Fastest carbon dioxide catcher heralds new age for direct air capture

New carbon sorbent is 99% efficient, lightning fast, and easily recyclable

Peer-Reviewed Publication

TOKYO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: ATMOSPHERIC AIR WITH LOW CONCENTRATIONS OF CARBON DIOXIDE IS PASSED THROUGH AN AQUEOUS SOLUTION OF IPDA, WHERE THE CARBON DIOXIDE RAPIDLY REACTS TO CREATE A SOLID PRODUCT. CARBON DIOXIDE IS SUBSEQUENTLY RE-RELEASED WITH MILD HEATING OF THE PRODUCT IN SUSPENSION, FOR STORAGE OR NEW APPLICATIONS. view more 

CREDIT: TOKYO METROPOLITAN UNIVERSITY

Tokyo, Japan – Researchers from Tokyo Metropolitan University have developed a new carbon capture system which removes carbon dioxide directly from the atmosphere with unprecedented performance. Isophorone diamine (IPDA) in a “liquid-solid phase separation” system was found to remove carbon dioxide at the low concentrations contained in the atmosphere with 99% efficiency. The compound is reusable with minimal heating and at least twice as fast as existing systems, an exciting new development for direct air capture.

The devastating effects of climate change are being felt around the world, with an urgent need for new policies, lifestyles and technologies that will lead to reduced carbon emissions. However, many scientists are looking further ahead than a net-zero emission goal, to a future “beyond zero” where we can actively reduce the amount of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. The field of carbon capture, the removal and subsequent storage or conversion of carbon dioxide, is developing rapidly, but hurdles remain before it can be deployed at scale.

The biggest challenges come from efficiency, particularly in processing atmospheric air directly in so-called direct air capture (DAC) systems. The concentrations of carbon dioxide are such that chemical reactions with sorbents are very slow. There is also the difficulty of getting the carbon dioxide out again in more sustainable capture-and-desorption cycles, which can be very energy intensive in itself. Even leading efforts to build DAC plants, such as those using potassium hydroxide and calcium hydroxide, suffer serious efficiency issues and recovery costs, making the hunt for new processes notably urgent.

A team led by Professor Seiji Yamazoe of Tokyo Metropolitan University have been studying a class of DAC technology known as liquid-solid phase separation systems. Many DAC systems involve bubbling air through a liquid, with a chemical reaction occurring between the liquid and the carbon dioxide. As the reaction proceeds, more of the reaction product accumulates in the liquid; this makes subsequent reactions slower and slower. Liquid-solid phase separation systems offer an elegant solution, where the reaction product is insoluble and comes out of solution as a solid. There is no accumulation of product in the liquid, and the reaction speed does not slow down much.

The team focused their attention on liquid amine compounds, modifying their structure to optimize reaction speed and efficiency with a wide range of concentrations of carbon dioxide in air, from around 400ppm to up to 30%. They found that an aqueous solution of one of these compounds, isophorone diamine (IPDA), could convert 99% of the carbon dioxide contained in the air to a solid carbamic acid precipitate. Crucially, they demonstrated that the solid dispersed in solution only required heating to 60 degrees Celsius to completely release the captured carbon dioxide, recovering the original liquid. The rate at which carbon dioxide could be removed was at least twice as fast as that of the leading DAC lab systems, making it the fastest carbon dioxide capture system in the world at present for processing low concentration carbon dioxide in air (400ppm).

The team’s new technology promises unprecedented performance and robustness in DAC systems, with wide implications for carbon capture systems deployed at scale. Beyond improving their system further, their vision of a “beyond zero” world now turns to how the captured carbon may be effectively used, in industrial applications and household products.

This work was supported by Project Number P14004 of the New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization (NEDO).

---

JOURNAL

ACS Environmental Au

DOI

10.1021/acsenvironau.1c00065 

ARTICLE TITLE

Direct Air Capture of CO2 Using a Liquid Amine–Solid Carbamic Acid Phase-Separation System Using Diamines Bearing an Aminocyclohexyl Group

ELDERADO

FBI records on search for fabled gold raise more questions

By MICHAEL RUBINKAM

FILE - FBI agents and representatives of the Pennsylvania Department of Conservation and Natural Resources set up a base in March, 2018, in Benezette Township, Elk County, Pa. A scientific report commissioned by the FBI shortly before agents went digging for buried treasure suggested that a huge quantity of gold was below the surface, according to newly released government documents. 

(Katie Weidenboerner/The Courier-Express via AP, File)


A scientific analysis commissioned by the FBI shortly before agents went digging for buried treasure suggested that a huge quantity of gold could be below the surface, according to newly released government documents and photos that deepen the mystery of the 2018 excavation in remote western Pennsylvania.

The report, by a geophysicist who performed microgravity testing at the site, hinted at an underground object with a mass of up to 9 tons and a density consistent with gold. The FBI used the consultant’s work to obtain a warrant to seize the gold — if there was any to be found.

The government has long claimed its dig was a bust. But a father-son pair of treasure hunters who spent years hunting for the fabled Civil War-era gold — and who led agents to the woodland site, hoping for a finder’s fee — suspect the FBI double-crossed them and made off with a cache that could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.

The newly revealed geophysical survey was part of a court-ordered release of government records on the FBI’s treasure hunt at Dent’s Run, about 135 miles (220 kilometers) northeast of Pittsburgh, where legend says an 1863 shipment of Union gold was either lost or stolen on its way to the U.S. Mint in Philadelphia.

Dennis and Kem Parada, who co-own the treasure-hunting outfit Finders Keepers, successfully sued the Justice Department for the records after being stonewalled by the FBI. Finders Keepers provided the FBI records to The Associated Press. The FBI subsequently posted them on its website.

The technical survey data collected by geophysical consulting firm Enviroscan gave credence to the treasure hunters’ own extensive fieldwork at the site — and prompted the FBI to excavate in a massive, secretive operation that lasted for several frigid days in late winter of 2018.

John Louie, a geophysics professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, unconnected to the dig, reviewed Enviroscan’s report at the request of the AP and said the firm’s “methods were very good,” and “their conclusions represent a physically reasonable hypothesis” that gold was buried at the site.

But he cautioned the subsurface gravity anomaly that Enviroscan identified did not definitively establish the presence of gold. There are other technical reasons why Enviroscan’s data could have turned out the way it did, Louie said.

“Thus, it is also entirely reasonable that the FBI did not find anything at the site, because there was not really any gold there,” he said via email.

Enviroscan co-founder Tim Bechtel declined to comment about his work at Dent’s Run, saying the FBI has not given him permission to talk. The FBI would not discuss Bechtel this week but said that after the dig, agents “did not take any subsequent steps to reconcile the geophysical-survey findings with the absence of gold or any other metal.”

Other documents in the just-released FBI case file raise still more questions.

A one-paragraph FBI report, dated March 13, 2019 — exactly one year after the dig — asserted agents found nothing at Dent’s Run. No “metals, items, and/or other relevant materials were found,” the report said. “Due to other priority work ... the FBI will close the captioned case.”

Anne Weismann, a lawyer for Finders Keepers, cast doubt on the FBI report’s credibility. She cited its brevity, as well as its timing — it was written after Finders Keepers began pressing the government for records.

“It does not read like one would expect,” said Weismann, a former Justice Department lawyer. “If that is the official record in the file of what they did and why they did it, it says almost nothing, and it’s crazy.”

She added that if the government does not produce a fuller, more contemporaneous accounting of its search for the gold, it “will heighten my view that this is not an accurate record and this was created as a cover-up. And I don’t say that lightly.”

In response, the FBI said the single-page document “is representative of the standard summaries filed when formally closing an FBI investigation.”

The agency has consistently denied it found anything.

Agents acted on information that Dent’s Run “may have been a cultural heritage site containing gold belonging to the United States government,” the FBI said in a statement, but “that possibility was not borne out by the excavation. The FBI continues to unequivocally reject any claims or speculation to the contrary.”

The trove of documents turned over to Finders Keepers also included nearly 1,000 photos, in grainy black-and-white, that show some — but certainly not all — of what the FBI was doing at the dig site, according to the treasure hunters.

Residents have previously told of hearing a backhoe and jackhammer overnight between the first and second days of the dig — when the work was supposed to have been paused — and seeing a convoy of FBI vehicles, including large armored trucks.

The FBI denied any work took place at the site after hours, saying the “only nighttime activity was ATV patrols by FBI Police personnel, who secured the site around the clock for the duration of the excavation.”

Parada suspects the FBI retrieved the gold in the middle of the night and then showed the treasure hunters an empty hole on the afternoon of the second day.

“It’s very curious why the FBI is going to such an extent to misdirect and be so obstructionist on this,” said Warren Getler, who has worked closely with the treasure hunters. “They worked that night under cover of darkness to evade, escape our knowledge of something we’re supposed to be partners in.”

Many of the FBI photos are seemingly irrelevant, including the hundreds of images of random trees and a woodland road leading to the dig site, while others simply don’t add up or raise additional questions, assert Parada and Getler, author of “Rebel Gold,” a book exploring the possibility of buried Civil War-era caches of gold and silver.

FBI agents are shown standing around the hole in photos that appear earlier in the series, but they are absent from nearly all of the later images at the dig site.

Getler and Parada say the lead FBI agent told them the hole was filled with water the morning of the second day, but the low-quality images released by the government show only a small puddle or perhaps a bit of snow. They said that same agent spent most of the second day at base camp — where Getler and the treasure hunters say they were largely confined to their car — and not at the dig site.

The FBI said it’s standard for photos to “document site conditions before, during, and after FBI operations,” Parada claims it all points to a clandestine overnight dig and a second-day excavation that was just for show.

“I think we were expecting a couple hundred photos of the night dig, and I think we were expecting pictures of metal coins or bars,” Parada said. “I think there were pictures, but they disappeared.”

The FBI records also show that several weeks before the excavation, an agent with the agency’s art crime team approached Wells Fargo to ask whether it shipped gold by stagecoach for the U.S. Mint in 1863.

Wells Fargo historians turned up no evidence of it but said records from the era are incomplete. Wells Fargo did ship gold by stagecoach, a corporate archivist wrote in an email to the FBI, but large quantities of the precious metal, as well as gold that had to be carried long distances, were “better transported by ship or train.”

Getler said the gold might have been transported by wagon, not stagecoach.

Additional FBI releases are expected over the coming months.

A doll brings pride, identity for Brazil Indigenous woman
By DIANE JEANTET

Today

1 of 11

Atyna Pora, of Brazil's Anambe indigenous group, clips the hair made of yarn of an indigenous doll, at a sewing workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Pora and her mother Luakam Anambe who make the dolls bearing faces and body paints of different Indigenous groups, have sold more than 5,000 of their dolls. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)


RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Luakam Anambé wanted her newborn granddaughter to have a doll — something she’d never owned as a child working in slave-like conditions in Brazil’s Amazon rainforest. But she wanted the doll to share their Indigenous features, and there was nothing like that in stores. So she sewed one herself from cloth and stuffing.

The doll had brown skin, long, dark hair, and the same face and body paint used by the Anambé people. It delighted passersby; while Indigenous dolls can be found elsewhere in Latin America, they remain mostly absent in Brazil, home to nearly 900,000 people identifying as Indigenous in the last census.

A business idea was born, and her modest home now doubles as a workshop where she and her daughter produce dolls for a growing clientele.

Dolls bearing faces and body paints of different Indigenous groups are displayed on a table at a sewing workshop in Rio de Janeiro. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

“Before, only white dolls existed, then came the Black ones, but Indigenous ones didn’t appear,” said Anambé, 53, wearing a beaded necklace and a headdress of delicate orange feathers. “When Indigenous women see the dolls, they sometimes cry.”

Since 2013, Anambé has sold more than 5,000 dolls at local fairs and through social media, mailing them across the country, and she is fundraising to attend a German fair with the aim of exporting to Europe. Her burgeoning business in Rio de Janeiro is a world removed from the Amazonian state of Para, where her life of hardship began.

Luakam Anambe poses for a photo in her sewing workshop. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

She was one of 15 children and Anambé’s parents sent her and two sisters to live and work at a plantation. Just 7 years old, she was charged with looking after the plantation owner’s toddler. She remembers being rebuked after asking the owner’s wife for a doll; she should work, not play, Anambé recalls being told. And she received no compassion when telling the woman that she had been sexually abused. She never received any pay, and complaints often ended with young Anambé locked in a dark tobacco storeroom, alone.

Anambé said she was 15 when the plantation owner forced her to marry his friend, a man two decades her senior, with whom she had a daughter. Anambé soon fled her violent husband, leaving her baby with family.

“We’re fighters, in a fight to survive,” she said, referring to Indigenous people who regularly face peril from Amazon land grabbers, loggers, ranchers and miners. Before colonization, “there were millions of Indigenous people in Brazil. Today, there are far fewer. And every passing day, less and less.”

 

Anambé worked for years as a cleaning lady in Belem, Para state’s capital. But she felt life had more in store for her and that she should seek opportunities in one of Brazil’s biggest cities. She hitched an eight-day ride to Rio with a long-haul trucker and thought of him as a godsend, especially because he didn’t abuse her.

Her Indigenous features stood out in Rio, and she experienced prejudice. Eventually, she landed a job in a bikini factory and was able to send for her daughter, by then in her twenties. Little by little, they saved enough money to move from their one-room shack to a small home, where she started making clothes for some fashionable Rio brands. With the skills she developed sitting behind her sewing machine, she made her first doll.

Atyna Pora, of Brazil's Anambe indigenous group, paints an indigenous doll. 

(AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

“It’s like a mirror,” said her daughter, Atyna Porã, who now works with her mother. “Through the doll, we see ourselves, and we have to break down the taboo behind it, because we have always been very discriminated against.”

Anambé and Porã have expanded their portfolio to include dolls bearing face and body paints of five other Indigenous groups. Each is handsewn, dressed in traditional clothes and carefully painted with a sharpened branch from a tree in their backyard, following Indigenous custom.

Atyna Pora adds black yarn hair to an indigenous doll. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

While they were the first to reach a broad audience using social media, others have followed in their footsteps.

Indigenous fashion designer We’e’ena Tikuna, also born in the Amazon rainforest and now based in Rio, started making Indigenous dolls to dress them in her creations. “I admire her work, like that of other Indigenous women,” Tikuna said of Anambé. “We need that Indigenous representation.”

Anambé named her first doll after Atyna’s daughter, Anaty, which became her company’s name. And 20% of proceeds go to her nonprofit, Maria Vicentina, named for her mother and grandmother. Based in Para, it will provide seamstress training to women under duress, growing the Anaty doll operation while helping provide them financial independence.

“When I left the state of Para, I didn’t leave just for myself. I went for other women, too,” Anambé said. “Anaty came to give this empowerment to us, Indigenous women.”

Dolls bearing faces and body paints of different Indigenous groups are displayed.

 (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

Dolls bearing faces and body paints of different Indigenous groups are displayed on a table at a sewing workshop. 

(AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)

THEOCRATIC THUGS
Christian nationalism on the rise in some GOP campaigns
By PETER SMITH and DEEPA BHARATH

1 of 3

FILE - State Sen. Doug Mastriano, R-Franklin, a Republican candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, takes part in a primary night election gathering in Chambersburg, Pa., Tuesday, May 17, 2022. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster, File)


PITTSBURGH (AP) — The victory party took on the feel of an evangelical worship service after Doug Mastriano won Pennsylvania’s Republican gubernatorial primary this month. As a Christian singer led the crowd in song, some raised their arms toward the heavens in praise.

Mastriano opened his remarks by evoking Scripture: “God uses the foolish to confound the wise.” He claimed Pennsylvanians’ freedom would be “snatched away” if his Democratic opponent wins in November, and cast the election in starkly religious terms with another biblical reference: “Let’s choose this day to serve the Lord.”

Mastriano, a state senator and retired Army colonel, has not only made faith central to his personal story but has woven conservative Christian beliefs and symbols into the campaign — becoming the most prominent example this election cycle of what some observers call a surge of Christian nationalism among Republican candidates.

Mastriano — who has ignored repeated requests for comment from The Associated Press, including through his campaign last week — has rejected the “Christian nationalist” label in the past. In fact, few if any prominent candidates use the label. Some say it’s a pejorative and insist everyone has a right to draw on their faith and values to try to influence public policy.

But scholars generally define Christian nationalism as going beyond policy debates and championing a fusion of American and Christian values, symbols and identity.

Christian nationalism, they say, is often accompanied by a belief that God has destined America, like the biblical Israel, for a special role in history, and that it will receive divine blessing or judgment depending on its obedience.

That often overlaps with the conservative Christian political agenda, including opposition to abortion, same-sex marriage and transgender rights. Researchers say Christian nationalism is often also associated with mistrust of immigrants and Muslims. Many Christian nationalists see former President Donald Trump as a champion despite his crude sexual boasts and lack of public piety.

Candidates seen as Christian nationalists have had mixed success in this year’s Republican primaries, which typically pitted staunch conservatives against opponents even further to the right.

There were losses by some high-profile candidates, such as U.S. Rep. Madison Cawthorn and an Idaho gubernatorial hopeful, Lt. Gov. Janice McGeachin. The former spoke of a “spiritual battle” on Capitol Hill and a need for “strong, God-fearing patriots.” The latter was photographed holding a gun and a Bible and said, “God calls us to pick up the sword and fight, and Christ will reign in the state of Idaho.”

Some of Idaho’s Republican primaries for the Legislature were won by candidates touting Christian values or sharing priorities with Christian nationalists, such as sports bans for transgender athletes. U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., who uses biblical phrasing to “be a watchman on the wall” against those seeking to “destroy our faith,” easily won her primary.

Watchers of Christian nationalism consider Mastriano’s win — in a rout, with 44% in a crowded field despite opposition from the state party establishment — by far the highest-profile victory for the movement.

Mastriano has called the separation of church and state a “myth.”

After his victory, the comments section of his campaign Facebook page had the feel of a revival tent:

“Praise Jesus!” “God is smiling on us and sending His blessings.” “Thank you Father God!!”

Mastriano “is a unique case where he really does in his speeches highlight this apocalyptic idea” where his supporters and causes are on God’s side, said Andrew Whitehead, sociology professor at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis and co-author of “Taking America Back for God: Christian Nationalism in the United States.”

“It literally is good and evil,” he continued. “There’s no room for compromise, so that is the threat to democracy.”

In the book, Whitehead and co-author Samuel Perry measured rates of Christian nationalism by drawing on a 2017 Baylor University survey. It gauged opinions on such things as America’s role in God’s plan and whether the U.S. should be declared a Christian nation, advance biblical values and allow school prayer and religious displays in public places.

Their research found about one in five Americans align with many of those views. That’s down from nearly one in four a decade earlier, just as Americans have become less religious overall. But Whitehead said Christian nationalists, who are more numerous among Republicans, can be expected to maintain their fervor.

Christian nationalism is emerging alongside and in some cases overlapping with other right-wing movements, such as the conspiratorial QAnon, white supremacy, and denialism over COVID-19 and the 2020 election. Christian prayers and symbols featured prominently in and around the U.S. Capitol during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection there.

Mastriano, who sought to overturn Pennsylvania’s vote for Joe Biden in 2020, attended the rally preceding the attack and chartered buses to bring others. Though he says he left when things turned violent, video showed he passed through “breached barricades and police lines,” according to a Senate Judiciary Committee report.

Robert Jones, CEO of the Public Religion Research Institute, said those Jan. 6 displays were not surprising.

According to a recent survey by the institute, white evangelical Christians were among the strongest supporters of the assertion that God intended America as a “promised land” for European Christians. Those who backed that idea were far more likely to agree that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence ... to save our country.”

“To my mind, white Christian nationalism is really the threat,” Jones said.

Conservative Christian themes are also playing a role in local elections, including in blue states, although many proponents say they view it not as nationalism but as supporting their religious freedom and values.

Pastor Tim Thompson of 412 Church in Murrieta, California, who hosts a YouTube channel with more than 9,600 subscribers and envisions a conservative future for the state, recently started a political action committee aiming to “take back our school boards” and give parents authority over curriculum.

“We don’t want teachers or any other adults talking to our kids about sex,” Thompson said. “We don’t want teachers categorizing our kids into oppressed or oppressor. These are not political issues. They are moral and biblical issues.”

Judeo-Christian values are the foundation of America, he argued.

“People are afraid to speak up for these values because they are afraid that the left is going to slap a label like ‘racist’ or ‘Christian nationalist’ on them,” Thompson said. “I don’t care about those labels, because my wife, children, church and community know who I am.”

Pastor Jack Hibbs of Calvary Chapel Chino Hills in Chino Hills, California, has also sought to influence local elections. While he does not let candidates campaign at the church, he frequently offers endorsements as a way of signaling to his flock those who are “pro-family, pro-life and pro-freedom.”

But “the hair on my neck goes up” when he hears the term “Christian nationalism,” he said. And he was embarrassed to see Christian imagery during the Jan. 6 riot: “That was a sad day, to see those sacred symbols and words pimped like that.”

Elizabeth Neumann, chief strategy officer for Moonshot, a tech company that aims to counter online violent extremism, disinformation and other harms, said Christian nationalism began picking up steam around 2015 amid a rising narrative of purported persecution of Christians.

Neumann, who served in the George W. Bush and Trump administrations and grew up in an evangelical Christian household, called the movement “heretical and idolatry” and an “apocalyptic vision (that) very often leads to violence.” Many pastors are pushing back against it, she added.

“I see Christian nationalism as the gasping, dying breath of the older generation in America that is afraid that Christians are going to be replaced,” she said.

___

Bharath reported from Los Angeles.

___

Associated Press religion coverage receives support through the AP’s collaboration with The Conversation US, with funding from Lilly Endowment Inc. The AP is solely responsible for this content.

NO GREEN WASHING JUST PROFITEERING

Chevron Shareholders Reject Proposal to Disclose Climate Risks


Author of the article:
Bloomberg News
Paul Takahashi
Publishing date:May 26, 2022 • 

(Bloomberg) — Chevron Corp. shareholders rejected two proposals calling for the US oil major to disclose climate risks to its business and set more rigorous targets to cut pollution.

More than 60% of shareholders voted against the proposals during Chevron’s annual meeting on Wednesday, according to preliminary results issued by the company.

The votes come as historic profits by oil majors such as Chevron eclipse concerns about combating climate change. Similar proposals at ConocoPhillips Co. and Occidental Petroleum Corp. also failed to garner votes this month.

Dutch investor group Follow This proposed that Chevron set targets to reduce carbon emissions, including those of its customers, in line with the Paris Agreement.

Chevron’s board opposed the measure, saying it has already developed a “portfolio carbon intensity” metric that measures emissions from oil and gas production and from its customers. The company also said it wouldn’t reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by changing its fossil-fuels portfolio, because it wouldn’t serve its shareholders who benefit from its “strong asset base.”

Shareholders also rejected a proposal requesting Chevron provide reports on how the International Energy Agency’s net-zero by 2050 plan would impact the company’s business. Investors overwhelmingly approved a Chevron-supported proposal to report on the reliability of the company’s methane emission disclosures.

Proposals seeking to avoid doing business with governments involved in crimes against humanity and an audit on racial equity and environmental racism also failed.

©2022 Bloomberg L.P.

Patients who use marijuana may need more sedation during endoscopies

By HealthDay News

Marijuana users were more likely to require higher total sedation -- defined as more than 5 mg of midazolam, or more than 100 mcg of fentanyl, or the need for diphenhydramine -- during gastric endoscopy, but not during colonoscopy, a recent study found. Photo by CBD-Infos-com/Pixabay

If you use pot, you may need more sedation than normal during a gastric endoscopy, according to a new study.

"Patients didn't have increased awareness or discomfort during procedures, but they did require more drugs," lead author Dr. Yasmin Nasser said in a news release from the American Gastroenterological Association. Nasser is an assistant professor in the Institute for Chronic Diseases at the University of Calgary School of Medicine in Canada.

With increases in marijuana legalization and use, doctors need to be aware of patients' use of the drug and prepare themselves and their patients for the possible need of increased sedation and associated risks, the study authors said.

In an endoscopy, a tube with a camera is inserted down the throat to examine the upper digestive system. Patients typically receive conscious sedation, meaning they're partially conscious but relaxed during the procedure.

RELATED Medical marijuana reduces pain, opioid use among cancer patients

In this study, researchers assessed the link between marijuana and sedation in 419 adult outpatients undergoing gastric endoscopy or colonoscopy at three centers in Canada.

The patients were asked about their pot use and their awareness and comfort level during the procedure. The researchers analyzed the use of the sedatives midazolam, fentanyl and diphenhydramine during the patients' procedures.

Marijuana users were more likely to require higher total sedation -- defined as more than 5 mg of midazolam, or more than 100 mcg of fentanyl, or the need for diphenhydramine -- during gastric endoscopy, but not during colonoscopy.

Gastric endoscopy generally requires more sedation than colonoscopy because the scope irritates the upper part of the gastrointestinal tract, often triggering the gag reflex, the researchers explained.

Nasser presented the study Saturday at the American Gastroenterological Association's Digestive Disease Week meeting, in San Diego. Studies presented at meetings are usually considered preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed medical journal.

The researchers noted that they only compared users and non-users of marijuana, but did not examine how the timing, amount or method of pot use could affect the need for greater conscious sedation.

They pointed out that their study did not look at marijuana's impact on propofol sedation, which is more commonly used in the United States.

More information

For more on gastric endoscopy, go to the U.S. National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

Children of same-sex parents as well-adjusted as others

By HealthDay News

Children raised by same-sex parents are just as well-adjusted as kids raised by different-sex parents, researchers say.

In the new study, the researchers compared 62 Dutch children (aged 6 to 16 years) whose parents were the same sex with 72 kids whose parents were different sexes. The investigators considered prosocial behavior, hyperactivity, peer problems, emotional adjustment and general behavioral problems.

"The new findings clearly show that same-sex families have strong resilience strategies to protect their children from prevailing legal hurdles and societal rejection. For example, parents create an environment in which their children receive appreciation and recognition from others and where other same-sex families provide positive role models," said Dr. Mirjam Fischer. She is with the University of Cologne's Institute of Sociology and Social Psychology in Germany.

Same-sex families have strong resilience strategies to protect their children from prevailing legal hurdles and societal rejection, a new study shows. Natasha Kramskaya/Shutterstock

"However, it should not be necessary in the first place that parents have to develop these strategies," Fischer said in a university news release.

Past research has found that same-sex parents face significant stress factors related to their sexual orientation that has led to decreased physical and mental health for the parents. It was thought that this emotional turmoil could lead to adjustment problems in the children, but this study did not find that.

The researchers recommended that research and policymakers move away from deficit-driven comparisons between same-sex and different-sex families. Instead, support services for same-sex families should build on their existing resilience structures and strengthen them further, the authors said.

The findings were published online recently in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health.

More information

The organization Family Equality has more resources and facts for LGBTQ+ families.

Copyright © 2022 HealthDay. All rights reserved.

MY HOMETOWN HAS SNAKES IN TREES
Firefighters rescue 6-foot pet snake from tree


Firefighters in Edmonton, Alberta, came to the rescue of a pet snake that escaped from its owner's home and climbed 15 feet up a tree. Photo courtesy of Edmonton Fire Rescue Services/Facebook

May 25 (UPI) -- Firefighters in Alberta were called out to perform an "unusual animal rescue" when a resident's 6-foot snake escaped and climbed 15 feet up a tree.

Edmonton Fire Rescue Services said in a Facebook post that personnel from Fire Station 26 responded to a residential neighborhood on a report of a pet snake stranded in a tree.

Firefighters said the snake, named Whiskey, had escaped from its owner and climbed to a tree branch about 15 feet off the ground.

The rescuers used a ladder to reach the serpent and bring it safely back to the ground for a reunion with its owner.

A German surfer broke the Guinness World Record for riding the largest wave -- an 86-foot monster off the coast of Portugal.

Guinness World Records announced Tuesday that Sebastian Steudtner, 36, broke the world record when he rode the 86-foot wave off the coast of Praia do Norte, Nazare, in October 2020.

"It feels amazing," Steudtner told Guinness at the Tuesday ceremony announcing his record. "I have achieved everything there is in my sport. It has been a crazy journey to get here and the record is much more than just a number."

The wave earned Steudtner the World Surf League Biggest Wave Award in 2021 -- the third time he has received the award.

Guinness World Records said measuring the wave was a long and difficult process that involved taking frames from a video of Steudtner's ride and using other objects in frame -- including the surfer's own body -- as points of reference to determine the height of the water.

Steudtner took the record from Brazilian surfer Rodrigo Koxa, who set the record in 2017 at the same location that Steudtner would later visit for his own record-breaking.

US Study reveals barriers preventing access to abortion pill

By Alan Mozes, HealthDay News

Among primary care doctors who were trained and currently providing abortion care, 60% said they didn't offer abortion pill prescriptions as part of their family practice, but only at specialized reproductive health clinics. File Photo by Bill Greenblatt/UPI | License Photo

Even with Roe v. Wade still the law of the land, primary care doctors in the United States have difficulty prescribing U.S. federally approved abortion pills, a new study finds.

Getting in the way is a complex combination of state and federal regulations, insufficient training and institutional hurdles, researchers found when they surveyed dozens of doctors.

"As family physicians provide comprehensive medical care to individuals throughout their life course -- including supporting their reproductive choices -- they are prime individuals to provide medication abortion," explained study lead author Dr. Na'amah Razon.

"We found a range of barriers that prevented family physicians from integrating medication abortion into their primary care practices," said Razon, an assistant professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at the University of California, Davis.

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It's a landscape that will likely only gets worse, said Razon, whether or not Roe v. Wade is actually overturned, although a leaked draft from the U.S. Supreme Court indicates it will be.

"Given the recent movement toward restricting abortions in the United States, family physicians could face increasing barriers in providing medication abortion," she noted.

The two-pill regimen consists of mifepristone and misoprostol. Planned Parenthood notes this noninvasive method is safe and 94%-96% effective. And the Guttmacher Institute says that the medicinal approach now accounts for more than half of all abortions in the United States.

Until December 2021, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration only allowed mifepristone to be administered in-person at a clinic, a hospital or under the direct supervision of a certified medical provider. Retail pharmacy pickup and mail orders were not allowed. The December FDA ruling did away with the in-person requirement, allowing telehealth consultation, though all the doctors in the current study were interviewed before that decision came down.

For the study, 48 U.S. primary care doctors were interviewed in 2019 and classified into one of three groups: those who did not provide abortions and had not been trained to do so (11 doctors) those who didn't provide abortions, despite having received training (20 doctors), and those who had been trained and did provide abortion services (17 doctors).

Roughly two-thirds were not providing abortions at the time they were surveyed.

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Those in the untrained/non-provider group said their lack of training was the main reason for not offering abortion care.

Such doctors variously said their lack of abortion care skills left them "uncomfortable," unfamiliar with the medications involved, and/or unconvinced that abortion services truly falls within the realm of family medicine. They were also the most likely to point to their state's anti-abortion political climate, a lack of community support, and a poor understanding of local hospital regulations as discouraging factors.

By contrast, those who didn't provide abortion services despite their training generally said they understood all too well the wide range of primary care, clinic and hospital restrictions in place in their region.

This group also cited the federal Hyde Amendment as a red-tape barrier to providing care in their own practice and elsewhere. That law prevents any federal funds from being used for abortion.

In addition, the group highlighted the FDA's REMS (Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy) as another impediment. REMS is a drug safety protocol applied to certain medications. Since 2011, the FDA has applied REMS to mifepristone to restrict how, where and when it can be prescribed and obtained.

Among primary care doctors who were trained and currently providing abortion care, 60% said they didn't offer abortion pill prescriptions as part of their family practice, but only at specialized reproductive health clinics.

Researchers also found that practitioners who offered abortion pill prescriptions in their primary care setting were located in either the Northeast or West none resided in states with highly restrictive abortion laws in place.

Some also noted that the institutions and/or hospital ob-gyn departments with which they worked prohibited abortion services of any kind.

Several said that in order to make abortion pills available at a family practice or a specialized clinic it was necessary to have a "champion" on board willing to jump through the regulatory hoops involved.

Elisa Wells is co-founder and co-director of Plan C, an organization dedicated to ensuring unrestricted and non-stigmatized access to abortion pills. She expressed frustration with the status quo.

"The science about the absolute safety of medication abortion doesn't support these added barriers to access," Wells said. "Many primary care providers we have talked to are not in practices that allow them to do abortion, so that's a huge hurdle," even among those who are trained and willing.

Wells, who was not involved in the study, said that ensuring widespread abortion pill access will mean convincing the FDA to remove all REMS restrictions for mifepristone.

"Mifepristone is an extremely safe medication," she noted, "and any licensed provider should be able to write a prescription for a patient who qualifies for it, and the patient should be able to fill that prescription at any pharmacy."

The findings were published in the May-June issue of the Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine.

More information

There's more on abortion medication at Plan C.

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