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The Brazilian Amazon lost about 18 trees per second in 2021 as deforestation in the country increased by more than 20 percent, according to a satellite data-based report released Monday.

The Mapbiomas report said the country lost some 16,557 square kilometres (1.65 million hectares) of indigenous vegetation in 2021 – an area bigger than Northern Ireland.

In 2020, the area lost was 13,789 square kilometres.

Nearly 60 percent of land deforested in 2021 was in the Amazon, the world's largest tropical rainforest, the report said.

"In the Amazon alone, 111.6 hectares per hour or 1.9 hectares per minute were deforested, which is equivalent to about 18 trees per second," according to Mapbiomas, a network of NGOs, universities and technology companies.

Clearing land for farming was the main driver, accounting for almost 97 percent, it said, with illegal mining also a major factor.

In the last three years, coinciding with the presidency of far-right President Jair Bolsonaro, the tree cover lost in Brazil was about 42,000 square kilometres – "almost the area of the state of Rio de Janeiro," said the report.

Data from the National Institute of Space Research (INPE) show that between January and June 2022, the Brazilian Amazon lost 3,988 square kilometres to deforestation.

And government statistics state that average annual Brazilian Amazon deforestation increased by 75 percent during Bolsonaro's presidency compared to a decade earlier.

Environmentalists accuse Bolsonaro of actively encouraging deforestation for economic gain and of weakening research and protection agencies.

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That drought would have led to civil conflict, which would, in turn, have brought about political collapse, according to the researchers.

People would then have retreated to smaller and safer settlements.

As well as giving us a useful insight into the history of this ancient people, the new study is a warning as well: about how shifts in climate can quickly put pressures on even the most well-established and prosperous civilizations.

"Multiple data sources indicate that civil conflict increased significantly, and generalized linear modeling correlates strife in the city with drought conditions between 1400 and 1450 CE," write the researchers in their published paper.

"We argue that prolonged drought escalated rival factional tensions, but subsequent adaptations reveal region-scale resiliency, ensuring that Maya political and economic structures endured until European contact in the early 16th century CE."

The team already had a lot of historical records to work with, covering population change, contemporary diets, and climate conditions.
These records were augmented with a new analysis of human remains for signs of traumatic injury (pointing to conflict).

Correlations emerged between increased rainfall and an increased population in the area, and between subsequent decreases in rainfall and increased conflict. Prolonged drought during 1400-1450 CE most likely led to the abandonment of Mayapan, the researchers say.

The lack of water would have affected agricultural practices and trade routes, putting strain on the people of Mayapan, the study suggests. As food got scarcer and the situation got more dangerous, people either died or dispersed.

In the final mass grave dug before the city was abandoned, the researchers report that many of the remains probably belonged to the family members of the Cocoms (the heads of state) – a bloody end brought on by competing factions and social unrest.

"Our findings support Mayapan's storied institutional collapse between 1441 and 1461 CE, a consequence of civil conflict driven by political rivalry and ambition, which was embedded in the social memory of Yucatecan peoples whose testimonies entered the written record of the early Colonial Period," write the researchers.

Human responses to environmental pressures such as drought are clearly complex, varying by region and by era – there are so many factors to weigh up and balance when it comes to considering why a historical population acted in the way that it did.

The movement of people to other parts of the Yucatán Peninsula, including prosperous coastal towns and politically independent settlements, helped the Maya culture continue to thrive after the fall of Mayapan – and there was little evidence of any conflict between these regions before Spanish rule started.

That's testament to a "resilient system of human-environmental adaptations," the researchers say, but adaptations can only get you so far. These same regions, along with the rest of the world, are once again facing up to a climate crisis.

"Archaeological and historical records are well suited for examining past societal effects of climate crises over long-term cycles," write the researchers.

"The Maya region offers the breadth and depth of archaeological, historical, and climate records essential for studying correlations between social change and fluctuating climate conditions."

The research has been published in Nature Communications.

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COVID-19-related anxiety appears to be less prevalent: among the 432 Secondary 3 and 4 students surveyed in 2020 and 2021, only 6% said they were very anxious because of the pandemic and 19% were moderately anxious.

These are some of the data from research conducted by Gabrielle Yale-Soulière, a Ph.D. student in the University of Montreal's Department of Psychology, under the supervision of Professor Lise Turgeon.

However, COVID-19-related anxiety is moderately associated with higher degrees of symptoms of depression, generalized anxiety and social anxiety, according to Ph.D. student Emmanuelle Ayotte, who contributed to the study. There is a weaker correlation between COVID-19-related anxiety and academic anxiety.

Symptoms of generalized anxiety, social anxiety and depression

In the study of students from five high schools in the Montreal area, 37% reported experiencing high levels of generalized anxiety symptoms, while 46% experienced moderate symptoms.

Generalized anxiety is characterized by worries that are difficult to manage; it is accompanied by symptoms such as difficulty concentrating, fatigue, muscle tension and sleep problems.

A high degree of social anxiety was reported by 32% of the student respondents and a moderate degree by an equal number.

One in two students (52%) said they suffered from depressive symptoms, 26% to a high degree and the others to a moderate degree.

Finally, 15% of students reported experiencing high levels of performance anxiety associated with academic achievement, and 18% a moderate level.

"Our results also indicate that these problems are approximately twice as prevalent among girls as among boys," said Yale-Soulière. "Non-binary students suffer from the highest levels of anxiety."

Academic anxiety is largely undocumented

The preliminary phase of the study is part of a larger research project on academic performance anxiety among high school students that Yale-Soulière is conducting under Turgeon's supervision. It is one of the first studies of its kind in Quebec.

"We wanted to identify tools that could help reduce academic anxiety and we realized there is very little documentation of this phenomenon, so it became the focus of our study," said Yale-Soulière.

The research team had to overcome some unexpected obstacles along the way. The successive waves of the pandemic forced them to recruit subjects for the study remotely.

"Initially, we wanted to survey 2,000 students, but because of the pandemic our partners at the five schools were overwhelmed with work," said Yale-Soulière. "Also, obtaining consent from 581 parents remotely proved to be no easy task."

PASTEL project aims to alleviate academic anxiety

During the first of the study's three phases, Yale-Soulière became interested in how young people suffering from academic anxiety can be reached.

In collaboration with Boscoville, Yale-Soulière, who is also a psychoeducator, is working to develop PASTEL, a program to assist teenagers in reducing academic anxiety. It is currently being tested with 48 teens.

"It's a turnkey package comprising six one-hour workshops for groups of 4–12 young people selected for their academic performance anxiety symptoms," said Yale-Soulière. "During the workshops, we share cognitive restructuring techniques, problem-solving strategies, exposure techniques and organizational and study strategies to help kids control their anxiety when studying or taking a test."

"Given the number of study participants and certain limitations of the questionnaires, our results cannot be generalized to all Quebec high school students," Yale-Soulière and Ayotte cautioned. "Nevertheless, they suggest research avenues for future studies and, above all, show the importance of helping young people deal with their emotional burdens."

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Several homes on the edge of the capital were destroyed after a grassfire broke out and spread wildly out of control.

Desperate residents could be seen running to escape the blaze before 100 firefighters arrived on the scene in Wennington, close to the Dartford Crossing.

It appears strong wind blew the rising flames from a field onto the row of houses, gutting them within minutes.

Meanwhile, shocking footage shows an enormous wildfire licking the A2 in Dartford.

Drivers were filmed coming perilously close to the flames that have torn through woodland along the major route out of the capital.

No casualties have been reported yet but thick smoke is impairing visibility across the road.

A wildfire tears through woodland along the A2 in Dartford

< View the Video at the source page. >

Terrified residents could be seen running from their homes in Wennington (Picture: Sky News)

Flames quickly engulfed the row of homes in Wennington as London Fire Brigade declared a ‘major incident’ (Picture: Sky News)

The out-of-control fire was blown onto the houses (Picture: Sky News)

In nearby Upminster, east London, almost 200 firefighters were tackling a huge grassfire as temperatures reached record-breaking highs.

Three hectares of cornfield and scrubland were ablaze, billowing smoke over the M25.

Homes are also facing destruction in Dagenham as a huge grassfire triggered an evacuation on Ballards Road.

Pictures show thick black smoke getting closer to buildings as eight fire engines arrive on the scene.

Thick black smoke rises from a grassfire in Dagenham (Picture: Reuters)

A grassfire erupted in a field close to the M25 in Upminster, east London

Crews are also tackling two simultaneous grassfires in Croydon on Oaks Road and Chapel View.

The London Ambulance Service confirmed it is dealing with multiple incidents across the city.

A spokesperson said: ‘We are responding to a number of fire incidents across London including at Rainham and Wembley.

‘We have a number of resources on scene including ambulance crews and our Hazardous Response teams. We are treating patients on scene.’

Earlier this afternoon, temperatures exceeded 40°C for the first time ever in the UK.

The threshold was hit at 12.50pm in Heathrow, when a provisional temperature of 40.2°C was recorded.

The nation’s previous extreme was 38.7°C, set in Cambridge in 2019.

Where are the fires in London?

•  Thirty fire engines dealing with a grass fire on Pea Lane in Upminster.
•  Fifteen fire engines tackling a fire on The Green in Wennington.
•  Twelve fire engines tackling a fire involving garden fencing and trees on Uxbridge Road in Pinner.
•  Ten fire engines tackling a restaurant fire on Green Lanes in Southgate.
•  Eight fire engines tackling a grass fire on Oaks Road in Croydon.
•  Eight fire engines tackling a grass fire on Ballards Road in Dagenham.
•  Eight fire engines tackling a fire on The Broadway in Wembley.
•  Six fire engines tackling a grass fire on Sunningfields Crescent in Hendon.
•  Four fire engines tackling a grass fire on Chapel View in Croydon.
•  Four fire engines tackling a fire on Sidcup Road in Eltham.

Source

Train companies offered refunds and ticket swaps, and Network Rail told passengers on Tuesday not to travel north out of London to a weather “red zone.”

A temperature of 39.1 degrees Celsius (102 degrees Fahrenheit) was recorded at Charlwood, Surrey, according to the Met Office, which warned that temperatures would likely rise further. That would break the previous record of 38.7 degrees set on July 25, 2019.

The current heat wave has sparked deadly wildfires in Spain, Portugal and France, adding to the challenges facing Europe from political upheaval to travel chaos and surging prices. Russia’s war in Ukraine provides a grim backdrop and increases anxiety about the weather’s impact on food production.

The hot and dry conditions have caused an area roughly equivalent to the combined size of New York’s boroughs of Brooklyn and Queens to burn over the past 10 days, while more than 600 people have died across the region.

Increasingly frequent and intense heat waves are the result of climate change, and temperatures this extreme are set to become more common as the world continues to burn fossil fuels.

Brutal conditions have already struck India, the U.S. and western Europe this year, but pose a particular challenge to regions unaccustomed to scorching temperatures like the UK. Ireland also posted its highest temperature in more than a century on Monday.

Here’s a roundup of some of the countries hit hardest in Europe’s current heat wave:

UK

Britain’s network operator said it measured rail temperatures of 62 degrees Celsius (143 Fahrenheit) in Suffolk on Monday and said tracks could “expand, bend and break” under the stress of the extreme conditions.

The train issues spilled over to the struggling aviation sector with services to Luton and Gatwick airports canceled on Tuesday. Luton was again operational after runway repairs halted flights on Monday.

Transport for London told people not to travel and suffered severe delays due to heat-related restrictions on a number of lines of the London Tube, including the Central and District lines. The Hammersmith & City line was suspended entirely because of heat.

Daily life has been disrupted across usually temperate Britain. The Met Office issued its first ever red emergency warning for extreme heat for Monday and Tuesday, warning of the potential for power outages, road closures and even loss of life. It has also extended its most severe warning for the risk of fires over most of England Tuesday.

Temperatures should start to ease later Tuesday as cooler weather moves in from the west. The biggest relief should come Wednesday evening when temperatures drop to the low 20s Celsius — around average for the season.

France

Forest fires continued to rage in southwestern France on Tuesday, with Paris set to exceed 40 degrees Celsius (104 Fahrenheit).

More than 34,000 people have been evacuated from their homes in the past week in the Gironde region where 19,300 hectares have burned so far, according to regional authorities. Hundreds of animals had to be moved to safety as flames came closer to a zoo in Bassin d’Arcachon, near the Atlantic coast.

Authorities warned there was a high risk of further fires in the southeast of the country later this week with the expected arrival of the Mistral wind in the Rhone valley.

Among places that saw record temperatures at the start of the week, Brest, on the tip of Brittany on the northwestern coast, smashed a previous high of 35.1 Celsius, reaching 39.3 degrees on Monday, according to Meteo France.

Italy

Amid an extreme drought — which has caused the Po river to drop to its lowest level in 70 years — officials are warning of risks to food production.
“Water for agriculture is running out,” Attilio Fontana, governor of Lombardy region around Milan, told Italian news agency Ansa. While the Maggiore, Garda and Como lakes still have some reserves, farms may be cut off “if rain doesn’t fall in coming days.”

Italy’s health ministry said at least nine Italian cities, including Rome and Florence, will be on “red alert” on Wednesday, with temperatures regarded as a serious threat to the health of the entire population and not merely of the most vulnerable.

Volunteers from the Progetto Arca foundation are monitoring the streets of Milan, Rome, Naples, Bari, Turin and Varese with mobile kitchens to bring fresh water and nutritious meals to homeless and vulnerable residents. Anti-heat kits include personal hygiene products, fresh and clean changes.

Netherlands

Dutch supermarket chain Albert Heijn said it will cancel all grocery deliveries from 2 p.m. local time Tuesday because of expected high temperatures.

The company doesn’t “consider it responsible to let our delivery workers work in these weather conditions,” a spokesperson told Bloomberg. The company, owned by Ahold Delhaize, said the normal delivery schedule will resume Wednesday.

The Netherlands’s meteorology institute declared code orange, warning the southern and central parts of the country “will be very hot.” Amsterdam is forecast to hit 37 degrees Celsius on Tuesday.

Portugal

Two elderly people were found dead inside a burnt car in the area of one of the large fires in northern Portugal, according to news agency Lusa. The country has suffered over 200 more deaths than normal since the start of the latest heatwave.

But there are signs of progress. The wildfires have eased since last week. Still, as of 8 a.m. on Tuesday there were two large blazes in the north of the country, with almost 800 firefighters seeking to contain them.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P. Visit bloomberg.com. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.

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Individual humans make decisions all the time. These decisions often involve integrating a variety of contextual cues to ensure a decision is made that is adequate to the circumstances. The wealth of information required to make decisions is provided by our senses. They perceive unique aspects of our environment, such as visual and auditory information, which our brain subsequently integrates into a holistic percept. This is called multisensory—or multimodal—perception.

Cells take their own state into account when making decisions

Single cells are no different than humans in this regard. They constantly make important decisions, such as whether to divide or not. Researchers at the University of Zurich (UZH) therefore extended the concept of contextual, multimodal perception found in humans to individual cells. And surprisingly, they found that single cells make decisions much more autonomously than previously thought. "Adequate decision-making by individual cells uses multimodal perception, allowing cells to integrate outside signals like growth factors with information from inside the cell, such as the number of cellular organelles," says Lucas Pelkmans, professor at the Department of Molecular Life Sciences at UZH.

In certain situations, such inside cues can overrule the outside stimuli: e.g., in tumors, where the actual state of particular cells overrides the treatment with anti-proliferative drugs, thus making them treatment-resistant. "Such resistance to drugs is a major problem in the fight against cancer. The solution may come from taking into account the contextual cues that individual cells experience and ultimately altering them," Pelkmans says.

Analyzing dozens of proteins in millions of cells at once

To test if cells decide according to contextual, multimodal perception as humans do, the researchers had to concurrently measure the activity of multiple signaling nodes—the cells' outside sensors—as well as several potential cues from inside the cell, like the local environment and the number of cellular organelles. All that had to be analyzed in single cells as well as across millions of cells. "To do this, we used '4i,' a method developed at UZH, which allows us to simultaneously visualize and quantify up to 80 different proteins and protein modifications in single cells using fluorescence microscopy," says Bernhard Kramer, first author of the study.

The researchers found that the variability in the activities of individual sensors across cells is tightly linked to variation in internal cues. For example, the abundance of mitochondria, the cells' power stations, fundamentally affects how an external stimulus is perceived by a single cell. Furthermore, each sensor integrates different cues from inside the cell. When the researchers evaluated an important decision of a single cell—namely to proliferate or to stay quiescent upon a growth stimulus—they found that the cell's choice was mediated by the perception of multiple sensors and was predictably modulated by cues of the cell's internal state.

"For any specific decision of a cell, all outside signals and internal cues have to be viewed in concert. Single cells are thus able to make adequate context-dependent decisions—and are therefore clearly smarter than previously thought," says Ph.D. candidate Kramer.

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The Shah Mosque in Isfahan is regarded as possibly the most beautiful In Iran and is part of a United Nations World Heritage site.

But in recent pictures, one side looks uneven, while its distinctive flower patterns do not match.

Officials acknowledged the defects, but said they could be rectified.

The work was "not yet finished", said the restorer, Mehdi Pakdel.

Mr Pakdel blamed problems with the scaffolding used, as well as challenges posed by the height of the 54m (177ft) dome.

The mosque was built during what is known as the golden age of Isfahan, the third-biggest city in the country.

With its striking bright blue and yellow patterned tiles, it is a magnet for Muslim worshippers and tourists from inside and outside Iran.

"Supervisors and restorers realised there was damage, especially in the upper part of the dome," said Alireza Izadi, head of heritage for the city, according to state media.

"We are going to replace the dome tiles, because the weight of the scaffolding has damaged their edge," he added.

Some of the designs on the restored tiles do not match

One of the dome's sides looks uneven

Source

The survey of Australia's ecological systems - conducted every five years - found widespread abrupt changes.

These can be blamed on climate change, habitat loss, invasive species, pollution and mining, it said.

The threats are not being adequately managed - meaning they are on track to cause more problems.

Environment Minister Tanya Plibersek said the document paints a "shocking" and "sometimes depressing" story, vowing to implement new policies and laws.

The 2,000-page State of the Environment report, commissioned by the government, found or reiterated:

•  Nineteen ecosystems are on the brink of collapse

•  There are now more non-native plant species in Australia than native ones

•  Australia has lost more species to extinction than any other continent

•  All bar one category of environment examined has deteriorated since 2016, and more than half are now in a "poor" state.

"If we continue on the trajectory that we are on, the precious places, landscapes, animals and plants that we think of when we think of home may not be here for our kids and grandkids," Ms Plibersek said.

The koala and gang-gang cockatoo are among more than 200 animal and plant species with upgraded threats since 2016. Many of those species are unique to Australia.

In recent years, Australia has suffered severe drought, historic bushfires, successive years of record-breaking floods, and six mass bleaching events on the Great Barrier Reef.

"In previous reports, we've been largely talking about the impacts of climate in the future tense," Professor Emma Johnston, another report chief author, told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"In this report there's a stark contrast, because we are now documenting widespread impacts of climate change."

The report found Australia lacks an adequate framework to manage its environment, instead relying on confusing systems that straddle different tiers of government.

Federal government spending on sustaining biodiversity has dropped at the same time risks have been increasing, it said.

The report was handed to the previous government last year, but its release was delayed until after the election in May.

"It tells a story of crisis and decline in Australia's environment, and of a decade of government inaction and wilful ignorance," Ms Plibersek said in a statement.

A spokesperson for the Liberal opposition said it had a "strong" environment record while in government.

Australia has vowed to cut carbon emissions by 43% on 2005 levels by 2030. Under its previous government, the target was 26-28%.

Source

Now temperatures across Europe are soaring yet again, at or near triple digits from Spain to the British Isles and spreading east. Wildfires stoked by the heat are burning in many countries, and much of the continent is in the throes of a lengthy drought.

And there are still two months of summer left.

Scientists say the persistent extreme heat already this year is in keeping with a trend. Heat waves in Europe, they say, are increasing in frequency and intensity at a faster rate than almost any other part of the planet, including the Western United States.

Global warming plays a role, as it does in heat waves around the world, because temperatures are on average about 2 degrees Fahrenheit (1.1 degrees Celsius) higher than they were in the late 19th century, before emissions of carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases became widespread. So extreme heat takes off from a higher starting point.

But beyond that, there are other factors, some involving the circulation of the atmosphere and the ocean, that may make Europe a heat wave hot spot.

No two heat waves are precisely the same. The current scorching temperatures that reached into England and Wales on Monday were caused in part by a region of upper level low-pressure air that has been stalled off the coast of Portugal for days. It’s known as a “cutoff low” in the parlance of atmospheric scientists, because it was cut off from a river of westerly winds, the mid-latitude jet stream, that circles the planet at high altitudes.

Low-pressure zones tend to draw air toward them. In this case, the low-pressure zone has been steadily drawing air from North Africa toward it and into Europe. “It’s pumping hot air northward,” said Kai Kornhuber, a researcher at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, part of Columbia University.

Dr. Kornhuber contributed to a study published this month that found that heat waves in Europe had increased in frequency and intensity over the past four decades, and linked the increase at least in part to changes in the jet stream. The researchers found that many European heat waves occurred when the jet stream had temporarily split in two, leaving an area of weak winds and high pressure air between the two branches that is conducive to the buildup of extreme heat.

Efi Rousi, a senior scientist at Potsdam Institute for Climate Research in Germany and the lead author of the study, said the current heat wave appeared to be linked to such a “double jet,” which she said has been in place over Europe for the past two weeks. This could have led to the creation of the cutoff low, Dr. Rousi said, as well as to an area of weak winds over Europe that allowed the heat to persist.

“It seems this is really favoring the buildup of this heat wave,” she said.

There may be other reasons Europe is seeing more, and more persistent, heat waves, although some of these are currently the subject of debate among scientists. Natural climate variability can make it difficult to tease out specific influences, Dr. Rousi said.

Dr. Kornhuber said warming in the Arctic, which is occurring much faster than other parts of the world, may play a role. As the Arctic warms at a faster rate, the temperature differential between it and the Equator decreases. This leads to a decrease in summertime winds, which has the effect of making weather systems linger for longer. “We do see an increase in persistence,” he said.

There are also indications that changes in one of the world’s major ocean currents, the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, may affect Europe’s climate. Dr. Rousi published a paper last year that showed, using computer simulations, that a weakening of the current as the world warmed would cause changes in atmospheric circulation leading to drier summers in Europe.

As in other parts of the world, a heat wave in Europe can make it more likely for others to occur in the same area, because a period of extreme heat dries out the soil.

When there is some moisture in the soil, some of the sun’s energy is used in evaporating the water, leading to a slight cooling effect. But when one heat wave wipes out almost all the soil moisture, there is little left to evaporate when the next wave of hot air arrives. So more of the sun’s energy bakes the surface, adding to the heat.

Raymond Zhong contributed reporting.

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Temperatures are predicted to reach over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Photo by Dinendra Haria/SOPA Images/LightRocket via Getty Images

The United Kingdom is currently experiencing an extreme heatwave, and some of its infrastructure hasn’t been able to cope. London Luton Airport, a hub for low-cost flights, had to suspend departures and arrivals on Monday after the heat caused a “small section” of runway to lift up, according to a tweet posted to the airport’s account. The BBC reports that the shutdown, which was cleared up by 6:05PM British Summer Time, meant that at least a few flights had to be diverted or canceled.

Luton isn’t the only airport experiencing heat-related issues. According to CNBC, the Royal Air Force couldn’t use its Brize Norton station in Oxfordshire thanks to the heat. The UK’s Met Office predicted that temperatures in London would reach 39 degrees Celsius, or around 102 Fahrenheit, on Monday, and it expects they’ll be a degree hotter on Tuesday.

Other forms of transportation are being affected as well. Network Rail has been warning the country’s residents to only travel by train if it’s truly necessary and has slowed down and canceled service for some lines. The company tweeted that engineers in Scotland had to install equipment to make sure that the electrical lines responsible for powering trains didn’t sag in the heat and also said that a signaling issue in Brockenhurst was “a direct result of the hot temperatures.”

Unfortunately, these types of incidents are likely to continue. Runways in Brize Norton melted last year as well, and experts say that the UK will have to adapt for a future where this kind of heatwave is far more common than it is now. Cities and countries all over the world have been experiencing the effects of climate change firsthand in recent years, with more people than usual dying of heat-related causes, super-charged storms putting more people in danger, and infrastructure like roads and runways buckling under the heat.

Correction July 18th, 5:45PM ET: A previous version of this article stated that London Luton Airport is located in London. It is actually located in Luton. We regret the error.

The London Luton airport suspended flights after its runway buckled due to the UK heat

SpaceX is now launching 10 rockets for every one by its main competitor

There are three ways to die: of injury, disease, or old age. Over time, humans have gotten better at avoiding the first two, but as we get older, senescence—the gradual deterioration of bodily functions with age—is inevitable. Some species seem to do better than others, though: Take the hydra, a tiny freshwater creature that some scientists have deemed potentially immortal. Last year, a naked mole rat made headlines for turning 39, five times the typical lifespan for similarly sized rodents. And just a few months ago, a giant Aldabra tortoise named Jonathan celebrated what was believed to be his 190th birthday, making him the world’s oldest living land animal.

Cases like these beg the question: Is it possible to escape aging?

The authors of a study published in Science last month say yes. Well, if you’re a turtle. With an extensive analysis of 52 species of turtles (a designation that includes both water dwellers and land-lodging tortoises), the team of four scientists found that the majority of them showed exceptionally slow—and in some cases, negligible—senescence while in captivity. That doesn’t make them immortal; turtles can still die from illness or injury. But unlike birds and mammals, their overall risk of death doesn’t increase with age. “We confirmed something that was suspected a long time ago, but never proven,” says Fernando Colchero, a biodemographer at the University of Southern Denmark.

Aging rate is a measure of how the risk of death increases among a population of organisms as they get older. For birds and mammals, that risk is thought to grow exponentially with age. But for most of the turtle species in the study, that rate was nearly flat, no matter how old they got.

Colchero and his colleagues also found that the environment the animals lived in plays a role. “Turtles and tortoises, based on comparing our results to those from animals in the wild, can actually change their aging rates dramatically when conditions improve,” he says, referring to factors like protection from predators, a controlled climate, and unlimited access to food and shelter. That’s distinct from previous work using primate data that reported increases in longevity due to better living conditions, but no significant reduction in mortality due to slowed aging.

What gives? Some evolutionary theories propose that senescence is the result of an energy trade-off. Most mammals and birds stop growing once they reach sexual maturity, Colchero says, at which point their energy gets prioritized for procreation, rather than cellular repair. Without sufficient upkeep to counter wear and tear, bodies become more vulnerable to chronic age-related conditions, as well as injuries or infections. “But many reptiles don’t. They keep growing, which means that they seem to be really efficient at repairing damages and keeping bodily functions working well,” he says.

According to Rita da Silva, a biologist who led the study with Colchero, animals with this quality are prime candidates for evading senescence. It’s an idea that’s been around since the 1990s, and to prove it, the researchers collected demographic information from the Zoological Information Management System, a database of records from zoos and aquariums maintained by the nonprofit organization Species360. They selected species that had data for at least 110 animals, and focused only on turtles living in fresh water or on land.

To quantify the role senescence played in mortality, the researchers compared their data for each species to theoretical survival curves that predicted the risk of death in a population of animals to grow exponentially each year after sexual maturity. They focused on what happened at a specific point in the curve: the age at which 80 percent of the turtles in each species had died. They considered this to be a point in time well after the onset of senescence.

Then, they determined the aging rate of each species by calculating the direction and steepness of the curve at that point. A positive rate (or an upward curve) indicated that the species was experiencing some level of senescence—that their risk of death was rising with age. A rate of zero meant that the risk of death was constant, and a negative value (or a downward curve) implied that it was declining. The steepness of the curve gave insight to how quickly the senescence was increasing or decreasing.

About 75 percent of the species in their sample displayed little to no senescence, and 80 percent of them had aging rates that were lower than those of modern humans. Two species, the Greek tortoise and black marsh turtle, even displayed what da Silva calls negative senescence, in which the risk of dying actually decreased with age.

It’s important to note that all of the turtles were captive, living in ideal conditions for long life: enclosed habitats with controlled environmental and reproductive conditions, as well as easy access to sustenance and care. “They don’t have to spend all of their energy on finding food or avoiding predators,” da Silva says. “So they can just allocate all of that energy to surviving.”

Studying captive animals helps eliminate external factors like predators, human encroachment, and difficulty finding food or shelter, allowing the researchers to focus just on demographic trends. But it doesn’t exactly reflect how the turtles fare in the wild. So for three of the species, the scientists were able to compare their own results with previous data collected from wild populations. Two of them, the pond slider and Home’s hinge-back tortoise, showed much steeper aging rates in their natural habitats than in captivity, while the painted turtle showed slightly less senescence in the wild.

Steven Austad, a biogerontologist at the University of Alabama Birmingham who was not involved in the work, says that the results are compelling, but that more in-depth studies in the wild are needed to determine if turtles have the capacity to stop aging altogether. That would mean that traditional evolutionary theories—which consider senescence to be universal across all species—are wrong. “To really test evolutionary ideas, you test them in the environment that the evolution occurred in,” he says.

Colchero and da Silva’s paper was accompanied by a broader study, published in Science on the same day by an independent group of scientists, reporting aging rates across 107 populations of turtles, crocodilians, amphibians, and scaled reptiles in the wild. By compiling and comparing data sets from over 100 scientists, evolutionary biologist Beth Reinke of Northeastern Illinois University found at least one species in each group of animals that displayed negligible senescence. Across the board, all types of turtles showed high longevity and extremely low aging rates.

That doesn’t necessarily clash with the high aging rates that Colchero and da Silva found in two specific wild populations. “There’s a lot of variation even within species that we have no explanation for,” says Reinke, who contributed 13 years’ worth of her own data on painted turtles for the comparative study. (Of the five populations of yellow-bellied toads, for example, one showed nearly no senescence, while another population had a very steep aging rate.) Reinke also discovered a dependence on temperature: senescence increased for reptiles and decreased for amphibians that lived in warmer areas, supporting Colchero and da Silva’s conclusion that the surrounding environment influences how animals age. 

Neither study could probe which biological mechanisms are driving this effect, since the researchers weren’t able to analyze tissue samples. And, notably, both research teams lacked the data to say much about how the shelled reptiles ultimately did die, or what their physiology was like in later stages of life. “The results need to be validated in wild populations, and by looking at animal’s physical and reproductive statuses—not just mortality patterns,” says Austad, who penned a perspective in Science about the two papers. He also suggests a future focus on a sample of longer-lived turtles, since the species in Colchero and da Silva’s work had average life expectancies of only up to 60 years, with many well below 30.

Colchero agrees. “This is not conclusive at all,” he says. “It’s something that we hope will open new avenues of research, that people who are really interested in the physiology of aging will start looking at species of turtles and tortoises.”

Until then, the jury is still out on whether turtles, or other organisms, will ever be able to cheat death. This new data suggests, at least, some biological potential to stave it off for a very long time—if the conditions are right. “No aging is basically eternal youth, and the distinction about whether they’re aging really slowly or not at all is an important one, conceptually,” Austad says. Finding a turtle that truly never ages would overhaul how scientists understand aging, and evolution, altogether. But barring that, he continues, “If they simply age slower than people, there could still be lessons.”

Solving the mystery of how turtles avoid senescence may eventually lend insight into human aging. “We can for sure say that we know more about mortality in general, how species age and how species die, than we knew before,” da Silva says. “And if we start actually seeing all of these trajectories of mortality across the tree of life, we’ll learn a lot that we can probably translate to human mortality in the future.”

What Turtles Can Teach Humans About the Science of Slow Aging

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You may have heard that the Arctic is warming more than twice as fast as the rest of the planet, in large part due to a gnarly feedback loop: As more sea ice melts, it exposes darker waters, which absorb more of the sun’s energy, further accelerating the melt. That’s wrong, as it turns out. Things are actually even worse.

Those underlying warming processes, known as Arctic amplification, are indeed happening. But their rate is far more catastrophic than scientists first understood. Thanks to a torrent of temperature data, by late 2021 researchers were estimating that the region is actually warming more than four times faster than the rest of Earth, with huge consequences for the whole planet. 

And now, a June paper published by a separate group in the journal Geophysical Research Letters puts an even finer point on the problem, showing that over the last few decades, the Arctic hasn’t warmed at a consistent, predictable rate. “We have seen that these changes are not smooth, as has been believed until now. They occur basically in two discrete steps: one around 1985 and then around 2000,” says Petr Chylek, a research scientist at the Los Alamos National Laboratory and lead author of the study. “After this last increase in the year 2000, Arctic amplification is about 4.5 compared to two or three [times as fast], as it was before. So it is a significant change.”

That means that the scientific community and policymakers have been referring to figures that are far too low. “A lot of papers have been citing this figure of two times greater warming in the Arctic than the rest of the planet for a long time,” says climate scientist Lily Hahn, who studies the mechanisms of Arctic amplification at the University of Washington but wasn’t involved in the work. “So it's nice to finally update this using the most up-to-date observations.”

What caused these sudden spikes in Arctic temperatures isn’t yet clear. But the first one in the 1980s was probably due to increasing concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, Chylek says. The second spike around the turn of the century may have been due more to variability in the climate—for instance, changing ocean currents.

Scientists have a good handle on what’s causing the overall Arctic warming, though. Sea ice has a very high “albedo,” meaning it reflects a lot of the sun’s radiation. But the underlying seawater has a low albedo, meaning it absorbs that energy. (If you look at satellite images of the sea, it can be quite dark.) So as that ice melts, the albedo of the Arctic decreases, raising temperatures, which melts more ice. It’s a vicious circle.

“This albedo effect is really translated into melting of sea ice in the summer and early fall,” says Chylek. “Because of this evaporation of water, and because a larger area of water is open at that time, we get this water vapor into the atmosphere and formation of low-level clouds.” And clouds, as it turns out, also play a role in boosting temperatures. They bounce some of the sun’s radiation back into space, sure, but they also absorb some of it, like insulation. The low-level clouds stick around through the winter, trapping heat against the landscape. So even though in some parts of the Arctic the sun doesn’t come out at all during the depths of winter, warmer summers and autumns prime the coldest months to get hotter. 

All the extra warmth of summer is also getting trapped in the Arctic Ocean, then released throughout the winter. “The greatest warming in the Arctic is happening in winter, which maybe surprises people, because you have the greatest sea ice melt in summertime,” says Hahn, of the University of Washington. “That's when you have incoming sunlight. But the idea is that there's seasonal ocean heat storage.” It’s like a giant radiator that warms up a room even after it’s been turned off. 

Simultaneously, storms have been transporting moisture from lower latitudes into the Arctic, further encouraging the development of clouds. And injections of warmer water from the south, brought north by ocean currents, further melt sea ice. “As it melts, water evaporates and increases atmospheric humidity, which causes an increase in cloudiness in winter, and we have infrared radiation coming from these clouds to the surface,” says Chylek. “This is one feedback loop that can cause increased Arctic temperature, and we believe that it is one of the reasons why we see this increase in temperature around 2000.”

University of Washington climate scientist Cecilia Bitz, who studies Arctic amplification but wasn’t involved in the new research, points out that there has been a lag in how areas at high latitudes have responded to greenhouse gases, compared to the rest of the planet. It’s taken time for sea ice to melt, but now that it’s doing so, the heat feedback loop in the Arctic has worsened, and the rate of change has become much more noticeable. “The tropics warmed faster first, and now the poles are catching up, and that's why you see a trend,” she says.

The consequences are already massive and far-reaching. First and foremost, more melting—particularly in Greenland, which is losing a quarter trillion tons of ice each year—means higher sea levels. Plus, warmer waters get physically bigger, a phenomenon known as thermal expansion, further raising sea levels. 

The landscape is also suffering literal and metaphorical upheaval. Warming temperatures are thawing frozen soil known as permafrost. When that permafrost loses water, it collapses, dragging down any infrastructure in or above it, like pipelines, roads, and buildings. “There are people in the Arctic,” says Bitz. “They did very little to deserve to live in this environment that is dangerous.”

Skyrocketing temperatures are also greening that landscape. Shrub species are marching north, and the vegetation traps more snow against the ground. This prevents the chill of winter from penetrating it, potentially accelerating the thaw of permafrost. All that extra vegetation is also darker—just like how the sea itself is darker than its ice—and thus absorbs more of the sun’s radiation. 

Simply put, the Arctic is descending into climatological and ecological uncertainty. “Each summer that my field research crew heads to the Arctic, we don’t know quite what to expect,” says Isla Myers-Smith, a global change ecologist at the University of Edinburgh, who wasn’t involved in the new research. “This year we arrived in Inuvik, Canada, in a heat dome with temperatures reaching 32 Celsius [90 degrees Fahrenheit], but out on the coast there was still lots of sea ice around, keeping temperatures much cooler locally.”

This kind of variability makes it difficult for models to pin down how the Arctic is changing, and to predict how those changes will go on to influence the larger climate system. That’s why it’s so important that scientists revise their understanding that the Arctic is actually warming more than four times as fast as the rest of the planet. 

One major concern is the potential for the climate system to reach a tipping point, in which warming kicks off rapid change. If the Arctic warms enough, for example, melting in Greenland might quickly accelerate. “I don't think it's really precisely known—if these tipping points exist—what level of warming would trigger such rapid changes,” says Michael Previdi, a climate scientist at the Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory of Columbia University, who wasn’t involved in the new paper. But, he continues, in theory a larger amplification factor “increases the chances of passing one of these tipping points.”

Why the Arctic Is Warming 4 Times as Fast as the Rest of Earth

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The mysterious image was revealed by an X-ray taken when conservationists at the National Galleries of Scotland examined Van Gogh's Head of a Peasant Woman (1885) ahead of a new exhibition called A Taste for Impressionism.

X-rays reveal hidden Van Gogh self-portrait

On March 16, 2020, the first volunteer received a shot of Moderna’s then-experimental Covid-19 vaccine, just 63 days after the company had generated a genetic blueprint of the new virus. But Moderna’s rival beat it to the marketplace: Pfizer’s Covid vaccine would be authorized for use in the United States less than a year later, a record-breaking achievement. Previously, the fastest a vaccine had ever been developed was for mumps—which took about four years.

The speed at which both companies were able to deliver their vaccines can be credited to mRNA technology. Instead of using the virus itself to spur an immune response, as older vaccines do, scientists instead spur it using a programmable piece of genetic code called mRNA. The mRNA tells the body to make a version of the coronavirus’s distinct spike protein, so it can make antibodies to neutralize that spike. The mRNA is quickly broken down, but the memory of the spike protein lingers in the immune system, so it’s ready to launch an attack if it encounters it again.

The promise of mRNA technology was its adaptability. Vaccine makers touted its plug-and-play nature. If the virus mutated to evade current vaccines, scientists could simply swap in a new piece of mRNA to match the new version of the virus. But today, despite waves of variants including Delta, Omicron, and the latest threats—Omicron subvariants BA.4 and BA.5—the Covid-19 vaccines and booster shots still target the original virus that was identified in late 2019. Why haven’t variant-specific boosters arrived sooner?

“You’re working with a virus that is rapidly mutating. Each of these variants is around for a few months and then is replaced by a new variant,” says infectious disease specialist Archana Chatterjee, dean of the Chicago Medical School. “This is a race that we are continually behind on.” 

And BA.4 and BA.5 are the fastest movers yet. “This virus has, over the period of these two years, become more and more contagious,” continues Chatterjee, who is also a member of the Vaccines and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee (VRBPAC), an independent panel of experts that advises the US Food and Drug Administration.

While the currently available vaccines have greatly reduced death and hospitalization due to Covid-19, “their effectiveness does appear to wane with time,” said Peter Marks, director of the FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research, during a June 28 VRBPAC meeting. Initial booster shots helped restore some protection against severe disease, but their effectiveness also seems to fade.

In June, all of these factors led VRBPAC to recommend that vaccine manufacturers update Covid booster shots for fall and winter 2022, tailoring them to the BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants. Chatterjee says the committee made the recommendation based on evidence that these subvariants seem to be driving a new wave of hospitalizations across the US and the UK. The US government intends to buy millions of variant-specific doses for a fall booster campaign.

Jacqueline Miller, senior vice president of infectious diseases at Moderna, says the company recognized early on that they’d have to race to catch up with the virus. The first variants of concern—Alpha and Beta—were identified in late 2020, just as the vaccines were being rolled out. While the original vaccines held up against the Alpha variant, they were slightly less effective against Beta. “That was really what prompted us to go down this road of investigating variant vaccines,” she says.

Miller says it takes Moderna about four to six weeks from the time of generating a new variant’s genome sequence to producing enough vaccine doses to begin human testing. Pfizer’s process is similarly fast.

“The design time to the actual production of the vaccine is still remarkably faster than other vaccines that we're talking about,” says Michael Diamond, a viral immunologist at Washington University in St. Louis who has studied mRNA vaccines. “The variants are just coming faster than we anticipated.”

The late-2020 Beta variant was quickly supplanted by Delta, which took hold in summer 2021 and caused another surge of infections around the world. Both Moderna and Pfizer rushed to test updated shots aimed at the Delta variant. But the companies' original vaccine formulas proved effective against Delta because its spike protein wasn’t all that different from the ancestral version of the virus. When Omicron emerged in November, it had dozens of mutations in its spike protein that allowed it to more easily escape the vaccine. It caused an explosion in Covid cases over the following months.

While the process of updating an mRNA booster goes rather quickly, testing and manufacturing it at scale takes longer. Variant-specific vaccines still need to go through animal and human testing to make sure they’re safe and generate an immune response. The FDA has said that vaccine makers can bypass large trials for updated Covid vaccines and instead test them in smaller groups of volunteers, similar to what’s done for the annual flu vaccine. Then, companies need to study volunteers’ blood to compare the immune response generated by the modified booster to the one generated by the original vaccine. The whole process from start to finish takes Moderna about six months, says Miller.

And that’s not counting the time it takes for FDA authorization, to make the new formula, or to get it to pharmacies and doctor's offices. Miller says she hopes the timeline will get shorter once the first variant-specific booster is out of the gate.

Omicron has stuck around longer than previous variants, which has given both Pfizer and Moderna more time to develop boosters against BA.4 and BA.5, after originally generating candidate boosters against the earlier BA.1 subvariant. On July 11, Moderna announced that its Omicron-specific candidate generated a “significantly higher neutralizing antibody response” against BA.4 and BA.5 than the currently available shot.

Pfizer and BioNTech also said its Omicron booster candidates spurred a better antibody response against the variant than the company’s already-approved vaccine. “For our Omicron-adapted vaccines, we explored a higher dose, which we anticipated may be necessary against the highly transmissible Omicron variant and subvariants,” says Pfizer spokesperson Keanna Ghazvini.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that BA.4 and BA.5 currently make up more than 81 percent of cases in the US. Of course, there’s no guarantee that they will still be the dominant variants come fall. Diamond says even if they aren’t, a booster that targets those versions of the virus will likely still provide better protection than the original formulation. “The reason to give a booster that is different from the original one is to broaden the immune response,” he says. “Some of that greater breadth may actually be able to anticipate new variants, even though your immune system has never seen them.”

But Maria Elena Bottazzi, associate dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor University, says it’s not enough to just switch from a booster against the original sequence to an Omicron-specific one. She thinks governments around the world will need to come up with longer-term solutions, especially as people lose interest in getting additional booster doses.

“What we have learned is that as much as the mRNA technology has been very effective and safe, the immunological response is not very durable,” she says. Older vaccine technologies, she says, may be able to provide longer-lasting protection. Bottazzi and her colleagues have developed a low-cost Covid-19 vaccine called Corbevax, which has been approved for use in India and Botswana. Known as a protein subunit vaccine, it uses a tiny, purified part of the spike protein to elicit an immune response. It also includes an adjuvant, an ingredient in some vaccines that helps increase the immune response.

“There's no doubt that mRNA broke the paradigm,” says Bottazzi. “But I don’t think it’s the one and only solution.” The latest Covid-19 vaccine to receive emergency authorization in the US is a protein subunit vaccine, made by Maryland biotech company Novavax.

Labs around the world are also attempting to develop a universal coronavirus vaccine, which would protect against virtually any member of the coronavirus family, including new variants of SARS-CoV-2 that arise.

Even if new boosters do arrive this fall, persuading people to get another shot will be a challenge. Only about 29 percent of people eligible for a second booster dose have received one.

Whether we’ll need a tailored booster shot every time a new variant arises is hard to know, says Chatterjee. It may be that an Omicron booster will be enough to offer protection against variants that emerge in the near future. But beyond that, she says, a big question remains: “How do you get ahead of this virus?”

The Covid Virus Keeps Evolving. Why Haven't Vaccines?

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Now, a full year after the surgery was completed, Mariam’s family and her team of doctors at Sick Kids Hospital in Toronto are sharing their experience with the life-saving technology.

“It’s been so difficult,” Mariam’s mother, Linda Antouan Adwar, said of Mariam’s long battle against congenital heart disease. “I understand some parents feel they can’t continue, but my message for them is: Don’t give up.”

So-called total artificial hearts like Mariam’s are not replacements for normal hearts. Rather, such devices are seen as a type of “bridge” therapy for patients who require heart transplants but are not candidates for one, either due to a lack of donors or because they are simply not healthy enough to undergo a transplant.

In Mariam’s case, she required a re-transplantation, which is considered highly risky for someone of her age, especially with an already-weakened immune system due to the immunosuppressive drugs she had been taking to maintain her existing transplanted heart.

With Mariam’s heart failing and no other options available, Dr. Osami Honjo and his surgical team decided to attempt the difficult operation of installing an artificial heart, hoping the device could give her body’s immune system the chance to calm down prior to a second transplant procedure.

“Either we gave up and let it be, or we had to do something,” said Dr. Honjo, adding that his team accepted the challenge of the procedure while knowing that her two previous procedures would mean they would be contending with an already fragile body.

Mariam receives physical therapy after receiving the total artificial heart.

Courtesy of Family

“We were anticipating that this operation was going to be very difficult because we knew that, inside the chest, it was going to be really messy.”

The surgery to install a SynCardia Total Artificial Heart in Mariam’s body, where it would remain for the two months before she was able to receive a full heart transplant, began on July 8, 2021 and lasted some fourteen hours.

During the operation, Mariam’s surgical team removed the bottom half of her heart and replaced its valves and outer structure with a polyethylene replica – all while keeping a normal level of blood flow to the rest of the body and organs.

Despite the complexity of the operation, Dr. Honjo said the main problem that occurred during the surgery was the actual size of the device. Since it only came in two sizes, both of which were too big for Mariam’s body, the surgical team were unable to close Mariam’s chest for five days following the surgery until her swelling subsided.

Dr. Aamir Jeewa, Mariam’s cardiologist and the head of heart function at Sick Kids, described the pumps of an artificial heart as being like “two grapefruits.”

“The majority of mechanical support for children with heart failure are in the form of devices approved for adult-sized patients,” Dr. Jeewa added. “This often creates challenges trying to fit these larger devices in smaller children.”

When Mariam eventually awoke from the operation, two tubes ran from the device inside of her body out of two holes in her abdomen to a piece of large external machinery that regulated her heart’s rhythm and allowed the device to replace the functionality of her two ventricles.

Mariam at a follow-up appointment earlier this year.

Handout

Just over two months later, in September, Mariam underwent her fourth open-heart surgery and received her second heart transplant – the same one beating inside of her today.

“She loved life and she needed to be alive,” said Ms. Adwar.

“She goes to school in person after all this. She goes to the swimming pool again and swims with her brother and her dad. She got to play basketball again, go running around, use the bike. She does everything now, thank God.”

Dr. Honjo and Dr. Jeewa both said that they expect technologies like the total artificial heart to continue to improve and become smaller, allowing easier use in children such as Mariam.

Whether artificial hearts will one day replace the need for transplantation entirely remains to be seen, but Dr. Honjo said – given the advancement in biotechnology in the last two decades – that it is a real possibility.

“20 years ago we didn’t have this type of technology at all, so this is a very rapid and quite significant development in recent years,” he said.

“We’re not there yet, but it’s possible.”

Source

A Monash researcher has analyzed more than four decades of data relating to common treatments for advanced carotid artery stenosis, one of the leading causes of stroke, and found surgery and stents have very limited impact, if any, in preventing stroke.

Carotid artery stenosis is a disease caused by the build-up of fatty deposits (plaques) in the main artery that delivers blood to the brain. The disease affects one in 10 people by age 80 and it is a major cause of stroke—the third-biggest cause of death, occurring when blood supply to the brain is restricted.

The Monash analysis, published in the open science journal Frontiers in Neurology, found that lifestyle factors—such as diet, exercise and quitting smoking—had a significant impact in reducing stroke risk when combined with appropriate medication.

The stroke risk in symptom-free patients with advanced carotid stenosis fell by at least 65 percent to 1 percent or less in those using non-invasive measures alone, the study showed. This is similar to, or lower than, the stroke rate in patients who underwent carotid surgery or stenting in past trials.
Study author Associate Professor Anne Abbott from Monash's Central Clinical School, said the findings dispel a common misconception that surgery or stenting is the best treatment for carotid artery stenosis, when the procedures often cause more harm than good.

"This is a widespread furphy that leads to inappropriate patient care, causing large-scale harm and premature death, while wasting vital health resources," Associate Professor Abbott said.

"People need to understand that they have the greatest power to prevent their own stroke. Healthy life habits, including physical activity, diet and quitting smoking, combined with appropriate medication, help mitigate major risk factors such as high blood pressure and cholesterol, and very effectively reduce the risk of stroke and heart attack."

There are currently four types of intervention used to reduce stroke risk in carotid stenosis patients: carotid surgery (endarterectomy), carotid stenting, a new hybrid procedure known as trans-carotid arterial revascularization (TCAR), and medical (non-invasive) intervention with lifestyle coaching and medication.

"Stroke rates are now so low with non-invasive intervention alone that carotid artery procedures are unlikely to provide benefit to the vast majority of patients and have no current proven benefit for any patient," Professor Abbott said. "Yet carotid artery procedures are still very commonly done in Australia and overseas and they continue to cause significant complications, including stroke, death and heart attack, and they are costly."

Professor Abbott is calling on the health sector to incorporate best practice non-invasive interventions and stop unnecessary procedures in order to deliver the best outcomes for their patients.

Source

But just half of parents recognize that screen time has a major impact their child's eye health, suggests the C.S. Mott Children's Hospital National Poll on Children's Health at University of Michigan Health.

"Many parents may not be aware of both the short and long-term health issues linked to excessive screen time, including its effect on children's eyes," said Mott Poll co-director Sarah Clark.

"Our findings suggest that some parents may have inaccurate perceptions of activities that affect their child's eye health and vision and how to minimize risks."

The nationally-representative report was based on responses from 2,002 parents of children ages 3-18 surveyed in April.

Some experts have pointed to the combination of increased screen time and less time outdoors as factors that may put children at higher risk for developing myopia, or nearsightedness, which can lead to serious eye problems in the future. The rate of nearsightedness in children has increased dramatically in the past 30 years.

Research is ongoing but studies suggest outdoor time protects against myopia.

"Parents should encourage at least one to two hours of outdoor time per day because exposure to natural light benefits eye development," Clark said.
"Parents should enforce family rules to ensure children have a sustained period of non-screen time during the day. This is especially important during summer months when they're off from school and may have less structured downtime."

Some research has also indicated associations between working up close—like reading or using a tablet—increasing the odds of myopia.

"It's important time to think about myopia risks for children because kids with this condition often become more nearsighted over time," said Olivia Killeen, M.D., ophthalmologist at U-M Health Kellogg Eye Center who consulted on the report.

"The age of myopia onset is the most significant predictor of severe myopia later in life."

Using eyewear to minimize risks to children's eyes

Another overlooked area of eye health—protecting little eyes from intense sunlight.

Less than a third of parents polled say wearing sunglasses when outdoors has a major impact on children's vision and eye health, with just two in five having their child wear eyewear when outdoors.

In fact, when children are outdoors, they should wear sunglasses or wide-brimmed hats to decrease the risks of ultraviolet radiation damage, which can contribute to eye problems in older age, Clark says.

"While parents often make sure their children's skin is protected with sunscreen, they may not think about protecting their eyes from the sun as well," Clark said.

Many parents polled also skip steps that help minimize eye injuries during activities that include a risk of objects hitting the child's eye at high speed or force, with less than a third of parents saying their child wears protective glasses or goggles during contact sports.

Clark recommends parents seek advice from their child's health provider for safe and comfortable eyewear for sports like lacrosse, tennis, baseball and softball, and basketball.

However, most parents polled say children and teens wear protective glasses or goggles when doing activities that pose a risk of eye injuries, including working with tools and playing shooting games like Nerf guns or paintball.

After time spent on screens, the most common factors parent identify as impacting children's vision and eye health are reading in poor light, how close children sit to the TV/screen, diet and blue light from screens.

"Some parents may still follow advice from past generations on protecting kids' eyes," Clark said. "Reading in poor light or sitting close to the TV can cause eye fatigue or strain, but they will not do any permanent damage or long-term eye problems."

Less than a third of parents say children wear glasses that block blue light. While the amount of blue light does not damage eyes, it may impact circadian rhythms and make it harder for children to fall asleep. Experts recommend children stop blue light screen use at least one hour before bedtime.

Regular eye checks to detect problems early

Four in five parents report their child has had a vision test during a visit to the pediatrician or family doctor while more than a fourth say kids were tested at school or daycare.

Most parents report their child's health insurance covers the full or partial cost of visits to an eye doctor while 9% say they are not covered and 7% are unsure. Parents who report no coverage for eye doctor visits are less likely than parents with full or partial coverage to say their child has seen an eye doctor in the last two years.

One in seven parents say their child has not had a vision test or seen an eye doctor in the past two years.

"Children should get vision tests at least every two years to make sure eyes are developing properly," Clark said.

"It's important to identify and treat vision problems as early as possible, because undiagnosed issues can lead to serious eye conditions in the future, including permanent vision loss."

Source

Insulin therapy, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2021, has probably saved the lives of hundreds of millions of people suffering from type 1 diabetes or severe forms of type 2 diabetes. However, it has some risks, if the doses are too high or too low, and is even directly responsible for some potentially fatal conditions. Consequently, the life expectancy of insulin-dependent diabetics is reduced by 10 to 15 years compared to the norm. "Life-threatening hypoglycemia, negative impact on fat metabolism and increased cholesterol: these are some severe side effects of insulin. This is why we are looking to develop complementary or alternative treatments that are more effective and less dangerous," says Roberto Coppari, a professor in the Department of Cell Physiology and Metabolism and Coordinator of the Diabetes Center of UNIGE Faculty of Medicine, who directed this work.

The S100A9 protein proves its worth

In 2019, Professor Coppari's team identified a protein called S100A9 that regulates blood glucose, lipids and ketones (a product of fatty acidic oxidation in the liver when the body no longer has enough glucose to function), without the side effects of insulin. "To develop a drug, however, we had to understand how this protein works precisely and demonstrate its effectiveness in animal models," says Girorgio Ramadori, a research associate in Professor Coppari's lab and lead author of this study.

The team first set out to decipher the mode of action of S100A9 in diabetic mice. "It turns out that this protein acts in the liver," says Gloria Ursino, a first author of the study and post-doctoral fellow in the research team. "It activates the TLR4 receptor, which is located on the membrane of certain cells, but not on the hepatocytes, which are the main functional cells of the liver." This is excellent news from a pharmacological point of view: it means that S100A9 does not need to enter the liver cells to act and allows for a simple injection mode of administration.

In diabetic people, insulin deficiency can cause a sudden increase in ketones and acidification of the blood, a mechanism called diabetic ketoacidosis. This is a life-threatening emergency that affects 2–4% of people with type 1 diabetes every year. "TLR4 activation in the liver controls the production of ketones," explains Gloria Ursino. "But this activation process does not trigger inflammation, whereas TLR4 is usually pro-inflammatory. The S100A9-TLR4 dialogue therefore seems to act as a totally unexpected anti-inflammatory drug."

A strategy in several steps

The scientists completed their results by examining the blood of diabetic people arriving at the emergency room with severe insulin deficiency. "A slight but insufficient natural increase in S100A9 is detected," explains Giorgio Ramadori. "Therefore, additional administration of S100A9 is expected to enhance this compensatory mechanism."

While the idea of a combination of drugs has already been explored, previous research has focused on drugs that increase insulin sensitivity. "But this only leads to the same results with lower doses. The side effects of insulin therapy remain the same," explains Roberto Coppari. "Here, we propose a radically different strategy with a drug that works independently of insulin and that can neither trigger hypoglycemia nor disrupt fat metabolism."

The scientists will initially test their drug in conjunction with low doses of insulin, but do not rule out the possibility of administering the S100A9 protein alone in the future, in specific conditions. To further develop this highly innovative therapy, Roberto Coppari and Giorgio Ramadori have created a start-up company, Diatheris, supported by UNITEC, the UNIGE's technology transfer office, and FONGIT, the main foundation supporting technological entrepreneurship in the canton of Geneva.

Source

We have an interesting week in rocket launches next week, there will be two Starlink satellite launches followed by the launch of the Wentian module which will attach to the Tiangong Space Station (TSS). If you are lucky enough to be in a part of the world where the TSS passes overhead, the expansion of the station could make it easier to see from Earth.

Thursday, July 21

The first launch of the week is a SpaceX Falcon 9 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. It will be carrying 46 Starlink satellites that will sit in a polar low Earth orbit and beam internet connectivity back down to ground stations. By expanding the Starlink network, SpaceX will be able to offer the services to people in more countries. The launch will be viewable on SpaceX’s website, with the launch scheduled for 5:13 p.m. UTC.

Sunday, July 24

SpaceX has another Starlink mission on Sunday, this time a Falcon 9 will take off from Florida with 53 Starlink satellites. The satellites with be placed in a low Earth orbit. Just like the other launch, you’ll be able to watch it live on SpaceX’s website, but we don’t know what time the launch is due for yet.

Also taking place on Sunday is the launch of a Long March CZ-5B rocket carrying the Wentian module for the TSS. The mission is slated to launch at 4:12 a.m. UTC from the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center. The new module is described as a Laboratory Cabin Module because it enables various science experiments. It allows researchers to perform free fall or zero gravity experiments that are not possible for long on Earth. It will also enable experiments on the outside of the module to test exposure to the space environment, cosmic rays, vacuum, and solar winds.

The launch probably won't be streamed live, but there should be plenty of footage after the event of the launch and docking. We’ll be sure to bring everything that’s available in a future TWIRL recap.

Recap

The first launch last week was a Falcon 9 carrying Starlink satellites. It’s a fantastic launch video because SpaceX has aerial footage of the Falcon 9 breaking through the thick fog or clouds that were present.

Next, a Long March 3B launched the Tianlian-2 03 satellite which will act as a relay between satellites in orbit and ground stations.

On Wednesday, Rocket Lab’s Electron rocket carried the NROL-162 mission successfully to space. The satellite itself is classified because it’s related to national security.

Next up, Arianespace’s Vega-C rocket was launched for the very first time.

Here’s the separation of the LARES-2 payload that the Vega-C rocket was carrying.

SpaceX launched a Falcon 9 topped with a Dragon capsule as part of a commercial resupply contract it has with NASA.

Here’s footage of the Dragon docking with the ISS.

Finally, a Long March 2C carried the SuperView Neo 2-01 and 2-02 remote sensing satellites to space, where they will perform a variety of commercial remote sensing operations.

That’s all we have this week, be sure to check in next time.

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