PETRO POLITICS IS STATE CAPITALISM
Newfoundland's Hibernia offshore oil project gets $38 million in federal aid

ST. JOHN'S, N.L. — Newfoundland and Labrador is giving $38 million to the Hibernia offshore oil project in a bid to protect 148 jobs over 18 months.

© Provided by The Canadian Press

Premier Andrew Furey said Wednesday the money will create 300,000 hours of work on the offshore oil project. "We will continually work for the benefit of our province, of our oil and gas industry and of our people to help get our economy back on its feet and our residents back to work," Furey told reporters.

The money comes from a pot of $320 million offered by the federal government in September to bolster the province's floundering offshore oil industry, which has been hit hard by crashing global prices and the COVID-19 pandemic.

Hibernia was Newfoundland and Labrador first offshore oil installation and sits just over 300 kilometres off the coast of St. John's. It has not been spared from the downturn in the local industry.

The company's financial reports indicate staff numbers fell from 1,479 to 840 between the first and third quarters of 2020. Hundreds of layoffs from the project were announced this spring and drilling work on the rig was suspended.

Among Hibernia's owners are ExxonMobil Canada, Chevron Canada Resources and Suncor. A conglomerate of those companies, called the Hibernia Management and Development Company, manages and operates the project.

Conglomerate president Stephen Edwards said Wednesday the money will help the company increase production and upgrade infrastructure that could lead to ten more years of drilling. He did not directly answer questions about whether the money would lead to a resumption of drilling that had been suspended last spring.

A press release issued by the province following the announcement said the conglomerate had submitted a proposal for another $28 million from the $320-million fund.

Earlier this month, the province announced Husky Energy would receive $41.5 million to extend the life of its White Rose oilfield, located about 350 kilometres off the coast of St. John's. The next day, 75 people were laid off from the work site.

Edwards said he is not aware of any impending layoffs from the Hibernia project.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 23, 2020.

Coronavirus cases make their way to Antarctica

The contnent's first cases were reported at a permanently staffed research station, operated by Chile's army, near the tip of a peninsula in northernmost Antarctica, overlooking a bay often dotted with icebergs.

Chile's Bernardo O'Higgins army base is seen at Antarctica in this undated handout photo provided by the Chilean Army on December 22, 2020. (Reuters)

The coronavirus has landed in Antarctica, the last continent previously free from Covid-19.

Chilean health and army officials scrambled to clear out and quarantine staff from a remote research station surrounded by ocean and icebergs, the South American country's military said.

Chile's armed forces said at least 36 people had been infected at its Bernardo O'Higgins base, including 26 army personnel and 10 civilian contractors conducting maintenance at the base.

The permanently staffed research station, operated by Chile's army, lies near the tip of a peninsula in northernmost Antarctica, overlooking a bay often dotted with icebergs.

Personnel constantly monitored

Base personnel "are already properly isolated and constantly monitored" by health authorities in Magallanes, in Chilean Patagonia, the army said, adding there had so far been no complications.

Research and military stations in Antarctica - among the most remote in the world - had gone to extraordinary lengths in recent months to keep the virus out, canceling tourism, scaling back activities and staff and locking down facilities.

Researchers with the British Antarctic Survey estimate about 1,000 people at 38 stations across the frozen continent had safely navigated the southern hemisphere winter without incident.

But an uptick in travel to and from the region this spring and early summer have heightened infection risk.

An Army press officer said the first Covid-19 cases had been reported in mid-December, when two soldiers fell ill.

The Magallanes region, one of the closest populated areas to Antarctica and take-off point for many boats and planes headed to the continent, is among the hardest-hit in Chile.

Much of the area, blasted by cold winds off the ocean, mountains and glaciers, has been under quarantine restrictions for months.

Chile's Navy reported it too had detected three cases of Covid-19 among 208 crew members of a ship that had sailed in the Antarctic region between November 27 and December 10.

Air pressure makes Mount Everest 'shrink' by thousands of feet, new study finds

© Provided by Live Science Peak of Mount Everest above the clouds.

Mount Everest is the tallest mountain in the world — but sometimes, it feels like the second-tallest, according to a story reported in the American Geophysical Union's news blog Eos.

That's because the mountain's air pressure fluctuates significantly throughout the year, a recent study found, causing the summit's "perceived elevation" to occasionally dip below that of its less-lofty rival, K2 — the second-tallest mountain in the world.

"Sometimes K2 is higher than Everest," lead study author Tom Matthews, a climate scientist at Loughborough University in the United Kingdom, told Eos.

Related: In photos: Mount Everest expeditions then and now

In the new study, published Dec. 18 in the journal iScience, Matthews and his colleagues looked at more than 40 years of air pressure data recorded by both weather stations near the summit of Mount Everest and the European Space Agency's Copernicus satellite.

Air pressure is closely tied to oxygen availability on Everest; when air pressure decreases, there are fewer oxygen molecules in the air, making the simple act of breathing much more strenuous, according to Eos. For this reason, many who choose to hike Everest rely on supplemental oxygen to stay on their feet as they scale to higher elevations where the air is thinner. (Only 169 men and eight women have ever summited Everest without the use of supplemental oxygen, the study authors noted.)

But while air pressure reliably decreases with elevation, it also fluctuates with the weather, the study authors found. From 1979 to 2019, the air pressure near the peak of Everest ranged anywhere from 309 to 343 hectopascals — roughly one-third the pressure at sea level — depending on the season.

"Compared with the average air pressure measured on Everest in May, that span translates into a 737-meter [2,417 feet] difference in how high the summit feels from an oxygen availability standpoint," science journalist Katherine Kornei wrote in the blog.

Put another way, sometimes the oxygen availability on Everest makes the mountain feel thousands of feet shorter than it really is. Occasionally, the 29,000-foot-tall (8,800 m) mountain feels shorter (to our bodies) than the world's next tallest mountain, K2, which measures 28,250 feet (8,600 m) tall.

The researchers also found that air pressure on Everest was consistently highest in the summertime, making that the best season to scale the mountain based purely on oxygen availability. As Earth's atmosphere continues to warm due to climate change, there could even be a permanent decrease in the mountain's perceived elevation, the researchers found.

"Warming will shrink the mountain a little bit," Matthews told Eos.

Read the whole story on the Eos website.

Originally published on Live Science.

Giant iceberg on collision course with South Atlantic island breaks up

An enormous iceberg that has been heading toward South Georgia Island in the southern Atlantic has broken up into three large chunks, according to scientists.

© Provided by NBC News

The iceberg — dubbed A68a by scientists — broke off from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica in 2017. In recent weeks, it has come close to South Georgia Island, a remote British overseas territory off the southern tip of South America, raising concerns for the island’s wildlife.

Scientists worry that an iceberg could grind into the seabed of the wildlife-rich island of South Georgia and disrupt underwater ecosystems. They were also concerned that one or more icebergs might block penguins making their way into the sea for food.

A large number of whales, seals, and penguins feed off the coast of South Georgia.

© Provided by NBC News Image of A68a iceberg disintegrating into three large fragments on Tuesday. (European Space Agency)

Andrew Fleming, of the British Antarctic Survey, has been tracking A68a for over three years and told NBC News that two new icebergs, named A68e and A68f, were “calved” away from A68a on Tuesday.

The two new fragments, 253 and 87 square miles each, as well as the original A68a, now more than 1,000 square miles in size — about two-thirds the size of Rhode Island — are still huge, according to Fleming. They are expected to continue drifting close to South Georgia island and the potential for them to ground on the island still exists.

“The fragmentation does not remove the chance of it happening, but it won’t now be as one huge piece,” Fleming said. “But there is still the potential for it to disturb things.”

Satellite imagery provided by the U.S. National Ice Center on Tuesday showed the boundaries of where the ice chunks have separated.

Satellite data has been crucial in monitoring the iceberg on its journey from birth to destruction, Adrian Luckman, satellite imaging glaciologist with U.K.'s Swansea University, told BBC.

"As well as being one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, A68 must also be one of the most watched," Luckman said, adding that the iceberg is finally beginning to disintegrate nearly 3.5 years since it calved away from Larsen C Ice Shelf.

Fleming said it will become more clear where the new iceberg chunks are headed in the next couple of days or weeks, but they are expected to be pushed by the ocean currents to the north side of the island.

He also expects more breakage as the two new iceberg fragments start disintegrating further.

VIDEO World's biggest iceberg shatters after collision (msn.com)

Evidence for a massive paleo-tsunami 

at ancient Tel Dor, Israel

by Public Library of Science

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Geoprobe drilling rig extraction of a sediment core with evidence 

of a tsunami from South Bay, Tel Dor, Israel. Credit: T. E. Levy

Underwater excavation, borehole drilling, and modelling suggests a massive paleo-tsunami struck near the ancient settlement of Tel Dor between 9,910 to 9,290 years ago, according to a study published December 23, 2020 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE by Gilad Shtienberg, Richard Norris and Thomas Levy from the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology, University of California, San Diego, U.S., and colleagues from Utah State University and the University of Haifa.

Tsunamis are a relatively common event along the eastern Mediterranean coastline, with historical records and geographic data showing one tsunami occurring per century for the last six thousand years. The record for earlier tsunami events, however, is less defined. In this study, Shtienberg and colleagues describe a large early Holocene tsunami deposit (between 9,910 to 9,290 years ago) in coastal sediments at Tel Dor in northwest Israel, a maritime city-mound occupied from the Middle Bronze II period (2000-1550 BCE) through the Crusader period.

To conduct their analysis, the authors used photogrammetric remote sensing techniques to create a digital model of the Tel Dor site, combined with underwater excavation and terrestrial borehole drilling to a depth of nine meters.

Along the coast of the study area, the authors found an abrupt marine shell and sand layer with an age of constraint 9,910 to 9,290 years ago, in the middle of a large ancient wetland layer spanning from 15,000 to 7,800 years ago. The authors estimate the wave capable of depositing seashells and sand in the middle of what was at the time fresh to brackish wetland must have travelled 1.5 to 3.5 km, with a coastal wave height of 16 to 40 m. For comparison, previously documented tsunami events in the eastern Mediterranean have travelled inland only around 300 m—suggesting the tsunami at Dor was generated by a far stronger mechanism. Local tsunamis tend to arise due to earthquakes in the Dead Sea Fault system and submarine landslides; the authors note that an earthquake contemporary to the Dor paleo-tsunami (dating to around 10,000 years ago) has already been identified using cave damage in the nearby Carmel ridge, suggesting this specific earthquake could have triggered an underwater landslide causing the massive tsunami at Dor.

This paleo-tsunami would have occurred during the Early to Middle Pre-Pottery Neolithic B cultural period of the region (10,700-9,250 years ago 11,700-10,500 cal BP), and potentially wiped out evidence of previous Natufian (12,500-12,000 years ago) and Pre-Pottery Neolithic coastal villages (previous surveys and excavations show a near absence of low-lying coastal villages in this region). The re-appearance of abundant Late Neolithic archaeological sites (ca. 6,000 BCE) along the coast in the years after the Dor tsunami coincides with the resumption of wetland deposition in the Dor core samples and indicates resettlement followed the event—highlighting residents' resilience in the face of massive disruption.

According to Gilad Shtienberg, a postdoc at the Scripps Center for Marine Archaeology at UC San Diego who is studying the sediment cores, "Our project focuses on reconstructing ancient climate and environmental change over the past 12,000 years along the Israeli coast; and we never dreamed of finding evidence of a prehistoric tsunami in Israel. Scholars know that at the beginning of the Neolithic, around 10,000 years ago, the seashore was 4 kilometers from where it is today. When we cut the cores open in San Diego and started seeing a marine shell layer embedded in the dry Neolithic landscape, we knew we hit the jackpot."

Explore further

Sediment cores from Dogger Littoral suggest Dogger Island survived ancient tsunami
More information: Shtienberg G, Yasur-Landau A, Norris RD, Lazar M, Rittenour TM, Tamberino A, et al. (2020) A Neolithic mega-tsunami event in the eastern Mediterranean: Prehistoric settlement vulnerability along the Carmel coast, Israel. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0243619. doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243619

Journal information: PLoS ONE

Research busts mental health coping myth

by University of the Sunshine Coast

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

People with extreme psychological distress have exceeded the limits of their own resources, and need support from others to cope, according to new research led by USC Australia.

The mental health research by USC's Thompson Institute was published in Journal of Affective Disorders Reports, based on a survey of more than 500 university students in the United States.

It found that healthy coping strategies—such as mindfulness and distraction—certainly work, but sometimes they are not enough.

Lead author and Professor of Suicide Prevention Helen Stallman said the findings contradicted a common belief that people who were in extreme distress were not resilient or did not have healthy coping mechanisms.

"What we have found busts the myth that mental health services and workers should encourage extremely distressed people to build resilience or learn healthy coping strategies like relaxing or distracting activities," she said.

"Support should not focus on 'fixing' the person who is suffering, it should focus on other ways to help reduce their overwhelming distress.

"While we may consider people in mental distress to be lacking in resilience, they are the most resilient people but have too much to cope with," she said.

"We found that the majority of extremely distressed people already used healthy coping methods such as mindfulness techniques before turning to unhealthy methods to feel better such as emotional eating, aggression, alcohol, drugs and self-harm, social withdrawal and suicidality."

Professor Stallman said the study means that if we want to support people who are upset, we need to use what we call the "Care Collaborate Connect' model to ensure people feel supported, rather than being expected to cope alone.

"Care' is the initial intervention when someone is upset, so listening without interrupting and validating their experience.

"'Collaborate' starts with asking how they are coping and 'connect' involves suggesting they talk to a health professional, like their GP, if things keep getting them down."

Professor Stallman hoped the research would inform changes in public messaging around mental health and improve the delivery of needs-based mental health care.


Explore further

New app supports a plan to cope and a strategy for suicide prevention
More information: Helen M Stallman et al. Modelling the relationship between healthy and unhealthy coping strategies to understand overwhelming distress: A Bayesian network approach, Journal of Affective Disorders Reports (2020). DOI: 10.1016/j.jadr.2020.100054

Journal information: Journal of Affective Disorders

Provided by University of the Sunshine Coast

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Lava lake forms as Hawaii volcano erupts after 

2-year break

by Audrey McAvoy

A plume rises near active fissures in the crater of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. People are lining up to try to get a look at the volcano on the Big Island, which erupted last night and spewed ash and steam into the atmosphere. A spokeswoman for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park says the volcanic activity is a risk to people in the park Monday and that caution is needed. (M. Patrick/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)

Lava was rising more than 3 feet (1 meter) per hour in the deep crater of a Hawaii volcano that began erupting over the weekend after a two-year break, scientists said Tuesday.

Kilauea volcano within Hawaii Volcanoes National Park on the Big Island was gushing molten rock from at least two vents inside its summit crater, the U.S. Geological Survey said. A lava lake has formed, rising about 440 feet (134 meters) from the bottom of the crater.

Since the eruption began Sunday night, Kilauea has spewed some 2 billion gallons of lava (10 million cubic meters), enough to cover 33 acres (13 hectares). The lava has been contained inside the deep crater.

It isn't threatening to get close to people or cover property, like when Kilauea erupted from vents in the middle of a residential neighborhood in 2018 and destroyed more than 700 homes.

Still, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory has warned residents to beware of potentially high levels of volcanic gas, rockfalls and explosions.

When erupting, Kilauea tends to spew large volumes of sulfur dioxide, which forms volcanic smog, or vog, when it mixes with oxygen, sunlight and other gases in the air. The state Department of Health warned residents to reduce their outdoor activities if they encounter volcanic smog conditions.

Kilauea is one of the world's most active volcanoes, having erupted some 50 times in the last century. Between 1983 and 2018, it erupted almost continuously. It had a lava lake in its crater for the last decade of that eruption.

In this photo provided by the National Park Service, people watch an eruption from Hawaii's Kilauea volcano on the Big Island on Sunday, Dec. 20, 2020. The volcano shot steam and an ash cloud into the atmosphere which lasted about an hour, an official with the National Weather Service said early Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. (Janice Wei/National Park Service via AP)

A plume rises near active fissures in the crater of Hawaii's Kilauea volcano on Monday, Dec. 21, 2020. People are lining up to try to get a look at the volcano on the Big Island, which erupted last night and spewed ash and steam into the atmosphere. A spokeswoman for Hawaii Volcanoes National Park says the volcanic activity is a risk to people in the park Monday and that caution is needed. (M. Patrick/U.S. Geological Survey via AP)

In this photo provided by the U.S. Geological Survey, lava flows within the Halema'uma'u crater of the Kilauea volcano Sunday, Dec. 20, 2020. The Kilauea volcano on Hawaii's Big Island has erupted, the U.S. Geological Survey said. (U.S. Geological Survey via AP)


Explore further Volcano erupts on Hawaii's Big Island, draws crowds to park

© 2020 The Associated Press. 

GeoBeats

Volcanic eruption boils off massive lake

 1 day ago

Duration: 01:01  VIDEO Volcanic eruption boils off massive lake (msn.com)

For months, Hawaii's Kilauea volcano site had been home to a deadly water lake. The lake was over 130 feet deep with a volume equivalent to almost 200 Olympic swimming pools. It showed temperature reading as high as 185 degrees Fahrenheit. For reference, water 154 degrees Fahrenheit or higher can scald humans instantaneously. However, that lake's life came to an abrupt end as the volcano started erupting on December 20. Lava began flowing from three fissure vents inside the crater. The lava cascaded into the summit water lake and in no time, boiled off the water. The water lake is now gone and a new lake made up of lava sits at the base of the crater.

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Earthlings and astronauts chat away, via ham radio

BEFORE THE INTERNET THERE WAS HAM RADIO!

by Samantha Masunaga

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Credit: CC0 Public Domain

The International Space Station cost more than $100 billion. A ham radio set can be had for a few hundred bucks.

Perhaps that explains, in part, the appeal of having one of humankind's greatest scientific inventions communicate with Earth via technology that's more than 100 years old. But perhaps there's a simpler explanation for why astronauts and ham radio operators have been talking, and talking, for years.

NASA astronaut Doug Wheelock was just a few weeks into his six-month mission at the space station when feelings of isolation began to set in.

Wheelock would be separated from loved ones, save for communication via an internet phone, email or social media. At times, the stress and tension of serving as the station's commander could be intense.

One night, as he looked out a window at the Earth below, he remembered the space station's ham radio. He figured he'd turn it on—see if anyone was listening.

"Any station, any station, this is the International Space Station," Wheelock said.

A flood of voices jumbled out of the airwaves.

Astronauts aboard the space station often speak to students via ham radio, which can also be used in emergencies, but those are scheduled appearances. Some, like Wheelock, spend their limited free time making contact with amateur radio operators around the world.

"It allowed me to ... just reach out to humanity down there," said Wheelock, who interacted with many operators, known as "hams," during that stay at the space station in 2010. "It became my emotional, and a really visceral, connection to the planet."

The first amateur radio transmission from space dates to 1983, when astronaut Owen Garriott took to the airwaves from the Space Shuttle Columbia. Garriott was a licensed ham who, back on Earth, had used his home equipment in Houston to chat with his father in Oklahoma.

Garriott and fellow astronaut Tony England pushed NASA to allow amateur radio equipment aboard shuttle flights.

"We thought it would be a good encouragement for young people to get interested in science and engineering if they could experience this," said England, who was the second astronaut to use ham radio in space.

An almost-all-volunteer organization called Amateur Radio on the International Space Station, or ARISS, now helps arrange contact between students and astronauts on the space station. Students prepare to ask questions rapid-fire, one after another, into the ham radio microphone for the brief 10-minute window before the space station flies out of range.

"We try to think of ourselves as planting seeds and hoping that we get some mighty oaks to grow," said Kenneth G. Ransom, the ISS Ham project coordinator at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Typically, about 25 schools throughout the world are chosen each year, said Rosalie White, international secretary treasurer at ARISS.

"Not too many people get to talk to an astronaut," she said. "They get the importance of that."

The conversations are a treat for the astronauts as well.

"You're talking to someone and looking right down at where they are," NASA astronaut Ricky Arnold II said.

Over the last 10 years, ham radio has become more popular, experts say, with about 750,000 licensed amateur operators across the U.S. (not all of whom are active on the air). Helping to drive that interest: emergency communications.

"Ham radio is when all else fails," said Diana Feinberg, Los Angeles section manager for the American Radio Relay League, the national association for amateur radio. "Unlike other forms of communication, it does not require any kind of a switched network."

But for some hams, the allure is the opportunity to connect with people all over the world—or even above it.

During his 10-day shuttle mission in 1983, astronaut Garriott spoke with about 250 hams all over the world, including King Hussein of Jordan and Sen. Barry Goldwater of Arizona. Garriott died in 2019.

"From my perspective, even from a young age, it was very obvious how globally inspirational that moment was," said his son Richard Garriott. "People from Australia and America, just all over, had tuned in, and it clearly touched them. No matter what their station was, no matter where physically they were, they all became part of this global experience."

It's not surprising that Richard Garriott followed his father's example with a 2008 flight to the space station as a private astronaut. During his free time on the 12-day mission, the younger Garriott made contact with so many hams on the ground—including his father—that the two pieces of paper he brought to record contacts filled up during his first day on the radio.

"Any moderately populated landmass, without regard to time of day or night, you would find a bountiful group of enthusiasts who are ready to make contact," he said.

What drives this desire for contact? Amateur radio operators love a challenge, particularly when it comes to reaching remote or unusual locations.

"We're always, in amateur radio, talking to people we don't know," England said. "If we didn't enjoy the adventure of meeting other people through that way, we probably wouldn't have been amateur radio operators."

Amateur operator Larry Shaunce has made a handful of contacts with astronauts over the years, the first time in the 1980s, when, as a teenager, he reached Owen Garriott.

More recently, Shaunce, 56, made contact with NASA astronaut Serena Auñón-Chancellor in 2018.

"Hello, this is Larry in Minnesota," he said after Auñón-Chancellor acknowledged his call sign.

"Oh, Minnesota!" she replied, adding that she could hear him "super clear" up in space and that he must have nice equipment.

"It's always exciting when you talk to somebody in space," said Shaunce, an electronic technician in Albert Lea, Minn. "You just never know. I monitor the frequency all the time."

James Lea knows that reaching the space station can be hit or miss. He and a friend once pulled over near a farm in Bunnell, Fla., as the space station flew overhead.

The pair sat in a truck with an antenna on the roof and the radio equipment in the cab. After a few tries, they heard Auñón-Chancellor respond: "Hey, good morning, Florida. How are you?"

Lea, 53, a filmmaker and engineer, recalled that he and his friend were "sitting in the middle of a cabbage field. The fact that she came back to him was kind of incredible."

Lea's daughter Hope has tried for years to reach the space station but has never gotten a response. She got her ham radio license at age 8. Now 14, Hope is thinking about becoming an astronaut and going to Mars, her father said.

David Pruett, an emergency physician from Hillsboro, Ore., tried to contact the space station using a multi-band amateur radio with a magnetic mount antenna, placed in a pizza pan to improve performance. Working from his dining-room table, he made many fruitless attempts. But one day, the space station got close to the West Coast, and Pruett again put out the call.

"November Alpha One Sierra Sierra," he said, using the amateur radio call sign for the space station.

Seconds of silence stretched after Pruett's identification: "Kilo Foxtrot Seven Echo Tango X-ray, Portland, Ore."

Then came a crackle, then the voice of astronaut Wheelock. At the close, both signed off with "73"—ham lingo for "best regards." Remembering that first conversation in 2010 still makes the hair on Pruett's arms stand up.

"It was absolutely unbelievable," Pruett said. "To push that microphone button and call the International Space Station and then let go of the button and wait, and then you hear this little crackle, and you hear Doug Wheelock come back and say, 'Welcome aboard the International Space Station'—it's just mind-boggling."

Pruett and Wheelock went on to have 31 contacts in all, one when Pruett was stuck in a traffic jam in Tacoma, Wash.

"I feel like I struck up a friendship with him," said Pruett, 64, who chronicled many of his contacts on YouTube. "I can only imagine that their workload is very tight, and they've got precious little free time, but I think it was very generous of him to donate as much of his free time to amateur radio operators as he did."

Wheelock remembers Pruett well.

"David was one of the early contacts I made," he said. "He was one of the first voices I heard as I was approaching the West Coast."

Wheelock's other ham radio contacts made similarly deep impressions on him—including a man from Portugal he spoke to so many times that Wheeler and his fellow astronauts once serenaded him with "Happy Birthday to You."

Wheelock also made contact with some of the first responders who worked to rescue the 33 Chilean miners trapped underground for 69 days in 2010.

"I just wanted to give a word of encouragement … to let them know that there's someone above that cares about what they're doing and what's in their path," he said.

During a six-month mission from 2005 to 2006, NASA astronaut William McArthur spoke via ham radio with 37 schools and made more than 1,800 individual contacts in more than 90 countries.

"That's just an infinitesimally small percentage of the world's population, but it's a lot more than I think I could have directly touched any other way," he said. "I wanted to share with people who maybe were random, who maybe didn't have a special connection or insight into space exploration."

It also allowed for some variety in his conversation partners. During his mission, McArthur's main crew mate was Russian cosmonaut Valeri Tokarev.

"I love him like a brother. We're very, very close," he said. "But still, it's one other person for six months."


Explore further Ham video premiers on space station

©2020 Los Angeles Times

E-cigarettes, as consumer products, 

do not help people quit smoking, study finds

by Vicky Stein, University of California, San Francisco

DECEMBER 23, 2020 

E-cigarette use has risen steeply and mostly without regulation over the past decade. The devices have diversified into a dizzying array of vape pens, tank systems, 'mods,' and more, mass-marketed and sold to the public. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) is in the midst of considering whether to approve thousands of pre-market applications for the sale of e-cigarettes as consumer products.

In these applications and related advertisements, the owners of e-cigarette brands claim that their products help smokers quit and can therefore be considered "appropriate for the protection of public health," as stipulated by law. But a new systematic review by UC San Francisco researchers of the scientific literature on this topic puts those claims to the test.

In the new study, published December 22, 2020 in the American Journal of Public Health, a team led by UCSF's Richard Wang, MD, MAS, surveyed the scientific community's understanding of e-cigarettes and found that, in the form of mass-marketed consumer products, they do not lead smokers to quit.

In their paper, the authors write, "If e-cigarette consumer product use is not associated with more smoking cessation, there is no population-level health benefit for allowing them to be marketed to adults who smoke, regardless of the relative harm of e-cigarettes compared with conventional cigarettes. Moreover, to the extent that people who smoke simply add e-cigarettes to their cigarette smoking (becoming so-called dual users), their risk of heart disease, lung disease, and cancer could increase compared with smoking alone."

"The question we explored is of both scientific interest and public health interest," said Wang, assistant professor of medicine, "and we hope that the FDA will pay attention to our study as they try to make these decisions." Wang was joined in the study by co-first author Sudhamayi Bhadriraju, MD, a former UCSF postdoctoral fellow who is now a pulmonologist at Kaiser Permanente in Redwood City, Calif., and senior author Stanton A. Glantz, Ph.D., professor of medicine.

The authors searched the literature, compiling results from 64 studies to answer this question. The studies selected for formal analysis encompassed observational studies, in which participants were surveyed, but not directed, about their use of e-cigarettes, as well as clinical trials in which smokers who were trying to quit were given free e-cigarettes under medical supervision.

This distinction mattered for their analysis, Wang noted. "In observational studies, you're basically asking people 'out in the wild' about their use of e-cigarettes that they've purchased themselves from a corner store, without specific guidance to quit. But in a randomized trial you're testing a product, treating it like a therapy—a medicine—to see if an e-cigarette or some other product is more conducive to quitting."

In their analysis of observational studies that involved groups of people who already smoked and used e-cigarettes, whether or not they wanted to quit, the team found no appreciable effect of e-cigarettes on participants' ability to quit. In the next group of studies, which surveyed smokers using e-cigarettes who did indicate a desire to quit, the researchers also found no effect.

Then the team tried to tease apart the effects of frequency of use—whether people who used e-cigarettes daily might quit at different rates than people who used them less often. The researchers found that daily users quit at a higher rate than more infrequent users, although they cautioned that most participants in U.S. studies fall into the second category.

Finally, they examined nine clinical trials, which provided some type of e-cigarette, for free, to participants who were specifically encouraged to use the devices to help them quit. Though the devices and the controls employed in the studies differed, Wang concluded that being provided with certain e-cigarette products in a clinical trial context led to more quitting than some other therapies.

The 2009 Family Smoking Prevention and Tobacco Control Act (TCA) charges the FDA with only allowing e-cigarettes on the market when manufacturers can prove their tobacco-based products are "appropriate for the protection of public health." But the FDA delayed enforcing the law until a federal court order required companies to submit pre-market approval applications to the agency before September 2020 in order to continue selling e-cigarettes to consumers. The FDA is now evaluating thousands of such applications to sell e-cigarettes.

"It's important to recognize that in clinical trials, when certain e-cigarette devices are treated more like medicine, there may actually be an effect on quitting smoking," said Wang. "But that needs to be balanced against the risks of using these devices. Also, only seven e-cigarette devices were studied in the clinical trials. Whether the effect observed with these seven devices is the same or different than that of the thousands of different e-cigarette products available for sale is unknown."

In addition, he said, the new study does not analyze the increase in youth and teen smoking as a result of e-cigarette marketing and availability, nor does it compare the negative health effects of e-cigarettes to traditional tobacco products.

With regard to the current decision before the FDA, Wang said, "The standards that the FDA has to apply to approve e-cigarettes as consumer products or therapeutic devices are fundamentally different."

Explore further  

E-cigarette use high among recent quitters but rare among those who gave up longer ago

More information: Richard J. Wang et al. E-Cigarette Use and Adult Cigarette Smoking Cessation: A Meta-Analysis, American Journal of Public Health (2020). 

DOI: 10.2105/AJPH.2020.305999

Journal information: American Journal of Public Health


Provided by University of California, San Francisco

Light smokers may not escape nicotine addiction, study reveals

by Pennsylvania State University

DECEMBER 23, 2020

Credit: Pixabay/CC0 Public Domain

Even people who consider themselves to be casual cigarette smokers may be addicted, according to current diagnostic criteria. Researchers at Penn State College of Medicine and Duke University found that many light smokers—those who smoke one to four cigarettes per day or fewer—meet the criteria for nicotine addiction and should therefore be considered for treatment.

"In the past, some considered that only patients who smoke around 10 cigarettes per day or more were addicted, and I still hear that sometimes," said Jonathan Foulds, professor of public health sciences and psychiatry and behavioral health, Penn State. "But this study demonstrates that many lighter smokers, even those who do not smoke every day, can be addicted to cigarettes. It also suggests that we need to be more precise when we ask about cigarette smoking frequency."

According to Jason Oliver, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, Duke University, when assessing nicotine addiction—clinically referred to as 'tobacco use disorder'—clinicians are encouraged to fully assess the 11 criteria listed in the 5th edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM-5). As a shortcut, he said, clinicians more typically ask smokers how many cigarettes they smoke per day.

"Lighter smoking is correctly perceived as less harmful than heavy smoking, but it still carries significant health risks," Oliver said. "Medical providers sometimes perceive lighter smokers as not addicted and, therefore, not in need of treatment, but this study suggests many of them may have significant difficulty quitting without assistance."

The researchers examined an existing data set from the National Institutes of Health, including more than 6,700 smokers who had been fully assessed to find out if they met the DSM-5 criteria for tobacco use disorder. They found that 85% of the daily cigarette smokers were addicted to some extent—either mild, moderate or severe addiction.

"Surprisingly, almost two thirds of those smoking only one to four cigarettes per day were addicted, and around a quarter of those smoking less than weekly were addicted," Foulds said.

The researchers found that the severity of cigarette addiction, as indicated by the number of criteria met, increased with the frequency of smoking, with 35% of those smoking one-to-four cigarettes per day and 74% of those smoking 21 cigarettes or more per day being moderately or severely addicted.

The findings appeared Dec. 22 in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine.

"This was the first time that severity of cigarette addiction has been described across the full range of cigarette use frequency," said Foulds, a Penn State Cancer Institute researcher.

Oliver added that the study highlights the high prevalence of tobacco use disorder even among those considered to be light smokers and provides a basis from which treatment can begin to target this population.

"Previous research has found that non-daily smokers are more likely than daily smokers to make a quit attempt," Oliver said. "Clinicians should ask about all smoking behavior, including non-daily smoking, as such smokers may still require treatment to successfully quit smoking. Yet, it is unclear the extent to which existing interventions are effective for light smokers. Continued efforts to identify optimal cessation approaches for this population remain an important direction for future research."


Explore further E-cigarettes 'gateway' to smoking for non-smokers

More information: Jason A. Oliver et al. Association Between Cigarette Smoking Frequency and Tobacco Use Disorder in U.S. Adults. American Journal of Preventive Medicine. Published: December 22, 2020 DOI:doi.org/10.1016/j.amepre.2020.10.019

Journal information: American Journal of Preventive Medicine

Provided by Pennsylvania State University