Today (June 20) the summer solstice — the longest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere — will begin, and it will be the earliest solstice in 228 years.

And the solstice is set to get progressively earlier for the next 72 years. But why? And why do the days change in length throughout the year to begin with?

"Solstice" means "sun stands still" in Latin. In the Northern Hemisphere, the summer solstice is the day when the sun rises and sets at its most northeasterly and northwesterly points in the year. The phenomenon is caused by Earth's 23.5 degrees of axial tilt with respect to the sun; so as our planet orbits our star, one hemisphere leans away from the sun and the other towards it.

This means that the solstice is the opposite in the Southern Hemisphere — the June solstice is the shortest day of the year and marks the winter solstice in the south.

Today's solstice is the earliest since 1796, the year in which George Washington issued his farewell address. But this variation is caused by humans and boils down to the Gregorian calendar.

Related: The 1st 'major lunar standstill' in more than 18 years is about to occur. Here's how to see it.

The calendar divides one year into 365 days. However, Earth's actual full orbital time around the sun is 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds — which we account for by adding a leap year every four years to round the calendar up. But this creates its own problem: four times 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45 seconds is 23 hours and 15 minutes, meaning it's 45 minutes short of a full day.

To account for this drift, the calendar is "reset" by skipping a leap day every four centuries, with the next reset due in 2100. But until then, during leap years like this year, the solstice will occur 18 hours earlier than the previous year and 45 minutes earlier than the previous leap year.

So every successive leap year from now until the end of the millennium will be the earliest since 1796 by 45 minutes.

One day after the solstice this year, on June 21, skywatchers will be treated to a beautiful Strawberry Moon — the lowest full moon of the year.

The origins of Earth's tilt can be traced back more than 4 billion years to when Earth was first forming. During its formation, our planet suffered an estimated 10 gigantic collisions with other planets.

In the last of these, a Mars-size planet called Theia hit our planet with such force that it transformed Earth's surface into a molten hellscape and ejected rocks and dust into space, which later became our moon. The colossal impact also gave our planet its tilt. This tilt, in turn, gave rise to the seasons, and life’s boom-and-bust cycle that spurred more complex ecosystems to evolve.

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Energy Minister Roberto Luque blamed the massive outage on a incident with a transmission line in southern Ecuador which triggered a “cascading disconnection.”

The blackout was the first of its kind in 20 years and “shows how fragile our system is, and reflects the energy crisis we’re experiencing,” Luque told reporters in Guayaquil.

At 7 p.m. local time, 95% of power service was restored and full service is expected to resume before midnight local time, according to the government.

Quito’s Mayor Pabel Muñoz said that the capital’s recently-inaugurated subway, which has an independent backup power supply, also stopped running.

Ecuador last suffered a series of rolling blackouts early this year amid a severe drought. Heavy rains in recent days however also forced the disconnection of the nation’s biggest hydroelectric plant because of a risk from erosion, which also led private pipeline operator Oleoducto de Crudos Pesados Ecuador SA to shut down its pipeline and declare force majeure.

With proper investment and maintenance of transmission lines, this incident would have been avoided, Luque said. Plans to prevent a total blackout were prepared two decades ago after the previous one and never implemented, he added.

(Updates with additional comments from Energy Minister Luque throughout)

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The World Weather Attribution (WWA) group studied excess heat between May and early June, when the US heatwave was concentrated in south-west states including California, Nevada and Arizona.

Extreme temperatures in Mexico also claimed lives during the period.

Such attribution studies take some time to complete, so it is too soon for scientists to say how much of a role climate change is playing in the current heatwave stretching from the centre of the US through to the north-east and into Canada.

In their new report, the scientists said such a heatwave was now four times more likely than it was in the year 2000, driven by planet-warming emissions.

Many extreme weather events including heatwaves are becoming more frequent and intense as a result of climate change, experts say.

“The results of our study should be taken as another warning that our climate is heating to dangerous levels," said Izidine Pinto, Researcher at the Royal Netherlands Meteorological Institute.

“Potentially deadly and record-breaking temperatures are occurring more and more frequently in the US, Mexico and Central America due to climate change.

“As long as humans fill the atmosphere with fossil fuel emissions, the heat will only get worse – vulnerable people will continue to die and the cost of living will continue to increase.”

The WWA study focused on a region including the US south-west and Mexico, as well as Guatemala, Belize, El Salvador and Honduras which also saw dangerously high temperatures.

The scientists said that the hottest five-day stretch across the region in June was made about 1.4C warmer by climate change.

“Every fraction of a degree of warming exposes more people to dangerous heat," said Karina Izquierdo, Urban Advisor for the Latin American and Caribbean region at Red Cross Climate Centre.

“The additional 1.4C of heat caused by climate change would have been the difference between life and death for many people during May and June."

Mexican officials have linked the heatwave to the deaths of scores of people. It has also been blamed for the deaths of howler monkeys in the southern state of Tabasco.

The scientists underlined the danger from high night-time temperatures - a severe threat to health as the body does not have time to rest and recover.

The WWA group conducts rapid-attribution studies on weather events around the world to look at the role climate change has played in their severity.

The scientists examine the events, comparing them against models of what would have likely occurred in a world not subjected to human-induced global warming.

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In 2024, fusion technology will finally make the transition from basic research to commercial application. The reason for that will be the construction and completion of the first commercial fusion demonstrators. These cutting-edge facilities are smaller than fusion power plants. For instance, a laser-based fusion demonstrator might use five to ten laser beams, while a commercial power plant can use several hundred. However, they have a crucial role—to prove that fusion technology works on a small scale, paving the way for the construction of larger fusion-power plants. In 2024, they will do just this, starting to build devices that will finally achieve the elusive goal of energy gain– in other words, outputting more energy than the quantity needed to kickstart the fusion process. Hitting this milestone is a critical step in addressing the steeply increasing global energy demand, as fusion energy has the potential to provide an abundant, carbon-free source of power.

In 2022, researchers at the National Ignition Facility (NIF) in California became the first to demonstrate experimentally that a fusion process could indeed produce a net energy gain. This experiment used high-power lasers to deposit energy in a small fuel target—a millimeter-sized capsule containing frozen deuterium and tritium—creating the conditions for fusion to occur. The lasers delivered 2.05 megajoules of energy to the target, resulting in a fusion energy production of 3.1 megajoules. This was a scientific experiment—unlike fusion demonstrators, the NIF is not designed to operate continuously like a power plant. However, as a result of this scientific breakthrough, nuclear fusion has attracted considerable research, political, and investor attention in recent months.

National fusion strategies have been developed in the US, UK, Japan, Germany, and other countries to advance research and testing of the technology. Currently, the US and the UK are leading the race: The US Department of Energy funds fusion research with an annual budget of about $1.4 billion and encourages private enterprises to accelerate commercialization. The UK similarly fosters public-private partnership by raising a fusion cluster with universities and companies combining their expertise. High-profile investors recognize the opportunity of fusion technology, with over $5 billion of private capital flowing into fusion companies in the last two years.

The initiatives are bearing fruit: Several fusion companies worldwide, including Commonwealth Fusion Systems, Helion Energy, and General Fusion have announced plans to begin constructing facilities in 2024 to demonstrate their technological approach. According to the latest report by the Fusion Industry Association, over half of all fusion companies believe that fusion energy will be delivered to the public power grid during the 2030s. In May 2023, Microsoft signed a power purchase agreement with Helion Energy, to secure a supply of fusion-generated electricity by 2028. In August 2023, Marvel Fusion (a fusion energy firm I cofounded) announced a partnership with Colorado State University worth $150 million, the largest public-private partnership to date, with the aim of building the only laser facility tailored to a commercial laser-based fusion technology and the most powerful short-pulse laser system in the world. With these advances and commitments in place, 2024 is set to show that fusion is no longer a distant dream but an achievable future of clean and sustainable energy.

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the 2 people who did it.

Rajan Naidu, 73, and Niamh Lynch, 21, ran up to the stone circle at around 12pm on Wednesday and released clouds of paint against several of the huge stones just 24 hours before thousands flock to the landmark to celebrate summer solstice.

Ms Lynch, a student at the University of Oxford, is a youth representative at the British Trust for Ornithology - the study of birds - and an officer at Oxford University's Nature Conservation Society.

She is also the events team leader at Oxford Climate Society and a keen cricketer.

Her fellow protester Mr Naidu, from Birmingham, is understood to be a Quaker who has previously been jailed for his role in climate protests.

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Artist’s animation of the black hole at the center of SDSS1335+0728 awakening in real time—a first for astronomers.

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NEW YORK — Could skipping a few meals each week help you fight cancer? It might sound far-fetched, but new research suggests that one type of intermittent fasting could actually boost your body’s natural ability to defeat cancer.

A team of scientists at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center (MSK) has uncovered an intriguing link between fasting and the body’s immune system. Their study, published in the journal Immunity, focuses on a particular type of immune cell called natural killer (NK) cells. These cells are like the special forces of your immune system, capable of taking out cancer cells and virus-infected cells without needing prior exposure.

So, what’s the big deal about these NK cells? Well, they’re pretty important when it comes to battling cancerous tumors. Generally speaking, the more NK cells you have in a tumor, the better your chances of beating the disease. However, there’s a catch: the environment inside and around tumors is incredibly harsh. It’s like a battlefield where resources are scarce, and many immune cells struggle to survive.

This is where fasting enters the picture. The researchers found that periods of fasting actually “reprogrammed” these NK cells, making them better equipped to survive in the dangerous tumor environment and more effective at fighting cancer.

“Tumors are very hungry,” says immunologist Joseph Sun, PhD, the study’s senior author, in a media release. “They take up essential nutrients, creating a hostile environment often rich in lipids that are detrimental to most immune cells. What we show here is that fasting reprograms these natural killer cells to better survive in this suppressive environment.”

Illustration of a group of cancer cells. Researchers found that periods of fasting actually “reprogrammed” these NK cells, making them better equipped to survive in the dangerous tumor environment. (© fotoyou – stock.adobe.com)

How exactly does intermittent fasting achieve this?

The study, which was conducted on mice, involved denying the animals food for 24 hours twice a week, with normal eating in between. This intermittent fasting approach had some pretty remarkable effects on the NK cells.

First off, fasting caused the mice’s glucose levels to drop and their levels of free fatty acids to rise. Free fatty acids are a type of lipid (fat) that can be used as an alternative energy source when other nutrients are scarce. The NK cells learned to use these fatty acids as fuel instead of glucose, which is typically their primary energy source.

“During each of these fasting cycles, NK cells learned to use these fatty acids as an alternative fuel source to glucose,” says Dr. Rebecca Delconte, the lead author of the study. “This really optimizes their anti-cancer response because the tumor microenvironment contains a high concentration of lipids, and now they’re able enter the tumor and survive better because of this metabolic training.”

The fasting also caused the NK cells to move around the body in interesting ways. Many of them traveled to the bone marrow, where they were exposed to high levels of a protein called Interleukin-12. This exposure primed the NK cells to produce more of another protein called Interferon-gamma, which plays a crucial role in fighting tumors. Meanwhile, NK cells in the spleen were undergoing their own transformation, becoming even better at using lipids as fuel. The result? NK cells were pre-primed to produce more cancer-fighting substances and were better equipped to survive in the harsh tumor environment.

Fasting reshapes tissue-specific niches to improve NK cell-mediated anti-tumor immunity (Credit: Immunity)

What kind of treatments could this create?

While this research is exciting, it’s important to note that it’s still in the early stages. The study was conducted on mice, and more research is necessary to understand how these findings might apply to humans. However, the researchers point out that blood samples from cancer patients show similar reductions in circulating NK cells during fasting, suggesting that similar reactions might be taking place within people.

So, what does this mean for cancer treatment? There are several potential avenues for further research. Clinical trials are already beginning to study the safety and effectiveness of fasting in combination with existing cancer treatments. Another possibility is developing drugs that could target these mechanisms without requiring patients to fast. There’s even the potential for NK cells to be put into a fasted state outside the body before being injected into a patient battling cancer.

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While it’s less common in places like the United States, it remains a significant health problem worldwide, particularly in countries like Japan and Korea. Understanding what causes stomach cancer can help in prevention and early detection.

One of the strongest risk factors for stomach cancer is infection with a bacterium called Helicobacter pylori, or H. pylori. This germ lives in the stomach lining and can cause chronic inflammation.

Over many years, this inflammation can lead to changes in the stomach cells and eventually cause cancer. Research shows that most people with stomach cancer have been infected with H. pylori, though not everyone with H. pylori will develop cancer.

Eradicating this infection with antibiotics can lower the risk of getting stomach cancer significantly.

Another significant factor is diet. People who eat a lot of salted, smoked, or pickled foods have a higher risk of developing stomach cancer. These methods of preserving food can produce cancer-causing substances.

On the other hand, fresh fruits and vegetables seem to protect against this disease, likely due to their antioxidant properties which help reduce damage to the body’s cells.

Smoking is also linked to stomach cancer. Smokers are nearly twice as likely as non-smokers to develop stomach cancer, highlighting another of smoking’s dangers. The harmful chemicals in tobacco smoke can damage the stomach lining, which can increase the risk of cancer.

Certain medical conditions can also increase the risk. For example, long-term stomach inflammation (chronic gastritis), anemia caused by vitamin B12 deficiency, and growths in the stomach called polyps are all conditions that can increase a person’s risk of developing stomach cancer.

Furthermore, a rare condition called pernicious anemia, which is also related to vitamin B12 deficiency, can increase the risk.

Genetics play a role as well. Hereditary factors are responsible for a small percentage of stomach cancers. Families that have a history of stomach cancer might carry genetic mutations that increase their risk.

This makes it important for those with a family history of the disease to discuss screening options with their doctor.

Obesity is another factor that has been associated with many types of cancer, including stomach cancer. Excess body weight can lead to changes in hormone levels and growth factors that may increase cancer risk.

Research into stomach cancer is ongoing, with scientists trying to understand more about why this cancer develops and how it can be stopped.

For example, there’s a lot of research on how dietary factors influence the risk of stomach cancer, trying to pinpoint which substances are most harmful or beneficial. Understanding these can lead to better dietary guidelines to help prevent stomach cancer.

Overall, while stomach cancer remains a challenging disease, understanding and modifying risk factors like H. pylori infection, diet, and smoking can significantly reduce its incidence.

Regular check-ups and discussions with a healthcare provider are vital, especially for those with a family history of the disease or other risk factors. With continued research and awareness, there is hope that more cases can be prevented or detected at an earlier, more treatable stage.

If you care about cancer, please read studies about a new method to treat cancer effectively, and this low-dose, four-drug combo may block cancer spread.

For more information about cancer prevention, please see recent studies about nutrient in fish that can be a poison for cancer, and results showing this daily vitamin is critical to cancer prevention.

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Strokes are a leading cause of disability and the fifth-leading cause of death in the United States, so knowing how drinking alcohol influences this risk is important for making informed health decisions.

A stroke occurs when the blood supply to part of the brain is interrupted or reduced, preventing brain tissue from getting oxygen and nutrients.

Brain cells begin to die in minutes. There are two main types of stroke: ischemic, caused by blocked arteries, and hemorrhagic, caused by bleeding into the brain.

Research has shown that alcohol consumption has a complex relationship with stroke risk. The effect of alcohol on stroke risk is influenced by the amount and frequency of alcohol consumed.

Moderate alcohol consumption, typically defined as up to one drink per day for women and up to two drinks per day for men, has been linked in some studies to a lower risk of certain types of stroke, particularly ischemic stroke.

This protective effect is thought to be due to alcohol’s ability to thin the blood and reduce clot formation.

However, heavy or binge drinking appears to increase stroke risk significantly. Studies indicate that consuming more than two drinks per day can increase the risk of both types of stroke. The risk increases even further with the amount of alcohol consumed.

Binge drinking, often defined as four or more drinks for women and five or more drinks for men in about two hours, can lead to a sudden and significant increase in blood pressure, which is a major risk factor for stroke.

Furthermore, chronic heavy drinking can lead to other health conditions that indirectly increase the risk of stroke. These include high blood pressure, liver disease, and atrial fibrillation (a type of irregular heartbeat).

Alcohol can also contribute to weight gain and changes in the blood lipids, which are fats in the blood, further increasing stroke risk.

Interestingly, the timing of alcohol consumption can also affect its impact on stroke risk.

Drinking even moderate amounts of alcohol within a short time before sleep has been shown to increase blood pressure during sleep, which could increase the risk of stroke, especially in the early morning hours when blood pressure naturally spikes.

Given the complex effects of alcohol on stroke risk, moderation is key. For those who choose to drink, following the guidelines for moderate drinking is crucial.

For individuals with a family history of stroke or other risk factors such as diabetes or heart disease, even moderate drinking may not be advisable, and consulting a healthcare provider for personalized advice is recommended.

It’s also important to consider that abstaining from alcohol is perfectly healthy and eliminates any associated stroke risk. For those who do not currently drink alcohol, medical experts advise against starting for the sole purpose of benefiting heart health.

In conclusion, while moderate alcohol consumption might have some protective effects against ischemic stroke, excessive drinking clearly increases the risk of both types of stroke.

The safest approach is to drink in moderation or not at all, especially for individuals at high risk of stroke. Understanding and managing your alcohol intake can be a significant step towards maintaining good brain health and reducing the risk of stroke.

If you care about alcoholism, please read studies that your age may decide whether alcohol is good or bad for you, and people over 40 need to prevent dangerous alcohol/drug interactions.

For more information about alcohol, please see recent studies about moderate alcohol drinking linked to high blood pressure, and results showing this drug combo shows promise for treating alcoholism.

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China's semiconductor industry is facing a resurgence of unfinished projects as smaller companies go bankrupt, reports the China Times. Recent insolvencies, such as that of Shanghai Wusheng Semiconductor, have raised concerns about widespread closures. Additionally, the market has seen 23 semiconductor companies withdraw their IPO applications since last year, which reflects growing investor caution.

The trend of unfinished semiconductor projects initially started in 2020 and over 10,000 of Chinese chip-related companies had to close their doors in 2021 – 2022. A record-breaking 10,900 semiconductor-related companies deregistered in 2023, a significant increase from the 5,746 companies that closed down in 2022.

For example, Shanghai Wusheng Semiconductor, a maker of OLED display drivers, microcontrollers, and CMOS image sensors, founded in 2021 with an investment of around $2.48 billion, recently went bankrupt due to financial difficulties. The bankruptcy of Shanghai Wusheng Semiconductor is not an isolated issue and is tied to the earlier financial troubles of Wu Sheng Electronics Technology Group and Nanjing Wusheng Semiconductor Technology (later renamed Nanjingxin Charming Extreme Semiconductor Technology), reports Yibeiic.

In July 2020, a $3 billion IDM project was initiated in Nanjing, targeting a monthly output of 40,000 300-mm wafers and an annual value of over ¥6 billion ($827 million), but saw no progress. By the end of 2020, Nanjing Wusheng Semiconductor underwent a shareholder restructuring, rebranding as Xinyue Polar Core Semiconductor in 2021, and significantly reducing its registered capital. In April 2021, Shanghai Wusheng Semiconductor announced an ¥18 billion yuan ($2.48 billion) investment plan to complete within five years. However, Wu Sheng Electronics filed for bankruptcy in 2023, and by now Shanghai Wusheng Semiconductor has also become insolvent. This bankruptcy has sparked fears of a new wave of industry closures similar to those seen in 2020.

China's push to develop its semiconductor industry began in 2014, driven by substantial government subsidies. The result was a rapid increase in the number of semiconductor companies and parks. In 2020 alone, 50,000 semiconductor-related companies were registered, with substantial investments from provinces like Jiangsu, Anhui, Zhejiang, Shandong, and Shanghai as well as from various government-controlled organizations.

However, several high-profile projects have come to nothing, including the collaboration between GlobalFoundries and Chengdu, which ended in failure, and the Wuhan Hongxin project, which was exposed as a scam. Since early 2023, 23 companies have retracted their plans to go public, highlighting the cautious stance of investors toward the sector.

Looking ahead, the tightening of IPO policies in 2024 is expected to make it harder for underqualified semiconductor companies to raise capital. Experts predict that higher listing standards will lead to more companies exiting the market due to financial challenges and increased difficulty in securing investment.

These failures have significantly undermined confidence in the prospects of China's semiconductor industry. Nonetheless, China's government continues to raise money for the sector and just recently it poured some $47.5 billion into its Big Fund III.

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The United States Surgeon General, Dr. Vivek Murthy, announced on Monday that he would push for a warning label on social media platforms advising parents that using the platforms might damage adolescents’ mental health.

Warning labels — like those that appear on tobacco and alcohol products — are one of the most powerful tools available to the nation’s top health official, but Dr. Murthy cannot unilaterally require them; the action requires approval by Congress. No such legislation has yet been introduced in either chamber.

A warning label would send a powerful message to parents “that social media has not been proved safe,” Dr. Murthy wrote in an essay published in The New York Times opinion section on Monday.

In his essay, he cast the effects of social media on children and teenagers as a public health risk on par with road fatalities or contaminated food.

“Why is it that we have failed to respond to the harms of social media when they are no less urgent or widespread than those posed by unsafe cars, planes or food?” Dr. Murthy wrote. “These harms are not a failure of willpower and parenting; they are the consequence of unleashing powerful technology without adequate safety measures, transparency or accountability.”

Dr. Murthy pointed to research that showed that teens who spent more than three hours a day on social media faced a significantly higher risk of mental health problems, and that 46 percent of adolescents said social media made them feel worse about their bodies.

U.S. teens are spending an average of 4.8 hours per day on social media platforms like YouTube, TikTok and Instagram, according to a Gallup survey of more than 1,500 adolescents released last fall.

In an interview last month, Dr. Murthy said he had repeatedly heard from young people who “can’t get off the platforms,” often finding that hours had passed when they had intended to just check their feeds.

“The platforms are designed to maximize how much time we all spend on them,” he said. “It’s one thing to do that to an adult, and another thing to do it to a child, whose impulse control is still developing, whose brain is at a sensitive phase of development.”

Past warning labels have had significant effects on behavior. In 1965, after a landmark report from the Surgeon General, Congress voted to require all cigarette packages distributed in the United States to carry a warning that using the product “may be hazardous to your health.”

That was the beginning of a 50-year decline in smoking. When the warning labels appeared, around 42 percent of U.S. adults were daily cigarette smokers; by 2021, that portion had dropped to 11.5 percent.

There is fierce debate among researchers about whether social media is behind the crisis in child and adolescent mental health. In his new book, “The Anxious Generation,” the social psychologist Jonathan Haidt points to the 2007 release of the Apple iPhone as an inflection point, setting off a sharp increase in suicidal behavior and reports of despair.

Other experts say that, while the rise of social media has coincided with declines in well-being, there is no evidence that one caused the other, and point instead to factors like economic hardship, social isolation, racism, school shootings and the opioid crisis.

Dr. Murthy has long indicated that he views social media as a health risk. In May 2023, he issued an advisory on the subject, warning that “there are ample indicators that social media can also have a profound risk of harm to the mental health and well-being of children and adolescents.”

In that statement, Dr. Murthy acknowledged that the effects of social media on adolescent mental health were not fully understood. Research suggests the platforms offer both risks and benefits, providing community for young people who might otherwise feel marginalized.

Still, it urged parents to begin setting limits on their children’s social media use immediately, and to keep mealtimes device-free.

With his call for a warning label, Dr. Murthy is further dialing up the tone of urgency.

“One of the most important lessons I learned in medical school was that in an emergency, you don’t have the luxury to wait for perfect information,” he wrote. “You assess the available facts, you use your best judgment, and you act quickly.”

Recalling the words of a tearful mother whose child had died of suicide after being bullied online, he compared the current moment with landmark public health campaigns of the past.

“There is no seatbelt for parents to click, no helmet to snap in place, no assurance that trusted experts have investigated and ensured that these platforms are safe for kids,” he wrote. “There are just parents and their children, trying to figure it out on their own, pitted against some of the best product engineers and most well-resourced companies in the world.”

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Cannabis, commonly known as marijuana, is a plant that has been used for both medicinal and recreational purposes for thousands of years. It contains numerous chemical compounds called cannabinoids, with tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) being the most well-known for its psychoactive effects.

THC is the substance primarily responsible for the “high” that users experience, as it interacts with the brain’s endocannabinoid system, influencing mood, perception, and various cognitive functions. Another major cannabinoid is cannabidiol (CBD), which is non-psychoactive and often touted for its potential therapeutic benefits.

The potency of cannabis, particularly in terms of its THC content, has significantly increased over the past few decades. In the 1980s, the average THC content in cannabis was around 1%. However, due to selective breeding and advanced cultivation techniques, modern strains can contain THC levels upwards of 20%, and some extracts can even exceed 90% THC.

This dramatic increase in potency has raised concerns among health professionals about the potential for more severe and widespread adverse health effects, especially among young users whose brains are still developing.

“My interest in this topic was initially driven by the legalization of recreational cannabis in Canada, which happened largely in the absence of solid evidence on the risks of cannabis use,” said study author André McDonald, a CIHR Postdoctoral Fellow at the Peter Boris Centre for Addictions Research and the Michael G. DeGroote Centre for Medicinal Cannabis Research at McMaster University.

“One of the big questions related to cannabis is its link with psychotic disorders, particularly during youth. Most studies on this topic have used data from the 20th century when cannabis was significantly less potent than today in terms of THC, so we were also curious whether using more recent data would show a stronger link.”

To conduct their study, the researchers linked population-based survey data from over 11,000 youths in Ontario, Canada, with health service use records. These records included hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and outpatient visits. The survey data came from the Canadian Community Health Survey (CCHS) cycles from 2009 to 2012, while the health service data was obtained from ICES.

The sample included non-institutionalized Ontario residents aged 12 to 24 years. To ensure the accuracy of their findings, the researchers excluded respondents who had used health services for psychotic disorders in the six years before their survey interview. This exclusion was intended to reduce the risk of reverse causation, where individuals might have started using cannabis to self-medicate for already existing psychotic symptoms.

Respondents were asked whether they had ever used cannabis and, if so, whether they had used it in the past 12 months. The primary outcome measured was the time to the first outpatient visit, emergency department visit, or hospitalization related to a psychotic disorder. The researchers also adjusted for various sociodemographic and substance use confounders to isolate the effect of cannabis use on the development of psychotic disorders.

Teens who reported using cannabis in the past year were found to be over eleven times more likely to be diagnosed with a psychotic disorder compared to non-users. Interestingly, this elevated risk was not observed in young adults aged 20 to 24, indicating that adolescence is a particularly vulnerable period for the mental health impacts of cannabis.

The data also showed that among the teens diagnosed with a psychotic disorder, the vast majority had a history of cannabis use. Specifically, about 5 in 6 teens who were hospitalized or visited an emergency department for a psychotic disorder had previously reported using cannabis. This finding supports the neurodevelopmental theory that the adolescent brain is especially susceptible to the effects of cannabis, which may disrupt normal brain development and increase the risk of severe mental health issues.

“People should be aware of the risks associated with using cannabis at an early age. This study estimates that teens using cannabis are at 11 times higher risk of developing a psychotic disorder compared to teens not using cannabis,” McDonald told PsyPost.

“It’s important to acknowledge that the vast majority of people who use cannabis will not develop a psychotic disorder, but this study suggests that most teens who develop a psychotic disorder have a history of cannabis use. This is important information to convey to teens but also parents of teens, who may not be aware that cannabis products today are different and may be more harmful than the ones that were around when they were teens. ”

While the study provides compelling evidence of a strong link between adolescent cannabis use and psychotic disorders, it still has some limitations. The potential for reverse causation remains, as early symptoms of psychosis could lead some teens to use cannabis as a form of self-medication before seeking formal medical help. Additionally, the study could not account for genetic predispositions, family history of mental health issues, or trauma — all factors that could influence both cannabis use and the risk of psychotic disorders.

Nonetheless, the findings heighten concerns about early cannabis use.

“As commercialized cannabis products have become more widely available, and have a higher THC content, the development of prevention strategies targeting teens is more important than ever,” said senior author Susan Bondy, an affiliate scientist at ICES and associate professor at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health.

McDonald added: :Canadian youth are among the heaviest users of cannabis in the world. If we follow the precautionary principle, the bottom line is that more needs to be done to prevent early cannabis use.”

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These "hypervelocity" stars are extremely rare, but we've just spotted a particularly special example. A star named CWISE J124909+362116.0 (J1249+36 for short) not only exceeds the galactic escape velocity at around 600 kilometers (373 miles) per second, it's a very rare type of tiny, ancient, main sequence star called an L subdwarf, which happens to also be one of the oldest in the Milky Way.

First spotted by citizen scientists combing through telescope data for signs of the mysterious Planet Nine, J1249+36 is one of just a handful of hypervelocity stars identified in the Milky Way – and although far from the fastest we've seen, it represents something of a challenge to astronomers; namely, how did it get so breathtakingly fast?

The discovery was announced at the 244th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society, with its paper recently submitted to The Astrophysical Journal Letters.

There are a number of possible explanations for the star's velocity. The researchers explored three of them.

Three possible explanations for the high-speed star. (Burgasser et al.)

The first is expulsion from a binary system that includes a white dwarf star – the remnant core left behind when a Sun-like star runs out of hydrogen, ejects most of its outer material, dies, and enters its afterlife. Ultra-dense white dwarfs shine hotly with residual heat rather than fusion, and can be a bit unstable if they have a binary companion.

If the two stars are in a close orbit, the white dwarf can steal material from the companion star. The problem is that the white dwarf has an upper mass limit. If it gains just a bit of mass it can maintain its existence through repeated eruptions known as novae. However, if it gains too much mass, it will explode in a Type Ia supernova that completely obliterates the white dwarf.

"In this kind of supernova, the white dwarf is completely destroyed, so its companion is released and flies off at whatever orbital speed it was originally moving, plus a little bit of a kick from the supernova explosion as well," says astrophysicist Adam Burgasser of the University of California San Diego.

"Our calculations show this scenario works. However, the white dwarf isn't there anymore and the remnants of the explosion, which likely happened several million years ago, have already dissipated, so we don't have definitive proof that this is its origin."

The second possibility is a many-body interaction that becomes unstable and yeets one of the objects across the galaxy. There are environments within the Milky Way that make these interactions more likely, namely globular clusters – dense globs which can contain millions of stars. Thought to contain swarms of black holes at their centers, globular clusters have a higher-than-usual concentration of black hole binary pairs.

"When a star encounters a black hole binary, the complex dynamics of this three-body interaction can toss that star right out of the globular cluster," says astrophysicist Kyle Kremer, of Caltech, shortly to join UC San Diego.

This, too, is plausible; but tracing the star's trajectory backwards has not yet allowed the researchers to identify a specific globular cluster as its starting point.

The third option is that J1249+36 is not from the Milky Way at all, but one of the many satellite dwarf galaxies orbiting it. A 2017 study examining the provenance of hypervelocity stars found an extragalactic origin plausible. And the researchers' calculations showed that it's feasible for J1249+36, too.

All three options remain on the table. The best way to figure it out will be to examine the chemical composition of the star in greater detail. If J1249+36 was the companion of a white dwarf, the supernova could have left trace elements that polluted the L subdwarf's atmosphere. Conversely, globular clusters contain stars that all have similar compositional properties, so it may be possible to link the star to a home population that way.

And if neither of those pan out, we may need to look to the Milky Way's satellites, to determine whether this tiny, dim star is a stranger from outside the galaxy, just winking howdy as it passes through.

The discovery was presented at the 224th Meeting of the American Astronomical Society.

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Developmentally, one of the largest single organ abnormalities is dextrocardia where the heart, instead of being slightly over to the left (known as levocardia), is flipped to the right. This is a fairly rare occurrence, about one in 12,000 people are born this way.

Where this happens in the absence of any other abnormalities, people will live a normal life, with the only "symptoms" being a different readout on an ECG.

In some people, all the abdominal and thorax contents can be flipped to the opposite side, this is known as situs inversus totalis. The singers Donny Osmond and Enrique Iglesias have this condition, as does actress Catherine O'Hara. Osmond's condition was diagnosed when his appendicitis was overlooked because he experienced pain on the left, rather than the normal location, on the right.

Situs inversus totalis is relatively rare, affecting one in 10,000 people—typically more males. In some people, they can have only the heart and lungs mirrored. This is called situs inversus.

Over 100 genes have been identified as playing a role in ensuring our organs develop on their normal side. Situs inversus is inherited when both parents pass on a defective copy of the same gene.

People with this condition may never notice any symptoms if they are healthy. Indeed, there are reports of people living well beyond the average life expectancy and only being diagnosed after death.

In very rare circumstances people with situs inversus totalis can have levocardia, flipping their heart and lungs back to the "normal" left-sided arrangement.

The only circumstances where life expectancy is affected in dextrocardia and situs inversus totalis is if there are other heart defects.

One structure that has a habit of appearing away from where it should be is teeth. Several people have had teeth grow in their nose, causing a variety of symptoms such as nosebleeds and infection. There have also been cases of teeth found in the eye socket, which can be difficult to remove if they are anchored firmly in the bone.

Hernias and prolapse

Sometimes parts of the body are in the wrong place because of a structural—rather than developmental—problem.

Hernias can see abdominal organs end up in the chest or outside the cavity they are supposed to be located in.

We have normal openings in the diaphragm, a sheet of muscle that helps us breathe, to let blood vessels and our esophagus through. The diaphragm also keeps the thoracic organs in the chest and the abdominal organs in the abdomen. In some circumstances, though, these openings can become weak, or an increase in pressure (coughing, sneezing or straining) can force things through them.

The liver, parts of the small intestine and colon can end up in the chest.

More commonly, the part of the stomach herniates through the opening of the esophagus. This "hiatus hernia" is very common, with one in four people possessing one by the age of 40. This rises to 55 to 60% of people over the age of 50, but many don't have any symptoms.

Hiatus hernias are more common in women and overweight people.

One type of these hiatal hernias can be dangerous: paraoesophageal hernias can strangle the stomach cutting off critical blood supply. They require emergency surgery.

Another class of hernias are inguinal hernias. In this condition, pieces of the bowel can enter into the inguinal canal in the lower abdomen directly through its opening and potentially protrude into the groin. Inguinal hernias are more common in men, with 27% likely to experience one in their lifetime compared with 3% of women.

In some cases, the giant hernia can reach the level of the knees. A different type of inguinal hernia can protrude through the wall of the canal, rather than the natural opening. This is rarer and is more common in older male patients.

Other organs can end up in the wrong place through prolapse, especially in women where the womb can prolapse into the vagina. In the most severe case, it can protrude out of the vagina externally. This can happen during pregnancy and labor and poses a significant risk.

Risk factors for womb prolapse include multiple vaginal childbirths, being overweight, chronic constipation and older age.

Although having organs and structures in the wrong place may sound unpleasant, our ability to diagnose and treat many of these conditions has improved the quality of life for many who suffer from them.

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What it is: "Earthrise," an iconic view of Earth above the moon's horizon

Where it is: The moon, as seen from orbit aboard the Apollo 8 spacecraft

When it was taken: Christmas Eve, 1968

Why it's so special: One of the most profound photographs ever taken, "Earthrise," has been credited as a driving force of the environmental movement. The image was captured by Bill Anders, lunar module pilot for NASA's Apollo 8 mission, the first lunar orbit mission, on Dec. 24, 1968.

NASA reshared the image this month in memory of Anders, who died in a plane crash on June 7 in Washington's San Juan Islands at the age of 90.

His image, taken using a 70mm Hasselblad still camera with a 250mm telephoto lens, shows Earth around 5 degrees above the lunar horizon. The image of a half-lit Earth shows Antarctica to the upper left and, close to the sunset line, North and South America mostly under clouds.

The original photo was actually taken with Earth on the left of the moon, but the image people remember is the view rotated 90 degrees such that Earth appears to be rising above the horizon. Earth doesn't rise in the way the sun and moon appear to from Earth; the only way to see Earth appear to rise from the moon is from lunar orbit.

The image was taken at around 10:30 a.m. Central time, during the fourth of 10 orbits completed by Apollo 8's command module, but it was improvised, with Anders asking his fellow astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Lovell for a camera with color film.

Earth never actually "rises" over the moon, but it sometimes appears that way to astronauts in lunar orbit. (Image credit: NASA)

"Oh my God, look at that picture over there! There's the Earth coming up. Wow, is that pretty!" Anders said. "You got a color film, Jim? Hand me a roll of color, quick, would you? Hurry! Quick!"

Lovell found the roll of color film, and after a few attempts through a couple of different windows, Anders got the shot at several different settings. It's cataloged as image AS08-14-2383 in the Lunar and Planetary Institute's archive of the mission.

The image was fitting for the mission because the three astronauts were the first humans to escape the gravitational pull of Earth and the first to orbit the moon. Anders was also a backup pilot for Apollo 11, the first mission to land humans on the moon, the following year.

"Bill Anders gave to humanity among the deepest gifts an explorer and an astronaut can give," NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said in a statement. "Along with the Apollo 8 crew, Bill was the first to show us, through looking back at the Earth from the threshold of the Moon, that stunning image — the first of its kind — of the Earth suspended in space, illuminated in light and hidden in darkness: the Earthrise."

In 2018, the 25-mile-wide (40 kilometers) lunar impact crater on the far side of the moon in the foreground of the famous image was renamed "Anders' Earthrise."

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Once every 24 hours, Earth completes one rotation on its axis, marking one day on our planet. This reliable rotational period is what allowed humans to develop systems to tell time and what signals to humans, animals and plants when it is time to rest.

But Earth's rotation hasn't always been so consistent. In fact, a long, long time ago, Earth's day was much shorter, said Sarah Millholland, an assistant professor of physics at MIT.

"The Earth has experienced days that were both shorter and longer than it is now at different points in history," Millholland told Live Science in an email. "Most importantly, it was affected by tidal interactions with the moon. About a billion years ago, the length of day was only about 19 hours."

Early in the planet's history, Earth's rotation may have even been shorter than 10 hours, Konstantin Batygin, a professor of planetary science at Caltech, told Live Science in an email. This speedy rotation was the result of a huge, moon-forming impact with a Mars-size protoplanet that accelerated Earth's angular momentum while breaking off enough of the planet's surface to form the moon. The moon's tidal effects eventually worked on the Earth to slow it back down, Batygin said.  

Earth's day has even been longer than 24 hours, Millholland said, although only by a few milliseconds as a result of subtle changes to the planet's molten core, oceans or atmosphere.

Earth's rotation is actually evidence of its planetary origin story, Millholland said. How quickly a planet rotates is determined by how it was formed when dust, rocks and gas that circled the sun in a protoplanetary disk came together in space. Exactly how forcefully these pieces collide helps determine a planetary body's angular momentum, or how quickly it spins. You can think about it like spinning a bottle: the more force you apply, the quicker the bottle will rotate.

If Earth had formed closer to the sun, our planet's rotation would look very different, she said. In this case, Earth might have become tidally locked to the sun, similar to how the moon is tidally locked to Earth, Millholland said.

If Earth were closer to the sun, it would experience stronger tidal interactions from the sun that would make the rotation period the same as the orbital period, meaning that a day could last a year, she explained. "Many exoplanets are thought to be tidally locked because they are very close to their host stars," Millholland said. "These planets have a permanent dayside and nightside because only one side of the planet is facing the star at all times."

Earth's day is still changing

While the length of Earth's day might seem consistent to us, Batygin and Millholland said it's actually still changing. In particular, it's lengthening, albeit very slowly — about 1.7 milliseconds every century.

"The change in Earth's spin rate is happening gradually enough that evolutionary processes can adapt to the changes over time," Batygin said. "The relative change in orbital speed would not be noticeable in daily life."

Several factors are contributing to Earth's slowing rotation. The primary culprit is our planet's relationship with the moon, Batygin said. Tidal forces from the moon — the same kind that tug on ocean shorelines — are creating a friction effect as the moon slowly distances itself from Earth over time. Indeed, that process will be extremely slow — it could take 200 million years for Earth's day to reach 25 hours.

In the meantime, other planetary and astronomical events could affect the length of Earth's day, Millholland said. For example, more commonplace events such as earthquakes could also have "other smaller effects on its rotation."

Unexpected collisions with asteroids could also change the length of the day — for example, by applying torque in the direction of Earth's rotation to make it spin faster, Millholland said. For instance, the magnitude 8.9 earthquake that struck Japan on March 11, 2011 accelerated Earth's spin, which shortened the length of the 24-hour day by 1.8 microseconds.

Human-made disasters are another possible factor.

"Climate change could also play a role due to redistribution of Earth's mass due to glacial melting, sea level changes, and tectonic activity,' Millholland said. "As the polar ice caps melt, the rotation is slowing down."

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"There is no fundamental difference between man and animals in their ability to feel pleasure and pain, happiness, and misery," Darwin wrote.

But his suggestion that animals think and feel was seen as scientific heresy among many, if not most animal behaviour experts.

Attributing consciousness to animals based on their responses was seen as a cardinal sin. The argument went that projecting human traits, feelings, and behaviours onto animals had no scientific basis and there was no way of testing what goes on in animals’ minds.

But if new evidence emerges of animals’ abilities to feel and process what is going on around them, could that mean they are, in fact, conscious?

We now know that bees can count, recognise human faces and learn how to use tools.

Prof Lars Chittka of Queen Mary University of London has worked on many of the major studies of bee intelligence.

"If bees are that intelligent, maybe they can think and feel something, which are the building blocks of consciousness," he says.

Prof Chittka’s experiments showed that bees would modify their behaviour following a traumatic incident and seemed to be able to play, rolling small wooden balls, which he says they appeared to enjoy as an activity.

These results have persuaded one of the most influential and respected scientists in animal research to make this strong, stark and contentious statement:

"Given all the evidence that is on the table, it is quite likely that bees are conscious," he said.

It isn't just bees. Many say that it is now time to think again, with the emergence of new evidence they say marks a "sea change" in thinking on the science of animal consciousness.

They include Prof Jonathan Birch of the London School of Economics.

"We have researchers from different fields starting to dare to ask questions about animal consciousness and explicitly think about how their research might be relevant to those questions," says Prof Birch.

Anyone looking for a eureka moment will be disappointed.

Instead, a steady growth of evidence for a rethink has led to murmurings among the researchers involved. Now, many want a change in scientific thinking in the field.

What has been discovered may not amount to conclusive proof of animal consciousness, but taken together, it is enough to suggest that there is "a realistic possibility" that animals are capable of consciousness, according to Prof Birch.

This applies not only to what are known as higher animals such as apes and dolphins who have reached a more advanced stage of development than other animals. It also applies to simpler creatures, such as snakes, octopuses, crabs, bees and possibly even fruit flies, according to the group, who want funding for more research to determine whether animals are conscious, and if so, to what extent.

But if you're wondering what we even mean by consciousness, you're not alone. It’s something scientists can’t even agree on.

An early effort came in the 17th century, by the French philosopher René Descartes who said: "I think therefore I am."

He added that "language is the only certain sign of thought hidden in a body".

But those statements have muddied the waters for far too long, according to Prof Anil Seth of Sussex University, who has been wrestling with the definition of consciousness for much of his professional career.

"This unholy trinity, of language, intelligence and consciousness goes back all the way to Descartes," he told BBC News, with a degree of annoyance at the lack of questioning of this approach until recently.

The "unholy trinity" is at the core of a movement called behaviourism, which emerged in the early 20th Century. It says that thoughts and feelings cannot be measured by scientific methods and so should be ignored when analysing behaviour.

Many animal behaviour experts were schooled in this view, but it is beginning to make way for a less human-centred approach, according to Prof Seth.

"Because we see things through a human lens, we tend to associate consciousness with language and intelligence. Just because they go together in us, it doesn’t mean they go together in general."

Some are very critical of some uses of the word consciousness.

"The field is replete with weasel words and unfortunately one of those is consciousness," says Prof Stevan Harnad of Quebec University.

"It is a word that is confidently used by a lot of people, but they all mean something different, and so it is not clear at all what it means."

He says that a better, less weasley, word is "sentience", which is more tightly defined as the capacity to feel. "To feel everything, a pinch, to see the colour red, to feel tired and hungry, those are all things you feel," says Prof Harnad.

Others who have been instinctively sceptical of the idea of animals being conscious say that the new broader interpretation of what it means to be conscious makes a difference.

Dr Monique Udell, from Oregon State University, says she comes from a behaviourist background.

"If we look at distinct behaviours, for example what species can recognise themselves in a mirror, how many can plan ahead or are able to remember things that happened in the past, we are able to test these questions with experimentation and observation and draw more accurate conclusions based on data," she says.

"And if we are going to define consciousness as a sum of measurable behaviours, then animals that have succeeded in these particular tasks can be said to have something that we choose to call consciousness."

This is a much narrower definition of consciousness than the new group is promoting, but a respectful clash of ideas is what science is all about, according to Dr Udell.

"Having people who take ideas with a grain of salt and cast a critical eye is important because if we don’t come at these questions in different ways, then it is going to be harder to progress."

But what next? Some say far more animals need to be studied for the possibility of consciousness than is currently the case.

"Right now, most of the science is done on humans and monkeys and we are making the job much harder than it needs to be because we are not learning about consciousness in its most basic form," says Kristin Andrews, a professor of philosophy specialising in animal minds at York university in Toronto.

Prof Andrews and many others believe that research on humans and monkeys is the study of higher level consciousness – exhibited in the ability to communicate and feel complex emotions – whereas an octopus or snake may also have a more basic level of consciousness that we are ignoring by not investigating it.

Prof Andrews was among the prime movers of the New York Declaration on Animal Consciousness signed earlier this year, which has so far been signed by 286 researchers.

The short four paragraph declaration states that it is “irresponsible” to ignore the possibility of animal consciousness.

"We should consider welfare risks and use the evidence to inform our responses to these risks," it says.

Chris Magee is from Understanding Animal Research, a UK body backed by research organisations and companies that undertake animal experiments.

He says animals already are assumed to be conscious when it comes to whether to conduct experiments on them and says UK regulations require that experiments should be conducted only if the benefits to medical research outweigh the suffering caused.

"There is enough evidence for us to have a precautionary approach," he says.

But there is also a lot we don’t know, including about decapod crustaceans such as crabs, lobsters, crayfish, and shrimp.

"We don’t know very much about their lived experience, or even basic things like the point at which they die.

"And this is important because we need to set rules to protect them either in the lab or in the wild."

A government review led by Prof Birch in 2021 assessed 300 scientific studies on the sentience of decapods and Cephalopods, which include octopus, squid, and cuttlefish.

Prof Birch’s team found that there was strong evidence that these creatures were sentient in that they could experience feelings of pain, pleasure, thirst, hunger, warmth, joy, comfort and excitement. The conclusions led to the government including these creatures into its Animal Welfare (Sentience) Act in 2022.

"Issues related to octopus and crab welfare have been neglected," says Prof Birch.

"The emerging science should encourage society to take these issues a bit more seriously."

There are millions of different types of animals and precious little research has been carried out on how they experience the world. We know a bit about bees and other researchers have shown indications of conscious behaviour in cockroaches and even fruit flies but there are so many other experiments to be done involving so many other animals.

It is a field of study that the modern-day heretics who have signed the New York Declaration claim has been neglected, even ridiculed. Their approach, to say the unsayable and risk sanction is nothing new.

Around the same time that Rene Descartes was saying "I think therefore I am", the Catholic church found the Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei "vehemently suspect of heresy" for suggesting that the Earth was not the centre of the Universe.

It was a shift in thinking that opened our eyes to a truer, richer picture of the Universe and our place in it.

Shifting ourselves from the centre of the Universe a second time may well do the same for our understanding of ourselves as well as the other living things with whom we share the planet.

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Monday, 17 June

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 9:35 p.m. – 12:22 a.m. UTC
• Where: Florida, US
• Why: SpaceX will be using a Falcon 9 to launch the SES 24 communications satellite for SES in this mission. As it’s a Falcon 9 rocket being launched, it’s likely that the first stage will perform a landing so that it can be reused.

Tuesday, 18 June

• Who: Rocket Lab
• What: Electron
• When: 6:13 p.m. UTC
• Where: Mahia, New Zealand
• Why: Rocket Lab will use its Electron rocket to launch five Kineis satellites to orbit. Eventually, this satellite will number 25 satellites and will provide Internet of Things communications. The mission has been named “No Time Toulouse”.

Wednesday, 19 June

• Who: SpaceX
• What: Falcon 9
• When: 3:00 – 7:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: California, US
• Why: SpaceX will use this mission to launch around 22 Starlink satellites into a low Earth orbit. This batch of satellite is designated as Starlink Group 9-1, this can be used to identify the satellites on apps like ISS Detector. The first stage of the Falcon 9 should do a landing.

Saturday, 22 June

• Who: CNSA
• What: Long March 2C
• When: 7:00 a.m. UTC
• Where: Xichang Satellite Launch Center, China
• Why: China will use a Long March 2C to launch the Franco-Chinese SVOM (Space-based multi-band astronomical Variable Objects Monitor) mission. The mission’s goal is to study explosions of stars which product black holes.

Recap

• We didn’t have any rocket launches in the last week, however, we did get a first stage propulsion test of China’s Long March 10 which you can see below:

That’s all for this week, be sure to check in next time!

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Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years.

2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of May): Nearly 2,400 news posts

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Hope you enjoyed this news post.

Thank you for appreciating my time and effort posting news every single day for many years.

2023: Over 5,800 news posts | 2024 (till end of May): Nearly 2,400 news posts

Part of the statin family, rosuvastatin is commonly prescribed to manage high cholesterol levels, a key factor in preventing heart disease. However, this new research indicates that higher doses of rosuvastatin may pose significant risks to kidney health.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) had approved rosuvastatin with prior indications of potential kidney-related side effects, such as blood in the urine (hematuria) and protein in the urine (proteinuria).

Despite these initial concerns, comprehensive studies evaluating these risks in practical, everyday healthcare settings were lacking until now.

The study team analyzed electronic health records spanning from 2011 to 2019. They compared the health outcomes of patients taking rosuvastatin with those taking atorvastatin, another popular statin.

The data included over 150,000 new rosuvastatin users and nearly 800,000 new users of atorvastatin.

Their findings over a three-year period showed that 2.9% of the patients developed hematuria and 1.0% developed proteinuria.

More alarmingly, the study revealed that rosuvastatin increased the risk of hematuria by 8%, proteinuria by 17%, and severe kidney failure—requiring intensive treatments like dialysis or a kidney transplant—by 15% compared to atorvastatin.

The study also highlighted a particularly troubling issue with dosage. Patients with advanced kidney disease were often prescribed higher doses of rosuvastatin than what the FDA recommends for such cases.

About 44% of these patients received doses exceeding recommended levels, intensifying concerns about the drug’s safety for this vulnerable group.

Despite these risks, both rosuvastatin and atorvastatin showed similar effectiveness in reducing heart-related complications, prompting critical questions about the trade-offs involved in using higher doses of rosuvastatin, especially among patients with pre-existing kidney conditions.

Published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology, the findings from this study, led by Jung-im Shin and her team, call for a reevaluation of how rosuvastatin is prescribed, particularly concerning its dosage.

The research suggests that both doctors and patients need to carefully weigh the benefits against the risks, taking into account the potential for serious kidney damage.

This study serves as a crucial reminder of the importance of continuous monitoring and evaluation of medications after they are brought to market.

As more is learned about the effects of these drugs in real-world conditions, medical guidelines and prescription practices can be adapted to better safeguard patient health and safety.

This ongoing vigilance helps ensure that the benefits of medications truly outweigh their risks, particularly for those with additional health vulnerabilities.

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However, recent findings suggest there’s more to this medication than previously thought.

Blood pressure is essential to our health, much like the speed of cars on a highway. When blood pressure is high, it’s as if the cars are racing dangerously fast, which can lead to severe health issues such as heart attacks, strokes, and kidney problems.

To slow down these “speedy cars,” doctors recommend lifestyle changes and prescribe medications like chlorthalidone, which acts like a traffic cop for our bloodstream.

In a comprehensive study, researchers at Columbia analyzed health records from over 730,000 individuals spanning 17 years. They focused particularly on comparing chlorthalidone with another similar medication, hydrochlorothiazide.

Both medications are effective in reducing the risk of heart-related diseases and strokes, but they discovered a significant concern with chlorthalidone.

The study revealed that people taking chlorthalidone were three times more likely to experience low levels of potassium in their blood—a condition known as hypokalemia.

Potassium is crucial for proper muscle and nerve function, and its deficiency can lead to symptoms like weakness, fatigue, and even heart disturbances.

The statistics showed that 6.3% of patients on chlorthalidone suffered from hypokalemia, compared to only 1.9% of those on hydrochlorothiazide. This finding raised concerns since low potassium levels can be quite dangerous.

Furthermore, the study noted that chlorthalidone users were also more prone to electrolyte imbalances and kidney issues.

Electrolytes are vital for many bodily functions, acting like spark plugs that power our cells, and the kidneys play a crucial role in filtering and managing waste. Disruptions in these systems can have significant health implications.

So, what does this mean for individuals taking chlorthalidone? It’s a reminder of the importance of regular monitoring and consultation with healthcare providers. This study could lead doctors to reconsider the use of chlorthalidone, balancing its benefits against potential risks.

Managing blood pressure isn’t just about medication; it also involves lifestyle choices.

Eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, reducing salt intake, avoiding excessive alcohol, quitting smoking, engaging in regular exercise, and practicing relaxation techniques like yoga can all contribute to healthier blood pressure levels.

Looking ahead, the researchers at Columbia University plan to continue their investigations into chlorthalidone and similar medications to ensure they provide safe and effective treatment options.

For those on chlorthalidone, think of it as part of a broader strategy to maintain your “blood highways.” Keeping in touch with your doctor, having regular health check-ups, and paying attention to how you feel are crucial steps in managing your health effectively.

In conclusion, while chlorthalidone remains a valuable tool in controlling high blood pressure, this study highlights the importance of careful management and monitoring to avoid potential side effects. As research continues, it will provide a clearer picture and guide safer treatment protocols.

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In the Arctic, a mysterious atmospheric phenomenon generates some of the oddest clouds on Earth.

Up there, streaky wisps can swiftly transform into towering thunderstorms. These strange clouds are not just visually mesmerizing. Nor are they just drivers of powerful storms. They may also play a role in the Arctic’s breakneck pace of warming, researchers say, a pace about four times as fast as that of the rest of the planet (SN: 8/11/22).

But climate simulations of the region can’t accurately incorporate the birth and evolution of these clouds: There’s simply too little known about the forces that shape them.

An international team of scientists is now confronting that uncertainty head-on. From late February to early April, the researchers repeatedly soared into the Arctic’s stormy skies, employing a heavily instrumented C-130 aircraft to study the clouds’ shape-shifting and collect a wealth of data.

Its findings, the team hopes, will be the first step to piercing a longstanding, cloudy mystery.

Swells of cold Arctic air give birth to these clouds

The Arctic clouds are the result of one of the most intense collisions of air masses on the planet.

Marine cold-air outbreaks, or MCAOs, are surges of cold, dry air that regularly whoosh seaward from the land to encounter warmer air over the oceans. In response, the ocean waters release huge amounts of heat and moisture that rise into the atmosphere and condense into clouds.

The MCAO-powered clouds have a distinct pattern.  “It’s beautiful to look at in satellite imagery,” says Paquita Zuidema, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel School of Marine, Atmospheric and Earth Science in Key Biscayne, Fla. These clouds are “so visually stunning,” says Zuidema, who co-led the expedition.

As cold, dry air from Greenland (coming in from the upper left) meets warmer ocean air to the southeast, rows of thin puffy clouds called “streets” form perpendicular to the coastline, as seen in this NASA Worldview image. Farther to the southeast, the clouds are beginning to deepen, organizing into a denser, honeycomb-like open-cell pattern.

NASA Worldview

The first clouds to form from the MCAOs are thin rows of small, kilometer-scale “streets” that line up with the wind as they emerge just off land. Farther downwind and farther out to sea, the streaks evolve into larger, open-celled clouds, big puffs with patches of clear air at the center.

Those cells can be as much as 20 to 30 kilometers across, and up to a kilometer tall, says atmospheric scientist Bart Geerts, another co-lead on the project. Eventually, they can become towering, thick cumulonimbus clouds as tall as 5 kilometers.

Researchers have limited intel on these clouds

The cumulonimbus clouds that emerge from MCAOs are not quite like the thunderstorm-producing clouds of the lower latitudes, in that they very rarely produce lightning, says Geerts, of the University of Wyoming in Laramie. But they can produce heavy snowfall — and sometimes intense, hurricane-like storms called polar lows (SN: 1/17/23).

Compared with tropical cyclones, these cyclones are small and therefore more difficult to predict. Improving predictions of these destructive events is of intense interest to Arctic nations, Greet says — improvements that the team’s flights might help with.

Another key question the researchers hope to answer is how much liquid the clouds contain, relative to ice, and how that proportion changes as they evolve. That proportion matters, Zuidema says, because liquid clouds are brighter, reflecting more sunlight back into space than ice clouds. That means that liquid clouds can reduce warming at the surface, while ice clouds can trap more of the sun’s heat, enhancing warming.

“In the last 10 years or so, people have realized that the proportions of liquid and ice clouds are actually pretty far off in climate models,” Zuidema says. “That’s a goal for the climate modeling community.”

The trouble is that there are relatively few direct observations of the water and ice content in these Arctic clouds to help validate climate simulations of future warming. That’s in part because these phenomena occur far offshore in one of the world’s most remote regions. And the clouds, though visible to satellites, are too small for spacecraft to capture essential characteristics that help control their evolution over time, such as the small-scale vertical motions that drive upward air drafts.

What impact the region’s rapid warming is having on the rest of the planet’s weather patterns is also still unclear, she adds. “We do think that the Arctic and mid-latitude weather should be linked,” she says. But the nature of those long-range atmospheric “teleconnections” is still uncertain.

So Zuidema, Greet and colleagues have been getting up close in their tricked-out C-130.

Repeated polar flights are starting to fill in the details

During this year’s mission, the team flew eight flights over the Arctic, flying above, below and through the MCAO-spawned clouds.

The plane carried several remote sensing instruments: lidar, which uses laser pulses to measure the dimensions of clouds or land surfaces; radar, which uses radio waves for the same purpose; and radiometers, to measure fluxes of infrared radiation, or heat. The data collected by these instruments, the team says, can help assess the proportions of ice and water in the clouds. Meanwhile, the team also deployed dropsondes, metal cylinders about a third of a meter long that are attached to small parachutes. The dropsondes collect measurements of temperature, humidity and wind as they sink through the atmosphere.

The goal, Zuidema says, was to collect enough data on enough different MCAO events that scientists can begin to build a statistically robust picture of them, one that can be incorporated into computer models with confidence. The team is now beginning to analyze all their data, which they plan to present next January at the American Meteorological Society’s annual meeting in New Orleans.

This year’s fieldwork is a good start, she says. “We got some interesting case studies this time.” But more data is always better when it comes to validating computer models. “What we’re really hoping for is to develop the kind of statistics that a modeler would want.” That will likely require future flights into the stormy Arctic skies.

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