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Koscher and his colleagues received permission last year to access and broadcast from a Canadian satellite known as Anik F1R, launched to support Canadian broadcasters in 2005 and designed for 15 years of use. The satellite's coverage extends below the US southern border and out to Hawaii and the easternmost part of Russia. The satellite will move to its graveyard orbit soon, and nearly all other services that use it have already migrated to a new satellite. But while Anik F1R still had its uplink license and transponder slot lease, Koscher had the opportunity to take over and broadcast to the northern hemisphere.

“My favorite thing was actually seeing it work!” Koscher tells WIRED.  “It's kind of unreal to go from making a video stream to having it broadcast across all of North America.”

Koscher and his colleagues from the Shadytel telecommunications and embedded device hacking group broadcast a livestream from another security conference, ToorCon San Diego, in October. At ShmooCon last week, he explained the tools they used to turn an unidentified commercial uplink facility (a station with a special powered dish to communicate with satellites) into a command center for broadcasting from the satellite.

In this case, the researchers had permission to access both the uplink facility and the satellite, but the experiment highlights the interesting gray area when a defunct satellite is not being used but has not yet moved father away from Earth to its final resting orbit. 

“Technically, there are no controls on this satellite or most satellites—if you can generate a strong enough signal to make it there, the satellite will send it back down to the Earth,” Koscher explains. “People would need a big dish and a powerful amplifier and knowledge of what they were doing. And if a satellite were fully utilized, they would need to overpower whoever else was using that particular transponder spot or frequency.”

In other words, whoever yells loudest into a (geosynchronous orbiting) microphone will have their voice amplified the most, but it's difficult to overpower established broadcasting giants—although not unprecedented. In 1986, for example, a hacker who called himself Captain Midnight broke into an HBO broadcast of The Falcon and the Snowman by hijacking the Galaxy 1 satellite signal.

More recently, hackers have taken advantage of underutilized satellites for their own purposes. In 2009, Brazilian Federal Police arrested 39 suspects on suspicion of  hijacking US Navy satellites using high-powered antennas and other ad hoc gear for their own CB (citizens band) short-distance radio communications.

Beyond independent hackers, Koscher points out that the lack of authentication and controls on satellites could allow countries to hijack each others' equipment. “One implication is that states who want to broadcast propaganda could do it without launching their own satellite, they could use another satellite if they have the ground equipment,” he says.

Ang Cui, an embedded device security researcher who launched the NyanSat open source ground station project in 2020, notes that decommissioned satellites aren’t the only ones that could be hijacked. “One could take over even newish satellites,” he says. But thinking about those in the end-of-life stages, he adds, “There definitely are things that are just hanging out up there.”

One of Koscher's colleagues, who goes by the hacker name Falcon, notes that from a pluralistic, freedom-of-information perspective, satellite uplink capabilities could be reimagined as plentiful and available rather than exclusive and scarce. “What if this was just a universal utility,” Falcon says with a faraway look.

Researchers Used a Decommissioned Satellite to Broadcast Hacker TV

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The study, led by U-M researcher Helen Levy, examined the probability that older adults will experience food insufficiency, or not having enough to eat, at some point over a long time period—about 20 years. She found the likelihood of food insufficiency over a longer period of time was about three times as high—22% compared to 8%—as any single point in time. The study was published in the journal Applied Economic Perspective Policy.

"The extent of food-related hardship among seniors in any given year is well documented. In 2019, 2.8% of Americans ages 60 and older reported experiencing food insufficiency. From some perspectives, this is a relatively small fraction," said Levy, a research professor in the Survey Research Center at the U-M Institute for Social Research. "But it still means more than 2 million seniors did not have enough food, and the prevalence of hardship over a longer time period will almost certainly be greater."

To date, there is no research on how many older adults experience food insufficiency over a long period of time, said Levy, also a research professor at the Ford School of Public Policy and the School of Public Health. To address this, Levy examined a 20-year period in an older adult's life, using data from the Health and Retirement Study, a longitudinal panel study of older Americans conducted by the Survey Research Center at ISR with funding from the National Institute on Aging and the Social Security Administration.

The Health and Retirement Study measures food insufficiency with a yes or no question. New respondents are asked, "In the last two years, have you always had enough money to buy the food you need?" Participants who have been previously included in a survey wave are asked the same question covering the period of time since the previous wave. For this study, Levy focused on individuals born between 1936 and 1953.

The rate of food insufficiency is particularly high for certain subgroups over the 20-year window of their 60s and 70s. Nearly 40% of those without a high school degree, 37.5% of non-Hispanic Black respondents and nearly 44% of those in poor health at baseline will experience food insufficiency during that time period.

But even those who have low rates of food insufficiency at baseline—the year they first responded to the panel survey—can have higher rates of food insufficiency in the longer term, Levy said. The baseline rate of food insufficiency for college graduates is 3.9%, for example, but 13.2% of this group will experience insufficiency during the 20-year window. Just 3.9% of those in excellent health at baseline experience food insufficiency, but 17% will experience it in the longer term.

"These results suggest that food insufficiency is not concentrated among a small group of persistently disadvantaged elderly, but is instead a surprisingly common feature of later life, affecting 1 in 5 Americans at some point in their 60s and 70s," Levy said.

Levy also found that food insufficiency is a transient experience for many seniors. About half of those who report food insufficiency at some point during an 8-year period report it only once, while about one-fifth of those with any food insufficiency experience it more than half the time.

While previous research shows that income is a major predictor of food-related hardship, most older adults who experience food hardship aren't poor, Levy said.

"It could be that short and long spells of hardship arise for different reasons," she said. "For example, if you can't get enough work hours and your income dips, you might have a brief period of food insufficiency. But if the problem is a chronic health condition, they may face persistent hardship—even with benefits like SSI or SNAP."

Levy said future research should use longitudinal data to explore the dynamics of food-related hardships, and whether they have consequences for the health of older adults.

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The researchers have developed simplified synthetic versions of the molecule teixobactin, used by producer bacteria to kill other bacteria in soil.

They have developed and tested a unique library of synthetic versions of the "game changing" antibiotic, optimizing key features of the drug to enhance its efficacy and safety, plus enabling it to be inexpensively produced at scale.

Pioneering research

Lead researcher Dr. Ishwar Singh said: "Introducing synthetic diversity to generate the library of synthetic teixobactins is important to overcome the high failure rates associated with the next stages of drug development."

This work builds upon pioneering research by Dr. Singh, an expert in antimicrobial drug discovery and development and medicinal chemistry at Liverpool's Centre of Excellence in Infectious Diseases Research (CEIDR). The latest results were achieved as part of a Small Business Research Initiative (SBRI) project, funded by the Department of Health and Social Care. This program was delivered by Innovate UK on behalf of DHSC, with a goal of creating five lead compounds for future use in the battle against antimicrobial resistance (AMR).

The research has proved that simplified synthetic teixobactins kill a wide range of bacteria taken from human patients, where current antibiotics fail. They also successfully eradicated MRSA in mice and were found to accumulate at sites of infection for up to 24 hours in amounts greater than that required to kill superbugs.

This suggests that in future, patients may be treated with just one dose of teixobactin per day for systemic life-threatening resistant bacterial infections. The synthetic teixobactins have been found to be robust and stable at room temperature for years thus do not need a cold chain for distribution and storage, thus have potential to tackle resistant bacterial infections in different clinical settings globally.

Improving efficacy and safety

Dr. Singh has also identified designs and method for cheaply "scaling up" viable antibiotics based on natural teixobactin—previously prohibitively expensive. By swapping out certain amino acids on the molecule for low cost, commercially available alternatives, the cost of materials has been reduced by over 2,000 times, while improving efficacy and safety. The researchers developed highly efficient solid phase synthesis using automation, speeding up a single coupling step from 30 hours to just 10 minutes in high yields.

Furthermore, the team have optimized preparation to scale up yield from 30mg to 1g scale and beyond. The process can now be adapted for application up to 1kg scale or higher, simply by increasing the scale and size of the reactor. Scalability is an important key building block for commercial production to realize the therapeutic potential of synthetic teixobactins.

'Last line of defense' against superbugs

Dr. Singh said: "Our motivation is to adapt the natural teixobactin molecule and make it suitable for human use. This is a journey. Through this project we have demonstrated that we can make synthetic molecules at low cost and with high safety, which potently kills the resistant bacteria in mice. The advantage of synthetic diversity is that we can select or deselect properties and modify molecules to impact potency and other desirable drug-like qualities. Our ultimate goal is to have a number of viable drugs from our modular synthetic teixobactin platform which can be used as a 'last line of defense' against superbugs to save lives currently lost due to AMR.

"Our next steps will be to focus upon the central benefit of synthetic teixobactin to overcome multi-drug resistant bacteria in different disease models, scale up process, followed by safety testing, which if successful, could potentially be used in hospitals as an investigational new medicine and be turned into a drug fit for treating resistant bacterial infections in humans globally. We will work with colleagues from CEIDR which have expertise in antimicrobials from drug discovery to clinic, to develop synthetic teixobactins into viable drugs."

Professor William Hope, director of CEIDR, said: "New antibiotics are urgently needed to address unmet medical needs related to multiple and extremely drug resistant bacteria. Infections due to these superbugs compromise the treatment outcomes for many patients. The teixobactins have the potential to provide valuable new therapeutic options for patients throughout the UK and globally."

Forefront of scientific advancements

Health and Social Care Secretary Sajid Javid said: "It is fantastic to see such innovative work like this happening in the UK—another clear example of this country being at the forefront of scientific advancements which can benefit people across the world.

"The rising tide of antimicrobial resistance is threatening the future of modern medicine, with currently treatable infections becoming untreatable and routine medical procedures such as cesarean sections becoming far less safe.

"Continuing to develop new drugs is critical in ensuring this risk does not become reality and that is why these results are so encouraging."

'Delighted' with results

Dr. Phil Packer, Innovation lead for AMR and vaccines at Innovate UK said: "This has been an excellent project and we sincerely hope this work will continue and go much further. There is lots of development going on in the AMR space, however much of it is focused on modifying existing classes of molecules. This is useful in the short term, but these scaffold molecules are already familiar to bacteria, making resistance development against these molecules more likely. There is a lack in the AMR pipeline for new classes of antibiotics, which is where this project fits in.

"We are delighted with results, which have validated synthetic teixobactin's promise to tackle resistant bacterial infections when currently used antibiotics fails. We look forward to following this journey closely in future."

An AMR review commissioned by the UK government has predicted that by 2050 an additional 10 million people will succumb to drug resistant infections each year. Furthermore, COVID-19 is thought to be accelerating the global threat of antimicrobial resistance as many infected patients admitted to hospital receive antibiotics to keep secondary bacterial infections in check. Greater use of antibiotics leads to increase in bacterial resistance. The development of new antibiotics which can be used as a last resort when other drugs are ineffective is therefore a crucial area of study for healthcare researchers around the world.

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The assessment of data from 157 studies of cognitive behavioral therapy led by University of Manchester and University of South Wales scientists is published today in the British Journal of Psychiatry.

The study compared CBT alone and with one or two additional components such as social skills training, assertiveness training, relaxation techniques and psychoeducation.

All three protocols, they found, reduced depressive symptoms by a substantial 8.44 points on the Beck Depression Inventory, a 21 item self-reporting scale which measures symptoms of depression.

However only CBT with one or two additional components sustained the effects in the long-term, reducing depression to at least 5 or 8 points respectively after 6 months when compared to CBT alone.

In addition, CBT given with two extra components was more effective when delivered by non-mental health specialists such as nurses.

Age also appeared to affect the effectiveness of CBT: participants younger than 30 and younger than 59 responded better to CBT with two or one extra components respectively.

And the analyses also demonstrated that participants from lower socio-economic status responded better to CBT with two or one extra components.

Lead author Dr. Ioannis Angelakis said: "Depression is the most common mental health condition with more than 264 million people being affected worldwide.

"It impacts negatively on people's quality of life and is very costly for health and care systems, so understanding how to best to treat it is paramount.

"Our study shows that CBT can significantly reduce depression after treatment, however when given with one or two extra components it becomes effective in the long term."

He added: "When enhanced CBT is given to younger people, policy makers should also focus on supporting non mental health professionals in giving this extra help.

"A nurse providing enhancements may also play the role of the main care coordinator for wider range of health problems.

"That could explain why enhanced CBT seems more effective when they deliver it however more research is needed to understand this more fully."

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We’ve seen an increased demand for support, suggesting more people are trying to cut back or quit.

There are so many options for cutting back or quitting alcohol it’s hard to know what will be most effective.

What works depends on how much you drink

Most people successfully quit or cut back their alcohol consumption on their own.

People who drink more frequently are much more likely to have symptoms of dependence and might find it more difficult.

• You might be dependent if:
• you can’t easily go a day without drinking alcohol, or find it hard to cut back
• a lot of your social activities include or are based around drinking
• you find yourself thinking about or wanting alcohol a lot
• you find it difficult to control the amount you drink once you start
• you need to drink a lot to feel the effects
• you experience withdrawal symptoms, even mild ones, such as feeling unwell or a slight shaking in your hands when you go a day or two without alcohol.

If all of your social activities revolve around alcohol, this could be a sign of dependence. Shutterstock

The more of these signs you have and the more severe they are, the more dependent you’re likely to be. You can check your risk of dependence here.

If you have a mild dependence on alcohol, you may be able to cut back on your own. But if you are moderately dependent, you may need to get some kind of support.

If you are severely dependent, you should seek medical advice before you make any change to your drinking because stopping suddenly can cause severe health problems, including seizures and even death in some people.

For people who are severely dependent, the usual recommendation is to take a permanent or temporary break from alcohol. It may take six months to a year or more before you are able to start drinking again. Some people find it’s better for them not to drink again at all. With severe dependence, there’s a high risk of quickly going back to heavy drinking if you just try to cut back.

If you experience any symptoms of dependence, once you stop or cut back your drinking, you might need specialist treatment or ongoing support to prevent going back to heavy drinking.

‘Cold turkey’ or reduction?

If you’re not dependent, you should be able to either reduce the quantity or frequency of drinking or quit altogether. You may do this on your own or choose to get some support. If one method doesn’t work, try a different way.

If you experience mild to moderate dependence, every time you have a drink it can become a trigger to drink more. So it’s sometimes easier to increase drink-free days, rather than reducing the quantity on drinking days, or to quit altogether for a period of time.

If you think you have an alcohol dependence, speak to your GP. Shutterstock

People who are severely dependent usually require some kind of withdrawal support to stop drinking. It is usually better to stop altogether (“cold turkey”) as long as you have medical support. You can undertake withdrawal treatment in a hospital, at home with the help of a GP or nurse, or via telehealth. Alcohol withdrawal typically lasts about five to seven days.

Zero-alcohol drinks

Zero-alcohol drinks are alcoholic drinks with the alcohol removed but which retain a taste similar to the alcoholic version. There is now a huge variety of options for spirits, beer and wine.

If you are not dependent but are trying to reduce your alcohol intake for health or other reasons, these can be a good option. By replacing some or all of your usual alcoholic drinks with zero-alcohol drinks, you can still enjoy the social aspects of drinking without the health risks of alcohol.

If you are dependent on alcohol, the smell and taste of zero-alcohol drinks can act as a trigger for drinking alcohol. They might make it more difficult to make permanent changes to your drinking.

Treatment apps and online support

A range of computerised, web-based, and mobile apps have been developed to support people cutting back or quitting alcohol. They have shown promising results in early trials. The benefit of these apps is accessibility, but the outcomes are modest and they seem to work best in conjunction with professional support.

Hello Sunday Morning’s Daybreak program is a large online alcohol support community, accessed through a mobile and desktop app. It’s designed for moderate drinkers who want to cut back or quit. Early research suggests it’s effective in reducing drinking, as well as improving psychological well-being and quality of life.

Some previously face-to-face support groups like SMART Recovery and Alcoholics Anonymous have moved online, which has increased accessibility. These are typically more suited to people who are dependent on alcohol.

Psychological interventions

Brief interventions

As little as five minutes of advice from a GP can reduce alcohol consumption by 30%, especially for people who are in the mild to moderate dependence category. So it’s worth chatting to your doctor if you need a little help getting started.

Counselling and psychological therapy

The main treatment type to help with alcohol issues is counselling. Sessions are usually once a week with a qualified professional, such as a psychologist. Sometimes they are delivered in group settings. Counselling is suitable for any level of drinker who is trying to make changes.

Some of the main evidence-based counselling treatments in Australia are behavioural and cognitive therapies, such as cognitive behavioural therapy and mindfulness-based relapse prevention. These types of treatments have been shown to be at least as effective as medication

Group programs such as Alcoholics Anonymous don’t have much research supporting their effectiveness. Shutterstock

Intensive group programs

A number of more intensive group programs are suited to people who are dependent on alcohol or who are having significant problems, including:

• residential rehabilitation, which is usually for people who have tried other treatments unsuccessfully or who may be unsuitable for non-residential treatment because their home life is not supportive of making changes. It has been shown to be effective in increasing abstinence in dependent drinkers
• day programs, which are similar to residential rehabilitation programs but participants live at home and go in each day. These are a relatively new treatment type and there is limited good quality research on their outcomes.

Medication

A number of medications can help people who are moderately to severely dependent on alcohol. They tend to work best in conjunction with counselling.

• disulfiram is an older medication that works on the alcohol metabolism system and induces nausea and vomiting if alcohol is taken at the same time
• acamprosate can help prevent relapse in people who have already been through withdrawal
• naltrexone reduces cravings in heavy drinkers.

Self-help groups

Alcoholics Anonymous’s 12-step movement has a long history dating back to the 1930s, when there was very little available in the way of real alcohol treatment. There is relatively little research on AA and much of that has been conducted from within the organisation. The known outcomes are modest – the success rate is estimated to be around 10% and the dropout rate appears high.

AA can be helpful for some people and also provides a very well-established peer support network if you need support. It seems to be more effective in conjunction with professional treatment.

There are many options if you are trying to reduce your drinking and no single strategy works for everyone. The best approach is to start with something that looks appealing and feasible to get the outcomes you are looking for. If that’s not effective, try something else or seek professional help.

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Fungus foils invading hordes of crazy ants, and that’s great for Texas

"Patients who have heart failure experience a poorer quality of life compared to their peers, with high levels of depression, anxiety and spiritual distress," said Rachel S. Tobin, MD, resident in Internal Medicine at Duke University Hospital, and lead author of the study. "Contributing to diminished quality of life is the fact that heart failure, unlike many other chronic diseases, is very unpredictable and can lead to hopelessness, isolation and altered self-image."

The American College of Cardiology and other major cardiovascular societies recommend palliative care for heart failure patients.

Spirituality is a core domain of palliative care, with the goal of identifying and addressing spiritual concerns and providing patients with appropriate spiritual and religious resources. However, limited research has been conducted on spirituality's impact on patients with heart failure, and there are no known tools designed to measure it.

According to the researchers, spirituality is hard to define, but they reference several definitions that describe spirituality as how individuals find meaning and purpose in life, which can be separate from religious beliefs.

For instance, the Institute of Medicine defines spirituality as "the needs and expectations which humans have to find meaning, purpose and value in their life. Such needs can be specifically religious, but even people who have no religious faith or are not members of an organized religion have belief systems that give their lives meaning and purpose."

Researchers conducted a review of 47 articles in order to explore the current knowledge of spirituality in heart failure patients; describe associations between spirituality and quality of life, as well as patient outcomes; and propose clinical applications and future directions for spirituality in this population. There were approximately 10 varying instruments used to measure spirituality, some simple, others complex. Key data examined include:

• In the Palliative Care in Heart Failure (PAL-HF) trial, spiritual well-being improved in patients randomized to a palliative care intervention compared to usual care as evaluated by FACIT-Sp. The FICA spiritual history tool was also used to gather information on spirituality.

• Patients randomized to palliative care had increased quality of life as measured by Kansas City Cardiomyopathy Questionnaire (KCCQ) and Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Palliative Care (FACIT-Pal). They were also found to have lower levels of anxiety and depression.

• Another study found that after a 12-week mail-based psychosocial intervention, patients completing the intervention had higher quality of life as measured by KCCQ, as well as less depression and searching for meaning. Out of the 33 patients included, 85.7% felt that the intervention was worthwhile. In a pilot study, spiritual counseling was associated with improved quality of life, although there was no control group to determine if the effect was significant.

"The literature suggests not only can spirituality improve quality of life for the patient, it can help support caregivers and potentially help heart failure patients from needing to be readmitted to the hospital," Tobin said. "What we have suggested and are now doing is developing a spirituality screening tool, similar to ones used to screen for depression. This can be used to identify heart failure patients in palliative care who are at risk for spiritual distress. However, this is just a start. More research needs to be done."

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But what we perceive can be influenced by a great many things, and a strange new experiment shows just how easily our perceptions can be manipulated by our own expectations and assumptions.

In a new study, scientists discovered a "novel perceptual illusion" that effectively reorders the perceived temporal order of events in a sequence.

"Is our perception of time and temporal order a faithful reflection of what happens in the world (or at least what arrives at our retina) or can seemingly higher-level expectations, such as [presumed] causality, affect the order in which we experience events occurring?"

writes a team of researchers led by first author and experimental psychologist Christos Bechlivanidis from University College London.

In a series of experiments, the researchers showed over 600 participants an animation in which a seemingly simple 'ABC' chain of events appears to take place: an A square collides with a B square, which in turn collides with a C square.

In truth, however, the animation really showed the C square beginning to move before the B square collided with it (called 'ACB'), and even slightly – 150 milliseconds – before the B square begins to move from its collision with A.

In a previous study co-authored by Bechlivanidis, researchers found that when the ACB animation is shown, many people remember the chain of events as ABC, with their perception of temporal order seemingly being influenced by their expectations of causality.

"Initially we became interested in backwards causation, and whether, under some circumstances, people can perceive causes happening after their effects," Bechlivanidis told PsyPost.

"After running a few experiments, we quickly realized that the expectation of a temporal direction (that causes precede their effects) is so strong that even if we reverse the order, people insist to have seen the causes happening first."

One explanation for the phenomenon is that people may be misremembering what occurred when they later retrieve the memory after seeing the chain of events – what researchers labelled the 'memory hypothesis'.

Indication of flash timing based on perception of the sequence. (Bechlivanidis et al., Psychological Science, 2022)

In the new experiments, Bechlivanidis and his team again showed participants the ACB animation, but this time they recorded the participants' responses in real-time, asking them to indicate the moments when B and C begin to move by synchronizing their timing with a brief flash that appeared on the screen.

If the memory hypothesis were correct, as per the figure above, participants would indicate the timing accurately in real-time.

However, despite repeated viewings, the experiment showed people actually perceiving B moving earlier than it really did, while C appeared to move later.

"When watching the reordered ACB sequence, participants actually perceive B happening earlier and C happening later, at timings that in total approach the temporal displacement necessary to turn the ACB sequence into the causal ABC one," the researchers explain in their paper.

"Displacements of such magnitude were not observed when one of the objects was hidden. It is thus the illusory causal context that produces the online reversal of temporal order."

While there's much we still don't fully understand about this perceptual illusion, the researchers say our ability to objectively perceive the timing of a signal is superseded by inferences we make regarding the timing of its transmission, irrespective of the nature of the signals.

In this case, the domino-like physics of an assumed ABC chain of events overrides our ability to perceive what's really happening, with strong causal expectations overpowering incoming information from a visual signal.

As for how deep the illusion goes remains to be seen, but it's just the latest evidence of the surprising ways our perception is affected, as the brain tries to juggle the non-stop flood of visual information we're bombarded with.

The findings are reported in Psychological Science.

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But no climate fix is ever that simple. Multiple studies have found that tree-planting campaigns don’t always deliver the benefits they promise. If newly planted forests aren’t properly cared for and monitored, the trees can die and any carbon they stored will be released back into the atmosphere. Sometimes there aren’t enough seedlings for these programs in the first place. The mass enthusiasm for tree-planting programs has sparked a partial backlash, with scientists arguing that planting trees is important, sure, but we shouldn’t kid ourselves that it’s a silver bullet for the vast challenges of the climate crisis.

Other scientists point to a different problem with mass tree-planting efforts: the trees themselves. What if existing trees just aren’t good enough at storing carbon? If scientists could find a way to increase trees’ carbon-sucking potential, we’d be unlocking more cost-effective carbon capture with every tree planted. A better tree could be what we've been waiting for. We just have to make it.

Maddie Hall, CEO and founder of the climate startup Living Carbon, is looking for the Tesla of trees. “Not just a tree that’s better for the environment, but a tree that grows faster and might be able to survive or perform better in climates than traditional varieties,” she says. “A lot of that comes down to how you could improve the growth rate and also carbon-capture potential of trees.”

The way that plants take carbon dioxide and sunlight and turn them into living material is nothing short of miraculous, a biological alchemy that supports almost all life on Earth. But this process—photosynthesis—is also woefully inefficient. Only a tiny fraction of sunlight that falls on leaves actually gets turned into living material—in the case of most plants around 95 percent of all that energy is wasted. For plant scientists like Amanda Cavanagh at the University of Essex, UK, this waste looks like an opportunity. If she can find a way to get plants to cut out some of this inefficiency, trees might put that energy into growth instead. Like most researchers in this area, Cavanagh’s focus is on faster-growing crops that can feed more people, but the same approach could be a boon for pulling carbon from the atmosphere, too. Photosynthesis-enhanced trees should be quicker at turning atmospheric carbon into trunks, leaves, and roots. That’s the theory, at least.

In 2019, Cavanagh and her colleagues published a paper in Science that strongly suggested they were on to something. By inserting a couple of new genes into tobacco plants, the scientists could get them to recycle a waste product of photosynthesis back into a molecule the plant could use to grow. Once they were planted, Cavanagh’s edited tobacco plants were 40 percent more productive than their non-edited equivalents. (Tobacco plants are the lab rats of the plant science world—the ultimate goal is to repeat this trick with crops like wheat or soy.)

Now a Californian startup has taken the same approach, but this time with poplar trees. In a non-peer-reviewed preprint first posted on February 19, scientists at Living Carbon claimed that by inserting new genes into poplar trees, they can make the plants grow 53 percent more quickly than their non-edited equivalents. Both sets of trees were grown under controlled conditions that differ significantly from the ones the plants would face in the wild, but Hall hopes that the edited trees will supercharge tree-planting plans by drawing down atmospheric carbon more quickly.

“Our belief is that climate change is a problem of relative rates. And also it’s one that we can’t just solve with man-made, intensely managed human processes like direct air capture,” she says. (Direct air capture means building devices that could scrub atmospheric carbon dioxide—or others that might trap methane—but by one recent estimate it could take 10,000 such machines to make a difference in CO₂ levels.) Living Carbon’s eventual business model will be to plant its genetically engineered trees on land leased from private landowners, then give those landowners a share of the money earned by selling carbon credits earned against the growth of the trees.

When most plants photosynthesize, they produce a toxic byproduct called phosphoglycolate, which they then have to use energy to break down—a process called photorespiration. Living Carbon’s edited trees have extra genes from algae and pumpkin that help the plant use less energy to break it down, as well as recycling some of the sugars created by this process. This pathway was an obvious target for making plants more efficient, says Yumin Tao, Living Carbon’s VP of biotechnology. “You channel that byproduct into energy and nutrients for plant growth,” says Tao. And more plant growth means more carbon captured.

Tao and his colleagues grew the genetically engineered poplars for 21 weeks in a lab before harvesting and weighing them to see how much biomass they’d accumulated. The best-performing seedling had 53 percent more above-ground biomass than non-edited plants. Tests also showed that the edited plants took up more carbon than their non-edited cousins, an indication that these plants had a higher rate of photosynthesis.

“It’s a really exciting first step,” says Cavanagh, who was not involved in Living Carbon’s research. But she cautions that we don’t know whether these trees will be better at storing carbon in the long run. Living Carbon’s poplars were harvested after only five months, but in the wild the trees can live for more than 50 years. Only further studies will reveal whether the edited trees will continue to grow quickly as they mature. Their growth rate might slow, or they might become so unhealthy that they fall over and release all that carbon back into the atmosphere when they rot. “Is the effect you see at the seedling phase the same at different stages of maturity, or does the plant fight back?” asks Cavanagh.

Soon this will be put to the test. Living Carbon has already planted 468 of its photosynthesis-enhanced trees in central Oregon, part of a field trial it’s running with Oregon State University. The company will analyze how quickly the trees grow over longer periods of time and also how they perform in different environments. It has also secured agreements to plant poplars created using a slightly different technique on around 3,500 acres of private land in the US, with the first plantings scheduled to start in late 2022, according to Hall.

But releasing genetically engineered trees into the wild is still controversial. Researchers at the State University of New York have engineered a chestnut tree that is resistant to a blight that has ravaged the species in the US, but the tree has still not been approved by the Department of Agriculture. Only two genetically engineered trees have been approved in the US: varieties of virus-resistant papaya and plum trees. The trees that Living Carbon is currently working with don’t produce pollen, which should limit the problem of genetic material from the edited plants mixing with wild trees.

But some plant scientists think there’s a simpler path to making a better tree: cultivating them the old-fashioned way. Humans have been breeding better crops for thousands of years, says Richard Buggs, an evolutionary biologist who studies plant health at Kew Gardens in London. “I’m totally in agreement with that core premise that we need trees that are more productive and fix carbon faster. I just think there are fantastic opportunities to do that by variation that already exists in nature,” says Buggs. Typically, cultivation means either hybridizing two varieties through cross-pollination—fertilizing the flowers of one tree with the pollen of another—or reinforcing a desirable trait within a species by self-pollinating a plant with that trait.

Rather than meddling with something as fundamental as photosynthesis, Bugg suggests there are other traits that might be useful for making more efficient trees. “There are actually lots of things that are already happening in nature that affect the growth of a tree that we could be working with,” he says, like variation in how quickly trees grow, how straight their trunks are, and when they drop their leaves. All would affect their suitability for carbon capture, Bugg says. “I would prefer that kind of approach. I think it’s more realistic, and you’re much more likely to end up with a tree that will survive and fix carbon in the long term in natural environments.”

Hall doesn’t actually envisage giant public forests of genetically engineered trees. She says that most of the time her trees will eventually be cut down for timber—another reason to find a way to speed up their growth. Other companies are interested in fast-growing trees too: In 2015 the Brazilian government approved a eucalyptus tree engineered by a paper-producing firm to produce 20 percent more wood than conventional trees.

The debate between natural breeding and genetic engineering has been bubbling along in the agricultural world for more than half a century. Now a similar conversation is starting to play out when it comes to forestry. We might be able to cultivate more productive trees, but that approach could take decades. We might not have that kind of time, Cavanagh says. “Thirty years will be the end of my career,” she says. “I would like to know I’ve done everything I can to make sure that there are solutions if things look as bad as the worst-case projections.”

A Bold Idea to Stall the Climate Crisis—by Building Better Trees

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For the week of Jan. 8, as cases of the highly contagious variant surged, the rate of COVID-related deaths among people who had the Johnson & Johnson (J&J) shot was more than five in 100,000, according to figures from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That compared with about two deaths per 100,000 among those who received the Pfizer or Moderna mRNA vaccines, CBS News reported.

But death rates among those with the J&J shot—which is not an mRNA vaccine—were still much lower than those among unvaccinated Americans. Their death rate was close to 20 per 100,000.

Among people who received booster shots, those initially vaccinated with the J&J vaccine had higher COVID-19 death rates than those who started with doses of Pfizer or Moderna, CBS News reported.

But breakthrough infections among J&J vaccine recipients were similar or lower compared to the others, according to CDC data released as federal officials consider a new round of booster shots.

"The CDC data adds to the growing body of evidence indicating the Johnson & Johnson COVID-19 vaccine provides durable protection against breakthrough infection and hospitalization," J&J spokesman Jake Sargent said in a written statement.

The data were not adjusted for a number of factors that can affect direct comparisons between different groups of vaccinated people, including length of time since vaccination and underlying health problems, CBS News reported.

"The J&J vaccine is different in that, initially the antibody responses are quite a bit lower than the mRNA vaccines. But those responses actually are maintained very well over time, even increase a little bit," Dr. Dan Barouch, director of the Center for Virology and Vaccine Research at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, told CBS News.

For now, only immunocompromised recipients of the J&J shot are eligible to receive a third shot. But that could change soon. Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech are seeking to roll out additional booster shots that would include recipients of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration plans to discuss additional boosters next month.

"Given the parallel protection that we have seen with J&J that is boosted or the mRNAs that are boosted, as well as the mix and match, which have been done, where you can vaccinate with one platform and boost with the other, we have found very interestingly that it works quite well," the president's chief medical advisor, Dr. Anthony Fauci, told reporters in January.

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Patients with co-infection of SARS-CoV-2, which causes COVID-19, and influenza viruses were over four times more likely to require ventilation support and 2.4 times more likely to die than if they only had COVID-19, experts found.

Researchers say the findings show the need for greater flu testing of COVID-19 patients in hospital and highlight the importance of full vaccination against both COVID-19 and the flu.

The team from the University of Edinburgh, University of Liverpool, Leiden University and Imperial College London, made the findings in a study of more than 305,000 hospitalized patients with COVID-19.

The research—delivered as part of the International Severe Acute Respiratory and emerging Infection Consortium's (ISARIC) Coronavirus Clinical Characterisation Consortium—is the largest ever study of people with COVID-19 and other endemic respiratory viruses.

ISARIC's study was set up in 2013 in readiness for a pandemic such as this.

The team looked at the data of adults who had been hospitalized with COVID-19 in the UK between 6 February 2020 and 8 December 2021.

Test results for respiratory viral co-infections were recorded for 6965 patients with COVID-19. Some 227 of these also had the influenza virus, and they experienced significantly more severe outcomes.

Dr. Maaike Swets, Ph.D. student at the University of Edinburgh and Leiden University, said: "In the last two years we have frequently witnessed patients with COVID-19 become severely ill, at times leading to an ICU admission and the employment of an artificial ventilator to help with breathing. That an influenza infection could give rise to a similar situation was already known, but less was understood about the outcomes of a double infection of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses."

Professor Kenneth Baillie, Professor of Experimental Medicine at the University of Edinburgh, said: "We found that the combination of COVID-19 and flu viruses is particularly dangerous. This will be important as many countries decrease the use of social distancing and containment measures. We expect that COVID-19 will circulate with flu, increasing the chance of co-infections. That is why we should change our testing strategy for COVID-19 patients in hospital and test for flu much more widely."

Professor Calum Semple, Professor of Outbreak Medicine and Child Health at the University of Liverpool, said: "We are seeing a rise in the usual seasonal respiratory viruses as people return to normal mixing. So, we can expect flu to be circulating alongside COVID-19 this winter. We were surprised that the risk of death more than doubled when people were infected by both flu and COVID-19 viruses. It is now very important that people get fully vaccinated and boosted against both viruses, and not leave it until it is too late."

Dr. Geert Groeneveld, doctor at Leiden University Medical Center's infectious diseases department, said: "Understanding the consequences of double infections of SARS-CoV-2 and other respiratory viruses is crucial as they have implications for patients, hospitals and ICU capacity during seasons that SARS-CoV-2 and influenza circulate together."

Professor Peter Openshaw, Professor of Experimental Medicine at Imperial College London, said: "Being infected with more than one virus is not very common but it's important to be aware that co-infections do happen. The vaccines that protect against COVID-19 and flu are different, and people need both. The way that these two infections are treated is also different so it's important to test for other viruses even when you have a diagnosis in someone who is hospitalized with a respiratory infection. This latest discovery by the ISARIC consortium again adds significantly to improving the way we manage patients."

The findings have been published in The Lancet.

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A former Microsoft employee accused the tech giant of corruption in The Wall Street Journal, and in an essay posted Friday to the website Lioness, which publishes whistleblower accounts.

The employee says he was fired after working for Microsoft from 1998 to 2018 in Africa, where he said he saw company employees involved in corrupt practices in several countries in the region.

He said the practices included using local partner companies to help sell Microsoft products.

Asked about the allegations, a Microsoft executive said Saturday, "We believe we've previously investigated these allegations, which are many years old, and addressed them."

"We cooperated with government agencies to resolve any concerns," Becky Lenaburg, vice president and deputy general counsel for compliance and ethics at Microsoft, told AFP.

Employees were fired and partnerships were ended as part of the response to the original allegations, the company said.

"We are committed to doing business in a responsible way," Lenaburg added.

Microsoft "always encourage(s) anyone to report anything they see that may violate the law, our policies, or our ethical standards," she said.

The Journal said the whistleblower employee also warned the US financial watchdog, the Securities and Exchange Commission), of his concerns in 2019.

In deposition documents, the employee claimed Microsoft had "engaged for many years in rampant bribery practices," according to the Journal.

The employee estimates that Microsoft spent more than $200 million per year on bribes and kickbacks in countries such as Ghana, Nigeria, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, according to news website The Verge.

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But through all of that, it seems Earth has been keeping time. A recent study of ancient geological events suggests that our planet has a slow, steady 'heartbeat' of geological activity every 27 million years or so.

This pulse of clustered geological events – including volcanic activity, mass extinctions, plate reorganizations, and sea level rises – is incredibly slow, a 27.5-million-year cycle of catastrophic ebbs and flows. But luckily for us, the research team notes we have another 20 million years before the next 'pulse'.

"Many geologists believe that geological events are random over time," said Michael Rampino, a New York University geologist and the study's lead author, in a 2021 statement.

"But our study provides statistical evidence for a common cycle, suggesting that these geologic events are correlated and not random."

The team conducted an analysis on the ages of 89 well-understood geological events from the past 260 million years.

As you can see from the graph below, some of those times were tough – with over eight of such world-changing events clustering together over geologically small timespans, forming the catastrophic 'pulse'.

(Rampino et al., Geoscience Frontiers, 2021)

"These events include times of marine and non-marine extinctions, major ocean-anoxic events, continental flood-basalt eruptions, sea-level fluctuations, global pulses of intraplate magmatism, and times of changes in seafloor-spreading rates and plate reorganizations," the team wrote in their paper.

"Our results suggest that global geologic events are generally correlated, and seem to come in pulses with an underlying ~27.5-million-year cycle."

Geologists have been investigating a potential cycle in geological events for a long time. Back in the 1920s and 30s, scientists of the era had suggested that the geological record had a 30-million-year cycle, while in the 1980s and 90s researchers used the best-dated geological events at the time to give them a range of the length between 'pulses' of 26.2 to 30.6 million years.

Now, everything seems to be in order – 27.5 million years is right about where we'd expect. A study published in late 2020 by the same authors suggested that this 27.5-million-year mark is when mass extinctions happen, too.

"This paper is quite good, but actually I think a better paper on this phenomenon was [a 2018 paper by] Muller and Dutkiewicz," tectonic geologist Alan Collins from the University of Adelaide, who wasn't involved in this research, told ScienceAlert in 2021.

That 2018 paper, by two researchers at the University of Sydney, looked at Earth's carbon cycle and plate tectonics, and also came to the conclusion that the cycle is approximately 26 million years long. 

Collins explained that in this latest study, many of the events the team looked at are causal – meaning that one directly causes the other, thus some of the 89 events are related: for example, anoxic events causing marine extinction. 

"Having said this," he added, "this 26-30 million year cyclicity does seem to be real and over a longer period of time – it also is not clear what is the underlying cause of it!"

Other research from Rampino and his team have suggested comet strikes could be the cause, with one space researcher even suggesting Planet X is to blame.

But if Earth really does have a geologic 'heartbeat', it might be due to something a little closer to home.

"These cyclic pulses of tectonics and climate change may be the result of geophysical processes related to the dynamics of plate tectonics and mantle plumes, or might alternatively be paced by astronomical cycles associated with the Earth's motions in the Solar System and the Galaxy," the team writes in their study.

The research has been published in Geoscience Frontiers.

A version of this article was first published in June 2021.

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The development marks the first time a Russian entity has been added to the list that's been otherwise dominated by Chinese telecommunications firms. Also added alongside Kaspersky were China Telecom (Americas) Corp and China Mobile International USA.

The block list includes information security products, solutions, and services supplied, directly or indirectly, by the company or any of its predecessors, successors, parents, subsidiaries, or affiliates.

The FCC said the decision was made pursuant to a Binding Operational Directive (BOD) issued by the Department of Homeland Security on September 11, 2017 that barred federal agencies from using Kaspersky-branded products in their information systems.

The security services provider, in response, said it was disappointed with the FCC's decision and that it's "being made on political grounds" without any technical assessment of its products.

"Kaspersky maintains that the U.S. Government's 2017 prohibitions on federal entities and federal contractors from using Kaspersky products and services were unconstitutional, based on unsubstantiated allegations, and lacked any public evidence of wrongdoing by the company," it added.

The announcement arrives as HackerOne said it's indefinitely suspending Kaspersky's access to the bug bounty platform in response to sanctions imposed on Russia and Belarus. The company said it "finds this unilateral action an unacceptable behavior."

The FCC's decision also mirrors an advisory released by Germany's Federal Office of Information Security (BSI) this month against using the company's security solutions in the country over "doubts about the reliability of the manufacturer."

"No evidence of Kaspersky use or abuse for malicious purpose has ever been discovered and proven in the company's twenty-five years' history notwithstanding countless attempts to do so," the company's founder Eugene Kaspersky said on March 16.

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The team behind the research, led by epidemiologists from Harvard Medical School in Massachusetts, says it shows how important it is to carefully monitor antibiotic use – and also how important it is that we understand the link between what's going on in our guts (which antibiotics can affect) and what's happening in our brains.

Plenty of previous studies have highlighted the link between the gut microbiome and the brain, but it's not clear exactly what the relationship might be. This new research adds more data points in a much-needed field of study.

"In a cohort of over 14,000 women, we observed that antibiotic use in midlife was significantly associated with subsequent poorer scores for global cognition, learning, and working memory, and psychomotor speed and attention," write the researchers in their paper.

"To our knowledge, our study represents the first large study of chronic long-term use of antibiotics and subsequent cognition."

The women in the cohort (a long-term chronic disease research project called Nurses' Health Study) had taken antibiotic drugs for a variety of reasons, including for respiratory infections, dental problems, acne, and urinary tract infections.

For those on antibiotics, the resulting drop in brain power across the various categories of learning, response, and memory was the equivalent of about three or four years of normal aging, according to the data.

Cognitive ability was assessed an average of seven years after the antibiotic use began, through an online test the participants completed at home. The test includes four different tasks in total, designed to measure different aspects of cognitive performance.

"This relationship was associated with longer duration of antibiotic use and persisted after adjustment for many potential confounding factors," write the researchers.

As usual with studies such as this, the link isn't enough to prove causation – that is, the data don't show it's definitely antibiotic use that's leading to a drop in cognition. It's possible that the conditions the antibiotics were intended to treat, rather than the antibiotics themselves, caused this small drop in cognition, for example.

However, there is enough here to suggest that more research is definitely warranted. The limitations of this study are that it didn't look at any particular type of antibiotic and that it relied on self-reporting for antibiotic use. However, the large sample size and the factoring in of other variables, including diet and other medications, increase its value.

Investigations into the link between antibiotics, gut microbiome, and brain function will continue, but to date, this is one of the best studies we've got looking at the potential long-term effects in adult human beings.

"Given the profound effect of antibiotic use on the gut microbiome – with prior studies showing alterations in functional potential at two and four years after antibiotic exposure – the gut-brain axis could be a possible mechanism for linking antibiotics to cognitive function," write the researchers.

The research has been published in PLOS One.

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Secret to keeping ice cream creamy (not crunchy) might be plant-based nanocrystals

The study included 371,463 adults—with an average age of 57 years and an average alcohol consumption of 9.2 drinks per week—who were participants in the UK Biobank, a large-scale biomedical database and research resource containing in-depth genetic and health information. Consistent with earlier studies, investigators found that light to moderate drinkers had the lowest heart disease risk, followed by people who abstained from drinking. People who drank heavily had the highest risk. However, the team also found that light to moderate drinkers tended to have healthier lifestyles than abstainers—such as more physical activity and vegetable intake, and less smoking. Taking just a few lifestyle factors into account significantly lowered any benefit associated with alcohol consumption.

The study also applied the latest techniques in a method called Mendelian randomization, which uses genetic variants to determine whether an observed link between an exposure and an outcome is consistent with a causal effect—in this case, whether light alcohol consumption causes a person to be protected against cardiovascular disease. "Newer and more advanced techniques in 'non-linear Mendelian randomization' now permit the use of human genetic data to evaluate the direction and magnitude of disease risk associated with different levels of an exposure," says senior author Krishna G. Aragam, MD, MS, a cardiologist at MGH and an associate scientist at the Broad Institute. "We therefore leveraged these new techniques and expansive genetic and phenotypic data from biobank populations to better understand the association between habitual alcohol intake and cardiovascular disease."

When the scientists conducted such genetic analyses of samples taken from participants, they found that individuals with genetic variants that predicted higher alcohol consumption were indeed more likely to consume greater amounts of alcohol, and more likely to have hypertension and coronary artery disease. The analyses also revealed substantial differences in cardiovascular risk across the spectrum of alcohol consumption among both men and women, with minimal increases in risk when going from zero to seven drinks per week, much higher risk increases when progressing from seven to 14 drinks per week, and especially high risk when consuming 21 or more drinks per week. Notably, the findings suggest a rise in cardiovascular risk even at levels deemed "low risk" by national guidelines from the U.S. Department of Agriculture (i.e. below two drinks per day for men and one drink per day for women).

The discovery that the relationship between alcohol intake and cardiovascular risk is not a linear one but rather an exponential one was supported by an additional analysis of data on 30,716 participants in the Mass General Brigham Biobank. Therefore, while cutting back on consumption can benefit even people who drink one alcoholic beverage per day, the health gains of cutting back may be more substantial—and, perhaps, more clinically meaningful—in those who consume more.

"The findings affirm that alcohol intake should not be recommended to improve cardiovascular health; rather, that reducing alcohol intake will likely reduce cardiovascular risk in all individuals, albeit to different extents based on one's current level of consumption," says Aragam.

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The world is in the midst of an anxiety epidemic, and it’s no wonder, according to Dr Ellen Vora. Modern life is fraught with stressors, ranging from our phones to an “always on” work culture and underexposure to sunlight. But, she argues, our understanding of this crisis is in need of an overhaul.

In her warm and highly readable new book, The Anatomy of Anxiety, Vora makes a compelling case that anxious people should tackle the condition not just in their minds but in their bodies. That begins with sorting unease into two categories: “false anxiety” and “true anxiety”. Both cause real suffering, but each one calls for a very different approach.

False anxiety, as Vora describes it, is largely rooted in our physical health. We might feel anxious because we’re chronically sleep deprived, or over-caffeinated, or eating too much junk food. All this can provoke a stress response in our bodies, which send a message to our brains: something’s off. “At these times, our minds are all too happy to swoop in with an explanation,” Vora writes, and we decide that it’s relationship issues, a recent email from work, or fears about the news that have us on edge.

This should come as a relief, because it means there are fairly simple steps we can take to rectify the situation. Vora, who describes herself as a holistic psychiatrist, focuses on changes we can make to our daily habits.

Many of her suggestions feel achievable: minimise blue light exposure late in the day; eat more vegetables; limit social media use. Others seem more daunting, including quitting sugar altogether. But Vora writes with compassion and is rarely prescriptive, noting that acting on even a few of her suggestions will be beneficial and urging readers not to be overcautious about diet: “The multifaceted pleasures of food are, in themselves, powerful medicine for anxiety.”

Once we’ve eliminated these sources of false anxiety, we can turn to what Vora calls true anxiety. This is any unsettled feeling that remains, “which we can think of as an emotional compass telling us something is not OK”. Perhaps it’s a signal that we’re following the wrong path in our career or relationships, or distress at the state of the world and a sense we should take action. Instead of trying to erase this sensation, we should embrace it: “Our uneasy feelings are no longer the enemy or something to vanquish – they become our tools and allies instead.”

The key, Vora says, is to figure out how to 'tune in' to this true anxiety and hear its message

It’s a redeeming way to look at the condition, as not merely a burden but ultimately a blessing. As Vora shifts to focus on true anxiety, the book becomes unexpectedly moving; as someone with lifelong anxiety, I found the idea validating and hopeful. The key, she says, is to figure out how to “tune in” to this true anxiety and hear its message. That depends on learning to sit quietly and listen to ourselves. Vora offers a simple and nonjudgmental guide to meditation, and suggests calming ourselves by getting in touch with nature and with others, since, “at the end of the day, our wellbeing rests on our connections with other people above everything else”.

Vora has a medical degree from Columbia University and extensive experience in alternatives to western medicine. The result is an open-minded and well-rounded approach to the psyche. But there are a few moments – as in her discussion of psychoactive substances or eating disorders – where Vora’s judgments can appear a little too reflexively anti-orthodox, and she seems sometimes to give greater weight to individual patients’ stories than to the scientific consensus. That said, she is careful to advise readers that their own experiences are unique.

“The tone of life these days is anxiety,” Vora writes. “Anxiety is the verb, the vibe, the texture, the pH of our age”. Anxious people are the proverbial canaries in the coalmine, Vora argues, sensitive to “the toxic influences of our modern world” before others identify them. Those living with the condition, then, can take pride in it; they are empathic, intuitive, creative. Anxiety “means you may have a bigger antenna than the average person, so you pick up more of the background noise,” she says. “This can be a liability, because the world can be pretty loud these days, but it’s also a gift.”

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WASHINGTON — Advanced AI technology can now calculate a person’s risk of suffering a heart attack just by listening to their voice, a new study says. Researchers at the Mayo Clinic say people who have a high voice biomarker score are more than twice as likely to suffer major heart problems related to clogged arteries.

Coronary heart disease is the most common cause of heart attack and is one of the leading causes of death for both men and women worldwide. It occurs when the heart’s blood supply is blocked or interrupted by a build-up of plaque in the arteries. Now, scientists have developed a “powerful screening tool” dubbed the Vocalis Health algorithm to help identify those who are particularly at risk and may need close monitoring.

“Telemedicine is non-invasive, cost-effective and efficient and has become increasingly important during the pandemic,” says lead author Dr. Jaskanwal Sara in a media release. “We’re not suggesting that voice analysis technology would replace doctors or replace existing methods of health care delivery, but we think there’s a huge opportunity for voice technology to act as an adjunct to existing strategies. Providing a voice sample is very intuitive and even enjoyable for patients, and it could become a scalable means for us to enhance patient management.”

6 voice features linked to heart problems

The researchers recruited 108 patients referred for an X-ray to assess the condition of their coronary arteries. The participants had to record three 30-second voice samples using the Vocalis Health smartphone application. During the first two recordings, each person read from a prepared text before speaking freely about a positive experience. For the third recording, the group did the same but spoke about a negative experience. The Vocalis Health algorithm then analyzed all of the samples.

Researchers trained the AI-based system using more than 10,000 voice recordings from Israel however, they add it is not yet ready for clinical use. It can pick up on 80 different voice features, like their frequency, amplitude, pitch, and cadence.

The results linked six features to coronary artery disease, before combining all of the readings into a single score, expressed as a number between minus one and one. “We can’t hear these particular features ourselves,” Sara says. “This technology is using machine learning to quantify something that isn’t easily quantifiable for us using our human brains and our human ears.”

A high voice biomarker score nearly triples heart disease risk

Over the next two years, 58.3 percent of the participants with a high voice biomarker score visited a hospital for chest pains or major heart problems including heart attacks. In contrast, only 30.6 percent of those with a low voice biomarker score ended up in the hospital. Overall, those with a high voice score were 2.6 times more likely to suffer major problems associated with coronary artery disease (CAD).

These patients were also three times more likely to show evidence of plaque build-up in medical tests compared with those who had a low score. While the researchers do not know exactly why a person’s voice may reveal their level of heart health, they believe the autonomic nervous system could be an important piece of the puzzle. This part of the nervous system regulates bodily functions which are not under a person’s conscious control including many aspects of their voice and heart, like blood pressure and heart rate.

Similar technology has been tested on a range of disorders, including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and COVID-19.

Researchers are presenting their findings at the American College of Cardiology’s 71st Annual Scientific Session.

South West News Service writer Tom Campbell contributed to this report.

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The study was published today in JAMA Network Open.

It also showed that repeated breast cancer screening with 3D mammography only modestly decreases the chance of having a false positive result compared with the standard digital 2D mammography. Other factors more strongly linked to a lower false positive risk included screening every other year and having non-dense breasts. Older women were also less likely to have a false positive result.

"The screening technology did not have the largest impact on reducing false positives," said Michael Bissell, epidemiologist in the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences and co-first author of the study. "Findings from our study highlight the importance of patient-provider discussions around personalized health. It is important to consider a patient's preferences and risk factors when deciding on screening interval and modality."

False positive mammograms are common

Breast cancer is the second leading cause of cancer-related death for women in the U.S. Early detection using screening mammography is a key strategy to lower the risk of advanced breast cancer and death from this disease.

A false positive result is a positive screening mammography assessment that leads to more diagnostic work-up but no diagnosis of breast cancer. When abnormalities are found on a mammogram, the patient is recalled for additional imaging and follow-up tests. If found to be cancer-free at the end of diagnostic evaluation and for one year after her recall, the patient is considered to have received a false positive result.

"Despite the important benefit of screening mammography in reducing breast cancer mortality, it can lead to extra imaging and biopsy procedures, financial and opportunity costs, and patient anxiety," said Diana Miglioretti, professor and division chief of biostatistics at the UC Davis Department of Public Health Sciences, UC Davis Comprehensive Cancer Center researcher and senior author of the study.

False positive results are common. While around 12% of 2D screening mammograms are recalled for more work-up, only 4.4% of those recalls, or 0.5% overall, conclude with a cancer diagnosis.

"To detect breast cancer early, we need to be careful and investigate any potentially abnormal findings. So, women should not be worried if recalled for additional imaging or biopsy. The vast majority of these results are found to be benign," said Thao-Quyen Ho, radiologist at the University Medical Center in Ho Chi Minh, Vietnam, research fellow at UC Davis School of Medicine and co-first author on the study.

Analyzing mammograms for false positive results

The researchers analyzed data collected by the Breast Cancer Surveillance Consortium on 3 million screening mammograms for 903,495 women aged 40–79 years. The screenings were performed between 2005-2018 at 126 radiology facilities.

The study evaluated screening modality, screening interval, age and breast density. It estimated the cumulative risk that a woman would receive at least one false positive recall over 10 years of annual or biennial (every other year) screening. It also assessed the risks of a false positive that resulted in a recommendation to repeat imaging within six months (short interval follow-up) and separately, in a biopsy recommendation.

Mammography versus tomosynthesis for breast cancer screening

The study found that the probability of receiving at least one false positive recall over a 10-year period was slightly lower with 3D than 2D digital mammography. The decrease in false positives with 3D vs. 2D mammography was greatest for women with non-dense breasts and those who had annual screenings.

The researchers estimated that over 10 years of annual tomosynthesis screening, 50% of women will experience at least one false positive recall, 17% a false positive short-interval follow-up recommendation, and 11% a false positive biopsy recommendation. This is compared to 56% of women screened with 2D digital mammograms having a false positive recall, 18% a short-interval follow-up recommendation, and 12% a biopsy recommendation.

Regardless of the type of screening, false positive results were substantially lower for older than younger age groups and women with entirely fatty versus extremely dense breasts.

Annual versus biennial breast cancer screening

The study also estimated 10-year risks for annual vs. biennial screenings. It found that screening every other year showed a considerably lower probability of at least one false positive result than annual mammograms over ten years of screening. This finding was observed for both 3D and 2D mammography.

"We were surprised that the newer 3D technology in breast cancer screening does not substantially reduce the risk of having a false positive result after 10 years of screening; however, chances of false positives are much lower with repeated biennial vs. annual screening," said Ho.

For short-interval follow-up recommendations, 17% of women undergoing annual 3D mammography are estimated to have at least one false positive over 10 years, compared to just 10% of those undergoing biennial screening. False positive benign biopsy recommendations are estimated to occur in 11% of women receiving annual 3D mammograms but in only 7% of those screened every two years.

After 10 years of annual screening, the risk of a false positive result was lower in 3D than 2D mammography for all outcomes. For biennial screening, the risk of a false positive recall was lower with 3D mammography. There was no difference in short interval follow-up or biopsy recommendations.

The other authors on this study are: Karla Kerlikowske and Jeffrey A. Tice at the University of California, San Francisco; Rebecca A. Hubbard at the University of Pennsylvania; Brian L. Sprague at the University of Vermont; Christoph I. Lee at the University of Washington and Hutchinson Institute for Cancer Outcomes Research; and Anna N. A. Tosteson at Dartmouth College and Norris Cotton Cancer Center.

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The tiny pieces of mostly invisible plastic have already been found almost everywhere else on Earth, from the deepest oceans to the highest mountains as well as in the air, soil and food chain.

A Dutch study published in the Environment International journal on Thursday examined blood samples from 22 anonymous, healthy volunteers and found microplastics in nearly 80 percent of them.

Half of the blood samples showed traces of PET plastic, widely used to make drink bottles, while more than a third had polystyrene, used for disposable food containers and many other products.

"This is the first time we have actually been able to detect and quantify" such microplastics in human blood, said Dick Vethaak, an ecotoxicologist at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

"This is proof that we have plastics in our body—and we shouldn't," he told AFP, calling for further research to investigate how it could be impacting health.

"Where is it going in your body? Can it be eliminated? Excreted? Or is it retained in certain organs, accumulating maybe, or is it even able to pass the blood-brain barrier?"

The study said the microplastics could have entered the body by many routes: via air, water or food, but also in products such as particular toothpastes, lip glosses and tattoo ink.

"It is scientifically plausible that plastic particles may be transported to organs via the bloodstream," the study added.

Vethaak also said there could be other kinds of microplastics in blood his study did not pick up—for example, it could not detect particles larger than the diameter of the needle used to take the sample.

The study was funded by the Netherlands Organization for Health Research and Development as well as Common Seas, a UK-based group aimed at reducing plastic pollution.

Alice Horton, anthropogenic contaminants scientist at Britain's National Oceanography Center, said the study "unequivocally" proved there was microplastics in blood.

"This study contributes to the evidence that plastic particles have not just pervaded throughout the environment, but are pervading our bodies too," she told the Science Media Center.

Fay Couceiro, reader in biogeochemistry and environmental pollution at the University of Portsmouth, said that despite the small sample size and lack of data on the exposure level of participants, she felt the study was "robust and will stand up to scrutiny".

She also called for further research.

"After all blood links all the organs of our body and if plastic is there, it could be anywhere in us."

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Seduced by visions of verdant hills and fertile ground, in the late 10th century waves of Norse migrants set sail in hopes of an easier life abroad. At its peak, the colony's population numbered in the thousands, spread out across three major settlements.

And then it ended. No word of hardship. No record of struggle. By the middle of the 15th century, the Norse experiment in Greenland was a bust.

New research suggests we might have had it all wrong about the prime cause of the collapse, shifting the focus from extreme cold to extreme drought.

Historians have speculated that the cause of the colony's collapse could have been anything from sudden violence at the hands of an invading culture to a gradual decline in birth rates, to hardship brought on by a changing climate.

There's little doubt that a variety of factors were at work, but the consensus has tended to see one as critical – an enduring drop in temperatures referred to as the Little Ice Age.

It's an idea a team of researchers from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and University at Buffalo in the US has now found wanting in evidence.

Pointing instead to records of temperature and precipitation buried in the sediment of a site near the remains of an ancient Norse farmstead, the team suggests it was a stark decline in summer rains that made living in Greenland increasingly unviable.

The very name of Greenland itself is a misnomer, intentionally crafted by the founder of the island's Viking colonies Erik 'the Red' Thorvaldsson as propaganda to draw willing settlers in from afar.

Still, those who did come quickly grew accustomed to the long icy winters and extreme remoteness, finding riches in the form of walrus skins and ivory to trade with those back home for dried fruits and timber.

Survival depended on inherited knowledge of raising meager crops and livestock under extreme conditions, while supplementing it with food from the ocean.

As difficult as a Viking life in Greenland sounds, from its establishment in 985 CE the population prospered and expanded over the course of several generations, before disappearing from historical records sometime in the mid-1400s.

The period of settlement also happens to be a period in history that spans the start of a regional cooling in the North Atlantic, leading some historians to suspect that the colony's establishment was only possible thanks to the relative warmth before this cooling period set in.

However, the evidence for this has been rather tenuous, based on ice core data from elevated sites more than 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) away from the nearest Viking colony of the time. What's more, there's good reason to think life was just as cold around the 10th century as it was in the 15th.

"Before this study, there was no data from the actual site of the Viking settlements. And that's a problem," says UMass Amherst geoscientist Raymond Bradley.

Bradley's team instead went to the site of one of the largest farms in the colony's Eastern Settlement, and spent three years digging samples of material from a nearby lakebed.

This muck sandwich of sediment, bacteria, and decaying plant matter told a 2,000-year-long story of stable temperatures and increasingly dwindling rainfall.

"What we discovered is that, while the temperature barely changed over the course of the Norse settlement of southern Greenland, it became steadily drier over time," says lead author and geoscientist Boyang Zhao, also from UMass Amherst and now at Brown University.

When life is already teetering on the brink, every year of drought is one more nail in the coffin.

Potential breakdowns in social ties, a tendency to have smaller families, and even a drop in the value of walrus tusks with growing trade for elephant ivory from elsewhere may have made tough times of drought that much harder to endure. Social collapse is a complicated business, after all.

But when you're living in a land that isn't as green as promised, even the hardiest Vikings would find years of drought just too much to bare.

This research was published in Science Advances.

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