonstrating these satellites’ technologies and training people to use them. Tranche 1, made up of more than 160 satellites, will follow in late 2024. Those will be operational, meaning they’ll be used for tracking ballistic and hypersonic missiles, especially with an eye out for those from China, Russia, and North Korea. Within a few years, the agency will have nearly 1,000 in orbit.

The Department of Defense currently relies on about 10 missile defense satellites in geosynchronous orbit, which means their orbits keep pace with the Earth’s rotation at an altitude of about 22,000 miles. Flying the new swarm in low Earth orbit, which is only 600 miles above the ground, will improve their detection sensitivity and the timeliness of their missile warnings. 

Their diminutive size—about an eighth that of current satellites—is part of their advantage, as they’re cheaper and faster to develop and launch. “As threats to space expand, we can no longer rely on a strategy of putting most of our capabilities into these few large exquisite satellite systems. Now the DOD is taking the approach of building many systems on shorter timelines,” says Kari Bingen, director of the Aerospace Security Project at the nonprofit Center for Strategic and International Studies, whose funders include some US-based aerospace companies and military contractors.

While this is entirely a military operation, the Space Force is buying the satellite technology from private companies under contract. One swarm of the new satellites, provided by SpaceX and Florida-based L3Harris, will be charged with missile tracking using their wide field-of-view sensors. Another group, provided by Lockheed Martin and colourado-based York Space Systems, will be relaying data between ground systems and the spacecraft. The agency will add other networks to the mix in about two years, including satellites from Northrop Grumman, according to Jennifer Elzea, an SDA spokesperson.

The approach of using many small satellites together, rather than a handful of large ones, initially faced some resistance within the military—it’s a big change from the way the Pentagon has operated for decades. “It’s a bit of a culture shock,” Bingen says. But when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, Ukraine and its NATO backers began making use of thousands of small, networked satellites, including SpaceX’s Starlink for broadband, Maxar’s and other companies’ for optical and radar imagery, and GPS. While Russia has invested in anti-satellite missiles, lasers, and electronic weapons, none of these are suited for taking down a swarm. That demonstrated the utility of this kind of constellation, says Brian Weeden, director of program planning at the Secure World Foundation, a nonpartisan think tank based in Broomfield, colourado. “Why isn’t Russia blowing up Starlink satellites?” he asks. “They have the capability, but it’s just not going to matter.” 

Still, flying in relatively congested low Earth orbit could make the swarm vulnerable to collisions with other satellites and bits of space junk, like derelict spacecraft and shrapnel flung from previous anti-satellite missile tests. However, they won’t overlap with the orbits of major commercial constellations; they’ll operate above Starlink satellites and below OneWeb’s network.

If the 2024 budget the Space Force has proposed to Congress becomes a reality, it will pump some $4 billion into these satellite systems next year, about double the amount of previous years. After that, the agency is requesting about $5 billion annually through 2028, Bingen says. Congressional approval of this growing budget would be a sign of broad US government support for this new military strategy. (For comparison, this four-year budget for new satellites would add up to two James Webb Space Telescopes.)

The Space Force’s satellite constellations are launching just as the US’s rivalries with China and Russia are escalating. All three countries have been expanding their military capabilities in space, including investing in satellites and technologies that could be used to attack them. There is very little diplomacy or communication between the militaries of the US and China, other than warnings of close encounters between objects in orbit, Weeden says. Even the two countries’ civilian space programs are restricted from cooperating with each other, thanks to a policy called the Wolf Amendment. 

One of the motivations for building this satellite network is the development of faster-moving hypersonic missiles, which China and the US have both tested over the past couple of years. Hypersonic missiles travel at five times the speed of sound or faster, and they fly at much lower altitudes than intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs. ICBMs rely on booster rockets to blast them through the Earth’s atmosphere. Then the warheads have free flight through the edge of space and only reenter the atmosphere near their target. On the other hand, hypersonic glide vehicles, as they’re typically called, need to continually use fuel to travel through the atmosphere, which is denser than space. As a result, their exhaust plumes and aerodynamic heating during flight make them visible to infrared detectors, says David Burbach, a national security affairs expert at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. The new satellite swarms will be equipped with infrared detectors, while the military continues to make use of ground- and sea-based radar sensors to detect ballistic missiles.

By some counts, the Pentagon’s current missile defense systems have only achieved a 50 percent success rate in tests. It’s possible that the new satellite swarm could improve these systems by providing faster, more accurate data. But, Burbach argues, it’s the Space Force’s shift toward constellations of smaller, cheaper satellites that’s most notable: “I see this more as a culture change than a capability change.”

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For most people, the first drink or two of alcohol produces a pleasant buzz. The sensation is caused by the feel-good chemical dopamine flooding the brain’s reward system. But for some, drinking loses its euphoric effects. Chronic alcohol abuse lowers dopamine levels, and it takes heavier drinking to maintain those good feelings. Counseling, residential treatment programs, support groups, and medication can help those with alcohol abuse disorder, but many people relapse. What if there were a more long-term fix?

“We know that we can get people with alcohol use disorder to stop drinking for short periods of time,” says Kathleen Grant, a neuroscientist at Oregon Health & Science University. “But the desire to drink again often supersedes taking their medications.”

Now, Grant is among a group of US researchers who are trying a new approach: using gene therapy to reset the brain's dopamine pathway. In a study published today in the journal Nature Medicine, they found that an experimental therapy injected into the brains of monkeys dramatically curbed their drinking over the course of a year.

Researchers gave the gene therapy to four rhesus macaques who had been given increasing doses of alcohol until they developed an addiction to it. The animals were then allowed to drink as much as they wanted.

The group’s approach involved delivering a gene that makes the GDNF protein, short for glial-derived neurotrophic factor. In previous studies, this protein has been shown to stimulate the production of dopamine. For this experiment, researchers packaged the GDNF gene into engineered viruses, which are used for their ability to carry genetic material into cells. After making two small holes in either side of each animal’s skull, they injected the viruses into a bundle of neurons near the brainstem known as the ventral tegmental area. Neurons there are involved in reward processing, making dopamine and distributing it throughout the brain.

At the start of the experiment, the macaques were voluntarily consuming the equivalent of about nine drinks a day for a human. After administering the therapy just once, the team imposed an initial abstinence phase of eight weeks on the monkeys, and then allowed them to drink again for four weeks, offering water alongside alcohol. They repeated this challenge five more times over the course of a year, alternating between a four-week abstinence period and a four-week drinking period.

The first time alcohol was reintroduced, the monkeys who had received the gene therapy decreased their drinking by about 50 percent compared to a control group of monkeys that didn’t get the therapy. Every time researchers reintroduced alcohol after an abstinence period, the animals that got the gene therapy drank less than they did before the treatment. By the end of the year, their alcohol consumption dropped by more than 90 percent compared to the control group.

Grant was stunned. She had previously studied how primates respond to other drugs for alcohol use disorder, but had never seen such a big dropoff. Not only did it work, but the therapy’s efficacy seemed to improve over time. “It was as if they were learning that the alcohol just wasn't something they wanted to engage in anymore,” says Grant, a senior author on the new paper. Scientists from Wake Forest School of Medicine, The Ohio State University, and University of California, San Francisco, also collaborated on the study.

When they conducted postmortem examinations of the monkeys’ brains, the team also confirmed that the treated animals had replenished levels of dopamine. In the untreated animals, dopamine levels remained low.

Donita Robinson, a professor of psychiatry and researcher at the University of North Carolina Bowles Center for Alcohol Studies, is impressed that the effects lasted for a year. “These findings support the idea that normalizing dopamine, or perhaps just boosting the levels of beneficial growth factors like GDNF, could be a useful strategy for reducing the drive to drink alcohol,” says Robinson, who wasn’t involved with the experiment.

But the dopamine pathway is broadly involved in movement and motivation, so this kind of therapy could potentially influence other behaviors. In fact, the study authors found that the treated monkeys drank less water than their untreated counterparts, and also weren’t as interested in a sugary solution. They drank about 20 percent of the sweet solution compared to untreated animals, who drank all of it. They also lost about 18 percent of their body weight compared to animals in the control group, which is at least partly due to less alcohol consumption. Such changes to dopamine-related behaviors are not necessarily all desirable or positive. Robinson says any further studies should look for changes in mood, mindset, and general activity levels.

A handful of one-dose gene therapies are already approved for certain rare cancers and genetic disorders, such as hemophilia B and spinal muscular atrophy. Others are in the works for sickle cell anemia and Type 2 diabetes. The hope is that each treatment’s effects will last for years, or potentially decades.

But there are risks to delivering gene therapy to the brain: bleeding, infection, severe immune reactions, and potentially cancer. These treatments can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars—with some in the millions—making them out of reach for anyone whose insurance will not cover them. And it’s not yet clear if they will last long-term. Since the alcohol abuse study was stopped after one year, it’s not known if the benefits would be permanent.

Gene therapy’s long-lasting effects are a double-edged sword, says Susan Ferguson, a professor of psychiatry and director of the Addictions, Drug & Alcohol Institute at the University of Washington. “It’s one and done. You can give someone this therapy and they don't have to worry about it,” she says. But if it causes side effects, there’s no way to inactivate it.

And Ferguson says any sort of drug should be used alongside therapy or other strategies that address the psychological and behavioral aspects of alcohol abuse.

There are already other medical treatments on the market, all of which can be discontinued if needed. The drugs acamprosate and naltrexone also act on the brain. A third medication, disulfiram, works by blocking the body from processing alcohol and creating an unpleasant reaction to it.

A gene therapy for addiction raises ethical questions, too. Unlike other gene therapies, this one would involve rewiring the brain and, arguably, influencing a person’s choices and potentially their behavior. Without a way to remove or stop the therapy, would people still choose to undergo it?

Grant admits it would be an extreme form of treatment. But some people with alcohol use disorder are very sick and pose a harm to themselves or others. If it moves forward to human testing, she sees the therapy being limited to those with the most severe cases of addiction. “This would be a last resort if all other treatment options fail,” she says.

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Some public health experts hope that Americans will welcome the new shot as they would a flu jab. But demand for Covid-19 vaccines has dropped sharply since 2021 when they first became available and more than 240 million people in the US, or 73 per cent of the population, received at least one shot.

In the autumn of 2022, by which time most people had either had the Covid-19 virus or the vaccine, fewer than 50 million people got the shots.

Healthcare providers and pharmacies such as CVS Health will start in September to offer the shot, updated to fight the Omicron version of the virus that has been dominant since 2022.

They will be fighting declining concern about the virus, as well as fatigue and scepticism about the merits of this vaccine, said Dr Ashley Kirzinger, Kaiser Family Foundation (KFF) director of Survey Methodology.

“Public health officials, if they want to see a majority of adults get these annual vaccines, they’re going to have to make the case to the American public that Covid-19 isn’t over, and it still poses a risk to them,” Dr Kirzinger said.

The top reason vaccinated people gave in KFF surveys earlier in 2023 for eschewing annual shots was that they believed they had protection from the virus because of previous shots or infections, she added.

Covid-19 vaccine makers have pared back expectations for this autumn’s vaccination campaign, with Pfizer – the largest maker of mRNA shots with BioNTech – recently warning that it might need to cut jobs if it does not do well. Its biggest rival, Moderna, conceded demand could be as few as 50 million shots.

In 2022, Pfizer and Moderna’s vaccine sales topped US$56 billion (S$76 billion) worldwide; analysts project around US$20 billion for 2023.

Jefferies analyst Michael Yee said he does not expect the autumn campaign to reach last year’s level.

“Take a look at what happened last winter. It was 50 million in the US, and it seems likely to be lower than that, given that there’s less concern about Covid-19 this year than last year,” he said.

Post-pandemic vaccine

The Covid-19 public health emergency ended in May, and the government has handed much of the duty of vaccinating America to the private sector. More than 1.1 million people in the US have died from Covid-19, according to the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).

CDC director Mandy Cohen said last week in a podcast that she expects the shots – which still need to be authorised by the US Food and Drug Administration and recommended by the CDC – to be rolled out in the third or fourth week of September. She suggested that Americans should view these shots as an annual measure to protect oneself, in line with the annual flu shot.

As with the flu, Pfizer/BioNTech, Moderna and Novavax, have created versions of the Covid-19 vaccine to try to match the variant they believe will be circulating this autumn. The shots are aimed at XBB.1.5, a subvariant that is similar to EG.5 and also a sub-lineage of the still dominant Omicron variant.

Coronavirus-related hospitalisations are up more than 40 per cent off of recent lows hit in June, but are still more than 90 per cent below peak levels hit during the January 2022 Omicron outbreak, according to CDC data.

The evidence

Some doctors suggest that annual shots should be targeted at the elderly and other high-risk people, who are most likely to have dire outcomes if they catch Covid-19.

Dr William Schaffner, an infectious diseases specialist at Vanderbilt University and a liaison to the CDC’s Advisory Committee on Immunisation Practices (ACIP), said it is possible that the ACIP could make a weaker recommendation for younger, healthier people. That could also affect demand.

“Should children really receive this booster?” Dr Schaffner said. “Should the average person with no underlying illness who is a younger adult receive this vaccine, or should this vaccine now be a more targeted vaccine?”

The CDC recommended children get a single dose of last year’s updated vaccine for those aged six and older.

Dr David Boulware, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Minnesota, said that according to research he has published, people who are boosted have less severe symptoms for a shorter duration.

“When you look at what you can do to reduce your duration of illness, even if you do get sick, being boosted is going to be the best way to do that,” he said.  REUTERS

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Our minds are more resilient than we know. According to a growing body of research, first popularised by psychologists Daniel Gilbert and Tim Wilson in the early 2000s, the brain has a remarkable capacity to make the best of bad events: when we encounter negative situations we subconsciously activate what is known as our psychological immune system.

A self-protective mechanism analogous to the body’s own immune system, the psychological immune system is a series of processes that our brain initiates to help us make sense of the adverse environment we might be in, assign meaning to what is happening, and ultimately find positives for the future. If we fail to land a job we had wanted, for instance, our brain might reason that the interviewer was rude and biased, therefore it wasn’t the role for us. Or, we will speak to a friend and gain a new perspective on the benefits of our existing job.

Gilbert and Wilson’s research has found that we often overestimate how unhappy we will be after negative events, since our psychological immune system helps to shelter us from the effects of difficult circumstances. “We underestimate how quickly our feelings are going to change in part because we underestimate our ability to change them,” Gilbert once told the Monitor on Psychology magazine. “This can lead us to make decisions that don’t maximise our potential for satisfaction.”

Since we are so skilled at construing what happens to us in a positive light, our lack of faith in our own resilience leads us to incorrectly expect that negative emotions will always last longer than our less-intense feelings. If we can strengthen our psychological immune system, there might be ways that we can better rely on ourselves in times of difficulty, as well as feel more comfortable in taking risks.

“The psychological immune system is an incredible buffer against the inevitable stresses of life,” author and resilience expert Anne Grady says. “It doesn’t prevent bad things from happening to us, but if we can learn to develop it, we can put our brain back in control and monitor our responses.”

To prepare for when you next find yourself in a tough situation, we asked experts about the daily practices and tips that people can implement to ensure their psychological immune system is functioning at its best.

Move from negative to neutral

Our brains have a negativity bias, which means that we focus on bad experiences more than positive ones. “This is because being wary of danger and potential difficulty keeps us safe from harm,” says Dr Joseph Barker, a clinical psychologist. “Whereas, in evolutionary terms, being contented for prolonged periods makes us more likely to slack off and less motivated to move on to the next goal.”

In order to allow our psychological immune system to kick in and move us away from this negativity, rather than feel trapped, Grady suggests “using the mind to change the brain” and developing habits we can turn to in stressful situations. “One technique is to change the narrative we are telling ourselves, since our beliefs can be very powerful in shifting our mindset,” she says. “Rather than leaping from a negative situation to positive self-talk, which will feel too challenging, we can try to move ourselves to a neutral zone, where we are more likely to feel that we are at least OK in the moment.”

A little positive messaging goes a long way … Photograph: Westend61/Getty Images

That neutral zone can help us feel relaxed and more able to access the parasympathetic nervous system, which is known as our “rest and digest mode”, and is activated when our bodies are not in fight or flight. Grady uses mantras to move to neutral and remind herself that she can weather the storm. She places sticky notes around her house with phrases such as “It is what it is” to keep her grounded, and she also mentions the importance of building a list of “safety signals” that she can turn to for reassurance.

“You have to find what works for you, then create resources you can access when you’re in situations of heightened stress,” she says. This can include reminding yourself of aspects of your life to be grateful for, since practising gratitude has been shown to lower levels of the stress hormone cortisol, as well as remembering other difficult events that you have already got through to highlight your existing resilience. Taking several long, deep breaths has also been shown to reduce stress and lower the heart rate, allowing us to reach that neutral point of calm.

Access the present moment

Another key aspect of bolstering the psychological immune system is to try to be in the present moment. “We have to focus on what we can control, rather than getting trapped in ruminations and potentially spiralling,” Barker says. “One of the best ways is through mindfulness exercises.”

Typically taking the form of guided meditations or structured practice, mindfulness encourages participants to focus on their breath, bodily sensations and an awareness of their surroundings, before accepting their thoughts and feelings without judgment. Studies have found that it is an effective therapy for reducing stress and Grady recommends that the smaller the positive you can focus on the better, from a hug to a good sip of coffee.

“It’s about starting with where you are in life and trying to acknowledge that whatever is happening might not be all consuming,” counsellor Natasha Clewley says. “It’s not a dismissal of the experience, but placing it in context.”

Take a breath … Photograph: Milko/Getty Images, posed by model

Barker also emphasises the importance of healthy sleep patterns. “It’s quality not just quantity when it comes to sleep, since we need to make sure we’re getting the right amount of different sleep stages,” he says. “A set sleep routine can restore cognitive function and reset the psychological immune system.” Research has shown that good sleep helps not only the body’s immune system but is key to maintaining mental health by allowing our cognitive skills to function properly and therefore respond to stressors.

Developing a general routine for daily life can help the psychological immune system when we find ourselves going through distressing events. “Since we have a tendency to overestimate how difficult things can be, a set routine gets us out of bed and step by step will interrupt this negative prediction cycle, making us feel more motivated to carry on,” Barker says.

Find your meaning

Life is often unpredictable and full of moments that can destabilise us. For Grady, life is like the ocean and there are times where swimming through it can feel treacherous and choppy. That is when we need a “lighthouse” to aim towards – a goal to keep us focused and to give the wider arc of our behaviour and experiences a sense of purpose.

“Having an end in sight helps us feel more committed to the journey, even if it might be difficult at times,” she says. “By trying to emphasise meaning and purpose in our lives, we have a reason for what we do.”

Barker explains that by making decisions based on our values, rather than being guided by what might make us feel good in the short term, we will feel more fulfilled and more likely to persist through difficulty. “You might avoid giving a presentation at work because it fills you with anxiety,” he says. “But if you see it as something that could help your career and you choose to do it for that reason, you will be much more able to get through it.”

Ultimately, it is a matter of perspective. “Reappraising our reality, by talking it over with a friend or even thinking about whether we will care about this incident in a few months’ or years’ time, interrupts our ruminations,” Barker says. “Finding compassion for ourselves is the best state to allow our psychological immune system to operate.”

Practise acceptance

Compassion is key when our psychological immune system feels stuck. “That occurs in situations of trauma or prolonged distress, such as bereavement,” Barker says. In these instances, tips and tricks can feel trite or even make the situation worse by suggesting that we can think our way out of our difficulties. At these moments, it is important to simply acknowledge our emotions, Grady explains.

“Give yourself permission to sit in the discomfort and allow it to happen, otherwise if you battle with it you can magnify it,” she says. “Try to remind yourself that your emotions have a purpose, that if you’re grieving, for instance, the sadness you feel is connected to the person you loved.”

If we don’t acknowledge the difficulty of these emotions, we might fall into the trap of toxic positivity. A relatively new psychological concept, toxic positivity is the pressure to remain upbeat, no matter how tough a situation is, which can make it harder to cope by suppressing otherwise natural emotions.

Instead, if we allow these emotions to come to the fore, we can begin the process of understanding our situation and assessing where we are.

Sometimes, we might realise our psychological immune systems can only do so much at that time and we need to seek help such as therapy or medication. “The psychological immune system is ultimately just a fancy term for how we cope,” Clewley says. “That is all we can try to do, and we need to give ourselves the best chance possible, whatever that means for you.”

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Adoption is common among humans, who may decide to raise someone else's child for a range of reasons, including fertility struggles or the wish to provide a home for youngsters in need.

But why do animals sometimes adopt the young of others? The act of caring for an unrelated, parentless infant probably emerged because it confers an evolutionary advantage on the foster parent, said Michael Weiss, a behavioral ecologist and research director at the Center for Whale Research in Washington state. For example, adoption may provide valuable caregiving experience for females that lack offspring and increase their future young's survival chances, Weiss told Live Science.

Adoptions can occur within the same species or, in some extremely rare and puzzling cases, between different species. In a 2021 study in the journal eLife, researchers examined the effects of maternal loss on young mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) and found that orphans over age 2 forged relationships with other group members, especially with dominant males. 

"A young gorilla would usually share its nest at night with its mother, but if the mother dies or leaves the group, then it will share a nest with the dominant male," study lead author Robin Morrison, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Zurich and an affiliate scientist with the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund in Rwanda, told Live Science.

Mountain gorillas live in social groups composed of a dominant male and several females with their offspring. Regardless of whether the dominant male fathered the infants, his role is to protect the next generation from infanticide at the hand of rival males. His ability to do so may determine his reproductive success, Morrison said.

Mountain gorillas (Gorilla beringei beringei) live in social groups that adopt orphaned youngsters. (Image credit: SIMON MAINA/AFP via Getty Images)

"Males that are really good at caring for offspring and do this in front of females are the most popular," she explained. Looking after an orphaned gorilla could earn a dominant male brownie points, thus increasing his chances of mating and of passing on his genes. "It's part of demonstrating their reproductive quality," Morrison said.

While the females in the group don't necessarily benefit from raising a motherless juvenile, doing so does not come at great energetic cost because infants over age 2 can forage by themselves, Morrison said. "It's also good for the other young gorillas to have a playmate," she added, as it enhances their social skills.

Social bonds and baby obsession

Adoption is also common in other primates and can bridge social groups. In a 2021 study published in the journal Scientific Reports, researchers documented the first known case of great apes adopting infants from a separate group. The team observed two female wild bonobos (Pan paniscus) that appeared to have adopted two infants from another group and posited that the behavior may boost the adults' social status. 

"One possibility is that adoptees could become future allies of the adoptive mothers," the researchers wrote in the study. "Both adoptees were females and female bonobos form strong social bonds and coalitions within their group and sometimes across groups."

Another possibility is that, like humans, female bonobos feel empathy and a fascination with infants, according to the study. "Within primate species, some adults are really baby-obsessed," Morrison said, adding that this zeal can lead to kidnappings and death if the infant is caught in a commotion.

Some species may adopt others' babies because it invokes future favors. (Image credit: Eduard Figueres via Getty Images)

Researchers described the kidnapping of a 3-week-old Tibetan macaque (Macaca thibetana) by a female of the same species in a 2023 study published in the journal Primates. The female had two offspring of her own when she snatched the baby from its mother, including a 1-month-old that she continued to nurse alongside the captive. The kidnapping-turned-adoption may have benefited the female by invoking future social support or favors, such as grooming, the researchers suggested. 

The kidnapping of a 5-day-old yellow baboon (Papio cynocephalus), described in a 1987 study in the American Journal of Primatology, had a less-happy ending: The infant died of starvation or dehydration after a high-ranking female abducted it and carried it around for three days. 

Underwater adoption

Nonhuman primates may feel the same caring instincts as humans do when we see a baby or small animal, which may help to explain these behaviors, Morrison said. And it's not just primates, according to Weiss, who studies orcas (Orcinus orca) in the waters around the Pacific Northwest and western Canada.

"All of the females, and especially the females who haven't had a calf yet, are totally baby-obsessed," he said. "The first year of a calf's life is the absolute center of attention for everyone."

In 2021, researchers in Iceland spotted, for the first time, an orca that appeared to have adopted a baby pilot whale (Globicephala). In June 2023, scientists with the Icelandic Orca Project were baffled by another female showing this behavior. "We are trying to piece together what is happening, but we sure have a lot of questions," they wrote on Twitter.

These cases are "a big mystery" because researchers have never seen adults from these two species socialize, which suggests the orcas may have kidnapped the baby whales, Weiss said. "The abduction case of a killer whale going into a pilot whale group and stealing a calf — while we don't know that's what happened — seems more likely to me," he added. 

A big question also remains over why this may be beneficial for orcas. Producing milk comes at a huge energetic cost, and moms nurse their calves for up to three years, Weiss said. By dividing a female's attention and draining her resources, adoptees could also pose "a bit of an issue" for any existing biological offspring, he added.

Adoptive and biological offspring may compete for attention, and this can lead to negative outcomes. In a 2019 study published in the journal Ethology, researchers documented the case of a melon-headed whale calf (Peponocephala electra) adopted by a female bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) with a baby of her own. The adoptee repeatedly pushed the other baby from under the mother's abdomen, potentially contributing to the biological calf's disappearance shortly afterward.

The female dolphin may have felt driven to nurse the calf due to the recent birth of her own, the researchers suggested. "Both calves were approximately the same age, which could have enhanced the mother's tolerance toward a newborn during a sensitive period for establishing mother-offspring bonding," they wrote in the study. Other factors may have contributed to the adoption, such as her "curious and social personality" or her lack of caregiving experience, they added. 

A female bottlenose dolphin (Tursiops truncatus) adopted a melon-headed whale calf (Peponocephala electra). (Image credit: JohnCarnemolla via Getty Images)

In nonmammal species too, inexperienced moms sometimes make mistakes. Common cuckoos (Cuculus canorus) are brood parasites, meaning females lay their eggs in other species' nests to save themselves the energetic cost of raising them. In a 1992 study published in the journal Behavioral Ecology, researchers found that young great reed warbler (Acrocephalus arundinaceus) females were more easily fooled by cuckoo eggs than older breeders and suggested their indiscriminate behavior could boil down to inexperience.

While evolutionary pressures can explain why animal adoptions emerged and keep happening, they may not shed light on individual cases. "One reason why that behavior might persist and keep getting passed down is because it helps build up the skills for taking care of a calf," Weiss said. "But the females are probably not doing it because they're trying to build up experience." 

Orcas, in particular, are highly intelligent creatures that we may never fully understand. "They've got big, complex brains just like us, and they have instincts and impulses, which means that they'll often do things that are really interesting and don't have an immediate survival or reproductive advantage," Weiss said.

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Abdominal pain is one clue something could be wrong. Changing bowel movements may be another. Other people might notice blood in their stool. Doctors may chalk that symptom up to hemorrhoids, but for some people, it’s a sign of something more insidious: early-onset colorectal cancer.  

Many of the patients that Thejus Jayakrishnan sees are in their 30s or 40s, establishing themselves in their careers and perhaps settling down in a new house with young kids at home. When they find out they have colorectal cancer, they’re shocked, he says. “It’s not something you expect.” In some cases, the cancer, which takes root in the large intestine, has already spread through the body and encroached on the liver or lungs.

Though the number of colorectal cancer cases among people under 50 has been rising for decades, younger and middle-aged adults’ symptoms can still go overlooked, says Jayakrishnan, a physician at the Cleveland Clinic in Ohio. These people aren’t in the age group that doctors tend to be concerned about, he says.

That’s also been the experience of Christopher Lieu, a medical oncologist at the University of Colorado Cancer Center in Aurora. “For the last 10 years of my career, all my patients were told, ‘You’re just too young to have colorectal cancer. Don’t worry about it.’” In a June talk at the American Society of Clinical Oncology meeting in Chicago, Lieu noted that, by 2030, colorectal cancer could be the number one cause of cancer death in people ages 20 to 49. “This is a humongous issue,” he said.

In 2018, the American Cancer Society updated its guidelines to reflect the changing incidence of the disease. Screening should begin at 45 years old rather than 50, the organization now recommends (SN: 5/31/18). But younger people with early-onset colorectal cancer may still be falling through the cracks, says Yin Cao, a cancer epidemiologist at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. “At least 50 percent of these cases are under age 45,” she says. 

Scientists don’t know what’s driving the disease’s increase in younger adults, but they’ve been looking for answers. Recent research is beginning to reveal some hints, though the picture remains murky.

In the meantime, Cao and Jayakrishnan are looking for ways to identify the disease earlier, before it has advanced to other parts of the body. Cao’s team recently identified warning symptoms linked to the early-onset cancer. And Jayakrishnan presented a small study at the June ASCO meeting that suggests there may be metabolic differences between people with early-onset and average-onset tumors.

Science News spoke with these and other doctors about what they’re learning about early-onset colorectal cancer and what questions remain. Here are three key aspects of the disease that they wish more people knew.

More younger adults are getting colorectal cancer, a trend that’s occurring around the world.

Historically, in the United States, colorectal cancer has been a disease of older people, Cao says. But in 2017, a landmark study marked a change in who was getting diagnosed.

Though older individuals still made up most cases, scientists noted that, from 2000 to 2013, colorectal cancer incidence among people ages 50 to 64 had meandered downward. In people 65 and older, the rate had plunged. But there had been a 22 percent increase in cases in people under 50 (SN: 3/1/17). Whereas 59 new cases were diagnosed out of every million younger people at the start of that period, the rate had risen to 72 out of a million by the end.  

“It’s really alarming because we saw this rising incidence in younger adults,” Cao says, and for a disease that hadn’t typically affected a younger population.

The data reflected what doctors were seeing in the clinic, Lieu says. Looking back through the decades, scientists can track the rise’s origin to the late 1980s. Seeing the numbers creep up for a few years might have been a blip, but “what’s concerning is that [the trend] doesn’t seem to be reversing,” Lieu says. In fact, “this problem continues to get worse.” And it appears to be occurring more or less globally. Other high-income countries, including Canada, Australia and the United Kingdom, mirror the rise.

Scientists have noticed that people born in more recent generations tend to have a greater risk of developing colorectal cancer than people born in earlier generations, what’s known as a birth cohort effect. That means someone who turns 40 today is more at risk than someone who turned 40 a decade ago, Lieu says. The pattern, and the fact that most early-onset cases lack a hereditary link, has doctors and scientists scrambling to answer a singular question: “What are younger individuals being exposed to that could account for that risk?” he asks.

Many factors may be driving the increase in early-onset colorectal cancer.

It’s not easy to take a magnifying glass to people’s lives and deduce what may be causing their disease. Sifting through a person’s diet history and past environmental exposures is complicated, Lieu says. “People have difficulty remembering what they ate yesterday, let alone their entire lives.”

That’s one reason the early-onset colorectal cancer picture is still so cloudy. Today, scientists are investigating an assortment of potential disease drivers, including obesity, antibiotics, the gut microbiome, alcohol intake, delivery by cesarean section and a diet rich in red meat and sugar.

Cao’s team, for example, has linked drinking sugar-sweetened beverages to an increased risk of early-onset colorectal cancer in women. Her group and others have also reported a connection between the disease and people with metabolic syndrome (which can include conditions like high blood pressure and excess belly fat) as well as those who eat a Western diet, among other factors.

Other teams have pointed out alterations in the gut microbiome in people with early-onset disease. They have a different community of gut microbes compared with people diagnosed later in life, a 2022 study suggested. Though many scientists are exploring the microbiome’s role in early-onset colorectal cancer, so far “nothing definitive has been determined,” says Cathy Eng, a medical oncologist at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville.  

That seems to be true of the many potential risk factors scientists have identified. It’s also possible that younger generations are somehow more susceptible to environmental insults that kick colorectal cancer into action. “I think it’s really hard to draw a conclusion at this point,” Cao says. Lieu agrees. Scientists are still “at the hypothesis-generating stage,” he says.

Some data can even be downright confusing. One study linked oral antibiotic use with an increased risk of colon cancer yet a reduced risk of rectal cancer. “Even in the same study, you’re getting two very different answers,” Lieu says.

And the diet and obesity-related risk factors are not one-size-fits-all. In Lieu’s experience in Colorado, many of his young colorectal cancer patients are otherwise “incredibly healthy,” he says. “They’re [Division 1] athletes; they’re triathletes; they’re pretty remarkable.”

A combination of different factors working together may set off early-onset colorectal cancer, and the recipe may vary among individuals. Doctors want to be able to say, “If we stop doing this one thing, then we can prevent the cancer,” Lieu says. But, he adds, “I don’t think there’s going to be a single smoking gun.”

Four ‘red flag’ symptoms may be signs of early-onset colorectal cancer.

Though scientists have not pinned down a single, definitive cause of early-onset colorectal cancer, they have identified some early warning signs.

Up to two years before their diagnosis, people with the disease may experience abdominal pain, rectal bleeding, diarrhea and iron-deficiency anemia, Cao’s team reported in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute in May.

The researchers trawled through insurance claim data from more than 27,000 people with and without the disease. They were looking for patterns in patients’ records — telltale symptoms documented in people under 50 who were later diagnosed with the cancer. The four signs Cao’s team identified stood out because they seemed specific to early-onset cases, and they often preceded a diagnosis by months to years. Unexplained weight loss could also be a symptom to look out for, Lieu says.

Knowing and spotting the warning signs could help people get a jump on the disease. In one 2019 survey of nearly 1,200 early-onset patients and survivors, more than 7 out of 10 were diagnosed at an advanced stage of the disease, when their cancer had already grown into neighboring tissues or spread to distant locales in the body. Patients often waited months before seeing their doctor and then visited multiple doctors before receiving a correct diagnosis.

Four ‘red flag’ signs of colorectal cancer

Scientists have identified some warning signs of early-onset colorectal cancer, which can affect younger and middle-aged adults. Knowing and spotting the warning signs could help people get a jump on the disease. Four potential “red flag” symptoms are:

• Abdominal pain
• Rectal bleeding
• Diarrhea
• Iron-deficiency anemia

Many early-onset cases are actually diagnosed at the emergency room, Cao says. “The bottom line is if someone has at least two [red flag symptoms], they really need to be aware of it,” she says. “It will definitely be worth a conversation with their primary care doctor.”

Beyond noticing suspicious symptoms, other doctors are exploring different ways to spot the cancer before it spreads. In a study of 170 patients, the early-onset and average-onset diseases left different metabolic signatures in the blood, Jayakrishnan reported in June at ASCO. His team saw differences in chemical reactions involving citrate and the amino acid arginine in young people with the cancer. If Jayakrishnan’s results hold up, such metabolic signatures could one day help doctors screen people for the disease.

“If you can detect it early,” he says, “colorectal cancer has really good treatment options. It really makes a huge difference.”

One key part of early detection may simply be wider knowledge that the early-onset disease is on the rise, says Colorado’s Lieu. Most cases of abdominal pain probably won’t be cancer, he says, but “you just don’t want to ignore it.” Raising awareness of the disease and its symptoms among both patients and doctors could “save somebody’s life.”

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It looks like the cage match between Mark Zuckerberg and Elon Musk is off because—to no one's surprise—the two rival CEOs can’t agree on anything. 

On Sunday, Zuckerberg called out Musk for essentially jerking him around and trying to delay the fight. According to him, Musk first wants to hold a practice match at a fighting cage at Zuckerberg’s home before staging the official public bout.

“I think we can all agree Elon isn't serious and it's time to move on,” Zuckerberg posted on his rival social media platform, Threads. “I offered a real date. Dana White (UFC president) offered to make this a legit competition for charity. Elon won't confirm a date, then says he needs surgery, and now asks to do a practice round in my backyard instead.” 

The offer from Musk to hold a practice fight at Zuckerberg’s house is real, according to the author Walter Isaacson, who is writing a biography about the Tesla CEO. As evidence, he posted a screenshot showing the text exchange between the two tech CEOs. In it, Musk says he’ll be in Palo Alto, California, today. But he also concedes: “I have not been practicing much, apart from a brief bout with Lex Fridman.”

In his own post on Threads, Zuckerberg says it was up to Musk on whether he was ready to throw down. He then posted a photo of himself sparring inside his backyard fight cage.

“If Elon ever gets serious about a real date and official event, he knows how to reach me,” he added. “Otherwise, time to move on. I'm going to focus on competing with people who take the sport seriously.”

In response, Musk tweeted that “Zuck is a chicken." In a later tweet, Musk joked about swinging by Zuckerberg's home anyway. “Can’t wait to bang on his door tomorrow."

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Also:  Zuckerberg says Musk 'not serious' about cage fight.

After two successful mission launches in July, including the Chandrayaan 3, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is gearing up for its next big mission to the Sun.

Aditya L1 will be India’s first mission to the Sun and is expected to be launched sometime in early September this year, sources have confirmed.

Aditya L1 aims to study the solar corona, solar emissions, solar winds and flares, Coronal Mass Ejections (CMEs) besides performing imaging of the Sun, round-the-clock. After Astrosat, this is ISRO’s second astronomy mission / observatory done in collaborations with scientific and research institutes. Aditya L1 will be inserted to Lagrange point L1 located at a distance of 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. The Indian spacecraft will still be over 90 million kilometers away from the Sun. Due to this considerable distance from the Sun, Aditya will be able to perform continuous observations looking directly at the Sun.

VELC / Source : IIA

In its update on microblogging site X, the space agency Monday tweeted, ” Aditya-L1, the first space-based Indian observatory to study the Sun, is getting ready for the launch. The satellite realised at the U R Rao Satellite Centre (URSC), Bengaluru, has arrived at SDSC-SHAR, Sriharikota.”

The main collaborators in the solar mission with seven payloads are Physical Research Laboratory, Ahmedabad, Indian Institute of Astrophysics(IIA), Bengaluru, Inter University Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics (IUCAA), Pune and the Indian Institute of Science, Education and Research (IISER), Kolkata.

SUIT / Source : IUCAA

In January this year, IIA handed over Visible Line Emission Coronograph (VELC) to ISRO. It will track CMEs, trace links between CME plasma and the magnetic field that drive the solar eruptions and solar winds. Later in June, IUCAA completed and handed over the Solar Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope SUIT to the space agency. SUIT will provide full disk images of the Sun in the 2000 — 4000 A wavelength range, observe of the solar atmosphere slicing through different layers — all of these will help peice together the various processes inside the solar surface. Both VELC and SUIT are unique instruments ever to be built for mission to the Sun.

Aditya L1 / Source : ISRO

The other onboard instruments are Aditya Solar wind Particle EXperiment (ASPEX) to study solar wind distribution, their variations and spectral characteristics. The Plasma Analyser Package for Aditya (PAPA) will observe the solar wind, their compositions and the energy distribution. Solar Low Energy X-ray Spectrometer (SoLEXS) aims to study the X-ray properties of the Sun and the solar activity whereas the High Energy L1Orbiting X-ray Spectrometer (HEL1OS) will study the Sun as a star and the hard X-Ray emissions during solar flares. Lastly, the Magnetometer will measure the magnitude and nature of the Interplanetary Magnetic Field.

The solar weather and environment, which is determined by the activities occurring inside and around the Sun, affects space weather which inturn influences many of the human-based activities including the funcitioning of satellites, telescommunications, power grids and a range of other space-based vital installations.

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A groundbreaking study, based on observations from the European Space Agency’s billion-pixel Gaia space telescope, has revealed a “gravitational anomaly” that challenges our fundamental understanding of the universe. The anomaly occurs when loosely orbiting stars, known as wide binaries, seem to move in ways that defy standard models of gravity established by Albert Einstein and Isaac Newton.  

Astronomer Kyu-Hyun Chae from Sejong University in South Korea made the discovery while studying binary star systems, which refer to two stars that orbit each other. At accelerations of lower than 0.1 nanometres per second squared, the orbit of the two stars deviated from Newton’s universal law of gravitation and Einstein’s general relativity. 

The discovery puts into question the existence of ‘dark matter’ which was often used to explain such anomalies. “Testing gravity with wide binaries is interesting because dark matter can play no role in their internal dynamics,” Chae said.

Professor Chae theorised that a model known as Modified Newtonian Dynamics (MOND) could explain why these previous theoretical frameworks were unable to explain the stars’ movements. MOND was first conceptualised by Israeli physicist Mordehai Milgrom, who proposed a modification to the laws of gravity at low accelerations to explain observed irregularities in galactic rotation without the need for dark matter.

“Chae’s finding is a result of a very involved analysis of cutting-edge data, which, as far as I can judge, he has performed very meticulously and carefully,” said Milgrom, from the Weizmann Institute in Israel. “But for such a far-reaching finding – and it is indeed very far-reaching – we require confirmation by independent analyses, preferably with better future data.

“If this anomaly is confirmed as a breakdown of Newtonian dynamics, and especially if it indeed agrees with the most straightforward predictions of MOND, it will have enormous implications for astrophysics, cosmology, and for fundamental physics at large,” he added.

Professor Chae commented on the implications, asserting that potential systemic errors were rigorously examined and the results appeared to be genuine. He anticipates that the results will undergo further scrutiny and refinement as more data becomes available.

Nevertheless, these findings could have a profound effect on our conception of the universe. “Because the standard cosmology is based on general relativity, cosmology needs a major revision now,” Chae said. “I think we are now entering an extremely exciting period of time.”

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Foxconn—also known by its official name Hon Hai Precision Industry—is the world's biggest contract electronics manufacturer and assembles devices for many companies, most notably Apple's iPhones.

It operates in more than two dozen countries but the bulk of its operations is based in China—a dependence it is looking to reduce, with media reports of major investments in India.

"From the perspective of India's potential market size and if we can fully implement our plans there, I think several billion dollars in investment is only a beginning," Foxconn chairman Young Liu said when asked during an earnings call if the firm planned to invest $2 billion in India.

Foxconn in May announced the purchase of a huge tract of land on the outskirts of Indian tech hub Bengaluru for $37 million.

It currently operates about nine production campuses and has more than 30 factories in India, with "turnover of business size of roughly $10 billion annually", according to Liu.

The company is planning to expand its India operations to "critical components" for consumer electronics and electric vehicles to boost its competitiveness, he said, without giving more details.

"Shipping (for critical components) will probably have to wait till next year but this year, relevant constructions have started," Liu said, adding the operations will take place in three states in India.

Last month, Foxconn withdrew from a $19.4 billion deal with India's Vedanta to make semiconductors in Gujarat state—dealing a blow to New Delhi's plan to boost self-reliance in the tech supply chain.

Foxconn posted a one percent drop in second quarter net profits on Monday, while revenues fell 14 percent on-year to $1.3 trillion Taiwan dollars ($40.8 billion)—an indication of a worsening market for global electronics during an economic downturn.

© 2023 AFP

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Here, Pekosz explains EG.5's role in the mid-year spike in cases, what precautions to take to protect yourself, and why the new vaccine—set for release this fall—will offer better protection than previous versions.

What is EG.5?

EG.5 is a recent COVID variant very closely related to the XBB variants that have been circulating here in the U.S. for the past six months. Notably, it contains one particular mutation that is known to evade some of the immunity that you get after an infection or vaccination.

What distinguishes it from other variants?

Besides the [genetic] sequence of the virus, it has been tracked recently to be associated with a rather fast increase in case numbers. It's important to note that, while it's increasing quickly, the total case numbers are still pretty low and pretty reasonable. We're not talking about a potential surge similar to what we saw when omicron first emerged. But anytime we see a virus causing a rapid increase in cases, we always want to pay attention.

What symptoms are associated with EG.5?

EG.5 has been detected in the U.S. recently, but the data we have gleaned from the global circulation of the virus has shown that its symptoms are the same as other variants. Its disease potential appears to be exactly the same as other variants' as well. The antivirals currently available should work against it. And the diagnostic tests, both the at-home rapid tests as well as tests that you get at medical facilities, all should recognize this variant quite well.

We're seeing a mid-year spike of COVID cases here in the U.S., as we have for the past three years. Is this a result of EG.5, low population immunity, or both?

While EG.5 is increasing faster than other variants, infections with other variants are also there. I think some of this increase is probably driven by waning population immunity. It's been quite a long time since boosters were provided for COVID, and those boosters did have a relatively low uptake rate in the population. That, combined with the fact that the XBB variants look different to your immune system from the [variants used in] previous COVID vaccines, means there's probably a lot of susceptible individuals in the population, and therefore these new variants are able to find new people to infect a little more easily than they have in the last couple of months.

What are you expecting to see with EG.5 as we head into fall? Is this a variant we should be really concerned about?

I think for the general population, this variant shouldn't be of high concern. But it's an important reminder for those parts of the population that are susceptible to severe COVID-19—the elderly, those with medical conditions that predispose them to severe COVID—that you should think about how you're going to get tested and where the antivirals are available.

If you do start to suffer respiratory symptoms, don't dismiss them right away. Go out and get a COVID test. While they're not free anymore, the at-home tests are available in pharmacies. It would be great if everyone had them at home just to rule out COVID, particularly if you're in that vulnerable population. The faster you identify whether it's COVID or not, the faster you can get the treatments shown to reduce the rate of severe COVID.

Will existing vaccines protect against EG.5?

One of the fortunate things about EG.5 is that it's closely related to XBB variants, and the XBB variants are the basis for the new COVID vaccine that will be rolled out in the fall. There should be a nice match between that vaccine and the EG.5 variant, as well as the other XBB variants that are circulating right now.

Should you hold out for the new one if you're due for a COVID vaccine now?

I think it's probably best if individuals wait and try to get in line right when that new fall vaccine rolls out so that they can have better protection against the currently circulating viruses.

What other precautions should we be taking? Is it time to mask up again?

Case numbers aren't as high as when we had to put into place some public health interventions. But, if you're in a high-risk group in particular, you might consider wearing a mask or social distancing a little bit more.

I would view this as a reminder that COVID is around—and COVID is still dangerous.

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The gut microbiome takes the components of food that you cannot digest, like fiber and phytonutrients, and transforms them into signals that regulate how hungry you are, how strong your immune system is, and even how you're thinking and feeling. It's as though the communities in your gut microbiome are an orchestra for your health, and you conduct their symphony through food.

I am a gastroenterologist who has spent over 20 years studying how food affects the gut microbiome and overall health. The research is increasingly clear: A gut-friendly approach to nutrition is important for happy and healthy communities both inside and out of your body.

Communities within and without

The fascinating research on the gut microbiome takes us on a journey into the depths of the intestine, where trillions of microorganisms blur the lines between other and self.

The term holobiont describes the combined lives of the microbiome and its vessel, working symbiotically to support each other's well-being. This relationship is represented at its extreme in the intestines of termites and cows, where microbes transform uniform, low-nutrient diets of wood or grass into complete nutrition replete with vitamins and other essential nutrients for health.

When people eat certain foods, like those rich in fiber, they too harbor similar relationships with their microbiomes. You provide your microbes with food and a safe place to live, and they in turn fortify your diet with vital molecules such as vitamins, short-chain fatty acids and neurotransmitters that are key for regulating your metabolism, immunity and mood.

Just as food illuminates the importance of the microbial community within you, it also shines a light on your social community. Food is one of the foundations of culture, serving as the basis of many gifts and shared experiences. You have first dates over drinks and meals, connect with your colleagues over lunch, and share dinners with your family and friends. Food is a type of social glue that helps bind communities together.

As you feed your microbiome to cultivate a thriving community within your gut, you also figuratively and literally feed your social community when you break bread with friends and family.

Convenient fixes sacrifice community

Convenient, fast, affordable ultraprocessed foods have some enormous benefits in helping feed a growing population and enabling an ever-quickening pace of life, but the latest research is showing that there may be collateral damage.

Compared with ancestral diets, industrialized diets may be contributing to less diverse microbial communities in your gut. Diversity is important for generating key molecules like butyrate that regulate appetite and mood. As a result, your microbiome becomes less good at regulating hunger and emotions.

Your social community may also be suffering as result of this disrupted microbial community. In fact, studies on various model organisms have found that microbes can mediate behaviors as diverse as mating and aggression by regulating responses to stress. Food and microbes may affect social behavior in people as well.

Processed foods do serve a purpose. They are convenient and affordable and can be especially useful for people and families with busy lives and limited time to cook. But some are healthier than others. Adding back missing nutrients like fiber and polyphenols to processed foods can help make them healthier, and these can complement a diet of less-processed foods.

Wisdom cultures around the world

Anthropological research suggests that traditional diets are a particularly important contributor to health and longevity. Communities in Costa Rica, the Mediterranean and Japan that follow traditional diets have many individuals who live for over 100 years. The Mediterranean and Okinawan diets have consistently been shown to contribute to better health, including lower rates of obesity and other metabolic diseases.

These diets involve traditional food choices and combinations as well as natural food processing and preservation techniques. Combining corn with lime, an ancient process called nixtamalixation, for example, increases vitamin availability and decreases grain toxins.

Fermentation transforms food through live microbes that consume simple carbohydrates, generating antimicrobial chemicals that help preserve food. It also decreases toxins and increases the levels of vitamins and minerals available for absorption. Fermented foods have been shown to grow diverse microbial communities in the gut, decrease inflammation in the body and reduce the risk of chronic disease.

Communal eating is also intricately woven into the social fabric of traditional communities. The longest-lived communities around the world tend to eat at least one of their meals together as a family, and eating together is linked to health benefits including weight regulation and lower depressive symptoms.

Reembracing community

Here are a few simple tips to help you eat well and grow your communities—holobiont, family, friends and all:

1. Eat the four phonetic food F's: fiber, phytonutrients, healthy fats and ferments. I developed this simple way of categorizing foods to streamline the often complicated advice on how to eat well from the perspective of growing a healthy microbiome. It is also independent of cultural background, as these four categories are common elements in the diets of diverse and long-lived populations around the world.
2. Learn the wisdom of traditional food preparation from people who still hold that knowledge. Consider taking a cooking class or spending time in the kitchen learning from a relative or a friend. Then re-share what you learn with your loved ones while preparing and enjoying your own meals.
3. You don't have to be perfect. Even a step toward a healthier meal a day and a communal meal a week can be beneficial.

It may at first seem daunting to carve out time to follow these deceivingly simple tips. But with a bit of patience and perseverance, they could be inspiration to improve your and your community's health and wellness.

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In 2022, Stacy Batten said, her “whole year was on fire.”

Her husband died of cancer, and her father died after a long battle with Parkinson’s disease. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer. And she moved across the country from Seattle to Fairfield County, Conn., after selling the home that she had lived in for 26 years.

In her devastation, she noticed that she felt better when she looked for the good parts of each day. So she took a large Mason jar and turned it into a “gratitude jar,” which she now keeps on her night stand.

Every night, she writes down a few things that she is grateful for on a scrap of paper and drops it inside. They are often as simple as “I met a new neighbor” or “I took a walk with the dog and my mom.”

“The grief is still there,” Batten, 56, said. “But writing those daily notes has helped.”

Two decades ago, a landmark study led by the psychologist Robert A. Emmons sought to understand how people benefit from gratitude, a question that scientists had rarely explored until then.

Dr. Emmons’s findings — which suggested that gratitude may improve psychological well-being — inspired a spate of additional research. To date, numerous studies have found that having a grateful outlook, “counting one’s blessings” and expressing gratitude to others can have positive effects on our emotional health as well as on interpersonal and romantic relationships.

In addition, some studies, but not all, have shown that gratitude can benefit physical health.

“Gratitude heals, energizes and changes lives,” Dr. Emmons said. “It is the prism through which we view life in terms of gifts, givers, goodness and grace.”

Here’s more about why gratitude is so powerful, and how can we incorporate it into our daily lives.

What is gratitude?

Gratitude is a positive emotion that can arise when you acknowledge that you have goodness in your life and that other people — or higher powers, if you believe in them — have helped you achieve that goodness.

In other words, the sources of the good things “lie at least partially outside the self,” Dr. Emmons said.

You might feel gratitude when someone is kind to you, for example.

But “feeling it is only half the equation,” said Philip Watkins, a professor of psychology at Eastern Washington University and the author of “Gratitude and the Good Life.” Expressing gratitude is equally important to reap the benefits of this emotion, he said.

How does it benefit you?

Many studies have asked participants to write letters of thanks, or to list the positive things in their lives, and then measured the effects of those acts.

The results suggest that performing these types of activities provides mental health benefits — reducing symptoms of depression and anxiety, increasing self-esteem and improving satisfaction with daily life. But some studies have noted that gratitude interventions are not necessarily more effective than other kinds of activities to enhance well-being, like asking people to write about the details of their day. Even so, that doesn’t make gratitude activities any less useful, the experts said.

Multiple studies have shown that expressing gratitude to acquaintances, co-workers, friends or romantic partners can offer a relationship “boost” and “helps bind us more closely,” said Sara Algoe, a psychologist at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill who has researched how gratitude aids relationships.

What’s more, when analyzing people’s dispositions, researchers have found that those who are more prone to experience gratitude in their daily lives have lower levels of depression and sleep better.

And not only does gratitude improve the well-being of the giver and the recipient, but it may also be good for those who witness it: Watching an act of gratitude between two people can cause an observer to feel more warmth and affinity toward them both.

“What impresses me are the objective, biologically verifiable outcomes that go beyond self-report measures,” Dr. Emmons said. For example, gratitude has also been associated with lower blood pressure, and, in one pilot study, higher levels of heart rate variability, a marker of well-being.

“Gratitude seems to be the gift that keeps on giving,” Dr. Algoe said.

One moment a day is enough.

The studies on gratitude don’t indicate how often we ought to express gratitude or how best to put it into practice. But many experts believe that a small dose of gratitude, once a day, is ideal.

“I think the benefits of gratitude activities truly unfold through long-term habits,” said Joel Wong, a professor of counseling psychology at Indiana University's School of Education, who is studying whether expressing gratitude in a six-week group program can help people with depression.

To develop an enduring gratitude habit, try linking your gratitude practice to an already ingrained routine, Dr. Wong said. He chooses to think about what he’s grateful for in the morning.

“I try to do it when I first turn on the computer at work,” he said.

Gretchen Schmelzer, a psychologist in Philadelphia who regularly incorporates gratitude exercises into her work with clients, said it could be especially useful during difficult times. Earlier this year, she fell while hiking and broke both legs, leading her to use a wheelchair for six weeks.

To avoid spiraling into negative thoughts while she continues to heal, she tells herself each day to “be thankful for what you can do — and not let yourself focus on what you can’t do,” she said.

“Gratitude allows us to look at what we do have and to feel abundance,” she added.

Finally, although many studies have shown the value of writing a letter expressing appreciation, it doesn’t have to be lengthy or time-consuming. A quick email or text can do the trick.

Be specific.

Imagine that your partner is thanking you for cleaning up the kitchen after dinner. Which statement would you rather hear?

“Thank you!”

Or: “I am grateful that you took the reins and handled all the kitchen duties tonight. I love how we take turns to give one another a break.”

Specificity matters “because it deepens our experience of gratitude,” Dr. Wong said. “It intensifies our grateful emotions and thoughts.”

Dr. Wong has created a list of 100 questions that may serve as useful prompts when thinking about gratitude in a more specific way, whether you are thanking someone else or listing the things in your life that you feel grateful for.

When doing this exercise, Dr. Wong suggests putting pen to paper.

“The act of writing slows down our thinking process and allow us to ponder more deliberately,” Dr. Wong said. He added, “By writing, we retain a permanent record of our blessings; we can return to our gratitude journaling months or years later to recall what we were grateful for.”

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"People ventured out. The fighting seemed to have stopped and dead bodies were being disposed. People went back to their houses to assess their losses in terms of clothes and armaments."

Sahni wrote a fictional account of the carnage that accompanied the partition as it split the subcontinent into the new independent nations of India and Pakistan. Religious violence erupted, displacing some 12 million people, and claiming the lives of up to one million people.

Fiction might have been mirroring reality when the planes swooped over the troubled villages, suggests Aashique Ahmed Iqbal, an Indian historian.

The mere presence of the aircraft, he says, had a deterrent effect, dispersing mobs and giving villages time to prepare their defences. "The aeroplane played a small but highly crucial role during the division of the British empire in India into the independent dominions of India and Pakistan," notes Mr Iqbal in his fascinating book, The Aeroplane and the Making of Modern India.

Of the 12 million people who fled from India and Pakistan, the overwhelming majority travelled by train, vehicle, cart and on foot. Up to 50,000 people - or less than 1% of the people evacuated - were flown out of what became India and Pakistan, Mr Iqbal says. A near-complete exchange of population was completed in three months, between September and November in 1947.

Planes flew over railway tracks to safeguard refugee-laden trains from potential mob ambushes

The Royal Indian Air Force (RIAF) - the aerial force of British India and later the dominion of India - would play a key role in quelling disorder and help in evacuating partition refugees, notes Mr Iqbal.

Every morning, their aircraft embarked on tactical reconnaissance missions, flying over railway tracks to safeguard refugee-laden trains from potential mob ambushes, and checking the rails for any signs of tampering. The planes would also look out for armed mobs and communicate with trains using wireless radio.

In September 1947, aircraft flying over Punjab reported a startling sight: up to 30,000 refugees trekking on foot along a 25-mile (40-km) stretch, as recounted by Mr Iqbal. These planes detected lurking mobs poised to attack weary refugees, relaying their locations to military patrols. They witnessed ominous columns of smoke rising from incinerated villages. "If you flew low," Mr Iqbal writes, "you would spot bodies floating through Punjab's famous canal system."

That was not all. RIAF planes - mostly trusty Dakotas - transported 1.5 million doses of cholera vaccines from Delhi to Karachi to help prevent an epidemic in the unsanitary refugee camps. They also dropped cooked food, sugar and oil for refugees. Both India and Pakistan used planes to drop leaflets warning rioters to cease violence, Mr Iqbal writes. The RIAF also ended up evacuating non-Muslims from distant parts of Pakistan like Multan, Bannu and Peshawar.

In scenes reminiscent of the desperate Afghans who attempted to flee their country by running alongside and clinging to military jets at Kabul airport in August 2021, the airfields of Delhi and Punjab in 1947 also witnessed moments of "great danger and desperation".

Indian companies bought cheap aircraft left behind by the US forces after the end of World War Two

"Refugees in camps near the airfields would rush to the planes as soon as they were permitted. Passengers desperate to be flown out of danger bribed crew with money and gold to board the plane," Mr Iqbal writes.

Tickets were expensive. Passengers were allowed to carry very little luggage: there are accounts of a refugee from Hyderabad in India carrying only her Quran to Pakistan; and others carrying a "battered child's cane chair" and a "moth-eaten-looking parrot".

Not surprisingly, the planes were packed to the gills. Seats and carpets were removed to accommodate as many refugees as possible. Dakota DC-3 planes meant to carry 21 passengers often carried five times the number.

A private airline technician was given a pair of knuckle-dusters by his pilot to control the crowds. "He would punch his way to the door collecting undercarriage pins and punch his way into the plane before firmly locking in," Mr Iqbal writes. Once the doors closed, the engines would start. "Then the crowd would automatically vanish due to the slip stream of the engines."

That no major crashes were reported because of the overcrowding, lax airport security and overworked planes was remarkable. "Refugees often crowded airfields before planes landed because of lack of security. Matters were not helped by hostility of the authorities to air crews of the 'other' country," writes Mr Iqbal.

Muslim refugees gather in India to seek transport to Pakistan

By early 1947, India had 115 civilian airplanes run by 11 private companies. The end of World War II had sparked an "unprecedented boom" for civil aviation as Indian companies bought cheap aircraft - mostly Douglas DC-3 Dakotas - left behind by the departing US forces. But there was a glut in supply and not enough demand and profits plummeted. During partition, civilian planes not flying on scheduled routes were diverted to ferry refugees from Pakistan to India; and 10 of these planes were made available for the government.

But civilian airline operators were not able to cope with the mass evacuation. They also refused to risk aircraft and personnel for this "impossible task". Eventually foreign help was sought: 21 British Overseas Airways Corporation (BOAC) jet planes flew "non-stop" for 15 days to move 6,300 people from Delhi to Karachi. They also carried 45,000kg of food, tents and vaccines for Muslim refugees stranded at Delhi airfields.

Two Royal Air Force transport aircraft deployed to evacuate British nationals were also used to evacuate some 12,000 people between India and Pakistan. Only 2,790 were British personnel; the rest would be railways, post, and telegraph employees who would play a key role in the exchange of population on the ground, writes Mr Iqbal.

By October 1947, India realised this effort was still not enough. This was when 'Operation India' was launched: over six weeks in October and November, 21 planes - mainly Dakotas chartered from eight British companies - transported 35,000 people and more than 1.5 million pounds of baggage between India and Pakistan. Some 170 aviation personnel were flown in from Britain to help.

Indian aviation companies were overwhelmed by the magnitude of evacuation, so both the governments had to rely on chartered British aircraft. And the use of planes, says Mr Iqbal, "enabled the rapid constitution of independent India in the crucial first months after Independence".

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On Saturday, popular account CALL TO ACTIVISM (@CalltoActivism) shared a post by a person named Casey Fischer. Fischer recalled that she was at Dunkin’ Donuts when she noticed a “homeless guy sitting on the side of the road and picking up change”.

Fischer bought him a coffee and bagel and they both began talking. Recalling their conversation, she wrote, “He told me a lot about how people are usually very mean to him because he’s homeless, how drugs turned him into the person he hated, he lost his mom to cancer, he never knew his dad and he just wants to be someone his mom would be proud of (along with another hours worth of conversation).”

Fischer further wrote that the man’s name was Chris and before they parted, he asked her to wait so that he could write something for her. Chris later gave her a small note, written on an old receipt paper that said, “’I wanted to kill myself today, because of u I now do not. Thank u, beautiful person’”.

This small gesture touched Fischer deeply. This post about Chris’s note has over 21,000 likes.

Commenting on this post, a user on the social media platform X wrote, “Genuine kindness, can deeply touch another person’s heart, in ways we may never realize… Seriously hoping this homeless man, has found his way safely, and that life has meaning for him, every day.”

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