In the last year, he has gone from a relative unknown to a bona fide art phenomenon. His surrealist-style paintings were acquired by deep-pocketed collectors like Tommy Mottola and Jessica Goldman Srebnick during Art Basel Miami Beach. In June, he had a solo exhibition at the Chase Contemporary gallery in SoHo, where all 35 works were sold, the gallery said, fetching $50,000 to $125,000.

One of his paintings went for $159,000 (with fees) at a Phillips de Pury auction in Hong Kong, and another hit $230,000 at a charity gala in Capri, Italy.

“I’m glad I can make people happy with my art, and they can hang it in their homes,” he said on a recent Monday at the Chase gallery. He was standing before one of his works, “The Professor,” a large, cubistlike painting of a man rendered in acrylic and oil that stands 4 1/2 feet high — as tall as the artist himself. “This one I did when I was younger, when I was 8,” he added shyly.

It should be noted that Andres Valencia, who has been called an “art prodigy” and “little Picasso,” is only 10.

With the gallery closed, he was joined by his mother, Elsa Valencia, 48, a jewelry designer when she is not chaperoning her son to art shows, and the gallery’s owner, Bernie Chase. Andres, dressed like a preppy schoolboy in a white Ralph Lauren polo shirt, bluejeans and a crisp pair of Nike Jordans, gave a tour of his show.

“Clowns are just classic,” he said, introducing a piece called “Max the Clown.” Another, “The Godfather,” was commissioned by a Florida family and depicts Mafia henchmen.

Like a precocious student unaware of his own maturity, he name-checked some of his inspirations: Jean-Michel Basquiat, George Condo, Pokémon, Pablo Picasso’s “Guernica,” Click N’ Play army action figures.

“I’ve been in the art business for 20 years,” Chase said, hovering proudly on the sidelines. “I’ve worked with guys like Peter Beard and Kenny Scharf. Andres has the potential to be that big — or bigger.”

Andres may be basking in adulation, but he is also a fifth-grader with math homework. “My son is an artist, but he is a kid first,” his mother said. “He is a child, not a celebrity.”

That is not to say that she and her husband, Lupe Valencia, 50, a lawyer and athlete manager for Cuban professional boxer Frank Sánchez, haven’t had a heavy hand in their son becoming an overnight sensation.

They briefly enlisted the services of Nadine Johnson, a veteran publicist in New York, and now work with Sam Morris, a theater and arts publicist.

Articles oohing and aahing over the baby-faced artist have appeared in The Miami Herald, The New York Post, Forbes and The Times of London. ABC’s “World News Tonight” did a segment on him.

Their son’s high earnings are an opportunity to teach him “how to give back,” his mother said. A portion of proceeds from their son’s sales, which the Valencias said “so far is over $300,000,” have been donated to AIDS charity group amfAR and children’s charity Box of Hope.

His art career began at 4, when his parents noticed that he spent hours in their San Diego dining room, sketching a painting by graffiti artist Retna, one of his father’s former clients.

“I would bring paper and sit there and always try to copy it, but it took years to get it right,” Andres said, fidgeting in his seat.

His artistic confidence grew quickly. He sold watercolors to family friends for $20. Among them was Chase, who offered to pay $100 whenever he would visit the Valencias in San Diego. Andres proved to be equally adept as a salesman and raised his price to $5,000. “So I said, ‘OK, I’ll pay $5,000 for that one,’” Chase said, laughing. “I took him out to my car to write a check, and Elsa comes running out after me screaming, ‘What do you think you’re doing?’”

Chase bought enough paintings to persuade the Valencias to let their son “share his talents with the world,” he said. He contacted Nick Korniloff, director of Art Miami, a fair that takes place alongside Art Basel, to debut the young artist.

Korniloff said he was initially “very skeptical when I heard Bernie say he wanted me to work with this 10-year-old child.” But he also thought there would be pent-up demand for “something joyful” after the pandemic. “The story of a talented 10-year-old painter felt gratifying,” he added.

News of the child painter spread fast. Celebrities like Sofia Vergara and Channing Tatum bought pieces. Reporters sought verification that the artworks were done by someone so young. Korniloff invited Valencia to paint live alongside Bradley Theodore, a popular street artist several decades older than him. The spectacle drew more media interest.

His following continues to grow. Earlier this month, the BTS singer known as V shared one of Andres’ works, a cubist-style portrait of a man, to his 50 million Instagram followers.

Underage artists are rare but not unique in the art world. Several years ago, collectors paid $250 to $1,500 for expressionist doodles by 2-year-old art star Lola June. Some young art stars, like Alexandra Nechita, who at 12 was labeled “a Mozart with a paintbrush” on talk shows and earned millions in sales, continue to make work.

Child stardom has been less kind to others. Marla Olmstead sold her abstract paintings for thousands of dollars when she was just 4 years old, but, years later, a “60 Minutes” segment and an investigative documentary questioned if her father guided her brush.

Owners of other contemporary art galleries caution that the speculative frenzy surrounding Andres may not last. “Too many people think of new artists as a kind of asset class that is protected from a lot of the inflation,” said Alexander Shulan, owner of the Lomex, a downtown Manhattan gallery that focuses on emerging artists. “But any young artist’s life is going to change dramatically over time, so it’s pretty ridiculous for anyone to assume that an investment will have longevity for a 24-year-old painter, let alone an artist so much younger — an actual child, in this case.”

Back at the gallery, Andres grabbed a notepad in front of him and doodled a portrait. “If you see a kid doing sketches on paper with a marker, a lot of people think that those drawings should not be put in a gallery,” he said, putting down his pen. “Sometimes older people just don’t get it.”

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The oldest known writing systems first emerged in Mesopotamia, between 3400 and 3100 BC, and Egypt, around 3250 BC. The Latin alphabet, which I’m using to write this post and you’re using to read it, gradually took the shape we know between the seventh century BC and the Middle Ages. Over the eras since, it has spread outward from Europe to become the most widely used script in the world. These are important developments in the history of writing, but hardly the only ones. It is with all known writing systems that historical map animator Ollie Bye deals in the video above: not just those used today, but over the whole of the past five millennia.

The conquests of Alexander the Great; the Gallic Wars; the colonization of Latin America; the “scramble for Africa”: these and other major historical events are vividly reflected in the spread of certain writing systems.

Up until 1492 — after the expiration of eight and a half of the video’s eleven minutes — the map concerns itself only with Europe, Asia, and the northern three-quarters of Africa (as well as an inlaid section depicting the civilizations of what is now Central America). Thereafter it zooms out to include the New World, and indeed the whole world, though centuries pass before most of its blank spaces fill up with the colors that indicate the adoption of a dominant script.

Arabic and Persian appear in lime green, simplified Chinese in red, and Cyrillic in light blue. Before Bye’s animation reaches the middle twentieth century, most of the world has turned medium blue, which represents the now-mighty Latin alphabet. The use of these very letters for all written communication by such a wide variety of cultures merits a volumes-long history by itself. But perhaps most intriguing here is the persistence of relatively minor scripts: Cree, used among the natives of northern Canada; hiragana, katakana, and kanji in Japan; and also hangul in Korea — which I read and write myself every day of my life in Seoul, and to whose continued dominance here I can confidently attest.

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Our ancestors ate a Paleo diet. It had carbs

Along the fabled Danube River, which snakes its way for 1,800 miles from the Black Forest in Germany to the Black Sea in Romania, scores of towns—such as the small Romanian port of Zimnicea on the Bulgarian border—depend on the waterway for their livelihood. But this summer’s epic drought and historic high temperatures, now in a fifth grueling month, have depleted the once-mighty Danube, upending everything that Zimnicea’s residents—port workers, farmers, the shipping industry, anglers, restaurant owners, and families—had for generations counted on to sustain themselves. Never in living memory has the river run so low, with large areas of mud-cracked river bottom exposed along Zimnicea’s shorelines, the dead mollusks evidence of the devastating toll on riverine life.

With the Danube flowing at less than half its usual summer volume, dozens of cargo barges lie motionless in Zimnicea’s harbor, waiting for a turn to use the only channel deep enough for passage. Locals are collecting the scant rainwater to use for household purposes in order to save potable water from the Danube for drinking. Children play along the shoreline’s new beaches.

As elsewhere along the Danube—and, indeed, across much of Europe this summer—emergency dredging teams have been called in to deepen the riverway to break the cargo jam. Nevertheless, grain transports emanating from Ukraine—with many of its Black Sea ports controlled by Russia, the Danube is an alternative route for the war-wracked country to export foodstuffs—have been forced to shed cargo weight in order to pass, when they can pass at all.

Across southern Romania, much of which relies on the Danube for fresh drinking water, hundreds of villages are rationing water supplies and curtailing the irrigation of farmland that Europe relies upon for corn, grain, sunflowers, and vegetables. The cruise ships that normally ferry tourists along the iconic waterway are docked. In the first six months of 2022, Romania’s hydropower utility Hidroelectrica generated a third less electricity than it normally does. And Romanian wheat farmers say that drought has cost them a fifth of their harvest. Romania is one of Europe’s largest wheat producers, and all the more important for the international market in light of Russia’s blockage of much of Ukraine’s wheat exports.

“At towns up and down the Danube, drought and climate change take on an existential meaning,” explains Nick Thorpe, author of The Danube: A Journey Upriver from the Black Sea to the Black Forest. “In contrast to city dwellers, they’re having this disaster unfold before their eyes.”

Nearly two-thirds of Europe has suffered drought conditions this year—the worst dry spell in 500 years—and scientists say global warming has played a large role in the crisis. The heat wave has wreaked havoc on many of the continent’s waterways—great and small, from the Loire to the Rhine—with wide-ranging knock-on effects for Europe’s food supply, commerce, water access, energy systems, and ecology. And scientists warn that if hot, dry summers become a long-term trend, some of these waterways may never recover.

Along the Rhine, barges that carry coal, oil, and commodities that supply millions of people are waylaid. By July, water levels in Italy’s Po were so low that the government declared a state of emergency in northern Italy, where vast fields of crops were abandoned. In France, the warmed waters of the Rhône and Garonne can no longer cool the systems of nuclear power plants, forcing numerous plants to shut down. And hundreds of tributaries to the larger rivers are in even worse shape: bone dry.

In early August, France’s prime minister, Élisabeth Borne, said that France is in the midst of the “most severe drought” the country has ever experienced, which has so sapped rivers—including the Loire, the Doubs, the Dordogne, and the Garonne—that hundreds of municipalities now require that drinking water be delivered by truck.

“This year is exceptional in terms of the drought’s intensity and duration, and yet it’s the new normal,” says Karsten Rinke of Germany’s Helmholtz Center for Environmental Research (UFZ). “There’s a huge water deficit in Europe’s landscape, which is only getting worse every year that it’s not replenished.” Rinke says that drought conditions in four of the past five years have sapped groundwater, further shrunk the glaciers that feed rivers, and transformed the landscape that has long nourished communities and ecosystems.

“Perhaps most alarming this year is the scope of the low water levels across the entire Danube basin, from Bavaria to the Black Sea,” says Thomas Hein of the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna. The basin covers more than 800,000 square kilometers (300,000 square miles) and encompasses 19 countries—10 percent of continental Europe. “The entire river is affected, which means we can’t just pump water from one section to another to make up for the shortfall.”

On the Danube, the river is so low at Novi Sad, Serbia’s second largest city, that people can wade across it—something even the city’s oldest citizens have never before witnessed. Whole wharfs and their vessels are stranded on dried riverbed, with never-before-seen islands now dotting the shallow waters. Farmers from the rich agricultural regions surrounding Novi Sad have requested that the government declare a state of emergency. And a grim symbol from the past has emerged: Dozens of sunken German World War II-era warships, some still harboring live ammunition, are now visible in the diminished river.

The drought is taking a huge toll on commerce: Europe’s waterways transport about one ton of freight a year for every EU resident and contribute, in terms of transportation alone, roughly $80 billion to the economy. The Rhine is so emaciated today that massive sand bars breach its midsection, rendering fully loaded barges unable to transport coal, diesel, and commodities to the industrial cities of Germany’s Ruhr Valley.

The coal and fuel that travel the Rhine and other rivers are particularly vital now in light of Russia’s embargoes on gas and coal. And the outages at France’s nuclear power plants due to a lack of cooling water have contributed to the soaring price of French electricity, which has shot up to the unheard-of €900 per megawatt-hour—more than 10 times last year’s price.

Scientists say that the economic cost of the rivers’ decimation is only part of the problem. The less water in the water system as a whole, explains Gabriel Singer, an ecologist at University of Innsbruck, Austria, the less dilution for salts and the slower a river flows. This leads to higher saline content and higher water temperatures, which can be lethal for many species of riverine life, such as Danube salmon, barbel, and European grayling, among many others.

Higher temperatures also feed algae blooms, Singer explains, which can be toxic for river systems. This is what has happened in several German rivers, including the Moselle and Neckar, as well as perhaps the Oder River, where in mid-August more than 100 metric tons (220,000 pounds) of dead fish—among them perch, catfish, pike, and asp—washed up on its shores within a week. (Experts are currently investigating the cause of the die off.)

Scientists point out that while the predicament of the great rivers of Europe has grabbed the headlines, it is the smaller rivers that suffer disproportionately. “So many of them are completely dried up, not a drop of water left,” says Rinke. “When this happens they lose their entire community of biodiversity, forever. It won’t just return the next time it rains.”

Scientists say that millennia of engineering and human activity along Europe’s rivers have also played a role. The straightening of once-wild rivers, deforestation, damming, industrial pollution, wastewater discharges, and agriculture’s usurpation of shorelines and wetlands has made Europe’s rivers all the more susceptible to heat waves and low-water conditions, as well as floods.

“All of our river systems are highly fragmented and vulnerable,” says Singer, underscoring that while the lower Danube is plagued by drought, the upper Danube in Germany and Austria can be at risk of flooding, as happened so spectacularly last July in the Rhine borderlands of Germany and Belgium. The underlying problem, he says, is essentially the same: the inability of highly modified rivers and river basins to hold water for longer periods of time. “Healthy natural ecosystems function as a sponge that gives and takes water, but ours have lost this ability,” he says.

Christian Griebler, a limnologist at the University of Vienna, explains: “We lose high amounts of water because rain cannot infiltrate sealed surfaces, and heavy rain after a drought does not infiltrate dry soils. Surface overflow goes into channelized and fast-flowing rivers that hardly communicate with the surrounding aquifers.”

Thus, the authorities’ reflex reaction—namely to dredge deeper—doesn’t address the essential problem, say Singer and Griebler. In fact, it exacerbates it.

Solving the crisis unfolding this summer along Europe’s rivers will of course involve the long-term endeavor of slowing global warming. In the short term, scientists say governments need to address other factors stressing the continent’s waterways, including enforcing stronger wetland protections.

On that front, some progress is being made, says Singer. Last year, UNESCO established the world’s first five-country biosphere reserve along the Mura, Drava, and Danube rivers—a total area of almost 1 million hectares (3,860 square miles).

The Danube Delta, Europe’s largest wetland, has enjoyed such protection since 1998. But the delta’s special status has not spared it from the extreme weather. Freshwater springs in the Delta’s Letea Forest went dry in August, endangering the lives of Romania’s famed wild horses. Officials bulldozed the mud-caked springs, enabling water to flow again and the horses to drink.

“Fortunately we still have the glaciers that act as a reserve for the bigger rivers in times of lower precipitation,” says Hein. “But climate change modelers say they’ll be gone in 30 years. This is extremely worrisome.”

Robert Lichtner, the Vienna-based coordinator of the European Union’s Strategy for the Danube Region, says that adaptation measures ultimately must be part of the basin’s future. “We want to slow these processes down, but the extreme weather is not going away,” he says. “We’ll have to adapt and learn to live with it.”

The Drying Up of Europe’s Great Rivers Could Be the New Normal

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COVID may have pushed a leading seasonal flu strain to extinction

Florida’s Space Coast on track after Ian, set for 3 launches in 3 days

According to a recent study conducted by University College London (UCL) researchers, utilizing digital devices like smartphones may actually benefit individuals’ memory skills rather than making them lazy or forgetful.

The study, which was published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, demonstrated that using a digital device may aid in the storage and recall of very important information. Their memory is thus freed up to remember other, less important things. 

Neuroscientists have previously raised worry that excessive use of technology might lead to cognitive decline and “digital dementia”. 

The new study, however, demonstrates that utilizing a digital device as external memory helps individuals recall knowledge not only saved into the device, but it also helps them to remember unsaved information too.

Researchers created a memory game that can be played on a touchscreen tablet or computer to show this. 158 people, ranging in age from 18 to 71, participated in the experiment.

Participants were shown up to 12 numbered circles on the screen and had to remember to drag some of these to the left and some to the right. The number of circles that they remembered to drag to the correct side determined their pay at the end of the experiment. One side was designated “high value”, meaning that remembering to drag a circle to this side was worth 10 times as much money as remembering to drag a circle to the other “low value” side.

Participants performed this task 16 times. They had to use their own memory to remember half of the trials and they were allowed to set reminders on the digital device for the other half.

The results found that participants tended to use digital devices to store the details of the high-value circles. And, when they did so, their memory for those circles was improved by 18%. Their memory for low-value circles was also improved by 27%, even in people who had never set any reminders for low-value circles.

However, results also showed a potential cost of using reminders. When they were taken away, the participants remembered the low-value circles better than the high-value ones, showing that they had entrusted the high-value circles to their devices and then forgotten about them.

Senior author, Dr. Sam Gilbert (UCL Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience) said: “We wanted to explore how storing information in a digital device could influence memory abilities.

“We found that when people were allowed to use an external memory, the device helped them to remember the information they had saved into it. This was hardly surprising, but we also found that the device improved people’s memory for unsaved information as well.

“This was because using the device shifted the way that people used their memory to store high-importance versus low-importance information. When people had to remember by themselves, they used their memory capacity to remember the most important information. But when they could use the device, they saved high-importance information into the device and used their own memory for less important information instead.

“The results show that external memory tools work. Far from causing ‘digital dementia’, using an external memory device can even improve our memory for information that we never saved. But we need to be careful that we back up the most important information. Otherwise, if a memory tool fails, we could be left with nothing but lower-importance information in our own memory.”

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The study, carried out by Anglia Ruskin University (ARU) in the UK as well as researchers in Pakistan, China and the United States, surveyed 323 employees about their experiences of abusive behavior from superiors and peers, and also their job security and level of emotional exhaustion.

Examples of hostile behavior in the workplace considered by the researchers included use of inappropriate language, sexual harassment, outbursts, humiliation and misuse of power.

Researchers uncovered a significant association between abusive leader behavior and abusive behavior from co-workers. Of the 323 people involved in the study, 68% who had experienced hostile behavior from a leader had also witnessed interpersonal aggression from the general workforce.

The study also reported an association between experiencing hostile behavior from leaders and emotional exhaustion and job insecurity, suggesting that mistreatment from peers can damage employees' confidence in their job and their role within an organization.

Of those who had experienced hostile behavior from a leader, 35% had faced abusive peer behavior themselves, 52% had suffered emotional exhaustion and 77% had concerns about job security.

Co-author Dr. Nadeem Khalid, Senior Lecturer in Entrepreneurship and Strategy at ARU, says that "it's clear from our study that hostile behavior at the top of a workplace is not only likely to be damaging to individuals in terms of their emotional exhaustion and job security, it is also likely to encourage other employees to act in unethical ways, creating a toxic environment across the entire organization."

"This mirroring of negative behavior may have its roots in the reciprocal relationship between leaders and employees. An employee who is mistreated may feel the only way to get ahead in their job is to treat others as they have been treated themselves—this may not always be intentional but it results in a race to the bottom among employees and damages job security and leads to stress and exhaustion."

"Previous studies have shown that abusive behavior from leaders is associated with a lack of commitment from employees, and has a negative effect on emotional well-being. Our study suggests that the situation could be exacerbated by the negative behavior of general workers as well as the leader."

The research was published in Frontiers in Psychology.

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But nuclear technology has been in use for decades in the United States, and it still produces nearly a fifth of US electricity with virtually no carbon emissions. Its safety track record over that period is also remarkably solid. Plus, issues of energy security are as relevant as ever, for reasons that have everything to do with those missiles landing near Zaporizhzhia. These are part of a cocktail of reasons that have profoundly shifted attitudes toward nuclear energy in recent months. From California to Germany, places planning to retire their reactors have now said they believe nuclear energy is part of the future—both to provide clean, reliable energy at night and when winds are low, and as a way to reduce dependence on Russian gas and oil.

The industry still faces uncertainty, primarily due to economics. Big reactors under construction in the US are subject to immense delays and overrunning costs. But that future is made brighter, Ahn argues, with advances in technology. He points to new advanced reactors, developed by startups like NuScale and Oklo, that are meant to be smaller, more efficient, and easier to construct. Once those designs earn regulatory approval, he says, the future of nuclear energy will again be bright.

Alan Ahn Says Nuclear Is Still the Carbon-Free Fuel of the Future

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Hurricane Ian made landfall in western Florida on Wednesday afternoon with wind speeds close to 150 mph, just shy of reaching Category 5. Huge storm surges flooded coastal areas, with 12 feet of water hitting the city of Fort Myers. Surveillance cameras revealed a wall of water sloshing past storefronts and turning cars into 4-ton bath toys, all while the storm slowed to a hover over the coastline. Moving slowly across the state, Ian then dumped large amounts of rain, flooding inland areas, collapsing buildings, and leaving roads impassable. More than 2.5 million people have been cut off from the grid.

Just a week ago, Hurricane Fiona traveled all the way to Newfoundland in Canada, becoming one of the strongest storms to ever hit the area. And the first major tropical storm to hit the US this year didn’t pass over New Orleans or Miami, but San Diego—a city that almost never sees such weather. Events like these are not unheard of in the historical record, but they have been rare, and their presence during a year when so many other records have been set—from extreme heat in Sacramento to record flooding in Yellowstone—sets off alarm bells. Just as extreme heat and precipitation are growing in intensity and regularity thanks to climate change, the latest research says that strong hurricanes like Ian will become increasingly common too.

“There are a lot of things which are connected, and we’re trying to use models to sort through some of these complicated relationships,” says Thomas Knutson, a senior scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration in the US. He and his colleagues are joining the dots to predict how hurricanes are changing as the world warms.

Hurricanes, or tropical cyclones, are susceptible to rising temperatures—they thrive in warm conditions. In the northern Atlantic they start their life cycle close to the equator, in a globe-encircling region called the tropical convergence zone, where there is a permanent area of low air pressure. Here, thunderstorms are a daily occurrence, and if enough form in a small area, they can begin to fall in toward each other and rotate. Because they cause a steady stream of water to rise up through the warm air, they lower the pressure on the sea’s surface dramatically, meaning they can quickly draw up more water to grow into the most intense storms on Earth. Once this process begins, it takes strong external forces, like powerful winds or a sudden influx of cold air or water, to stop things from intensifying.

And with more warm seawater now stretching poleward because of climate change, hurricanes have the potential to form much closer to the North American coastline. Knutson and his team recently published a paper that found that, because of the spread of warm water, a greater percentage of Atlantic hurricanes could make landfall in the US in the coming decades. 

“We simulated fewer storms at the base level, but a greater fraction reaching Category 4 and 5 and making US landfall. What we’re seeing now is an example of that,” Knutson says. This means that hurricane-prone regions in the US could see more storms with winds exceeding 130 mph, powerful enough to rip the roof off a building, uproot trees, and cut off power.

As global average temperatures rise, the atmosphere will also hold on to greater quantities of moisture, meaning hurricanes could unleash stronger torrents of rain—as much as 14 percent more with 2 degrees Celsius warming, according to Knutson. Sea levels are also expected to rise, contributing to stronger storm surges and devastating impacts on coastal areas. “We have very high confidence that sea level rise is going to continue, and that’s going to exacerbate any type of situation like the one we’re seeing now in Florida,” Knutson says.

Most climatologists agree that the intensity of hurricanes and tropical cyclones will increase as global temperatures rise, and that there’s a strong likelihood that they’ve already begun to do so. Since 1980, there’s been an increase in the percentage of hurricanes that reach Category 3 or higher, and storms have started to intensify more rapidly.

At this point, even if nations make good on their COP26 commitments, we’re likely to reach 2 degrees Celsius of global warming—a scenario in which coastal areas in hurricane-prone regions will face an unprecedented existential crisis. Sea level rise will be a general problem, but it will also be a particular threat during extreme weather events, leading to more violent storm surges and overland flooding that will devastate infrastructure and squeeze local and national resources.

Marshall Shepherd, a climatologist and former president of the American Meteorological Society, says the rising threat of tropical storms is a reality that can no longer be ignored—and yet one that we don’t seem to be adapting to. “In some ways these aren’t really natural disasters anymore,” he says. The fact that we keep placing human infrastructure and people in the pathway of these hurricanes, he argues, means that we can’t regard these as freak occurrences, but problems of our own making.

According to the US Census Bureau, Fort Myers, Florida, was the sixth-fastest-growing area in the country from 2020 to 2021. The fastest development there is still occurring along the coastline, with little thought to rising sea levels or an increased likelihood of extreme weather. Mitigation efforts like sea walls can be effective at protecting property from smaller storms, but walls would need to exceed 300 feet in height to protect infrastructure from the most intense hurricanes, at a cost that would exceed the value of the property being protected. “Going forward, there’s got to be realistic and smart growth solutions,” Shepherd says.

What realistic and smart growth will actually look like might be a bitter pill to swallow for those living in coastal inundation zones. Rob Young, a geologist and director of the Program for the Study of Developed Shorelines, says we need to start changing how we rebuild in the aftermath of these devastating storms. “There are probably areas that we simply shouldn’t put any infrastructure back in,” Young says. “But it’s really difficult to make that call after an emergency when everybody’s just trying to make themselves whole again.”

The complete devastation of Mexico Beach, Florida, by Hurricane Michael in 2018, which bombarded the area with 155 mph winds and a 17-foot storm surge, is a prime example, he says. The town’s rebuilding strategy consisted of elevating homes at least 18 feet off the ground to withstand future storm surges. “But they’re still building in a flood zone,” Young says. “We just don’t have the right kinds of incentives or disincentives to change that economic calculus yet—anywhere, not just in Florida.”

Whether or not people reconsider where and how they live, hurricanes and tropical cyclones will almost certainly become stronger and deadlier. The threat is clear—how humanity will respond to it is not.

Hurricane Ian Is a Warning From the Future

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The trouble appears to have begun in early April, with the first identified case striking a backpacker on April 4. On April 8, a commercial rafting company notified the National Park's Office of Public Health (OPH) that seven people on a rafting trip fell ill with vomiting and/or diarrhea. The cases kept streaming in through April and erupted in early May. The OPH contacted the CDC on May 11, after collecting dozens of case reports. By May 21, the OPH received reports of an additional 102 cases from 13 river rafting groups and several backpackers.

Local officials tested samples taken from portable toilets used by nine affected rafting groups. They found norovirus in all of them. Officials also tested toilet samples from two unaffected rafting groups, which were negative for norovirus. Of the nine positive samples, two were from rafting groups who visited the park in April, while the other seven were from May.

Genetic testing revealed that the strain of norovirus causing illnesses in April differed from the one found in May. Moreover, at least five people reported that their symptoms began more than 24 hours before their trip to the canyon. This all suggests a "potential for multisource introduction of norovirus into the river corridor," the authors wrote.

Bottoming out

To date, it's still unclear how the virus spread among the different groups and park visitors. But the authors note that "[b]ecause many trips use the same campsites and place portable toilets in the same locations, particles could have been transmitted to surfaces, beach sand, or river water where new groups could have encountered them, and then transmitted the virus both from person-to-person and trip-to-trip."

However the virus moved, it did so efficiently. The attack rate among rafting trip groups ranged from 10 percent (i.e., three rafters in a group of 31 fell ill) to a horrifying 83 percent (29 of 35).

In response to the cases, the OPH tried boosting sanitation around potable water spigots at campsites, including daily chlorine disinfections and mechanical devices that prevent backflow. They also raised awareness of the outbreak and advised visitors to wash their hands with soap and water, avoid sharing food, stay home if they're feeling ill, and immediately isolate anyone who falls ill. The authors highlighted that many people "were unaware that alcohol-based hand sanitizer is ineffective in mitigating norovirus transmission," and that washing with soap and water was the most effective prevention.

The efforts appeared to pay off. After alerts were posted in mid-May, the cases slowed to a trickle by the end of the month. Only three cases were reported in June, the last of which occurred on June 17. In all, the authors counted 222 cases between April 1 and June 17, 2022, but they say cases are "likely underreported."

Looking more broadly, the authors note that the outbreak at the Grand Canyon mirrors a nationwide surge in norovirus outbreaks during spring 2022. Like many infectious diseases, the highly contagious gut-busting virus died down amid the pandemic but came roaring back as pandemic health restrictions eased. A study published by the CDC last week found that norovirus outbreaks nearly tripled in the 2021-2022 surveillance year compared with the 2020-2021 surveillance year.

As such, park visitors should stay vigilant, the authors warn. "With norovirus increasing nationwide and visitation rates returning to near prepandemic levels, the potential exists for resurgence of norovirus outbreaks among visitors to the Grand Canyon backcountry," they conclude.

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An evaluation of a new tool to determine which medications are more likely to have adverse anticholinergic effects on the body and brain was conducted under the direction of the University of Exeter and the Kent and Medway NHS and Social Care Partnership Trust. Their findings were recently published in the journal Age and Ageing.  Many prescription and over-the-counter medications that affect the brain by inhibiting the neurotransmitter acetylcholine may result in adverse anticholinergic effects.  Numerous drugs, including certain bladder medications, antidepressants, stomach medicines, and Parkinson’s disease have some degree of anticholinergic impact. These types of drugs are often consumed by the elderly.

Anticholinergic adverse effects include disorientation, blurred vision, dizziness, falls, and a decline in brain function. The effects of anticholinergic drugs may also make people more likely to fall and may be associated with an increased risk of death.  Long-term usage of them has also been linked to a higher risk of dementia.

Researchers have now created a tool that uses artificial intelligence to calculate the negative effects of medications. The researchers developed the International Anticholinergic Cognitive Burden Tool (IACT), an online tool that employs chemical structure analysis and natural language processing to identify drugs that have an anticholinergic effect.

This tool is the first to use machine learning technology to create an automatically updated tool that is accessible via a website portal. The anticholinergic burden is calculated by giving a score based on documented adverse events and closely matching the chemical structure of the medicine under consideration for prescription, resulting in a more accurate and up-to-date scoring system than any prior approach. Ultimately, the tool developed after further investigation and modeling using actual patient data could help to reduce risks from common medications. 

Professor Chris Fox, at the University of Exeter, is one of the study authors. He said: “Use of medicines with anticholinergic effects can have significant harmful effects for example falls and confusion which are avoidable, we urgently need to reduce the harmful side effects as this can leads to hospitalization and death. This new tool provides a promising avenue towards a more tailored personalized medicine approach, of ensuring the right person gets a safe and effective treatment whilst avoiding unwanted anticholinergic effects.”

The team surveyed 110 health professionals, including pharmacists and prescribing nurses. Of this group, 85 percent said they would use a tool to assess the risk of anticholinergic side effects, if available. The team also gathered usability feedback to help improve the tool further.

Dr. Saber Sami, at the University of East Anglia, said: “Our tool is the first to use innovative artificial intelligence technology in measures of anticholinergic burden – ultimately, once further research has been conducted the tool should support pharmacists and prescribing health professionals in finding the best treatment for patients.”

Professor Ian Maidment, from Aston University, said: “I have been working in this area for over 20 years. Anticholinergic side effects can be very debilitating for patients. We need better ways to assess these side-effects.”

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Taking a dip in cold water may cut ‘bad’ body fat in men and decrease the risk of disorders such as diabetes. These are the findings suggested by a major scientific review published on September 22 in International Journal of Circumpolar Health, a peer-reviewed journal.

According to the authors, many of the 104 studies they analyzed demonstrated significant effects from cold water swimming including also on brown fat, also known as ‘good’ fat, which helps burn calories. They say that this may protect against obesity and cardiovascular disease.

However, the review was inconclusive overall on the health benefits of cold-water bathing, an increasingly popular hobby.

Much of the available research involved small numbers of participants, often of just one gender, and with differences in water temperature and salt composition. Additionally, it is unclear whether or not winter swimmers are naturally healthier, say the scientific expert team of review authors from UiT The Arctic University of Norway and from the University Hospital of North Norway.

“From this review, it is clear that there is increasing scientific support that voluntary exposure to cold water may have some beneficial health effects,” states lead author James Mercer, from UiT.

“Many of the studies demonstrated significant effects of cold-water immersion on various physiological and biochemical parameters. But the question as to whether these are beneficial or not for health is difficult to assess.

“Based on the results from this review, many of the health benefits claimed from regular cold exposure may not be causal. Instead, they may be explained by other factors including an active lifestyle, trained stress handling, social interactions, as well as a positive mindset.

“Without further conclusive studies, the topic will continue to be a subject of debate.”

Weight loss, increased libido, and improved mental health are among numerous health and well-being claims made by followers of regular cold-water immersion or arising from anecdotal cases.

This activity is the subject of growing interest worldwide and takes many forms such as swimming in cold water during the winter.

Determining whether voluntary exposure to cold water has health effects in humans was the primary goal of the review. The methodology involved a detailed investigation of the scientific literature.

Excluded from the review were studies where participants wore wet suits, accidental cold-water immersion, and water temperatures greater than 20 degrees centigrade.

Themes covered by the studies that were eligible for review included inflammation, immune system, adipose tissue, blood circulation, and oxidative stress.

Immersion in cold water has a major impact on the body and triggers a shock response that includes an elevated heart rate.

Evidence that cardiovascular risk factors are actually improved in swimmers who have adapted to the cold was provided by some studies. However, other research suggests the workload on the heart is still increased.

The review provided insights into positive links between cold water swimming and brown adipose tissue (BAT), a type of ‘good’ body fat that is activated by cold. BAT burns calories to maintain body temperature, unlike ‘bad’ white fat which stores energy.

Cold exposure in water – or air – appears also to increase the production of the hormone protein adiponectin by adipose tissue. It plays a key role in protecting against insulin resistance, diabetes, and other diseases.

Repeated cold-water immersions during the winter months significantly increased insulin sensitivity and decreased insulin concentrations, according to the review. This was for both inexperienced and experienced swimmers.

However, the researchers highlight that the profile of swimmers participating in the studies did vary. They included a broad range people from elite swimmers and established winter bathers to those with no previous winter swimming experience.

Others were not strictly ice bathers but used cold-water immersion as a treatment post-exercise.

According to the authors, education is also needed on the health risks associated with taking a dip in icy water. These include the consequences of hypothermia, and of heart and lung issues which are often related to the shock from the cold.

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According to a recent study, aerosol particles in the atmosphere have a greater influence on cloud cover than previously assumed, but less of an impact on cloud brightness. Aerosols, which are tiny particles floating in the atmosphere, are essential for the formation of clouds.

Numerous assessments by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) have shown that since clouds reflect sunlight and maintain lower temperatures, aerosols, which are increasing as a result of human activity, might have a significant impact on climate change.

However, it is challenging to measure the cooling effect of aerosols on clouds, which has resulted in substantial uncertainty in climate change projections.

The new research, led by the University of Exeter in collaboration with national and international academic partners as well as the UK Met Office, investigated this using the 2014 Icelandic volcanic eruption.

“This massive aerosol plume in an otherwise near-pristine environment provided an ideal natural experiment to quantify cloud responses to aerosol changes, namely the aerosol’s fingerprint on clouds,” said lead author Dr. Ying Chen.

“Our analysis shows that aerosols from the eruption increased cloud cover by approximately 10%. Based on these findings, we can see that more than 60% of the climate cooling effect of cloud-aerosol interactions is caused by increased cloud cover.

Volcanic aerosols also brightened clouds by reducing water droplet size, but this had a significantly smaller impact than cloud-cover changes in reflecting solar radiation.”

Previous models and observations indicated this brightening accounted for the majority of the cooling caused by cloud-aerosol interactions.

Water droplets often develop in the atmosphere surrounding aerosol particles, so a larger concentration of these particles facilitates the formation of cloud droplets.

However, since these cloud droplets are smaller and more numerous, the resulting clouds may hold more water before rainfall occurs – hence, more aerosols in the atmosphere might result in greater cloud cover but less rain. The study used satellite data and computer learning to study cloud cover and brightness.

It used 20 years of satellite cloud images from two different satellite platforms from the region to compare the periods before and after the volcano eruption. The findings will provide observational evidence of aerosols’ climate impacts to improve the models used by scientists to predict climate change.

Jim Haywood, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Exeter and part of the Global Systems Institute, and a Met Office Research Fellow said: “Our earlier work had shown that model simulations could be used to disentangle the relative contribution of aerosol-cloud-climate impacts and potentially confounding meteorological variability.”

He continues, “This work is radically different as it does not rely on models; it uses state-of-the-art machine learning techniques applied to satellite observations to simulate what the cloud would look like in the absence of the aerosols. Clear differences are observed between the predicted and observed cloud properties which can be used to assess aerosol-cloud-climate impacts.”

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Your mental health will be greatly enhanced if you spend 30 minutes less each day on social media and more time exercising. This was recently demonstrated in a study conducted by a team from Ruhr-Universität Bochum’s Mental Health Research and Treatment Center, led by assistant professor Dr. Julia Brailovskaia.

Following this advice for two weeks resulted in participants feeling happier, more satisfied, less stressed by the Covid-19 pandemic, and less depressed than participants in a control group. These results persisted even six months after the study’s conclusion. The scientists recently published their findings in the Journal of Public Health.

The drawbacks of social media

Social media platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, Twitter, and WhatsApp made sure that we still felt connected to other individuals throughout periods of lockdowns and contact limitations brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic. They diverted us from the pandemic-related stress that many individuals experienced, which led to feelings of anxiety, insecurity, and hopelessness.

However, using social media has its downsides as well. Heavy usage might result in addictive behavior, which may manifest as, for instance, a strong emotional connection to social media. Conspiracy theories and fake news may also spread uncontrolled on social media and increase anxiety.

“Given that we don’t know for certain how long the coronavirus crisis will last, we wanted to know how to protect people’s mental health with services that are as free and low-threshold as possible,” explains Julia Brailovskaia. To find out whether the type and duration of social media use can contribute to this, she conducted an experimental study as part of her fellowship at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS).

An experiment that lasted two weeks

Julia and her colleagues recruited 642 participants and randomly assigned them to one of four groups of about similar size. The first group cut down on their daily social media use by 30 minutes over the course of the two-week intervention period.

The second group increased their daily physical activity by 30 minutes while continuing to use social media as normal since prior research had shown that physical exercise might improve mood and lessen depression symptoms. The third group increased physical activity while also decreasing social media usage. During the intervention period, the behavior of the control group remained unchanged.

Before, during, and up to six months after the two-week intervention phase, the participants responded to online surveys on the duration, intensity, and emotional significance of their social media use, physical activity, satisfaction with life, their subjective feeling of happiness, depressive symptoms, the psychological burden of the Covid-19 pandemic and their cigarette consumption.

Healthy and happy in the age of digitalization

The findings clearly showed that both reducing the amount of time spent on social media each day and increasing physical activity has a positive impact on people’s well-being. And particularly the combination of the two interventions increases one’s satisfaction with life and subjective feeling of happiness and reduces depressive symptoms.

The effects last for a long time: even six months after the two-week intervention phase had ended, participants in all three intervention groups spent less time on social media than before: namely about a half hour in the groups that had either reduced social media time or increased their daily exercise, and about three-quarters of an hour in the group that had combined both measures.

Six months after the intervention, the combination group engaged one hour and 39 minutes more each week in physical activity than before the experiment. The positive influence on mental health continued throughout the entire follow-up period.

“This shows us how vital it is to reduce our availability online from time to time and to go back to our human roots,” concludes Julia Brailovskaia. “These measures can be easily implemented into one’s everyday life and they’re completely free – and, at the same time, they help us to stay happy and healthy in the digital age.”

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The photo on the left of a poke bowl doesn’t look as fresh and tasty to viewers as the one on the right. Credit: Ohio State University

How does color impact how you perceive food?

According to recent research, a restaurant may boost sales by using an appealing photo of a burger or other menu item, especially if the correct filter is used. According to the study, food seems fresher and tastier in photos with a high color saturation, which increases viewers’ willingness to buy menu items.

Color saturation is a term used to describe how vibrant and rich the reds, greens, and blues are in a picture. However, the visual distance of the food in the image and even whether customers expect to eat alone or with others affect how effectively color saturation works to make food appetizing.

These findings provide a straightforward way to boost sales in the competitive restaurant industry, according to Stephanie Liu, the study’s lead author and an associate professor of hospitality management at The Ohio State University.

“On Instagram, it means using the ‘X-Pro II’ filter on your food photos rather than the ‘Earlybird’ filter,” Liu said. “It is not difficult and doesn’t cost a dime, so it is an easy win for restaurant marketers.”

The findings were recently published in the Journal of Business Research.  The scientists conducted two online studies.

In one study, 267 participants were instructed to imagine themselves looking through options on an online platform for ordering food. Photos of poke bowls, a Hawaiian dish containing raw, marinated fish pieces, vegetables, and sauce served over rice, were presented to the participants. They were from a fictitious called restaurant Poke Kitchen.

Participants in the study were randomly allocated to see one of four distinct images, each with different color saturation and visual distance.

The photos with high color saturation were edited with professional graphic design software to be 130% more saturated than the low-saturation photos. The up-close photos were 130% larger in radius and appeared nearer to the observer than the more distant photo.

Participants were asked to rate how fresh the food in each photo looked, how tasty it looked and how likely they would be to purchase it. The food in the more highly saturated photos looked fresher and tastier to participants, and that led them to be more likely to purchase the food, results showed.

But color saturation had a stronger effect when the food appeared more distant in the photos, Liu said.

“When the food is shown close up, it is already easy for the viewers to imagine how fresh and tasty the food would be,” she said. “Color saturation is not as necessary.”

The second study involved 222 online participants. In this case, the participants were asked to imagine they were browsing Instagram and came across images of pizza from a fictitious restaurant near their home named Pizza City. They were shown photos either high or low in color saturation.

People in the study were also told they would either be eating alone or with family that night and were again asked to rate the pizza on perceived freshness and tastiness and on whether they would likely purchase the menu item.

As in the previous study, the food in the color-saturated photo was always seen as fresher and tastier and one that people would be more likely to buy. But that effect was stronger for people who were told they would be eating alone and weaker for those who would be eating with family.

“When people are eating with others, the social experience is a big part of what people look forward to,” Liu said. “But when they anticipate eating alone, they focus more on the food itself. They want the food to be fresher and tastier and that’s why color saturation is more important in this context.”

These findings are more important now than ever before, with people ordering online and looking at photos to help them decide what to eat, Liu said.

“Restaurants have to post pictures of their food on social media and online ordering platforms,” she said. “They should be paying as much attention, or maybe more, to the photos they post as they do to the text. Color saturation is one key element they need to focus on.”

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Two groundbreaking studies recently published in the journals Nature and Genome Medicine found genetic signatures that explain ethnic disparities in the severity of prostate cancer, notably in Sub-Saharan Africa.

By genetically analyzing prostate cancer tumors from Australian, Brazilian, and South African donors, the team developed a new prostate cancer taxonomy (classification scheme) and cancer drivers that not only distinguish patients based on their genetic ancestry but also predict which cancers are likely to become life-threatening, a task that is currently difficult.

“Our understanding of prostate cancer has been severely limited by a research focus on Western populations,” said senior author Professor Vanessa Hayes, genomicist and Petre Chair of Prostate Cancer Research at the University of Sydney’s Charles Perkins Centre and Faculty of Medicine and Health in Australia. “Being of African descent, or from Africa, more than doubles a man’s risk for lethal prostate cancer. While genomics holds a critical key to unraveling contributing genetic and non-genetic factors, data for Africa has till now, been lacking.”

Professor Vanessa Hayes examining a blood sample from a prostate cancer patient that was used in the study. Credit: Stefanie Zingsheim, University of Sydney

 

“Prostate cancer is the silent killer in our region,” said University of Pretoria’s Professor Riana Bornman, an international expert in men’s health and clinical lead for the Southern African Prostate Cancer Study in South Africa. “We had to start with a grassroots approach, engaging communities with open discussion, establishing the infrastructure for African inclusion in the genomic revolution, while determining the true extent of prostate disease.”

Over two million cancer-specific genomic variants were identified in 183 untreated prostate tumors from males residing throughout the three research zones using advanced whole genome sequencing (a method of mapping the full genetic code of cancer cells).

“We found Africans to be impacted by a greater number and spectrum of acquired (including cancer driver) genetic alterations, with significant implications for ancestral consideration when managing and treating prostate cancer,” said Professor Hayes.

“Using cutting-edge computational data science which allowed for pattern recognition that included all types of cancer variants, we revealed a novel prostate cancer taxonomy which we then linked to different disease outcomes,” said Dr. Weerachai Jaratlerdsiri, a computational biologist from the University of Sydney and first author on the Nature paper.

“Combining our unique dataset with the largest public data source of European and Chinese cancer genomes allowed us to, for the first time, place the African prostate cancer genomic landscape into a global context.”

As part of her Ph.D. at the University of Sydney, Dr. Tingting Gong, the first author of the Genome Medicine paper, painstakingly sifted through the genomic data for large changes in the structure of chromosomes (molecules that hold genetic information). These changes are often overlooked because of the complexity involved in computationally predicting their presence, but are an area of critical importance and contribution to prostate cancer.

“We showed significant differences in the acquisition of complex genomic variation in African and European derived tumors, with consequences for disease progression and new opportunities for treatment,” said Dr. Gong.

This cancer genome resource is possibly the first and largest to include African data, in the world.

“Through African inclusion, we have made the first steps not only towards globalizing precision medicine but ultimately to reducing the impact of prostate cancer mortality across rural Africa,” explains Professor Bornman.

“A strength of this study was the ability to generate and process all data through a single technical and analytical pipeline,” added Professor Hayes.

The research featured in the Nature and Genome Medicine paper is part of the legacy of the late Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu. He was the first African to have his complete genome sequenced, data which would be an integral part of genetic sequencing and prostate cancer research in southern Africa.

The results of the sequencing were published in Nature in 2010.

“Diagnosed at age 66 with advanced prostate cancer, to which he succumbed in late December 2021, the Archbishop was an advocate not only for prostate cancer research in southern Africa, but also the benefits that genomic medicine would offer all peoples,” recollected Professor Hayes.

“We hope this study is the first step to that realization.”

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Molly Russell was "exposed to material that may have influenced her in a negative way and, in addition, what had started as a depression had become a more serious depressive illness," Andrew Walker ruled at North London Coroner's Court.

The teenager "died from an act of self-harm while suffering depression", he said, but added it would not be "safe" to conclude it was suicide.

Some of the content she viewed was "particularly graphic" and "normalised her condition," said Walker.

Russell, from Harrow in northwest London, died in November 2017, leading her family to set up a campaign highlighting the dangers of social media.

"There are too many others similarly affected right now," her father Ian Russell said after the ruling.

"At this point, I just want to say however dark it seems, there is always hope.

"I hope that this will be an important step in bringing about much needed change," he added.

The week-long hearing became heated when the family's lawyer, Oliver Sanders, took an Instagram executive to task.

A visibly angry Sanders asked Elizabeth Lagone, the head of health and wellbeing at Meta, Instagram's parent company, why the platform allowed children to use it when it was "allowing people to put potentially harmful content on it".

"You are not a parent, you are just a business in America. You have no right to do that. The children who are opening these accounts don't have the capacity to consent to this," he said.

Lagone apologised after being shown footage, viewed by Russell, that "violated our policies".

Of the 16,300 posts Russell saved, shared or liked on Instagram in the six-month period before her death, 2,100 related to depression, self-harm or suicide, the inquest heard.

Children's charity NSPCC said the ruling "must be a turning point".

"Tech companies must be held accountable when they don't make children's safety a priority," tweeted the charity.

"This must be a turning point," it added, stressing that any delay to a government bill dealing with online safety "would be inconceivable to parents".

© 2022 AFP

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Researchers from the Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine say the immune system can actually benefit from a little stress.

“This one of the few studies showing that chronic stress could have beneficial effect instead of negative effect,” says senior author Fabio Cominelli, a professor of medicine and pathology and associate dean for program development at the School of Medicine, in a media release. “This was a little bit of a surprise for us.”

What does stress do to your gut?

Studies have found that psychological stress can exacerbate symptoms of inflammatory bowel disease (IBD). Intestinal tertiary lymphoid organs (TLOs), which are immune cells that form in response to chronic inflammation or injury, also have a link to severe inflammation.

In the new study, researchers examined mice dealing with a Crohn’s disease-like condition called ileitis after experiencing stress for 56 days. Results reveal that the mice experienced increased TLO formation in their colons as their immune systems responded to the trauma. However, the team found that the stress did not significantly increase levels of small or large intestinal inflammation. The gut microbiome of these animals remained unchanged as well, in comparison to healthy control mice.

Since it’s difficult to accurately measure the microbiome, the team performed a fecal microbiome transplant. While mice receiving the microbiome of stressed-out mice had the same behavioral phenotype as their donors, the transplant did not lead to the formation of more TLOs.

Instead, stress increased the production of the cytokines IL-23 and IL-22. These substances are a part of the system that forms TLOs. IL-22 also plays a key role in wound healing and tissue regeneration. It even has both anti-inflammatory and pro-inflammatory properties.

Study authors found that stressed-out mice deficient in the genetic receptor for IL-23 displayed signs of increased IL-23, but not IL-22. They also couldn’t increase the formation of TLOs. Scientists were able to reverse this by administering doses of IL-22.

Stress may actually ‘stimulate’ the body

Since TLOs have a connection to other diseases, the team thought that stressed mice would be more susceptible to a “second hit” in the colon.

Surprisingly, stressed mice actually had less inflammation after this “second hit.”

“Our findings demonstrate that psychological stress induces formation of TLOs by increasing the production of IL-23,” Cominelli says. “Furthermore, the stressed mice were protected after a ‘second hit,’ suggesting TLOs may function to improve the mucosal barrier.”

“What we discovered is that chronic daily stress for six weeks was beneficial against a second injury. The mouse models that were stressed were actually protected,” Cominelli continues. “We showed they had stimulation of the immune system, which protects against intestinal inflammation. What needs to be studied is whether this may translate to other diseases and injuries.”

“So do I want to be stressed? It all depends on the definition of stress. ‘Stimulated’ is a better term,” the researcher concludes. “The message is that a little bit of stress is good in your life, but you want to be stressed in the right way.”

The study is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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Juno just raced by Europa, providing our best look in 20 years at the icy world

The human genome is made of more than 6 billion letters, and each person has a unique configuration of As, Cs, Gs, and Ts—the molecular building blocks that make up DNA. Determining the sequence of all those letters used to take vast amounts of money, time, and effort. The Human Genome Project took 13 years and thousands of researchers. The final cost: $2.7 billion.

That 1990 project kicked off the age of genomics, helping scientists unravel genetic drivers of cancer and many inherited diseases while spurring the development of at-home DNA tests, among many other advances. Next, researchers started sequencing more genomes: from animals, plants, bacteria, and viruses. Ten years ago, it cost about $10,000 for researchers to sequence a human genome. A few years ago, that fell to $1,000. Today, it’s about $600.

Now, sequencing is about to get even cheaper. At an industry event in San Diego today, genomics behemoth Illumina unveiled what it calls its fastest, most cost-efficient sequencing machines yet, the NovaSeq X series. The company, which controls around 80 percent of the DNA sequencing market globally, believes its new technology will slash the cost to just $200 per human genome while providing a readout at twice the speed. Francis deSouza, Illumina’s CEO, says the more powerful model will be able to sequence 20,000 genomes per year; its current machines can do about 7,500. Illumina will start selling the new machines today and ship them next year.

“As we look to the next decade, we believe we’re entering the era of genomic medicine going mainstream. To do that requires the next generation of sequencers,” deSouza says. “We need price points to keep coming down to make genomic medicine and genomic tests available much more broadly.”

Sequencing has led to genetically targeted drugs, blood tests that can detect cancer early, and diagnoses for people with rare diseases who have long sought answers. We can also thank sequencing for the Covid-19 vaccines, which scientists started developing in January 2020 as soon as the first blueprint of the virus's genome was produced. In research labs, the technology has become essential for better understanding pathogens and human evolution. But it still isn’t ubiquitous in medicine. That’s in part because of the price tag. While it costs around $600 for scientists to perform sequencing, clinical interpretation and genetic counseling can drive the price to a few thousand dollars for patients—and insurance doesn’t always cover it.

Another reason is that for healthy people, there’s not yet enough evidence of benefits to prove that genome sequencing will be worth the cost. Currently, the test is mostly limited to people with certain cancers or undiagnosed illnesses—although in two recent studies, around 12 to 15 percent of healthy people whose genomes were sequenced ended up having a genetic variation that showed they had an elevated risk of a treatable or preventable disease, indicating that sequencing may provide an early warning.

For now, researchers—not patients—will likely benefit most from cheap sequencing. “We’ve been waiting for this for a long time,” says Stacey Gabriel, chief genomics officer at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, of the new improvements. “With greatly reduced costs and greatly increased speed of sequencing, we can sequence way more samples.” Gabriel is not affiliated with Illumina, but the Broad Institute is something of an Illumina power user. The institute has 32 of the company’s existing machines and has sequenced more than 486,000 genomes since it was established in 2004.

Gabriel says there are a number of ways that researchers will be able to apply added sequencing power. One is to increase the diversity of genomic datasets, given that the vast majority of DNA data has come from people of European descent. That’s a problem for medicine, because different populations might have different disease-causing genetic variations that are more or less prevalent. “There’s really an incomplete picture and a hampered ability to translate and apply those learnings to the full population diversity in the world,” Gabriel says.

Another is to boost the size of genetic datasets. In the early 2000s, when the Broad Institute started a project to search for genes related to schizophrenia, researchers had 10,000 genomes from people with the condition, which didn’t yield many insights, Gabriel says. Now, they have amassed more than 150,000.

Comparing those genomes to those of people without schizophrenia has allowed investigators to uncover multiple genes that have a profound impact on a person's risk of developing it. By being able to sequence more genomes faster and more cheaply, Gabriel says they’ll be able to find additional genes that have a more subtle effect on the condition. “Once you have bigger data, the signal becomes clearer,” she says.

“This is the kind of thing that shakes up everything you’re working on,” agrees Jeremy Schmutz, a faculty investigator at HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, of new sequencing technology. “This reduction in sequencing cost allows you to scale up and do more of those large research studies.” For Schmutz, who studies plants, cheaper sequencing will allow him to generate more reference genomes to better study how genetics influence a plant’s physical characteristics, or phenotype. Large genomic studies can help improve agriculture by accelerating the breeding of certain desirable crops, he says.

Illumina’s sequencers use a method called “sequencing by synthesis” to decipher DNA. This process first requires that DNA strands, which are usually in double-helix form, be split into single strands. The DNA is then broken into short fragments that are spread onto a flow cell—a glass surface about the size of a smartphone. When a flow cell is loaded into the sequencer, the machine attaches color-coded fluorescent tags to each base: A, C, G, and T. For instance, blue might correspond to the letter A. Each of the DNA fragments gets copied one base at a time, and a matching strand of DNA is gradually made, or synthesized. A laser scans the bases one by one while a camera records the color coding for each letter. The process is repeated until every fragment is sequenced.

For its latest machines, Illumina invented denser flow cells to increase data yield and new chemical reagents, which enable faster reads of bases. “The molecules in that sequencing chemistry are much stronger. They can resist heat, they can resist water, and because they’re so much tougher, we can subject them to more laser power and can scan them faster. That’s the heart of the engine that allows us to get so much more data faster and at lower costs,” says Alex Aravanis, Illumina’s chief technology officer.

That said, while the cost per genome is dropping, for now, the startup cost for a machine itself is steep. Illumina's new system will cost around $1 million, about the same as its existing machines. The high price tag is a key reason they’re not yet common in smaller labs and hospitals, or in rural regions.

Another is that they also require experts to run the machines and process the data. But Illumina's  sequencers are completely automated and produce a report comparing each sample against a reference genome. Aravanis says this automation could democratize sequencing, so that facilities without large teams of scientists and engineers can run the machines with few resources. The system also stores the data on an internal computer, whereas with earlier models, that data needed to be stored elsewhere.

Illumina isn’t the only company promising cheaper, faster sequencing. While the San Diego-based company currently dominates the marketplace, some of the patents protecting its technology expire this year, opening the door for more competition. Ultima Genomics of Newark, California, emerged from stealth mode earlier this year promising a $100 genome with its new sequencing machine, which it will begin selling in 2023. (That price point doesn’t include data storage.) Meanwhile, a Chinese company, MGI, began selling its sequencers in the United States this summer. Element Biosciences and Singular Genomics, both based in San Diego, have also developed smaller, benchtop sequencing machines that could shake up the marketplace.

Ultima’s machine design has replaced the traditional flow cell with a round silicon wafer just under seven inches in diameter. Josh Lauer, the company’s chief commercial officer, says the disc is cheaper to manufacture and has a bigger surface area than a flow cell, allowing more DNA to be read at once. Because the disc rotates like a record under a camera instead of moving back and forth like flow cells do, Lauer says it requires smaller volumes of reagents and speeds up imaging.  “We think this will enable scientists and clinicians to do more breadth, depth and frequency of genome sequencing,” he says. “Instead of just looking at tiny parts of the genome, we want to look at the whole genome.” 

Ultima’s machine isn’t widely available yet, and the company hasn’t released the price, though Lauer says it will be comparable to other sequencers on the market.

The increased competition could be a boon to the genomics field, but research is often slow to translate to health improvements in real people. It will likely take time before patients see a direct benefit from cheaper sequencing. “We’re at the very, very beginning,” deSouza says.

The Era of Fast, Cheap Genome Sequencing Is Here

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Results released this month and published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings, a peer-reviewed journal, show that 63 percent of physicians surveyed reported at least one symptom of burnout at the end of 2021 and the beginning of 2022, an increase from 44 percent in 2017 and 46 percent in 2011. Only 30 percent felt satisfied with their work-life balance, compared with 43 percent five years earlier.

“This is the biggest increase of emotional exhaustion that I’ve ever seen, anywhere in the literature,” said Bryan Sexton, the director of Duke University’s Center for Healthcare Safety and Quality, who was not involved in the survey efforts.

The most recent numbers also compare starkly with data from 2020, when the survey was run during the early stages of the pandemic. Then, 38 percent of doctors surveyed reported one or more symptoms of burnout while 46 percent were satisfied with their work-life balance.

“It’s just so stark how dramatically the scores have increased over the last 12 months,” said Dr. Tait Shanafelt, an oncologist at Stanford University who has led the research efforts.

Burnout among physicians has been linked to higher rates of alcohol abuse and suicidal ideation, as well as increased medical errors and worse patient outcomes. In May, the U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, issued an advisory.

“Covid-19 has been a uniquely traumatic experience for the health work force and for their families,” he said, adding, “if we fail to act, we will place our nation’s health at risk.”

Dr. Shanafelt noted that most of the studies on burnout among physicians and health care workers at this stage of the pandemic have been focused on certain specialties and geographic hot spots, not on the profession as a whole. With the new data set, he said, “We have, for the first time, real context.”

While the idea of burnout has become ubiquitous, the condition has a definition in medical literature. The Maslach Burnout Inventory, first published in 1981, measures burnout on three dimensions: emotional exhaustion, depersonalization from work and sense of personal accomplishment.

When the metric was first proposed, a widely held belief was that burnout could be blamed on the dispositions of individual physicians — “that these are just weaklings,” explained Dr. Colin West, a physician at the Mayo Clinic who helped conceive of the survey efforts. Over time, though, the problem persisted and that belief became outdated.

“This couldn’t just be pawned off as a handful of people who couldn’t handle the career,” Dr. West said.

In 2019, the National Academy of Medicine released a 312-page report on physician burnout, carefully laying out the current understanding of the issue and steps that people in the medical profession could take to address it. Dr. Shanafelt, who helped write the report, said that evidence suggested that many doctors’ dissatisfaction with their work could be caused by an incongruence between what they cared about and what they were incentivized to do by the health care system.

“We cared about quality of patients’ experience, building relationships with them, and then there were all these things we got paid for,” Dr. Shanafelt said.

A doctor may stop looking forward to patient visits if each one is accompanied by a large amount of paperwork; they may feel as if their time is being wasted by an inefficient process.

“Even something that was once a good thing can become tarnished,” he added.

The researchers noted that the most recent survey’s broad scope has limitations. About 2,500 physicians participated by responding to a mass email, a fraction of the estimated one million practicing physicians in the United States. And the factors that might lead someone to complete a survey on burnout — such as the need for an outlet to express frustration or the lack of time to complete one — could have had complicating effects.

Doctors also exist within an ecosystem of other health workers. Dr. Sexton published a study of more than 70 hospitals this month that showed burnout is often a local phenomenon. “A lot of a person’s exhaustion score is connected to who they work with,” he said. “There’s a social contagion in burnout. If your colleagues are fried and you’re not, give it six months and you’ll look just like them.”

Doctors were unevenly affected by the early stages of the pandemic. While emergency physicians and family physicians worked around the clock, constantly exposed to Covid-19, many physicians in other specialties were able to reach their patients through telehealth appointments and spend more time with their families. Combined with a possible optimism that the worst of the pandemic was over, the rise of remote work might explain why emotional exhaustion rates actually fell among surveyed physicians in mid-2020 to the lowest point since the survey began in 2011.

But two and a half years into the pandemic, the most recent survey pointed to an overall decline in mental health.

The survey also suggested that some physicians were at higher risk of burnout, including those practicing emergency medicine, family medicine and pediatrics, as well as women physicians in general. Dr. Shanafelt said this might be because of the shortage of mental health services. “They’ve got 10 minutes to take care of their patients. There’s no psychiatrist or therapist to refer them to because our health care system is overwhelmed,” he said.

The increase in burnout is most likely a mix of new problems and exacerbated old ones, Dr. Shanafelt said. For instance, the high number of messages doctors received about patients’ electronic health records was closely linked to increased burnout before the pandemic. After the pandemic, the number of messages from patients coming into physicians’ In Baskets, a health care closed messaging system, increased by 157 percent.

And physicians pointed to the politicization of science, labor shortages and the vilification of health care workers as significant issues. In one survey published in 2021, 23 percent of physicians reported being bullied, threatened or harassed by their patients at work in the past year.

Dr. Sexton added: “On a hopeful note, we know that there are simple interventions that can have as much a positive effect on well-being as the pandemic had a negative effect. So, yes, things are worse during the pandemic, but they’re not so bad that we don’t know how to fix it.”

Dr. West, who has done research on how to combat burnout among health care workers, said that “all the solutions run through a common pathway”:

They connect people with their most meaningful activities.

“What that means is it’s less important what the specific tactic is,” he said, “and more important to make sure that, whatever the solution is, it’s aligned with our basic, fundamental goals.”

But Dr. West emphasized the need for data to know the prevalence of burnout and how to combat it.

“This really provides a 30,000-foot view pulse check,” he said of the survey. “So that we’re not just guided by our feelings and our intuition.”

The post Physician Burnout Has Reached Distressing Levels, New Research Finds appeared first on New York Times.

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