Robert S Gable writes: Everyone dies sometime. But when and how? Those questions become more salient as birthdays roll by. It has been said that wherever old people gather there is an ‘organ recital’ of malfunctioning body organs and parts. I, too, have a recital. Last year, at age 88, I woke up in a San Francisco hospital room after having my aortic heart valve replaced by one made of a metal spring and some cow tissue (an ‘Edwards Sapien…
CNN reports: If you’re at high risk of serious illness or death from Covid-19, it’s time to dust off those N95 masks and place them snugly over your nose and mouth to protect yourself from a recent uptick of the virus, according to a growing number of experts. That advice should go all the way up to 80-year-old President Joe Biden, said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a cardiologist. “Octogenarians comprise the highest-risk group for complications following Covid infection,” Reiner said. “At…
Nature reports: Researchers are racing to determine whether a highly mutated coronavirus variant that has popped up in three continents will be a global concern — or much ado about nothing. Several laboratories detected the variant last week, and it has been named BA.2.86. Although the lineage seems to be exceedingly rare, it is very different from other circulating variants and carries numerous changes to its spike protein, a key focus of the body’s immune attack on the SARS-CoV-2 virus….
Nicholas Kristof writes: It’s not just that life expectancy in Mississippi (71.9) now appears to be a hair shorter than in Bangladesh (72.4). Nor that an infant is some 70 percent more likely to die in the United States than in other wealthy countries. Nor even that for the first time in probably a century, the likelihood that an American child will live to the age of 20 has dropped. All that is tragic and infuriating, but to me the…
CNN reports: A Montana judge handed a significant victory on Monday to more than a dozen young plaintiffs in the nation’s first constitutional climate trial, as extreme weather becomes more deadly and scientists warn the climate crisis is eroding our environment and natural resources. In a case that could have legal reverberations for other climate litigation, District Court Judge Kathy Seeley ruled that Montana’s continued development of fossil fuels violates a clause in its state constitution that guarantees its citizens…
The New York Times reports: If you find that the blistering, unrelenting heat is making you anxious and irritable, even depressed, it’s not all in your head. Soaring temperatures can damage not just the body but also the mind. As heat waves become more intense, more frequent and longer, it has become increasingly important to address the impact on mental health, scientists say. “It’s really only been over the past five years that there’s been a real recognition of the…
The Washington Post reports: A strong rumble woke 13-year-old Lucy Benavidez Garwood in the darkness, shaking the three-room adobe house where she and her family lived and rattling dishes in the kitchen cupboard. Neighbors who gathered that morning agreed it must have been an earthquake. They learned the truth several weeks later when U.S. forces attacked Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The atomic bombs dropped on the two cities had been developed in Tularosa’s own backyard — that pre-dawn test blast…
Ed Yong writes: Alexis Misko’s health has improved enough that, once a month, she can leave her house for a few hours. First, she needs to build up her energy by lying in a dark room for the better part of two days, doing little more than listening to audiobooks. Then she needs a driver, a quiet destination where she can lie down, and days of rest to recover afterward. The brief outdoor joy “never quite feels like enough,” she…
Amanda Ruggeri writes: Stop scrolling. Now inhale slowly, concentrating on expanding your lungs, to a count of five. Exhale, just as slowly and deliberately, as you count to five. You might find that, in just that 10 seconds, you suddenly feel just a little bit more relaxed or centred. Follow the same practice for 20 minutes a few times a week and – according to the research – you might not just reap the benefits of feeling calmer. You may…
The New York Times reports: In July 1945, as J. Robert Oppenheimer and the other researchers of the Manhattan Project prepared to test their brand-new atomic bomb in a New Mexico desert, they knew relatively little about how that mega-weapon would behave. On July 16, when the plutonium-implosion device was set off atop a hundred-foot metal tower in a test code-named “Trinity,” the resultant blast was much stronger than anticipated. The irradiated mushroom cloud also went many times higher into…
Vann R. Newkirk II writes: Consider the cantaloupe. It’s a decent melon. If you, like me, are the sort who constantly mixes them up, cantaloupes are the orange ones, and honeydews are green. If you, like me, are old enough to remember vacations, you might have had them along with their cousin, watermelon, at a hotel’s breakfast buffet. Those spreads are not as bad as you remember, especially when it’s hot out; add a couple of cold bagels and a…
CNN reports: Another wave of wildfire smoke has drifted into the US, dimming blue summer skies and igniting troubling concerns regarding the increasing frequency of fires, and what they have to do with climate change. More than 100 million people are under air quality alerts from Wisconsin to Vermont and down to North Carolina as smoke from Canadian wildfires continues to waft south, though conditions are expected to improve slowly into the holiday weekend. Air quality on both sides of the border has…
Zeynep Tufekci writes: Three researchers at a laboratory in Wuhan, China, who had fallen ill in November 2019 had been experimenting with SARS-like coronaviruses under inadequate biosafety conditions, The Wall Street Journal reported on Tuesday, citing current and former U.S. officials. The Journal had reported in 2021 that some researchers at the Wuhan Institute of Virology had sought hospital care that November, around the time that evidence suggests Covid first began to spread among people. It was not publicly known,…
Discover magazine reports: Millions of years ago, our ancestors, like us today, had to contend with viruses. No doubt the infections were unpleasant for them at the time, but their suffering wasn’t for naught — some of those viruses left traces in our DNA. And, according to scientists at the Francis Crick Institute, these remnants may aid the body’s immune response to cancer today. While studying lung cancer in mice and in human tumor samples, the team found that immunotherapy…
Emily Anthes writes: In January 1912, in the depths of a New York City winter, an unusual new apartment complex opened on the Upper East Side. The East River Homes were designed to help poor families fend off tuberculosis, a fearsome, airborne disease, by turning dark, airless tenements inside out. Passageways led from the street to capacious internal courtyards, where outdoor staircases wound their way up to each apartment. Floor-to-ceiling windows opened onto balconies where ailing residents could sleep. The…
CBS News reports: Companies making so-called “forever chemicals” knew they were toxic decades before health officials, but kept that information hidden from the public, according to a peer-reviewed study of previously secret industry documents. The new study in the Annals of Global Health concluded that 3M and DuPont, the largest makers of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, actively suppressed evidence that the chemicals were hazardous since the 1960s, long before public health research caught up. “The chemical industry took…