Browsed by
Category: Health

Seabirds that swallow ocean plastic waste have scarring in their stomachs – scientists have named this disease ‘plasticosis’

Seabirds that swallow ocean plastic waste have scarring in their stomachs – scientists have named this disease ‘plasticosis’

Scientists have identified a condition they call plasticosis, caused by ingesting plastic waste, in flesh-footed shearwaters. Patrick Kavanagh/Wikipedia, CC BY By Matthew Savoca, Stanford University As a conservation biologist who studies plastic ingestion by marine wildlife, I can count on the same question whenever I present research: “How does plastic affect the animals that eat it?” This is one of the biggest questions in this field, and the verdict is still out. However, a recent study from the Adrift Lab,…

Read More Read More

‘Everything living is dying’: Environmental ruin in modern Iraq

‘Everything living is dying’: Environmental ruin in modern Iraq

Lynzy Billing writes: It’s 6PM and the pink-tinged skies turn black above Agolan, a village on the outskirts of Erbil in the Kurdistan region of northern Iraq. Thick plumes of smoke have begun to billow out of dozens of flaring towers, part of an oil refinery owned by an Iraqi energy company called the KAR Group. The towers are just about 150 feet from where 60-year-old Kamila Rashid stands on the front porch of her house. She looks squarely at…

Read More Read More

The toxic threat in thawing permafrost

The toxic threat in thawing permafrost

Christian Elliott writes: Covering nearly the same area as Norway, the Hudson Bay Lowlands in northern Ontario and Manitoba is home to the southernmost continuous expanse of permafrost in North America. Compared with many marine waterways this far south, Hudson Bay stays frozen late into the summer, its ice-covered surface reflecting sunlight and keeping the surrounding area cold. The influence of Hudson Bay on the weather is crazy, says Adam Kirkwood, a graduate student at Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario….

Read More Read More

Why cursing is a healthy feature of human behavior

Why cursing is a healthy feature of human behavior

Alex Orlando writes: Well, damn. Maybe you stubbed your toe first thing in the morning. Or some thoughtless commuter forced you to slam the brakes on the drive to work. Perhaps you’re just fed up with it all and feel like sinking to your knees and cursing the heavens. If you’ve ever suppressed the urge to unleash a string of obscenities, maybe think again. Some research suggests that it might be a better idea to simply let the filth fly….

Read More Read More

New analysis of genetic samples from China appears to link the pandemic’s origin to raccoon dogs

New analysis of genetic samples from China appears to link the pandemic’s origin to raccoon dogs

Katherine J. Wu writes: For three years now, the debate over the origins of the coronavirus pandemic has ping-ponged between two big ideas: that SARS-CoV-2 spilled into human populations directly from a wild-animal source, and that the pathogen leaked from a lab. Through a swirl of data obfuscation by Chinese authorities and politicalization within the United States, and rampant speculation from all corners of the world, many scientists have stood by the notion that this outbreak—like most others—had purely natural…

Read More Read More

Global microbiome study gives new view of shared health risks

Global microbiome study gives new view of shared health risks

Yasemin Saplakoglu writes: Our bodies consist of about 30 trillion human cells, but they also host about 39 trillion microbial cells. These teeming communities of bacteria, viruses, protozoa and fungi in our guts, in our mouths, on our skin and elsewhere — collectively called the human microbiome — don’t only consist of freeloaders and lurking pathogens. Instead, as scientists increasingly appreciate, these microbes form ecosystems essential to our health. A growing body of research aims to understand how disruptions of…

Read More Read More

How single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,500-pound cows

How single-celled yeasts are doing the work of 1,500-pound cows

The Washington Post reports: The first course was a celery root soup lush with whole milk. The last was a spice cake topped with maple cream cheese frosting served with a side of ice cream. And then a latte with its fat cap of glossy foam. In all, a delicious lunch. Maybe a little heavy on the dairy. Only this dairy was different. It was not the product of a cow or soybean or nut. The main ingredient of this…

Read More Read More

Half of humanity on track to be overweight by 2035

Half of humanity on track to be overweight by 2035

BBC News reports: More than half the world’s population will be classed as obese or overweight by 2035 if action is not taken, the World Obesity Federation warns. More than four billion people will be affected, with rates rising fastest among children, its report says. Low or middle-income countries in Africa and Asia are expected to see the greatest rises. The report predicts the cost of obesity will amount to more than $4tn (£3.3tn) annually by 2035. The president of…

Read More Read More

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on Covid origins

Little-known scientific team behind new assessment on Covid origins

The Washington Post reports: The theory that covid-19 started with a lab accident in central China received a modest boost in the latest U.S. intelligence assessment after the work of a little-known scientific team that conducts some of the federal government’s most secretive and technically challenging investigations of emerging security threats, current and former U.S. officials said Monday. An analysis by experts from the U.S. national laboratory complex — including members of a storied team known as Z-Division — prompted…

Read More Read More

The toxic legacy of the Ukraine war

The toxic legacy of the Ukraine war

BBC Future reports: On 6 June, satellite images captured hundreds of craters made by artillery shells and a 40m-wide (131 ft) hole left by a bomb in fields around the village of Dovhenke, in eastern Ukraine. It is just one site left scarred by Russia’s invasion of its neighbour. And as the war continues to wreak a devastating humanitarian toll on the people caught up in the fighting, the conflict is leaving a far less obvious, toxic legacy on the land itself….

Read More Read More

Accidental lab leak more likely than other possible causes of Covid pandemic, Energy Department now says

Accidental lab leak more likely than other possible causes of Covid pandemic, Energy Department now says

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. Energy Department has concluded that the Covid pandemic most likely arose from a laboratory leak, according to a classified intelligence report recently provided to the White House and key members of Congress. The shift by the Energy Department, which previously was undecided on how the virus emerged, is noted in an update to a 2021 document by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines’s office. The new report highlights how different parts of the…

Read More Read More

Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Biophobia hurts nature and humans

Emily Harwitz writes: When Masashi Soga was growing up in Japan, he loved spending time outside catching insects and collecting plants. His parents weren’t big fans of the outdoors, but he had an elementary schoolteacher who was. “They taught me how to collect butterflies, how to make a specimen of butterflies,” Soga recalls. “I enjoyed nature quite a lot.” That early exposure helped foster Soga’s appreciation for nature, he says, and today, Soga is an ecologist at the University of…

Read More Read More

As the pandemic swept America, deaths in prisons rose nearly 50 percent

As the pandemic swept America, deaths in prisons rose nearly 50 percent

The New York Times reports: Deaths in state and federal prisons across America rose nearly 50 percent during the first year of the pandemic, and in six states they more than doubled, according to the first comprehensive data on prison fatalities in the era of Covid-19. The tremendous jump in deaths in 2020 was more than twice the increase in the United States overall, and even exceeded estimates of the percentage increase at nursing homes, among the hardest-hit sectors nationwide….

Read More Read More

Natural immunity as effective as Covid vaccine against severe illness

Natural immunity as effective as Covid vaccine against severe illness

NBC News reports: Immunity acquired from a Covid infection provides strong, lasting protection against the most severe outcomes of the illness, according to research published Thursday in The Lancet — protection, experts say, that’s on par with what’s provided through two doses of an mRNA vaccine. Infection-acquired immunity cut the risk of hospitalization and death from a Covid reinfection by 88% for at least 10 months, the study found. “This is really good news, in the sense that protection against…

Read More Read More

In East Palestine, Ohio, where train derailed, anxiety and distrust are running deep

In East Palestine, Ohio, where train derailed, anxiety and distrust are running deep

14 miles from my house, in East Palestine Ohio. Norfolk Southern assures us that the vinyl chloride spilling from the tanks of their derailed train and burning and turning into hydrogen chloride as it rises into the atmosphere and mixes with water vapor and turns into …… pic.twitter.com/Rc8wbpXU8R — 𝐑𝐨𝐛𝐞𝐫𝐭 𝐂 𝐀𝐭𝐤𝐢𝐧𝐬𝐨𝐧 𝐉𝐫 🦺🌍🔥🌹 (@blckndgldfn) February 8, 2023 The New York Times reports: All around the once-thriving industrial town in the quiet hills of eastern Ohio, there were signs this…

Read More Read More

How quickly does Covid immunity fade? What scientists know

How quickly does Covid immunity fade? What scientists know

Nature reports: Three years into the pandemic, the immune systems of the vast majority of humans have learnt to recognize SARS-CoV-2 through vaccination, infection or, in many cases, both. But just how quickly do these types of immunity fade? New evidence suggests that ‘hybrid’ immunity, the result of both vaccination and a bout of COVID-19, can provide partial protection against reinfection for at least eight months1. It also offers greater than 95% protection against severe disease or hospitalization for between…

Read More Read More