Air pollution takes the lives of more than half a million young children every year, according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in London has come up pollution-busting face masks to protect kids from toxic air.
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It’s a major natural disaster that slowly grows in one place and then moves across a region, gaining intensity and size. As it spreads, it destroys land, ruins agriculture and tears apart communities, and it can kill people.
It’s a drought.
Researchers are just beginning to view droughts as this type of dynamic force, and some hope that soon they will be monitored similarly to hurricanes — with scientists able to predict their development, helping to protect those living in their path.
Ten percent of droughts travel between 1,400 to 3,100 kilometers from where they begin, according to a recent study. The study, which analyzed 1,420 droughts between 1979 and 2009, identified “hot spots” around the world and common directions in which droughts move.
Some droughts in the southwest United States, for example, tend to move from south to north. In Argentina, they usually migrate the opposite direction. In Central Africa, droughts tend to go southeastern toward the coast.
“It can start somewhere, move throughout the continent, and obviously cause harm throughout its way,” Julio Herrera-Estrada, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and leader of the study, said Thursday.
Droughts that travel are usually the largest and most disastrous, the scientists found. They can cause a loss of agriculture, wildlife, wetlands and human life, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Very costly
They are also one of the most expensive natural disasters that people face today, according to Herrera-Estrada, who collaborated on the study with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.
The most recent moving drought that Herrera-Estrada studied began in 2008 in Ukraine and Russia, and moved 1,700 kilometers northeast, ending in northwest Russia and affecting parts of Kazakhstan on the way. It lasted almost a year.
“People haven’t really thought of droughts in this way,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.
Future research, Herrera-Estrada said, can shed light on what mechanisms cause some droughts to move and what affects their paths. This can be done accurately, however, only through collaboration among national governments, he said.
“It’s important to have a global or a continental understanding about how droughts are behaving,” he said. Collaboration “benefits people on the ground, farmers, cities that need water, power plants that need water.”
The study was published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
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Sonia Papiu started her first year of residency as a psychiatrist in the Romanian city of Cluj in January, but she plans to move abroad within the
year, seeking better learning opportunities and hospital conditions.
She will not be alone.
“I don’t think any of my colleagues are planning to stay,” she said. “I think I could learn more abroad. You have higher responsibilities as a resident there.”
In the Romanian system, doctors go through six years of medical school and then three to five years as a hospital resident, treating patients while working under the supervision of senior staff.
Finding a job abroad will be easy. Cluj, one of Romania’s largest cities and a university and business hub, hosts several agencies recruiting for western European hospitals.
Romania has bled out tens of thousands of doctors, nurses, dentists and pharmacists since joining the European Union a decade ago, lured abroad by what the country lacks: significantly higher pay, modern infrastructure and functional healthcare systems. France, Germany and Britain are among the most popular destinations.
The consequences are dire. Romania is one of the EU states with the fewest doctors. Nearly a third of hospital positions are vacant and the health ministry estimates one in four Romanians has insufficient access to essential healthcare.
“Medical staff leaving Romania at an almost massive pace deepens the problems of the healthcare system,” former health minister Vlad Voiculescu has said. “Entire hospitals are facing a major personnel deficit and entire towns don’t have a family physician.”
This despite the fact that Romania is a leading EU state when it comes to the number of medical graduates. But the system — ridden with corruption, inefficiencies and politicized management — has been unable to motivate them to stay. The shortages are even starker in rural areas.
“Because we have one doctor per section for most specialties, when a doctor goes on holiday we need to close down the section,” said Cristian Vlad, the hospital manager in Viseul de Sus, a small town near the Ukrainian border.
Vlad said three hospitals in the region shared one anaesthetist until last year, when his hospital brought in another from neighboring Moldova.
“I live in hope that our resident doctors will change their mind and stay in smaller hospitals, too,” Vlad said.
Turning point
Romania is taking steps to address the issues. Pay has risen significantly, although it still does not measure up to western standards. The net average monthly wage for the healthcare system stood at 2,609 lei ($606) at the end of 2016, nearly double what it was three years ago.
In 2016, the health ministry created a multi-year plan for the medical profession, including a simpler recruitment process, education reform, better promotion opportunities, and subsidies for physicians willing to move to remote villages.
The strategy has yet to be approved by the two-month-old cabinet of Social Democrat Prime Minister Sorin Grindeanu.
“Measures to improve healthcare are in place, but the system suffers from inefficiencies, limited accessibility and corruption,” the European Commission said last month.
Yet not all doctors shy away from remote areas. From the village of Tureni, Andreea Kis has been serving as a family doctor for five villages for nearly five years.
“I chose to be a family doctor because this is compatible with family life,” said Kis, a mother of two. “People in the villages preserve their humanity better.”
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For the first time, doctors have tied infection with the Zika virus to possible new heart problems in adults.
The evidence so far is only in eight people in Venezuela, and is not enough to prove a link. It’s also too soon to know how often this might be happening. The biggest trouble the mosquito-borne virus has been causing is for pregnant women and their fetuses.
“I think as awareness increases, the cases will start to show up more,” said Dr. Karina Gonzalez Carta, a Mayo Clinic research fellow working in Venezuela who investigated the heart cases.
She discussed them on an American College of Cardiology press call, ahead of a presentation Saturday at the group’s meeting in Washington.
Many people infected with Zika will have no or only mild symptoms, such as fever, aches, an itchy rash or red eyes. But the virus has caused an epidemic of birth defects in the Caribbean and South America, notably babies with abnormally small heads and brains.
A report last June in the International Journal of Cardiology describes heart problems that have been seen from other viruses spread by mosquitoes, such as West Nile and ones that cause yellow fever, dengue fever and chikungunya.
Doctors have been watching for the same from Zika, and “we were surprised at the severity of the findings” in the Venezuela cases, Carta said.
She studied nine patients, ages 30 to 64, treated at the Institute of Tropical Medicine in Caracas who developed heart symptoms such as palpitations, shortness of breath and fatigue an average of 10 days after typical Zika symptoms began.
Only one had any prior heart-related problem – high blood pressure that was under control with medications – and all had lab tests confirming Zika infection. They were given extensive heart tests and were studied for an average of six months, starting last July.
Eight of the nine developed a dangerous heart rhythm problem, and six of the nine developed heart failure, which occurs when a weakened heart can’t pump enough blood.
Doctors don’t know if these problems will be permanent. So far, they haven’t gone away although medicines have improved how patients feel.
“This is the first time we’ve considered that cardiovascular disease may be associated with Zika,” and people who travel to or live in places where Zika is spreading need to watch for possible symptoms, said Dr. Martha Gulati, cardiology chief at the University of Arizona-Phoenix who is familiar with the results.
Zika infections have been reported in more than 5,000 people in the United States, mostly travelers. After a big outbreak in Brazil in 2015, Zika spread throughout Latin America, the Caribbean and elsewhere. The virus also spread locally in parts of southern Florida and Texas last year.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has warned pregnant women to avoid travel to Zika zones and to use bug spray and other measures to prevent bites.
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When humans finally land on Mars one of the first dishes made of locally grown vegetables may be the universally popular French fries.
Researchers from the International Potato Center and the University of Engineering and Technology in Lima, Peru, say potatoes could grow in Martian soil, if they are given certain nutrients and water.
Researchers successfully grew potatoes in soil from the Pampas de La Joya desert in Peru, which they say is the closest chemically to the dry Martian soil.
Helped by scientists from NASA Ames Research Center, they built a special chamber closely mimicking the Martian temperature, air pressure, and oxygen and carbon dioxide levels.
The most promising results have come from a variety of potato specially bred for extreme soil and climate conditions on Earth.
The new experiments were started on February 14 and can be viewed on potatoes.space/mars.
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Senior citizens who move to Charlestown Retirement Community in Catonsville, Maryland, have a chance to start new careers in television. No matter what they did before retiring, they’re encouraged to participate in creating a range of programs broadcast on channel 972, a closed circuit 24-hour TV station. Their active participation benefits them and their community.
Accepting aging
Retired physician Stephen Schimpff is one of the residents-turned-TV-stars at Charlestown. He hosts two shows, Megatrends in Medicine and Aging Gracefully. Both deal with nutrition and lifestyle.
“It’s not giving medical advice on a problem,” he said. “I clearly avoid doing that. I say to people, if you have a problem go to the health center and see your doctor. But we deal with issues about aging. How our bodies age, the actual physiology of it, some of the mechanisms, and how we can affect that. We can affect it with our lifestyle. How can we increase the quality of food and reduce stress? What type of exercise do we really need? We’ve been also asked about supplements, should we be taking vitamins?”
Schimpff says the biggest issue about aging for most people is accepting it.
“If I go look in a mirror, I see a person who is older than I think I am. I say, ‘Gosh, when did he get older?’ because I don’t feel old. It is a thing about accepting, but not in a negative way, in a very positive way. We’re all getting older, everyone does. How can we make the best use of that time?”
Seeing themselves on TV
Community TV manager Tom Moore says viewers like Schimpff’s shows because they see themselves in it. That’s also the case with the other shows hosted by residents.
“When I have residents involved in TV production,” he said, “it truly becomes public TV because they can voice things from their perspective, which myself and the staff may not be able to adequately do.”
Residents participate in reading announcement and the daily newscasts. They are creating shows that cover a wide variety of topics, from history and careers to fitness and hobbies.
“We have shows that talk about residents and their pets,” Moore said. “We can easily highlight residents’ pets, but we also want to talk about how to take care of a pet as you get older, both the pet and ourselves, to take care of a pet while living in a community with 2,000 people. We do a program that looks at people’s apartments. People love to go behind the doors of other people’s homes and see what’s in there. We have programs where we interview our residents and staff. We do garden tours because the residents have their own gardens here, whether it’s outside of their patios of their apartments. Or we have a public space where you can grow gardens, where if you want to grow vegetables, you can do that. So we tour those gardens with that resident and show people what the gardens look like and give them some gardening tips also.”
Exploring the world
The environment at Charlestown invites new show ideas.
“We’re open to almost everything,” Moore said. “So if a resident comes to me and says, ‘You should do a program about something,’ I will often say, ‘Will you help me with that?’”
That’s what happened when Eugenia High, a former social worker, moved to the community a couple of years ago.
“I told him that travel is my passion,” she said. “That’s when he said, ‘Well, maybe you might want to use a video camera to record some of your trips and you could share it with other residents here.’”
So she learned to use a video camera. On each trip, High explores on a certain theme. On her recent trip to Iceland, for example, she focused on nature, while in Mongolia, she was attracted to culture and traditions.
“We went to one place in Iceland where the tectonic plates come together. And we were able to look down that reef and it was scary. In Mongolia, we visited a school or a cultural center where they teach children about traditional values and culture, like dancing and playing music on traditional instruments.”
High is now preparing to host another show that’s also about traveling.
“What I will be doing is interviewing residents who have gone on different trips, and I’ll be asking them questions about maybe why they chose that trip? What happened during the trip?”
Active retirement
Shortly after the Charlestown Retirement Community was founded in 1983, the directors launched the closed circuit TV station, hoping to connect residents. The television channel has evolved over the years and became more popular when residents started to volunteer to help with its programming. The community’s executive director, Clara Parker, says Channel 972 reflects what active retirement can be.
“Retirement living here is not a place where you come and be taken care of, it’s a place to come and live and thrive,” Parker said. “We do have residents who are homebound and can’t get out. So the TV is a way for them to be part of the community, to engage with their neighbors, to experience from a peer’s perspective what’s going on and it makes it relatable for them.”
That’s how Channel 972 keeps the community connected and helps the residents stay active and creative.
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The Earth’s atmosphere, and magnetic fields protect us from the damaging, and potentially deadly effects of gamma rays. But in space, and in some earthly disaster scenarios like a nuclear meltdown, it takes several feet of concrete or lead to keep us safe. But a new vest of flexible light material might solve the gamma ray problem as we try to figure out ways to set up shop on the Moon, Mars, and beyond. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Researchers are developing a blood test that can tell not only whether someone has cancer, but in what organ the tumors are lurking. The test could mean more prompt, potentially life-saving treatment for patients.
Researchers describe their blood test as a kind of dual authentication process. It is able to detect the presence of dying tumor cells in blood as well as tissue signatures, to signal to clinicians which organ is affected by the cancer.
There already are tests that screen for traces of DNA released by dying cancer cells. Such blood tests show promise in the treatment of patients to see how well anti-cancer therapies are working.
But researchers at the University of California, San Diego discovered a new clue, using organ-specific DNA signatures, that leads them to the particular organ that is affected.
The finding makes the new blood test potentially useful as a screening tool in people suspected of having cancer.
UC-San Diego bioengineering professor Kun Zhang is senior author of a paper in Nature Genetics about the experimental test.
“So when you try to do these kinds of early screening or early detection [tests], these people are healthy. So if you take a blood draw and then you do a test, and you find some signature of cancer, that is not enough because you do not know what to do next,” Zhang said. “And so, in this case, we developed a method where we can say whether there is a cancer growing in the body and if the answer is ‘Yes,’ we can also say something about where does it grow.”
The test screens for a DNA signature called a CpG methylation haplotype, which is unique for each tissue in the body.
When a cancer grows in an organ, it competes with healthy tissue for nutrients and space, killing off healthy cells, which release their DNA into the bloodstream.
The haplotype signatures, identified by the blood test, could tell doctors what cells are being destroyed, and therefore what organ is being invaded by cancer. Zhang says knowing a tumor’s location is especially crucial for early detection and treatment.
Researchers created a database of complete CpG methylation patterns for 10 different normal tissues: the lungs, liver, intestine, colon, brain, pancreas, spleen, stomach, kidney and blood. To put together the genetic marker database, the investigators also analyzed tumor and blood samples of cancer patients.
They screened the blood samples of 59 patients with lung or colorectal cancer, comparing those findings to people without cancer.
“It could be potentially used as a screening test,” Zhang said. “So I think that is the real potential. We need to do a few more rigorous clinical observations before we can get to that point.”
Zhang envisions eventually using the blood test to look for markers of cancer as part of routine blood work.
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Gorging on bacon, skimping on nuts? These are among food habits that new research links with deaths from heart disease, strokes and diabetes.
Overeating or not eating enough of 10 specific foods and nutrients contributes to nearly half of U.S. deaths from these causes, the study suggests.
”Good” foods that were undereaten are nuts and seeds; seafood rich in omega-3 fats, including salmon and sardines; fruits and vegetables; and whole grains.
”Bad” foods or nutrients that were overeaten include salt and salty foods; processed meats including bacon, bologna and hot dogs; red meat including steaks and hamburgers; and sugary drinks.
The research is based on U.S. government data showing there were about 700,000 deaths in 2012 from heart disease, strokes and diabetes, and on an analysis of national health surveys that asked participants about their eating habits. Most didn’t eat the recommended amounts of the foods studied.
The 10 ingredients combined contributed to about 45 percent of those deaths, according to the study.
More detail on risks, benefits
It may sound like a familiar attack on the typical American diet, and the research echoes previous studies on the benefits of heart-healthy eating. But the study goes into more detail on specific foods and their risks or benefits, said lead author Renata Micha, a public health researcher and nutritionist at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts.
The results were published Tuesday in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
Micha said the foods and nutrients were singled out because of research linking them with the causes of death studied. For example, studies have shown that excess salt can increase blood pressure, putting stress on arteries and the heart. Nuts contain healthy fats that can improve cholesterol levels, while bacon and other processed meats contain saturated fats that can raise levels of unhealthy LDL cholesterol.
In the study, too much salt was the biggest problem, linked with nearly 10 percent of the deaths. Overeating processed meats and undereating nuts and seeds and seafood each were linked with about 8 percent of the deaths.
The Food and Drug Administration’s recent voluntary sodium reduction guidelines for makers of processed foods is a step in the right direction, as are taxes that some U.S. cities have imposed on sugar-sweetened beverages, Micha said.
A journal editorial said public health policies targeting unhealthy eating could help prevent some deaths, while noting that the study didn’t constitute solid proof that ”suboptimal” diets were deadly.
The study’s recommended amounts, based on U.S. government guidelines, nutrition experts’ advice, and amounts found to be beneficial or harmful in previous research:
‘Good’ ingredients
— Fruits: 3 average-sized fruits daily
— Vegetables: 2 cups cooked or 4 cups raw vegetables daily
— Nuts/seeds: 5 1-ounce servings per week — about 20 nuts per serving
— Whole grains: 2½ daily servings
— Polyunsaturated fats, found in many vegetable oils: 11 percent of daily calories
— Seafood: about 8 ounces weekly
‘Bad’ ingredients
— Red meat: 1 serving weekly — 1 medium steak or the equivalent
— Processed meat: None recommended
— Sugary drinks: None recommended
— Salt: 2,000 milligrams daily — just under a teaspoon.
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Researchers at New York University’s School of Medicine found that diabetes increased the risk of cancer death among Asians by an average of 26 percent, a statistic similar in the West.
Data for the new study drew on an analysis of 770,000 people with Type 2 diabetes throughout East and South Asia. Diabetics were followed for an average of 13 years to see if they developed cancer and what types. During that time more than 37,300 cancer deaths were identified.
Yu Chen, an epidemiology professor at the NYU School of Medicine’s Department of Population Health who was the study’s lead author, says Asians with Type 2 diabetes are more likely to be diagnosed with rarer cancers than Westerners, including cancers of the liver, thyroid and kidney which was double the risk compared to non-diabetics in Asia.
There was also a more than two and a half times increased risk of cancer of the endometrium and a 1.7 times higher risk of breast cancer among diabetic Asians compared to those who were not diabetic.
The number of cancers of the gallbladder and bile ducts in Asia were comparable to those in the West, according to Chen. Those sites are closer in the body to the pancreas, where insulin is made.
Chen thinks there may be several mechanisms at work, but data suggests that insulin may in some way stimulate the growth of cancer.
“Patients with diabetes that have high levels of insulin, some cancers are very sensitive to insulin, so it may promote the tumor growing,” she said.
The findings were published in the journal Diabetologia.
Chen said the study was undertaken because there’s been little research on an association between diabetes and cancer in Asia.
She said the research suggests Type 2 diabetes should be added to the list of cancer risk factors, along with diet and cigarette smoking.
“Cancer prevention needs to take into account for diabetes the lifestyles related to diabetes – [which] may reduce the risk of diabetes and also cancer,” she said.
Chen suggested that diabetics should receive more cancer screenings, in addition to medical interventions to reduce the risk of diabetes overall.
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Brazil’s federal environmental agency, Ibama, launched on Tuesday a centralized database to track timber from source to sale, a vital step in the fight against illegal logging in the Amazon.
The system, known as Sinaflor, allows individual trees to be electronically tagged and monitored as they are cut down and pass through the supply chain, with regulators able to check the database via their cell phones while on patrol.
With built-in satellite mapping, timber being sold as legal can be checked against the exact area of licensed commercial production it is claimed to originate from.
The system marks a step change from the current system, which environmentalists criticize as being open to fraud and human error as databases are isolated, poorly managed and cannot be easily accessed to verify documentation attached to timber.
“The new system offers a much more comprehensive process of control,” Suely Araújo, president of Ibama, said in an interview in her office in Brasilia. “What’s not in Sinaflor will be illegal timber.”
The system is the result of four years of work and was envisioned under the forest code passed into law in 2012, which gave the federal government power to create and manage a national system to regulate the supply chain of timber.
Illegal logging is one of the greatest threats to the preservation of the Amazon. In the year until July 2016, Amazonian rainforest six times the size of Los Angeles was cut down.
That was the second rise in two years, ending a 10-year period in which deforestation was dramatically reduced. Brazil’s Environment Ministry, under which Ibama falls, has vowed to reverse the trend.
Sinaflor has already been piloted in the state of Roraima and is being introduced this week in Rondonia. The states are legally obliged to use the system, and Araújo expects to have it up and running across the country by the end of the year.
“When we manage to implement it in the whole country, I think it will be a step change in terms of control,” Araújo said.
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Minor floods caused by rising sea levels may end up costing U.S. coastal communities as much money and resources as major hurricane disasters, U.S. scientists said.
As climate change causes sea levels to rise, such “nuisance flooding” is expected to become more frequent and costly for cities like Washington, San Francisco, Boston and Miami, researchers said.
Over the last 20 years, Washington has endured more than 94 hours a year of nuisance flooding. By 2050, the capital could see as many as 700 hours of flooding a year, the scientists estimated in a study published in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future.
“Since these events are not extreme, they don’t get a lot of attention,” said Amir AghaKouchak, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of California-Irvine and co-author of the study.
Inconvenience to public
The National Ocean Service defines nuisance flooding as “flooding that leads to public inconveniences such as road closures” but rarely causes death or injury. Such floods can overwhelm storm drains, slowly degenerate infrastructure and strain city resources.
Roads and sidewalks were not built to be under saltwater for hours on end, and cities usually have to close roads and send in trucks to clean them up, the scientists said.
“They definitely can’t withstand this,” said lead author Hamed Moftakhari, also of UC-Irvine. And the damage leads to “long, drawn-out costs,” he added.
In Boston specifically, “king tides” overwhelm walkways and roads several times a year. The East Coast city is predicted to see up to 100 hours of such nuisance flooding a year by 2030, the UC-Irvine scientists said.
Residents have already noticed the semifrequent inconvenience, according to Mia Goldwasser, Boston’s climate preparedness program manager.
“There are always people sending pictures to the city, saying, ‘Look at all the flooding happening with very little rain,’ ” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in a telephone interview this week. The city has already noted several waterfront hot spots where “it’s going to be worse [in the future] if there’s already flooding.”
More awareness
The flooding has raised awareness among the general public to the everyday realities of climate change, Goldwasser added: “It’s an inconvenience to people when they’re walking and driving and biking, moving around their neighborhood.”
The scientists are using the data as a “call to action” for coastal cities to examine the issue and decide on the best ways to respond to rising sea levels.
“We believe that if you have information on the type of hazard, the potential cost, then you can plan,” said AghaKouchak.
Boston has begun to come up with ideas to mitigate the effects of rising seas on infrastructure, which include floodproofing properties and potentially building a massive seawall.
Some roads and buildings may become corroded by nuisance floods, while others could end up completely under water, Goldwasser said.
“There’s still a lot that we don’t know, that we’re trying to figure out,” she said. “What are the most effective solutions? … How do we actually implement them?”
As for the total cost of the floods over the next few decades, Goldwasser said that’s still to be determined, though it’s expected to be “pretty significant.”
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