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Iran protests trigger solidarity rallies in US, Europe

October 23, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

WASHINGTON (AP) — Chanting crowds marched in the streets of Berlin, Washington DC and Los Angeles on Saturday in a show of international support for demonstrators facing a violent government crackdown in Iran, sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in the custody of that country’s morality police.

On the U.S. National Mall, thousands of women and men of all ages — wearing green, white and red, the colors of the Iran flag — shouted in rhythm. “Be scared. Be scared. We are one in this,” demonstrators yelled, before marching to the White House. “Say her name! Mahsa!”

The demonstrations, put together by grassroots organizers from around the United States, drew Iranians from across the Washington D.C. area, with some travelling down from Toronto to join the crowd.

In Los Angeles, home to the biggest population of Iranians outside of Iran, a throng of protesters formed a slow-moving procession along blocks of a closed downtown street. They chanted for the fall of Iran’s government and waved hundreds of Iranian flags that turned the horizon into a undulating wave of red, white and green.

“We want freedom,” they thundered.

Shooka Scharm, an attorney who was born in the U.S. after her parents fled the Iranian revolution, was wearing a T-shirt with the slogan “Women, Life, Freedom” in English and Farsi. In Iran “women are like a second-class citizen and they are sick of it,” Scharm said.

Iran’s nationwide antigovernment protest movement first focused on the country’s mandatory hijab covering for women following Amiri’s death on Sept. 16. The demonstrations there have since transformed into the greatest challenge to the Islamic Republic since the 2009 Green Movement over disputed elections. In Tehran on Saturday, more antigovernment protests took place at several universities.

Iran’s security forces have dispersed gatherings in that country with live ammunition and tear gas, killing over 200 people, including teenage girls, according to rights groups.

The Biden administration has said it condemns the brutality and repression against the citizens of Iran and that it will look for ways to impose more sanctions against the Iranian government if the violence continues.

Between chants, protesters in D.C. broke into song, singing traditional Persian music about life and freedom — all written after the revolution in 1979 brought religious fundamentalists to power in Iran. They sang one in particular in unison — “Baraye,” meaning because of, which has become the unofficial anthem of the Iran protests. The artist of that song, Shervin Hajipour, was arrested shortly after posting the song to his Instagram in late September. It accrued more than 40 million views.

“Because of women, life, freedom,” protesters sang, echoing a popular protest chant: “Azadi” — Freedom.

The movement in Iran is rooted in the same issues as in the U.S. and around the globe, said protester Samin Aayanifard, 28, who left Iran three years ago. “It’s forced hijab in Iran and here in America, after 50 years, women’s bodies are under control,” said Aayanifard, who drove from East Lansing, Michigan to join the D.C. march. She referred to rollbacks of abortion laws in the United States. “It’s about control over women’s bodies.”

Several weeks of Saturday solidarity rallies in the U.S. capital have drawn growing crowds.

In Berlin, a crowd estimated by German police at several tens of thousands turned out to show solidarity for the women and activists leading the movement for the past few weeks in Iran. The protests in Germany’s capital, organized by the Woman(asterisk) Life Freedom Collective, began at the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten park and continued as a march through central Berlin.

Some demonstrators there said they had come from elsewhere in Germany and other European countries to show their support.

“It is so important for us to be here, to be the voice of the people of Iran, who are killed on the streets,” said Shakib Lolo, who is from Iran but lives in the Netherlands. “And this is not a protest anymore, this is a revolution, in Iran. And the people of the world have to see it.”

___

Blood reported from Los Angeles.

Follow AP’s coverage of Iran at: https://apnews.com/hub/iran

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Health

Hands of People With Diabetes More Often Affected by Trigger Finger

October 22, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Summary: Trigger finger, a condition in which the fingers get locked into a bent position and become difficult to straighten, is more common in those with diabetes than in the general population. High blood sugar levels increase the risk of developing trigger finger, researchers say.

Source: Lund University

Locked fingers, known as trigger finger, are more common among people with diabetes than in the general population. A study led by Lund University in Sweden shows that the risk of being affected increases in the case of high blood sugar. The study has been published in Diabetes Care.

Trigger finger means that one or more fingers, often the ring finger or thumb, ends up in a bent position that is difficult to straighten out. It is due to the thickening of tendons, which bend the finger, and their connective tissue sheath, which means that the finger becomes fixed in a bent position towards the palm. It is a painful condition that can often be treated with cortisone injections, but sometimes requires surgery.

“At the hand surgery clinic, we have noted for a long time that people with diabetes, both type 1 and type 2, are more often affected by trigger finger. Over 20 percent of those who require surgery for this condition are patients who have, or will develop, diabetes,” says Mattias Rydberg, doctoral student at Lund University, resident physician at Skåne University Hospital and first author of the study.

To study whether high blood sugar (blood sugar dysregulation) increases the risk of trigger finger, the researchers examined two registers: Region Skåne’s healthcare database, which includes all diagnoses, and the Swedish national diabetes register. Between 1 and 1.5 percent of the population are affected by trigger finger, but the diagnosis arises among 10-15 percent of those who have diabetes, and the phenomenon appears most in the group with type 1 diabetes.

The newly published study strengthens the pattern of blood sugar being a crucial factor for an increased risk of being affected by trigger finger. High blood sugar increased the risk of being affected by trigger finger among both men and women in the groups with type 1 diabetes and type 2 diabetes.

Blood sugar is measured in HbA1C, also referred to as long-term blood sugar, and when regulated, is under 48. The group of men with the worst regulated blood sugar (HbA1C > 64) had up to 5 times as high a risk of being affected than men with well-regulated (HbA1< 48) blood sugar.

“However, we can’t know for certain if any of the groups seek healthcare more often than others which could be a factor that affects the results,” says Mattias Rydberg.

The mechanism, or mechanisms, behind the increased risk are unknown, but there are theories that high blood sugar makes both the flexor tendons and their connective tissue sheaths thicker, thus causing them to lock more easily. It was previously known that those with unregulated blood sugar are more prone to nerve entrapments in the hand.

“It is important to draw attention to the complications from diabetes and how they can arise in order to discover them early, which enables faster treatment and thus a better outcome.

The newly published study strengthens the pattern of blood sugar being a crucial factor for an increased risk of being affected by trigger finger. Image is in the public domain

“In addition to nerve compressions and trigger finger, there may also be a link with thickening of the connective tissue in the palm (Dupuytren’s contracture), impairment of joint movement and the risk of arthritis at the base of the thumb. The mechanisms behind these complications probably differ in the case of diabetes.

“The results of this study are interesting, as we can show that blood sugar dysregulation has a connection with the development of trigger finger,” says Lars B. Dahlin, professor at Lund University and consultant in hand surgery at Skåne University Hospital.

The next step in the research will be to chart how effective it is to operate on patients with diabetes who are affected by trigger finger.

“From our experience at the clinic, surgery goes well and there are few complications, but it takes a little longer for patients with type 1 and type 2 diabetes to regain full movement and function. We want to investigate this hypothesis further. Another interesting idea is to see if trigger finger could be a warning signal for type 2 diabetes.

“It is far from all who are affected by trigger finger that have diabetes, but it would be interesting to see if by using modern registers we can discover those who are in the risk zone for developing diabetes,” concludes Mattias Rydberg.

About this diabetes research news

Author: Lotte Billing
Source: Lund University
Contact: Lotte Billing – Lund University
Image: The image is in the public domain

Original Research: Closed access.
“High HbA1c Levels Are Associated With Development of Trigger Finger in Type 1 and Type 2 Diabetes: An Observational Register-Based Study From Sweden” by Mattias Rydberg et al. Diabetes Care

Abstract

Does covid trigger diabetes in children?

October 21, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Leah Wyckoff, a stay-at-home mom of four from West Chester, Ohio, knew there was something seriously wrong with her 8-year-old son Sam when her daughters—ages 7, 10, and 11—alerted her that his face looked scary.

He had been sick for about a day and vomiting frequently; the pediatrician had told her there was a stomach bug going around. Wyckoff thought he was probably just dehydrated. But when she went to look at him, she was shocked. He had dark circles under his eyes, and his mouth was so dry his lips kept sticking to his gums. “He looked like he had lost 10 pounds in like hours. I thought he was disappearing in front of my eyes,” she says.

A trip to the emergency room explained what was happening. Sam had severe diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA), a life-threatening condition where the body isn’t able to use sugar for energy, and starts breaking down fat at too fast a pace, causing the blood to become acidic. He had lost 15% of his body weight, and was quickly deteriorating.

“We think your son has Type 1 diabetes,” the doctors told Wyckoff and her husband. This was surprising, as he didn’t have any of the classic onset symptoms such as excessive urination or thirst, but the diagnosis was clear. Sam was admitted to the intensive care unit to be stabilized—and put in isolation.

At the hospital, he had also tested positive for covid.

The two things might be coincidental, the doctors told Wyckoff. Or they might not be. “They explained in the hospital that most likely something in his genetic makeup means he was more predisposed to developing Type 1 [diabetes] and covid was what brought the onset,” she says. “They said there are a couple of different viruses that can bring the onset and covid happens to be one of them.”

Sam Wyckoff isn’t the only child to be diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the same time as, or shortly after, covid. In fact, Type 1 diabetes is could be up to 77% more likely in children who have had covid, according to some preliminary studies.

Covid as a possible trigger of Type 1 diabetes

Upticks of diabetes diagnoses in coincidence with covid-19 have been registered by several studies. A study done by the University of California, San Diego, found that from March 2020 and March 2021, 57% more children were admitted into the hospital with a diagnosis of Type 1 diabetes than were expected based on data from the previous years. Data analysis from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), found an increased risk—ranging from 31% to 166% higher, depending on the body of data analyzed—of Type 1 diabetes diagnosis in patients under 18, 30 days after a covid infection. In Germany, the new diagnoses of Type 1 diabetes in children and adolescents increased significantly in 2020 and 2021, and studies from Norway and Finland have arrived at similar findings.

Most of this research is done through data analysis of hospitalization numbers and diagnoses, and is far from establishing any causation link between covid and diabetes. Many things could explain the numbers, says Sharon Saydah, a senior scientist at the CDC who worked on the diabetes study. It could be that covid triggers an autoimmune response that leads to diabetes; perhaps children who were predisposed to diabetes had more severe cases of covid, and were diagnosed with diabetes only after; or parents might be more vigilant with children who had covid, and quicker to recognize the signs of diabetes.

Wyckoff’s other children were tested for the four autoantibodies associated with Type 1 diabetes. Her eldest daughter, Audrey, was positive for all of them, and while she doesn’t have full-fledged diabetes yet, she is all but sure to develop it, making theirs one of the rare families in which more than one member has Type 1 diabetes. This points to the complicated nature of autoimmune diseases, and the roles that unrelated viruses may play in triggering their onset. The Epstein-Barr virus is believed to be the possible trigger of autoimmune conditions such as lupus and multiple sclerosis, and even the flu has been associated with the onset of Type 1 diabetes.

Whatever the cause, says Saydah, the association between covid and diabetes is important enough to demand further research to understand what is happening, and why.

How does diabetes work?

Diabetes is a disease in which the body doesn’t produce the hormone insulin, or does not respond to it appropriately. This results in a failure to absorb and use carbohydrates as energy, and in elevated levels of glucose in the blood. There are two types of diabetes. Type 1 is a condition in which the pancreas doesn’t have the ability to produce sufficient insulin for the metabolization of sugars. It is rare and chronic, managed through administration of synthetic insulin. It is overwhelmingly diagnosed in childhood, and accounts for almost all of the of diabetes diagnoses in children under age 10. Type1 diabetes is an organ-specific autoimmune disease, in which autoantibodies attack pancreatic beta cells, hindering their ability to produce insulin.

Type 2 diabetes happens when the body does not respond properly to insulin. It is a metabolic condition typically linked to lifestyle and diet, and it is usually diagnosed during or after adolescence. It’s very common—an estimated 10% of Americans have Type 2 diabetes, and one-in-three have pre-diabetes. The onset of Type 2 diabetes is usually slower than in Type 1, and insulin isn’t always needed as some cases can be managed with diet and lifestyle changes. In the vast majority of cases, Type 1 diabetes is diagnosed by age 10, while adult-onset diabetes is almost exclusively Type 2. In adolescence, diagnosing whether diabetes is Type 1 or 2 can be more challenging.

Studies have shown an increase in Type 2 diabetes in connection with covid, too. A study by the Colorado Children’s Hospital found a dramatic increase in youth-onset (under 21), Type 2 diabetes in 2020, about double the number they would ordinarily see. A broader review of data from 24 facilities confirmed it: there was a 77% increase in cases of Type 2 diabetes among youth (8- to 21-years-old) during the first year of pandemic.

Diabetes could be a long covid outcome

While increases in Type 2 diabetes diagnoses might be driven by lifestyle factors—the result of a more sedentary lifestyle during lockdowns, or a poorer diet—the increase in Type 1 diabetes suggests covid might be triggering an autoimmune response. “It could be due to the effects of the [covid] infection directly on organ systems involved in diabetes risk. It might be that covid is leading to diabetes through, say, direct attack on pancreatic cells,” says Saydah.

“Type 1 diabetes is thought to be an autoimmune disease and prior infections could trigger it, so we were not necessarily shocked that it would be increased following covid,” says, a professor of medicine at Case Western Reserve University and co-author of an electronic health data study that found an increase in the disease of nearly 80% among children under 10 who had covid. “However, it was increased even above other respiratory infections—so clearly, covid had had some kind of an association.”

The link between covid and Type 1 diabetes might be found in the autoimmune response. (In the absence of data on the type of diabetes, Davis’s research team picked the child’s age as an imperfect, but functional proxy for the type of diabetes, as most diagnoses before 10 years old are of Type 1.) “There are a lot of reports of increased autoimmune antibodies in patients who have covid, and since Type1 diabetes is thought to be an autoimmune disease, we thought that this might well provide a risk factor,” says Davis.

In a way, diabetes might fall into the still growing list of long-term consequences of covid. Autoimmune antibodies have been found in long covid patients, for instance, although the attack on pancreatic beta cells (and consequent diabetes) is particularly concerning because they don’t regenerate themselves like many other body cells.

What can parents do?

“This could be a big issue and it could be a driving health problem as the pandemic wears on,” says Davis, adding that there are many new aspects of the long tail of covid we are still struggling to understand.

In this case, follow-up studies are needed to tease out whether there is, in fact, a causal link between covid and Type 1 diabetes, and how it works—though it might take time before those questions are answered. “Those are very difficult studies and require a long-term commitment both on the part of the investigating physicians and on the part of the family,” says Davis. Another challenge, says Saydah, is finding a good control group, because Type 1 diabetes is a rare condition, and it’s difficult to predict what children will develop it, and then compare their situation with that of children who have had covid.

While scientists continue to investigate the link, parents and caregivers can take action, starting with vaccinating children to protect them from the most severe consequences of covid including, potentially, diabetes. “It is better to prevent the disease and everything that comes afterwards […] Vaccination does very well at that,” says Davis.”I can tell you that my grandchildren are all vaccinated.” Sam Wyckoff was in between his two doses of vaccine when he got covid, and it’s likely he wouldn’t have been infected had he completed the course. Yet so far, the uptake of covid vaccination in children has been abysmal: Just above 30% of children between ages 5 and 11 are vaccinated, and less than 10% of children under 5 have received at least one dose of vaccine.

Further, parents should monitor their children, and be especially vigilant in the weeks and months after they have had covid, even if vaccinated. Increased thirst and frequent urination, weight loss, and extreme fatigue can be signs of diabetes, and an early diagnosis helps avoid the risk of DKA, which can be deadly. “Parents of children who had covid should be aware of the different signs and symptoms of diabetes, so they can make sure that they get the care that they need,” says Saydah.

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Entertainment

Luckiest Girl Alive viewers urge Netflix to add trigger warning to Mila Kunis film

October 10, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Netflix users are issuing warnings for those planning to watch Luckiest Girl Alive.

The new film, which is based on the 2015 novel by Jessica Knoll, follows Mila Kunis’ lead character who is faced with a past trauma related to a horrifying high school shooting.

Those who have watched the 15-certificate film since its release on Friday (7 October) are alerting their Twitter followers to the fact that the film features “harrowing” scenes many might find triggering.

Netflix briefly mentions that Luckiest Girl Alive features “sexual violence” and “threat” at the top of the screen when the film starts – but many users believe this is not enough, and are saying it should be made clearer that the film features “intense scenes of sexual assault”.

“Netflix really dropped the ball on not adding a giant trigger warning for Luckiest Girl Alive,” one viewer wrote.

Another subscriber added: “Heads up to anyone who wants to watch Luckiest Girl Alive on Netflix. The movie is triggering, heavy and the sexual violence scenes are graphic. I hate it when they do this coz there was no trigger warning.”

“I was bamboozled by Netflix’s description of Luckiest Girl Alive,” an additional user stated, writing; “No trigger warning, no heads up, no nothing.”

Netflix has faced similar controversy before, with the film All the Bright Places.

Also, upon the release of 13 Reasons Why in March 2017, the series sparked a debate about whether it deals with the subject of teen suicide tactfully and was criticised heavily by mental health organisations

Mila Kunis in ‘Luckiest Girl Alive’

(Netflix)

It was reported at the time that schools were issuing letters to parents warning them about the drama, which led to the show’s producers defending their decision to include the controversial scene.

Luckiest Girl Alive, which co-stars Connie Britton, Scoot McNairy and Finn Wittrock, is available to stream on Netflix now.

The Independent has contacted Netflix for comment.

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World

Gas leaks in Russian pipelines to Europe trigger sabotage probe

September 27, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Polish PM blames sabotage, without citing evidence
Russia say leaks threaten Europe’s energy security
Footage shows gas bubbles churning sea surface
Operator says damage to Nord Stream 1 ‘unprecedented’
Crisis over Russian gas has sent prices soaring

STOCKHOLM/COPENHAGEN, Sept 27 (Reuters) – Europe was investigating major leaks in two Russian pipelines that spewed gas into the Baltic Sea on Tuesday as Sweden launched a preliminary probe into possible sabotage to infrastructure at the centre of an energy standoff.

But it remained far from clear who might be behind any foul play, if proven, on the Nord Stream pipelines that Russia and European partners spent billions of dollars building.

“We have established a report and the crime classification is gross sabotage,” a Swedish national police spokesperson said.

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Poland’s prime minister blamed sabotage for the leaks, without citing evidence. The Danish premier said it could not be ruled out.

Russia, which slashed gas deliveries to Europe after the West imposed sanctions over Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, also said sabotage was a possibility and that the leaks undermined the continent’s energy security.

A senior Ukrainian official, meanwhile, called the incident a Russian attack to destabilise Europe, without giving proof.

“We see clearly that it’s an act of sabotage, related to the next step of escalation of the situation in Ukraine,” Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki said at the opening of a new pipeline between Norway and Poland.

Seismologists in Denmark and Sweden registered powerful blasts in the vicinity of the leaks on Monday, Sweden’s National Seismology Centre told public broadcaster SVT. German geological research centre GFZ also said a seismograph on the Danish island of Bornholm had twice recorded spikes on Monday.

The Nord Stream pipelines have been flashpoints in an escalating energy war between capitals in Europe and Moscow that has damaged major Western economies, sent gas prices soaring and sparked a hunt for alternative supplies.

Denmark’s armed forces on Tuesday released a video showing bubbles boiling up to the surface of the sea. The largest gas leak had caused a surface disturbance of well over 1 km (0.6 mile) in diameter, the armed forces said. read more

Sweden’s Maritime Authority issued a warning about two leaks in the Nord Stream 1 pipeline the day after a leak on the nearby Nord Stream 2 pipeline was discovered that prompted Denmark to restrict shipping and impose a small no fly zone.

European leaders and Moscow say they can not rule out sabotage. Map of Nord Stream pipelines and locations of reported leaks

‘RISK OF EXPLOSIONS’

The leaks were very large and it could take perhaps a week for gas to stop draining out of the Nord Stream 2 pipeline, the head of Denmark’s Energy Agency Kristoffer Bottzauw said.

Ships could lose buoyancy if they entered the area.

“The sea surface is full of methane, which means there is an increased risk of explosions in the area,” Bottzauw said.

Gas bubbles from the Nord Stream 2 leak reaching surface of the Baltic Sea in the area shows disturbance of well over one kilometre diameter near Bornholm, Denmark, September 27, 2022. Danish Defence Command/Handout via REUTERS

Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen said sabotage could not be ruled out. “We are talking about three leaks with some distance between them, and that’s why it is hard to imagine that it is a coincidence,” she said.

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov called it “very concerning news. Indeed, we are talking about some damage of an unclear nature to the pipeline in Denmark’s economic zone.” He said it affected the continent’s energy security.

Neither pipeline was pumping gas to Europe at the time the leaks were found amid the dispute over the war in Ukraine, but the incidents will scupper any remaining expectations that Europe could receive gas via Nord Stream 1 before winter.

Operator Nord Stream said the damage was “unprecedented”.

Both pipelines contained gas although they were not in operation.

Gazprom (GAZP.MM), the Kremlin-controlled company with a monopoly on Russian gas exports by pipeline, declined comment.

“There are some indications that it is deliberate damage,” said a European security source, while adding it was still too early to draw conclusions. “You have to ask: Who would profit?”

CUTTING SUPPLIES

Russia reduced gas supplies to Europe via Nord Stream 1 before suspending flows altogether in August, blaming Western sanctions for causing technical difficulties. European politicians say that was a pretext to stop supplying gas.

The new Nord Stream 2 pipeline had yet to enter commercial operations. The plan to use it to supply gas was scrapped by Germany days before Russia sent troops into Ukraine, in what Moscow calls a “special military operation”, in February.

“The multiple undersea leaks mean neither pipeline will likely deliver any gas to the EU over the coming winter, irrespective of political developments in the Ukraine war,” Eurasia Group wrote in a note.

European gas prices rose on the news, with the benchmark October Dutch price climbing almost 10% on Tuesday. Prices are still below this year’s peaks but remain more than 200% higher than in early September 2021.

Norway’s Petroleum Safety Authority (PSA) had urged oil companies on Monday to be vigilant about unidentified drones seen flying near Norwegian offshore oil and gas platforms, warning of possible attacks.

The Swedish Maritime Administration (SMA) said two leaks on Nord Stream 1, one in the Swedish economic zone and another in the Danish zone, were northeast of Denmark’s Bornholm.

“We are keeping extra watch to make sure no ship comes too close to the site,” an SMA spokesperson said.

The Danish authorities asked that the level of preparedness in Denmark’s power and gas sector be raised after the leaks, a step that would require heightened safety procedures for power installations and facilities.

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Reporting by Reuters bureaus; Writing by Matthias Williams, Jan Harvey and Alexander Smith; Editing by Edmund Blair and Emelia Sithole-Matarise

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Technology

Anime-Style 3D-2D Shoot ‘Em Up Angelian Trigger Locks In A Switch Release

September 25, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The Nintendo Switch is already home to a lot of retro and modern shoot ’em up games, and if you’re hungry for more – you’ll want to be on the lookout for Angelian Trigger, arriving on the hybrid system in 2023.

This anime and Space Harrier-style game by PiXEL will feature a unique 3D-2D style of gameplay with both English and Japanese language support included. Additional information about the title hasn’t been revealed just yet, but the staff have been revealed.

Here’s the rundown (via Gematsu):

Character Design: Akihiro Kimura (ZAVAS, Emerald Dragon, Alshark, Alnam no Kiba: Juuzoku Juunishinto Densetsu)
Music: Akari Kaida (Darkstalkers, Resident Evil, Breath of Fire III, Okami)
Director: Hidekuni Sasaki
2D Animation: Yukihito Tanaka
Backgrounds: nspace
Enemy Character Design: Yu Hiraoka, Soushokunin Dora, uhper2319
Effect Design: Toshikazu Arai

What are your first impressions of this upcoming Switch release? Comment below.

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Health

Having a history of psychological distress may trigger long Covid, study says

September 18, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

CNN
—

You may have up to a 50% higher risk of developing long Covid-19 if you suffer from common psychiatric issues such as anxiety or depression, a recent study found.

Signs of the malady can include breathing problems, brain fog, chronic coughing, changes in taste and smell, overwhelming fatigue, difficulties in performing daily life functions, and disruptions in sleep that can last months, even years, after the infection has cleared the body.

People who self-identified as having anxiety, depression or loneliness, or who felt extremely stressed or worried frequently about the coronavirus were more likely to experience long Covid-19, according to the study published this month in JAMA Psychiatry.

“We found participants with two or more types of psychological distress before infection had a 50% higher risk of getting long Covid,” said study coauthor Dr. Siwen Wang, a research fellow in the department of nutrition at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health in Boston.

About 40 million adults over 18 in the United States live with an anxiety disorder, while over 21 million have suffered from major depression, according to national statistics. Many mental health conditions often overlap, with concurrent diagnoses, experts say. More than a fifth of adults in the US (22%) and the UK (23%) say they often or always feel lonely, a Kaiser Family Foundation study said.

“Having higher levels of psychological distress prior to a Covid infection also increased the risk of getting long Covid by 50%,” Wang said. “Those people also reported more symptoms seen in long Covid.”

It’s possible that some could use the study’s findings to support a hypothesis that post-Covid illness is psychosomatic, a prevalent belief in the early days of the pandemic, said Dr. Wesley Ely, a professor of medicine and critical care at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Nashville, Tennessee. He was not involved in the study.

Instead, the study’s message should be that people with existing psychological distress are closer to the “disaster” of long Covid, said Ely, codirector of Vanderbilt’s Critical Illness, Brain Dysfunction and Survivorship Center.

“Imagine 10 people are running a race, and you give five people a head start,” Ely said. “Those are the people who already had a mental health issue – they are just closer to the unfortunate finish line of getting long Covid.”

The idea that mental distress can affect the body in negative ways isn’t new. It’s also a two-way lane: Having a chronic illness is strongly associated with the development of depression and other psychological disorders.

With common noninfectious disorders such as heart disease, “depression/anxiety/emotional distress do appear to play a role,” said Dr. Joseph Bienvenu, a professor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, in an email. He was not involved in the study.

People with major depression can develop blood pressure issues and may be more likely to have a heart attack. Chronic depression, stress and anxiety have been linked to insomnia, and a lack of quality sleep is a major culprit in the development of obesity, type 2 diabetes and other disorders.

And psychological distress has been shown to weaken the immune system, said study coauthor Dr. Angela Roberts, an associate professor of pulmonary and critical care medicine at Stanford University in California.

“Your brain and your immune system are very tightly interconnected,” Roberts said. “Studies have shown when you’re depressed or anxious, your immune system doesn’t work as well against targets like viruses and bacteria.”

To do the new study, researchers worked with nearly 55,000 people with no history of Covid-19 who were enrolled in three major longitudinal studies: the Nurses’ Health Study II, the Nurses’ Health Study 3 and the Growing Up Today Study. Participants in those studies tend to be predominantly female and White, which can limit how much the results can be generalized to a wider population, the study said.

Participants were asked about their mental health in April 2020, quite early in the pandemic. They continued to fill out mental health surveys each month for six months, then quarterly. At the end of a year, researchers narrowed the pool of subjects to nearly 3,200 people who had developed Covid-19 and met study requirements.

“This study is particularly nice in that participants’ baseline characteristics were assessed independently in time from their later Covid symptoms,” Johns Hopkins’ Bienvenu said.

Compared with people not having mental distress, those with depression and loneliness had a 1.32 times greater chance of developing long Covid symptoms. Participants who worried a good deal about the coronavirus – predominantly people of color, women and asthma sufferers – were 1.37 times more likely to develop long Covid, the study found.

Anxiety was associated with a greater risk – 1.42 times more likely – but people with higher levels of perceived stress were nearly 50% more likely to develop post-Covid symptoms, said Wang, the study coauthor.

All the associations between psychological distress and long Covid remained significant, even after researchers adjusted for demographics, body weight, smoking status and a history of asthma, cancer, diabetes, and high blood pressure or cholesterol.

In addition, all types of psychological distress except loneliness were linked to a higher risk of being unable to complete the actions of daily life due to ongoing long Covid symptoms.

While many cases of long Covid are mild and resolve within a few months, other patients continue to suffer for an extended time. Some still haven’t recovered their quality of life more than two years into the pandemic, according to Dr. Aaron Friedberg, a clinical assistant professor of internal medicine who works in the Post-Covid Recovery Program at Ohio State University’s Wexner Medical Center in Columbus.

“They can’t think, they can’t breathe. I have one person whose disease is so severe, they basically can’t get out of bed,” Friedberg told CNN in an earlier interview. “I saw a person recently who is still not working because of Covid symptoms two years later.”

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Health

Scientists find clues to how air pollution may trigger lung cancer

September 12, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

The findings, presented Saturday at the European Society for Medical Oncology Presidential Symposium in Paris, suggest that air pollution can trigger lung cancer in people with no history of smoking because some air pollutant particles may promote changes in cells in the airways.

In particular, more exposure to airborne particulate matter or particle pollution — at 2.5 micrometers in diameter or smaller — can drive rapid changes in airway cells that have mutations in a gene called EGFR, which are seen in about half of people with lung cancer who have never smoked, and another gene linked to lung cancer called KRAS, according to the research, conducted by scientists at the Francis Crick Institute in London and other institutions around the world.

“We found that driver mutations in EGFR and KRAS genes, commonly found in lung cancers, are actually present in normal lung tissue and are a likely consequence of ageing,” Charles Swanton, a scientist at the Francis Crick Institute and chief clinician at Cancer Research UK, who presented the findings, said Saturday in a news release.

“In our research, these mutations alone only weakly potentiated cancer in laboratory models. However, when lung cells with these mutations were exposed to air pollutants, we saw more cancers and these occurred more quickly than when lung cells with these mutations were not exposed to pollutants, suggesting that air pollution promotes the initiation of lung cancer in cells harbouring driver gene mutations,” Swanton said. “The next step is to discover why some lung cells with mutations become cancerous when exposed to pollutants while others don’t.”

Particulate matter or particle pollution in the air is a mix of solid particles and liquid droplets, according to the US Environmental Protection Agency. Some are emitted in the form of dirt, dust, soot or smoke, and they can come from coal- and natural gas-fired plants, cars, agriculture, unpaved roads and construction sites, among other sources.

Zeroing in on a possible mechanism

The researchers analyzed data on 463,679 people to find associations between their exposure to air pollution and cancer risk.

Fine particulate matter, at 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM 2.5) or smaller, is the tiniest air pollutant yet among the most dangerous. When inhaled, these pollutants can travel deep into lung tissue, where they may enter the bloodstream and contribute to asthma, cardiovascular disease and other respiratory illnesses.

As part of their analysis, the researchers found that increasing levels of air pollutants at PM 2.5 were associated with overall increases in the risk of EGFR-related non-small cell lung cancer in England, South Korea and Taiwan. Up to 33% of normal lung tissue samples in the study harbored driver mutations in EGFR and KRAS, even in the absence of cancer.

“The first thing is, we look at the epidemiological data around air pollution levels and lung cancer risk in never-smokers, finding a good correlation in England, South Korea and Taiwan,” Swanton said in a video released by the European Society for Medical Oncology on Saturday.

“Secondly, we use animal models to show that exposing mice to pollution — these mice are prone to mutations in EGFR or KRAS — we see a dramatic increase in the number and size and grade of cancers in these mice after exposure to pollution,” he said.

The researchers examined 247 normal lung tissue samples, taking a close look at tissue from humans and mice after exposures to air pollutants, and then investigated the consequences of that exposure in the mice models.

“What we found is that air pollution exposure in both mice and humans results in an inflammatory axis,” which transforms cells, Swanton said in the video.

“And it’s only if that stem cell has an EGFR mutation that a tumor is initiated,” he said. “What we found through biopsying normal lung tissue is that EGFR and KRAS mutations occur in normal lung tissue in over 50% of normal lung biopsies, and these occur with aging.”

These mutations in the EGFR and KRAS genes “may very well be the reason that the nonsmoker population ends up getting lung cancer. That’s been a question we’ve had for a number of years: Why is it that individuals, otherwise healthy, with no relationship to secondhand smoke or primary smoking are still developing lung cancer?” Dr. Albert Rizzo, chief medical officer for the American Lung Association, told CNN on Monday.

“So we know that air pollution was listed as a carcinogen a number of years ago by the World Health Organization, and I think this study just adds evidence to that being a particular mechanism for those PM 2.5 particles leading to the development of lung cancer in this population,” said Rizzo, who was not involved in the research.

“We should really make sure we limit the PM exposure as much as possible,” he added. “We don’t have much control over our genetics right now, but we can control the air pollution.”

‘Particles in the air … directly impacting human health’

Research has found that exposure to PM 2.5 air pollution can be associated with lower lung function and an increased risk of cardiac arrest, among other health problems. One study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in 2019, estimated that air particulate matter was responsible for 107,000 premature deaths in the United States in 2011, costing society $886 billion.

“The same particles in the air that derive from the combustion of fossil fuels, exacerbating climate change, are directly impacting human health via an important and previously overlooked cancer-causing mechanism in lung cells,” Swanton said in the news release.

“The risk of lung cancer from air pollution is lower than from smoking, but we have no control over what we all breathe,” he said. “Globally, more people are exposed to unsafe levels of air pollution than to toxic chemicals in cigarette smoke, and these new data link the importance of addressing climate health to improving human health.”

The new research suggests that, rather than causing mutations in cells that lead to cancer, airborne PM 2.5 pollutants can switch on existing mutations, Richard Smith, chair of the UK Health Alliance on Climate Change, wrote in an opinion article in the medical journal BMJ on Monday.

“This mechanism may be important in other cancers with carcinogens other than air pollution,” Smith wrote.

“The usual invisibility of current air pollution must contribute to us failing to give it the attention it deserves, but the roots of medicine’s neglect of air pollution must lie with the intertwined factors of the feeling that there is nothing doctors can do about air pollution and failures of education of doctors,” he wrote.

“There is advice that doctors can offer to individuals — recognising the importance of polluted air, reducing internal pollution in the home, accessing information on local air pollution, changing travel routes, avoiding particularly poisonous days, and perhaps even contributing to lessening the problem by driving less or not all — but the needed response is political action at a local, national, and global level.”

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Bitcoin ($BTC), Dogecoin ($DOGE), Ethereum ($ETH) – Ethereum Upstages Bitcoin, Dogecoin As Merge Nears: Analyst Warns This Data Could Trigger Crypto ‘Summer Lows’

September 2, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

Bitcoin traded flat, while Ethereum rose Thursday evening as the global cryptocurrency market cap inched up 0.3% to $983.9 billion.

Price Performance Of Major Coins
Coin	24-hour	7-day	Price
Bitcoin BTC/USD	-0.1%	-6.5%	$20,086.08
Ethereum ETH/USD	1.2%	-6.1%	$1,579.66
Dogecoin DOGE/USD	1.1%	-9.2%	$0.06

Top 24-Hour Gainers (Data via CoinMarketCap)
Cryptocurrency	24-Hour % Change (+/-)	Price
TerraClassicUSD (USTC)	+21.8%	$0.04
EOS (EOS)	+9.9%	$1.52
Balancer (BAL)	+9.7%	$7.81

See Also: Best Crypto Debit Cards

Why It Matters: The second-largest coin was buoyant amid the buzz surrounding its move to a proof-of-stake mechanism. The apex coin failed to make any significant moves.

Michaël van de Poppe said that Ethereum “carries the entire market.” The cryptocurrency trader tweeted, “If the regular markets are making a slight bounce, we’ll probably accelerate quite fast with crypto to the upside.”

#Ethereum carries the entire market.

If the regular markets are making a slight bounce, we’ll probably accelerate quite fast with crypto to the upside.

— Michaël van de Poppe (@CryptoMichNL) September 1, 2022

Among other risk assets, stock futures were flat at press time as investors awaited U.S. jobs data for August, due for release on Friday.

“The true test for Bitcoin is if it can stay close to the $20,000 level after the NFP [Non-Farm Payroll] release. A hot labor market report and Fed rate hike bets might surge and that could trigger downward pressure that eyes the summer lows,” said Edward Moya, a senior market analyst at OANDA.

Justin Bennett shared two charts on Twitter, and said either the dollar index or the S&P500 is “wrong,” adding that the “reaction to Friday’s NFP should give us an answer.”

One of these markets is wrong.

The reaction to Friday’s NFP should give us an answer.$DXY $SPX pic.twitter.com/RoldlteXfk

— Justin Bennett (@JustinBennettFX) September 1, 2022

On the Ethereum side, derivatives are dominant ahead of the “Merge.” Kaiko Research pointed to the share of perpetual futures volume between BTC and ETH, and said the latter commanded 45% of the volume at the beginning of August to 57% at the end of the month.

BTC/ETH Daily Perpetual Futures Volume — Courtesy Kaiko Research

The cryptocurrency market data provider, in a note seen by Benzinga, also pointed to open interest — a measure of how many positions in futures are open at a moment in time and the amount of capital invested in futures.

Kaiko said open interest denominated in ETH shows that the “number of futures positions open at this time represents a staggering all-time high, acting as a massive leveraging force on the price action of ETH over the next few weeks.”

ETH Open Interest Denominated In ETH — Courtesy Kaiko Research

The data provider said approaching end-August funding rates have dropped sharply. “This dip negative, coinciding with a buildup in open interest, leads us to conclude that the majority of the new money piling into futures markets for ETH are short-biased,” said Kaiko.

Perpetual daily volume in ETH has risen from $19 billion to over $33 billion over the last year. In a similar period, daily spot volume rose from $3.7 billion to $4.8 billion.

ETH Perpetual Future and Spot Volume — Courtesy Kaiko Research

Converting those volumes to a ratio, Kaiko said we can see the “rising dominance of perpetual futures volume for ETH as the ratio of perps to spot volume has increased from 5 times the volumes to roughly 7.”

ETH Perpetual Future To Spot Volume Ratio — Courtesy Kaiko Research

“With a rising dominance of perpetual futures volume versus spot markets, derivatives markets are having outsized effects on price action at present,” said Kaiko Research in conclusion.

“The Merge is one of the only events in crypto as of late that hasn’t been macro-driven and it will be interesting to see if it sparks a breakout towards a lower correlation with the stock market, for better or for worse.”

Read Next: Largest Ethereum Mining Pool Launches New ETH Staking Ahead Of Merge

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Greenland ice sheet set to trigger nearly a foot in sea level rise

August 29, 2022 Admin Leave a comment

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Human-driven climate change has set in motion massive ice losses in Greenland that couldn’t be halted even if the world stopped emitting greenhouse gases today, according to a new study published Monday.

The findings in Nature Climate Change project that it is now inevitable that 3.3 percent of the Greenland ice sheet will melt — equal to 110 trillion tons of ice, the researchers said. That will trigger nearly a foot of global sea-level rise.

The predictions are more dire than other forecasts, though they use different assumptions. While the study did not specify a time frame for the melting and sea-level rise, the authors suggested much of it can play out between now and the year 2100.

“The point is, we need to plan for that ice as if it weren’t on the ice sheet in the near future, within a century or so,” William Colgan, a study co-author who studies the ice sheet from its surface with his colleagues at the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland, said in a video interview.

“Every study has bigger numbers than the last. It’s always faster than forecast,” Colgan said.

One reason that new research appears worse than other findings may just be that it is simpler. It tries to calculate how much ice Greenland must lose as it recalibrates to a warmer climate. In contrast, sophisticated computer simulations of how the ice sheet will behave under future scenarios for global emissions have produced less alarming predictions.

A one-foot rise in global sea levels would have severe consequences. If the sea level along the U.S. coasts rose by an average of 10 to 12 inches by 2050, a recent report from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration found, the most destructive floods would take place five times as often, and moderate floods would become 10 times as frequent.

‘They are not slowing down’: The rise of billion-dollar disasters

Other countries — low-lying island nations and developing ones, like Bangladesh — are even more vulnerable. These nations, which have done little to fuel the higher temperatures that are now thawing the Greenland ice sheet, lack the billions of dollars it will take to adapt to rising seas.

The paper’s lead author, Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland scientist Jason Box, collaborated with scientists based at institutions in Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and the United States to assess the extent of ice loss already locked in by human activity.

Just last year, the U.N. Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change — which generally forecasts lower figures for total ice loss from Greenland by the end of the century — projected around half a foot of sea-level rise from Greenland by the year 2100 at the high end. That scenario assumed humans would emit a large amount of greenhouse gases for another 80 years.

The current study, in contrast, does not factor in any additional greenhouse gas emissions or specify when the melting would take place, making the comparison with the U.N. report imperfect.

The finding that 3.3 percent of Greenland is, in effect, already lost represents “a minimum, a lower bound,” Box said. It could be much worse than that, the study suggests, especially if the world continues to burn fossil fuels and if 2012, which set a record for Greenland ice loss, becomes more like the norm.

But that aspect of the study offers hope: even if more sea-level rise is locked in than previously believed, cutting emissions fast to limit warming close to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) would prevent things from getting much worse.

Scientists observe a lake of glacial meltwater drain beneath Greenland’s ice sheet in July 2018. This research could help better understand global sea rise. (Video: Sam Doyle and Tom Chudley)

Greenland is the world’s largest island and is covered with a sheet of ice that, if it melted entirely, could raise sea levels by more than 20 feet. That is not in doubt — nor is the fact that in past warm periods in Earth’s history, the ice sheet has been much smaller than it is today. The question has always been how much ice will thaw as temperatures rise — and how fast.

Melt rates have been increasing in the past two decades, and Greenland is the largest single ice-based contributor to the rate of global sea-level rise, surpassing contributions from both the larger Antarctic ice sheet and from mountain glaciers around the world. Greenland lies in the Arctic, which is warming much faster than the rest of the world.

Higher Arctic temperatures cause large amounts of ice on Greenland’s surface to thaw. While the island’s oceanfront glaciers are also shedding enormous icebergs at an accelerating pace, it is this surface melt — which translates into gushing ice rivers, disappearing lakes and giant waterfalls vanishing into crevasses — that causes the biggest ice losses.

In the past, scientists have tried to determine what Greenland’s ongoing melting means for the global sea level through complex computer simulations. They model the ice itself, the ocean around it, and the future climate based on different trajectories of emissions.

In general, the models have produced modest figures. For instance, according to the latest IPCC assessment, the most “likely” loss from Greenland by 2100 under a very high emissions scenario equates to about 5 inches of sea-level rise. This represents the disappearance of about 1.8 percent of Greenland’s total mass.

Most models and scenarios produce something much lower. In a low-emissions scenario, which the world is trying to achieve right now, the IPCC report suggests Greenland would contribute only a few inches to sea-level rise by the century’s end.

The new research “obtains numbers that are high compared to other studies,” said Sophie Nowicki, an expert on Greenland at the University at Buffalo who contributed to the IPCC report. Nowicki observed, however, that one reason the number is so high is that the study considers only the last 20 years — which have seen strong warming — as the current climate to which the ice sheet is now adjusting. Taking a 40-year period would yield a lower result, Nowicki said.

“This committed number is not well-known and actually quite hard to estimate, because of the long response time scale of the ice sheet,” Nowicki said.

Box, for his part, argues that the models upon which the IPCC report is based are “like a facsimile of reality,” without enough detail to reflect how Greenland is really changing. Those computer models have sparked considerable controversy recently, with one research group charging they do not adequately track Greenland’s current, high levels of ice loss.

The worrying message scientists brought back from Greenland’s ice caverns

In Greenland, the processes triggering ice loss from large glaciers often occur hundreds of meters below the sea surface in narrow fjords, where warm water can flick at the submerged ice in complex motions. In some cases, these processes may simply be playing out at too small a scale for the models to capture.

Meanwhile, while it is clear that hotter air melts the ice sheet from the surface, the consequences of all that water running off the ice sheet — and sometimes, through and under it — raises additional questions. Much of the water vanishes into crevasses, called moulins, and travels through unseen pathways through the ice to the sea. How much this causes the ice itself to slick and lurch forward remains under debate and might be happening at a finer scale than what the models capture.

“Individual moulins, they are not in the models,” Colgan said.

The new research assesses Greenland’s future through a simpler method. It tries to calculate how much ice loss from Greenland is already dictated by physics, given the current Arctic climate.

An ice sheet — like an ice cube, but at a vastly larger scale — is always in the process of melting, or growing, in response to the temperature surrounding it. But with an ice body as large as Greenland — picture the entire state of Alaska covered with ice that is one to two miles thick — adjustment takes a long time. This means that a loss can be almost inevitable, even if it has not actually happened yet.

Still, the ice sheet will leave clues as it shrinks. As it thaws, scientists think the change will manifest itself at a location called the snow line. This is the dividing line between the high altitude, bright white parts of the ice sheet that accumulate snow and mass even during the summer, and the darker, lower elevation parts that melt and contribute water to the sea. This line moves every year, depending on how warm or cool the summer is, tracking how much of Greenland melts in a given period.

The new research contends that in the current climate, the average location of the snow line must move inward and upward, leaving a smaller area in which ice would be able to accumulate. That would yield a smaller ice sheet.

“What they’re saying is that the climate we already have is in the process of burning away the edges of the ice,” said Ted Scambos, an ice sheet expert at the University of Colorado at Boulder who did not work on the paper.

Scambos, however, said it could take much longer than 80 years for 3.3 percent of the ice sheet to melt: the study says “most” of the change can happen by 2100.

“A lot of the change they forecast would happen in this century, but to get [that level of retreat] would require several centuries, more perhaps,” he said.

Future ice losses will be greater than that amount if global warming continues to advance — which it will. If the massive melt year of 2012 became the norm, for instance, that would likely lead to about two-and-a-half feet of committed sea-level rise, the study says.

Pennsylvania State University professor Richard Alley, an ice sheet expert, said the fact that researchers remain uncertain about how the planet’s ice sheets will change and raise global sea levels shows the need for more research.

“The problems are deeply challenging, will not be solved by wishful thinking, and have not yet been solved by business-as-usual,” he said.

But Alley added that it is clear that the more we let the planet warm, the more the seas will rise.

“[The] rise can be a little less than usual projections, or a little more, or a lot more, but not a lot less,” Alley said.

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Bitcoin ($BTC), Dogecoin ($DOGE), Ethereum ($ETH) – Ethereum Upstages Bitcoin, Dogecoin As Merge Nears: Analyst Warns This Data Could Trigger Crypto ‘Summer Lows’

Greenland ice sheet set to trigger nearly a foot in sea level rise

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