FOR PROFIT HEALTHCARE

New West Health-Gallup poll: 114 million Americans think the US healthcare system is failing them

1 in 3 Americans say healthcare in America deserves an F for affordability

Reports and Proceedings

WEST HEALTH INSTITUTE

 

IMAGE: WEST HEALTH-GALLUP HEALTHCARE IN AMERICA REPORT view more 

CREDIT: 2022 GALLUP

WASHINGTON, D.C. — Oct. 6, 2022 — Nearly half the country (44%), or about 114 million Americans, give poor (30%) or failing (14%) grades to the U.S. healthcare system, percentages that climb higher and grow even more negative when it comes to affordability and health equity, according to a new report from West Health and Gallup, the polling organization.

The 2022 West Health-Gallup Healthcare in America Report asked a nationally representative sample of more than 5,500 Americans to provide a letter grade (A-excellent, B-good, C-satisfactory, D-poor and F-fail) for the healthcare system overall and to give individual grades for affordability, equity, accessibility and quality of care.

High marks were in short supply across the board, with the healthcare system getting an average grade of C-minus. Women and Hispanic and Asian Americans were more negative, with about half of each group assigning it a grade of D or F compared to about 40% of males, and 43% of White and Black Americans.

Nothing, however, earned more failing grades than affordability, which for three-quarters of Americans — an estimated 190 million adults — deserved no higher than a D (41%) or F (33%), for an average grade of D-minus. A top grade of A was virtually nonexistent (1%), only 6% went as high as a B, and 19% gave it a middling grade of C. The negative feelings about healthcare affordability were strikingly similar across gender, age, race, household income and political persuasion.

“After years of higher prices, growing inequities, skipping treatments, getting sicker, or borrowing money to pay medical bills, it’s no wonder so many Americans view the health system so poorly,” said Timothy A. Lash, President, West Health. “This new report should send a strong message to policymakers that despite the healthcare provisions in the Inflation Reduction Act, most of which will not take effect for some time, there is still immediate work to be done to lower healthcare prices.”

Report Card on Healthcare Equity, Access and Quality of Care

Two-thirds of Black Americans (66%) and a similar percentage of Asian Americans (64%) gave a D or F for equity, the ability of every person to get quality care when they need it regardless of personal characteristics. That’s more than the 55% of Hispanic Americans and 53% of White Americans who deemed health equity to be poor or failing. Black, Hispanic and Asian Americans and women were also more critical when it came to access to care. More than 40% of each of these groups gave access Ds and Fs, compared to about a third of White Americans and men.

Quality of care was the only aspect of the healthcare system that received more positive than negative marks, though it was still only able to earn an overall grade of C-plus. Less than half (47%) gave it an A or B grade, but a significant gender divide emerged, with women much less likely to give high grades for quality than men (38% vs. 57%). Black and Hispanic Americans were more negative on quality and less likely to give top marks than the general population (36% each vs. 47% overall).

Making the Grade — Why Do So Many Americans View Healthcare So Poorly?

Millions of Americans struggle every day in the face of a high-cost healthcare system, a struggle that not only results in a bad report card but in negative real-life consequences. Nearly one in five Americans say they or a family member had a health problem worsen after being unable to pay for needed care and an estimated 70 million people (27%) report that if they needed quality care today, they would not be able to afford it.

“What I’ve done instead is ration healthcare…medicine. Using less to make it last. Using less than was prescribed in order to make it last longer...Things weren’t as good as they could have been if I’d been using it...the way I should have been,” said 71-year-old Anne Courtney Davis from Ohio, one of the survey respondents.

Additional Key Findings

• 66% of Americans say their household pays too much relative to the quality of care that it receives, up six points compared to April of last year. 
• Half the country, about 129 million people, lack confidence they will be able to afford healthcare as they age.
• Two in three Americans under 65 are worried Medicare will not exist when they turn 65, and 3 in 4 adults 62 or younger say the same about Social Security.
• 17% cut back on healthcare services to pay for other household goods with women more likely to do so than men (about 50% more likely); and Black (23%) and Hispanic (24%) Americans 53% and 60% more likely than White adults (15%). 
• Six in 10 Americans report that cost is an extremely important or important factor when considering a recommended medical procedure or medication.
• People 50 to 64 are nearly twice as likely to say cost is extremely important as those over 65 (29% vs. 16%) — rates that run even higher for Black (39%) and Hispanic adults (41%).

“While America’s grading of the U.S. healthcare system is troubling, it provides a roadmap for healthcare systems and policymakers to invest and fix areas with the greatest impact to shift sentiment,” said Dan Witters, Research Director for the Gallup National Health and Well-Being Index. “What we must remember is that there are actual people behind these grades and that too many Americans are persistently struggling to access and afford quality healthcare.”

Note to Media If you wish to receive any additional information about the survey, including further demographic groups responses, please contact kristjan_archer@gallup.com.

 

Methodology

Results are based on surveys conducted June 21-30, 2022, with n=5,584 adults, aged 18 and older, living in all 50 U.S. states and the District of Columbia as a part of the Gallup Panel. For results based on these samples of national adults, the margin of sampling error at the 95% confidence level is +1.6 percentage points for response percentages around 50% and is +1.0 percentage points for response percentages around 10% or 90%, design effect included. For reported subgroups, the margin of error will be larger, typically ranging from ±3 to ±4 percentage points. All demographic group comparisons in the report are significant at p<.05 unless otherwise noted. Learn more about how the Gallup Panel works.

 

About West Health
Solely funded by philanthropists Gary and Mary West, West Health is a family of nonprofit and nonpartisan organizations including the Gary and Mary West Foundation and Gary and Mary West Health Institute in San Diego, and the Gary and Mary West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. West Health is dedicated to lowering healthcare costs to enable seniors to successfully age in place with access to high-quality, affordable health and support services that preserve and protect their dignity, quality of life and independence. Learn more at westhealth.org and follow @westhealth.

 

About Gallup
Gallup delivers analytics and advice to help leaders and organizations solve their most pressing problems. Combining more than 80 years of experience with its global reach, Gallup knows more about the attitudes and behaviors of employees, customers, students and citizens than any other organization in the world.

 

---

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Survey

SUBJECT OF RESEARCH

People

Score a discount on Amazon? You might’ve unwittingly paid more

Online sellers display a discount claim when raising price. Shoppers think they have found a bargain

Peer-Reviewed Publication

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

More than a quarter of vacuum cleaners sold on Amazon have at some point pretended to offer a discount when they had actually just increased the price, according to new research.

By pairing a price increase with the introduction of a previously unadvertised “list price” for a product, Amazon signals to shoppers that they are receiving a discount when they actually pay 23% more, on average, for their new vacuum than they would have just a day earlier. Days after the price hike, the price drops and both the list price and misleading discount claim disappear.

Sellers of digital cameras, blenders, drones and even books used the same misleading practice, although less frequently. The false discounts drove higher sales despite charging more money, causing the products to improve in Amazon’s sales rankings.

These findings come from new research into this pricing phenomenon by Jinhong Xie at the University of Florida, Sungsik Park at the University of South Carolina and Man Xie at Arizona State University. The team published their analysis (DATE) in the journal Marketing Science.

“When you see this list-price comparison, you naturally assume you are getting a discount. It’s not just that you didn’t get a discount. You actually paid a higher price than before the seller displayed the discount claim,” said Jinhong Xie, a professor in the Warrington College of Business at UF.

Currently, regulations prohibiting deceptive pricing require that sellers use truthful price comparisons.  Consumers have won class-action lawsuits against retailers like JC Penny and Ann Taylor for making discount claims using illegitimate values in price comparisons.

In the pricing practice that Xie and her colleagues uncovered, the list price can be truthful yet still misleading. That’s because retailers advertise a price discount by displaying the list price when they actually raise prices and give the impression of a deal. But most of the time, the product is sold at a cheaper price without any comparison to a list price. It is the timing of the price comparison that misleads shoppers.

“Current regulations are all about the value of the list price, and they don’t say anything about misleading consumers by manipulating the timing of the list price’s introduction,” Xie said.

The researchers studied the pricing of household products on Amazon from 2016 to 2017. Xie and her colleagues followed more than 1,700 vacuums and gathered nearly half a million individual observations of prices. While most introductions of a new list price were associated with a price drop or no price change, 22% were instead accompanied by a price increase.

Because shoppers perceive they are getting a deal, these misleading discounts actually improved the products’ sales rankings on Amazon, a proxy for sales volume.

“We found that by increasing the price by 23% on average, the seller achieves an 11% advantage in their sales rank among all products in the home and kitchen category,” Xie said. “This allows firms to achieve the impossible: increasing margins and increasing sales simultaneously.”

Other products used this practice anywhere from 3% of the time for books to more than 13% of the time for blenders, digital cameras and drones.

Xie says consumers can protect themselves by questioning ubiquitous “discounts” advertised in online stores. Shoppers should not assume a discount claim means the price is lower than usual. Instead, shoppers should comparison-shop across multiple websites. They can also use online tools that provide price histories to learn if the advertised price they are seeing is really a deal or not.

“We think consumers need to be aware so they can protect themselves,” Xie said. “And we think that consumer organizations and regulators should evaluate this new marketing practice to determine whether and how to manage it.”

---

JOURNAL

Marketing Science

DOI

10.1287/mksc.2022.1402 

METHOD OF RESEARCH

Data/statistical analysis

University at Buffalo-led team awarded $5 million to help older adults spot online scams, disinformation

The National Science Foundation-funded project aims to reduce online fraud among older adults, who lose billions of dollars each year

Grant and Award Announcement

UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

 

IMAGE: THE PROJECT USES DIGITAL GAMES – INCLUDING ENGAGING AND REALISTIC SOCIAL MEDIA SITUATIONS – TO MAKE LEARNING FUN. view more 

CREDIT: UNIVERSITY AT BUFFALO

BUFFALO, N.Y. – Last year, more than 92,000 U.S. adults aged 60 and over reported being victims of online scams, according to the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

Their losses? Roughly $1.7 billion.

To fight this problem, a University at Buffalo-led research team was awarded a two-year, $5 million National Science Foundation (NSF) Convergence Accelerator phase 2 cooperative agreement to create digital tools that help older adults better recognize and protect themselves from online deceptions and other forms of disinformation.

“Older adults did not grow up using the internet. For many of them, it can be difficult to spot online deceptions, and the results can be tragic,” says principal investigator Siwei Lyu, PhD, Empire Innovation Professor of computer science and engineering at UB.

He adds: “What we’re doing is pulling together a multidisciplinary team of experts to create a suite of digital literacy tools that older adults can use to help recognize, resist and spread awareness of online deceptions and disinformation.”

Co-principal investigators include Natalie Bazarova, PhD, professor in the Department of Communications at Cornell University, Dominic DiFranzo, PhD, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Lehigh University, Darren Linvill, PhD, associate professor in the College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences at Clemson University; and Anita Nikolich, director of research and technology innovation and research scientist in the School of Information Sciences at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

Other team members from UB include David Castillo, PhD, professor in UB’s Department of Romance Languages and Literatures; Rohini Srihari, PhD, professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering; and Cynthia Stewart, PhD, program manager for the UB Center for Information Integrity.

 

Team is working with older adults

The project, Deception Awareness and Resilience Training (DART), is led by the UB Center for Information Integrity (CII), which was launched in late 2021 with internal funding from the Office of the Vice President for Research and Economic Development at UB. Lyu and Castillo serve as co-directors of CII.

DART builds upon a $750,000 National Science Foundation phase 1 grant the team received last year, when it began meeting with older adults in Western New York and South Carolina to better understand how they fall victim to online deceptions.

Both projects are funded by the NSF’s Convergence Accelerator, a program the agency launched in 2019 to support “basic research and discovery to accelerate solutions toward societal impact.”

The DART platform uses digital games – including engaging and realistic social media situations – to make learning fun. The aim is to make DART easy to use, so older adults can learn on their own, in communal settings such as adult homes or libraries, or with the aid of a caregiver.

There are many digital literacy tools available, but many are not tailored to older adults, which limits their effectiveness.

DART aims to address this limitation by including a wide range of online schemes older adults encounter. The team will update the learning materials as schemes evolve.

DART can be applied to teens, others vulnerable to online scams

NSF selected the DART team for the second phase of the accelerator’s 2021 cohort. It is one of six teams funded under the accelerator’s Track F: Trust and Authenticity in Communication Systems.

Additional DART investigators are affiliated with Cornell University, Lehigh University, and Northeastern University. The team also includes representatives from the Education Collaborative of Western New York.

Additional partner organizations include the Amherst Center for Senior Services in Amherst, New York; Clemson Downs, a retirement community in Clemson, South Carolina, and the Buffalo and Erie County Public Library system.

While focused on older adults, the DART platform is being designed so it can be adapted for use by teenagers and other groups that are vulnerable to online deceptions, Lyu says.

DEMILITARIZE POLICE

WVU researchers envision police as community partners, not adversaries

Grant and Award Announcement

WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY

 

IMAGE: WEST VIRGINIA UNIVERSITY SOCIOLOGISTS JAMES NOLAN AND HENRY BROWNSTEIN HOPE TO SHIFT THE PRIMARY FOCUS OF POLICING FROM LAW ENFORCEMENT ACTIVITIES, SUCH AS MAKING ARRESTS AND SEIZING LARGE QUANTITIES OF GUNS AND DRUGS, TO HELPING RESIDENTS CREATE THE CONDITIONS IN THEIR COMMUNITIES WHERE CRIME AND VIOLENCE ARE LESS LIKELY TO THRIVE. view more 

CREDIT: WVU PHOTO/GEOFF COYLE

Mistrust between the police and the communities they serve has exacerbated crime, according to two West Virginia University sociologists who hope to reimagine and reshape policing techniques in American communities. 

James Nolan and Henry Brownstein, of the WVU Department of Sociology and Anthropology, in partnership with Morgan State University, have collectively received a $500,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to break down those walls and build a healthier rapport among police and citizens. 

The research team will study the implications of a situational policing approach in real-life neighborhoods in Baltimore, Maryland, home to MSU.

People need to feel safe in their neighborhoods, and the key may be Nolan’s concept of situational policing, which shifts the primary focus of policing from law enforcement activities, such as making arrests and seizing large quantities of guns and drugs, to helping residents create the conditions in their communities where crime and violence are less likely to thrive. 

While Nolan, sociology professor and department chair, had considered situational policing in the past, he said he recently began challenging the efficacy of the law enforcement approach itself. Rather than an adversarial, outside force, police might come into, or emerge from, a community as partners, seeking to solve problems and make places safer together. This is different from previous versions of community policing that emphasized friendly police-community relations while the “real police” continued its law enforcement mission. Situational policing shifts the primary police mission from law enforcement to building safe and strong communities. 

“What keeps communities safe are these levels of connection,” he said. “The cohesion and trust within the community where people are supporting each other.” Situational policing considers how to forge such connections and, collaboratively, build the needed resources.  

Nolan served as a police officer for 13 years, working in an undercover unit on wiretap investigations, surveillance and conspiracy cases. Rather than making the streets and neighborhoods safer, he found the increased law enforcement served only to further divide police from residents. When community members complained about the number of shootings in the neighborhood, police responded by increasing the frequency of arrests, weapons seizures and drug busts. Nolan believes this was misguided and counterproductive. 

“The idea that drives the law enforcement approach to policing is that if you could get the small percentage of people that are bad, that are criminals, that it is going to make places safe,” he said. “That's just a completely wrong way of thinking about things. No matter how many people you take off the street, if conditions in the neighborhood create distrust, and there are no resources to help those struggling, no jobs and lots of poverty, the problems are going to continue.” 

Nolan and Brownstein, distinguished research professor, said despite the recent killings of Black Americans like Tamir Rice, Philando Castille and George Floyd by police in the last decade, the problem isn’t a new one.  

“People in underserved communities, people on the fringes and borders of society, are not being treated the same as other people,” said Brownstein, who studied such attitudes toward police discretion in the 1970s. 

Success in police work has traditionally been quantitative, and advancement goals focus on arrests, drug busts and the seizure of weapons. 

During a period of zero tolerance in the late 20th century, police “went after everybody,” Brownstein said of traditional policing methods. “Every little thing, every public nuisance, somebody getting drunk on the street. They arrested them all.”

The MSU component of the project is led by Natasha Pratt-Harris, a former student of Brownstein’s, who will conduct the hands-on research and provide essential connections in the area. She is accompanied by fellow faculty members Kevin Daniels and Paul Archibald. Faculty at WVU and MSU will be equal partners in designing and conducting the research.

“We don't know Baltimore,” Brownstein said. “Our colleagues at Morgan State know everybody who has any authority, interest or knowledge of the police in Baltimore. They're connected. We're not, but we have the data analytic capabilities, the theory. It's a great partnership.”

Besides analyzing data, “We’ll ask questions of the police and of the local people,” Brownstein said. For example, “What would it take for you to talk to each other? What would it take for you to trust each other? What would it take for you to respect each other?’ And let them tell each other those things while we're sitting there. The people we would be talking to will be part of our research team. They help us figure out the answers to the questions we have and what questions we have yet to ask.”

This type of data collection is known as participatory action research, a method in which community members work as partners with the research team to help gather and process data and use it to create the desired change. 

Researchers will use the collected data to assess each neighborhood based on criteria like the amount of crime, types of crime, number of arrests, levels of trust in local government and the police, levels of cohesion among neighbors and the willingness of residents to get involved to help others and keep the community safe. 

“That way, residents and police can change the local neighborhood conditions which often give rise to crime and violence,” Nolan said. “And once the conditions are changed in a way that fosters larger and stronger alliances with added resources, participants are better able to affectively reduce crime and keep it that way.”

Impact that killed the dinosaurs may have triggered a 'mega-earthquake' that lasted weeks to months

by Geological Society of America

Artwork depicting one dinosaur's experience of the Chicxulub impact. 

Credit: Hermann Bermúdez

Some 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for weeks to months after the collision. The amount of energy released in this "mega-earthquake" is estimated at 1023 joules, which is about 50,000 times more energy than was released in the magnitude 9.1 Sumatra earthquake in 2004.

Hermann Bermúdez will present evidence of this "mega-earthquake" at the upcoming GSA Connects meeting in Denver this Sunday, October 9. Earlier this year, Bermúdez visited outcrops of the infamous Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction event boundary in Texas, Alabama, and Mississippi to collect data, supplementing his previous work in Colombia and Mexico documenting evidence of the catastrophic impact.

In 2014, while doing fieldwork on Colombia's Gorgonilla Island, Bermúdez found spherule deposits—layers of sediment filled with small glass beads (as large as 1.1 mm) and shards known as "tektites" and "microtektites" that were ejected into the atmosphere during an asteroid impact. These glass beads formed when the heat and pressure of the impact melted and scattered the crust of the Earth, ejecting small, melted blobs up into the atmosphere, which then fell back to the surface as glass under the influence of gravity.

Spherule deposits on Gorgonilla Island. Credit: Hermann Bermúdez

The rocks exposed on the coast of Gorgonilla Island tell a story from the bottom of the ocean—roughly 2 km down. There, about 3,000 km southwest of the site of the impact, sand, mud, and small ocean creatures were accumulating on the ocean floor when the asteroid hit. Layers of mud and sandstone as far as 10–15 meters below the sea floor experienced soft-sediment deformation that is preserved in the outcrops today, which Bermúdez attributes to the shaking from the impact.

Faults and deformation due to shaking continue up through the spherule-rich layer that was deposited post-impact, indicating that the shaking must have continued for the weeks and months it took for these finer-grained deposits to reach the ocean floor. Just above those spherule deposits, preserved fern spores signal the first recovery of plant-life after the impact.

Bermúdez explains, "The section I discovered on Gorgonilla Island is a fantastic place to study the K-Pg boundary, because it is one of the best-preserved and it was located deep in the ocean, so it was not affected by tsunamis."

Deformed spherule-rich layer at Gorgonilla Island (Colombia) showing that seismic activity 

persisted for weeks or months after impact. Credit: Hermann Bermúdez

Evidence of deformation from the mega-earthquake is also preserved in Mexico and the United States. At the El Papalote exposure in Mexico, Bermúdez observed evidence of liquefaction—when strong shaking causes water-saturated sediments to flow like a liquid. In Mississippi, Alabama, and Texas, Bermúdez documented faults and cracks likely associated with the mega-quake. He also documented tsunami deposits at several outcrops, left by an enormous wave that was part of the cascading catastrophes resulting from the asteroid collision.

Bermúdez will deliver a talk about evidence for the mega-earthquake at the GSA Connects meeting in Denver on Sunday, October 9. He will also present a poster about his observations of tsunami deposits and earthquake-related deformation on Monday, October 10, which will be available in English, Spanish, Italian, French, and Chinese. In discussing his research, he emphasized the important role collaboration has played in visiting and studying so many outcrops that tell the story of this extreme event in Earth's history.

Dinosaur-killing asteroid triggered global tsunami that scoured seafloor thousands of miles from impact site

---

More information: (Abstract) The Chicxulub Mega-Earthquake: Evidence From Colombia, Mexico, And The United States

Provided by Geological Society of America 

Widespread pipe repair technique sends nanoplastics into the atmosphere, new study finds

by Brittany Steff, Purdue University

Purdue researchers perform testing during a CIPP installation in 2016. Credit: Purdue University

The tiny bits of plastic that wear off bottles, plastic bags, automotive parts and even cosmetics get into the soil and the water supply. They disrupt chemical cycles, throw off ecosystem health and pollute environments both marine and terrestrial. They eventually also get into the air, where they can damage lungs much more effectively. But for that to happen, they have to be worn away by water or earth and then be launched into the sky by winds.

A new study published in Nature Nanotechnology has discovered that a process that happens all over the developed world every day accelerates the airborne dispersal of these micro- and nanoplastic particles, posing a risk to human and environmental health. The study was led by Alexander Laskin, professor of analytical chemistry in Purdue University's College of Science.

Laskin is an expert in environmental forensics: He takes complex samples and uses analytical chemistry methods to determine what, exactly, is in the air. In this case, what's in the air are previously unsuspected amounts of aerosolized nanoplastics.

The origin of the issue lurks under the ground in every modern city, in technology to repair sewer pipes. When a sewer pipe breaks, the options to fix it are to physically dig a hole around it and replace a section of it or to treat it like the weakened area of a human artery and install a stent.

"What they do," explains Laskin, "is they put a resin-soaked sock into the pipe. That's what it is, effectively a big sock, and then they cure it into place. It seals the pipe without any need for excavation. It is a very sophisticated and very practical technology. When they inflate the sock, they use pressurized steam, which then emerges as a discharged chemical plume. There's no control on the resulting emissions, and it turns out that they produce a significant amount of pollution, including nanoplastic particles."

The result is that around every modern urban or suburban area where this process takes place, there are uncounted and significant sources of these microplastics and nanoplastics, sources that have not before been considered or examined. Before, scientists thought the only route for plastics to get into the air is slow degradation followed by consistent wind.

Researchers have discovered that microplastics are among a complex mixture of vapors and chemical droplets contained in a white plume emitted during the process of cured-in-place pipe repair. Credit: Purdue University

"The amount of microplastic and nanoplastic in the atmosphere, floating around, has been explicitly assumed to only come from windborne sources. What we show here is that there is a process commonly used throughout the whole modern world that is dumping nanoplastic pollution into the air," Laskin said.

Laskin worked with Andrew Whelton, a Purdue professor of civil engineering and environmental and ecological engineering, to quantify the impact of this cured-in-place pipe repair method, which Whelton has been studying for almost a decade. Whelton's research has helped advise municipalities, utilities and public health agencies on how to lessen environmental pollution from this pipe repair method and protect the workers better.

This new study further unravels the mystery of what exactly is in the air when construction workers repair pipes using the cured-in-place method, something Whelton and other Purdue researchers have been studying for years.

"When we first investigated the plastic pipe air pollution practice, we discovered there had been no independent testing or oversight," Whelton said. "It was being used in neighborhoods and in environmentally sensitive areas, sometimes prompting immediate health impacts to workers, bystanders, emergency responders and the environment. We often see workers who implement this pipe repair standing inside or near the micro- and nanoplastics waste exhaust plumes without respiratory protection. This new study indicates these workers and ones before them have likely been inhaling microplastics and nanoplastics."

The effect of inhaled, aerosolized microplastics on human health has not been widely studied—not least because scientists have not been aware of it as a significant problem. This paper is important, because like the first studies that heralded the trouble with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosol sprays (like hairspray), it's the first one to point to a potential significant risk that scientists were previously unaware of.

They conducted the chemical imaging measurements of nanoplastics at the Advanced Light Source Synchrotron facility operated by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and at the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory operated by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, with additional expertise provided by the Sonoma Technology staff. Ana Morales, a doctoral student in Laskin's lab, integrated the observations into the published study as its first author.

"It's not that no one cares about this problem," Laskin said. "But with knowledge comes the need for solutions. Now that we know there is a problem, once we have assessed the issue, now we can develop mitigations and strategies to keep everyone safe."

Polar ice contaminated with nanoplastics

More information: Ana C. Morales et al, Atmospheric emission of nanoplastics from sewer pipe repairs, Nature Nanotechnology (2022). DOI: 10.1038/s41565-022-01219-9

Journal information: Nature Nanotechnology

Provided by Purdue University 

Heart infection could be cause of death of Polish, US hero

Polish President Bronislaw Komorowski speaks during the unveiling of the 

Tadeusz Kosciuszko monument in Warsaw, Poland, Tuesday, Nov. 16, 2010. 

Medical and genetic experts in Poland say that a heart infection with common skin

 bacteria could have caused the 1817 death of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish and 

U.S. military leader and national hero. Credit: AP Photo/Alik Keplicz, File

Medical and genetics experts in Poland say that a heart infection caused by a common skin bacteria could have caused the 1817 death of Tadeusz Kosciuszko, a Polish and U.S. military leader and national hero.

The experts said last month they found the genome of the Cutibacterium acne in the wax, wood and linen that had long-term contact with the tissues of Kosciuszko's heart, which has been preserved. They said it could have led to endocarditis, or inflammation inside the heart, and to his death, aged 71, in Switzerland.

The team was led by Prof. Michał Witt, head of the human genetics institute at the Polish Academy of Sciences in Poznan and Dr. Tadeusz Dobosz of the Wroclaw Medical University. They took the samples for their molecular tests from a vessel where the heart is being kept, at the Royal Castle in Warsaw.

Under some conditions, skin bacteria can attack the internal organs, including the heart, leading to very serious problems, Witt told Polish Radio Zet24.

He stressed that it's hard to say for sure what caused Kosciuszko's death but that their findings have led them to the "rationally based hypothesis" that it was the acne bacteria that caused the documented rapid deterioration of his health and death.

Previously, typhoid fever or pneumonia were believed to have ended Kosciuszko's life. He was said to have developed a high fever and chills after he had fallen off his horse into a cold stream.

Born in 1746 in the then-Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, Kosciuszko fought as colonel of the Continental Army in the 1776 American Revolutionary War. A military engineer and architect, he designed and oversaw the construction of America's fortifications, including West Point.

Back to restless Poland, in 1794 he commanded an ill-fated uprising against the Russian Empire that was annexing some of Poland's lands. He spent his last years in Switzerland.

Pickled in 'cognac', Chopin's heart gives up its secrets

© 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.

Megadroughts helped topple ancient empires. They're in Australia's past, with more to come

by Kathryn Allen, Alison O'Donnell, Benjamin I. Cook, Jonathan Palmer and Pauline Grierson, The Conversation

The Khmer Empire in Cambodia suffered decades-long dry periods.

Credit: Fred Nassar/Unsplash, CC BY

Most Australians have known drought in their lifetimes, and have memories of cracked earth and empty streams, paddocks of dust and stories of city reservoirs with only a few weeks' storage. But our new research finds over the last 1,000 years, Australia has suffered longer, larger and more severe droughts than those recorded over the last century.

These are called "megadroughts," and they're likely to occur again in coming decades. Megadroughts can last multiple decades—or even centuries—with occasional wet years offering only brief relief. Megadroughts can also be shorter periods of very extreme conditions.

We show megadroughts have occurred several times across every inhabited continent over the last two millennia. They've dealt profound damage to agriculture and water supplies, increased fire risk, and have even contributed to toppling civilizations.

Unless we incorporate the full potential of Australian drought into our planning, management and design, their impacts on society and the environment will likely worsen in coming decades.

The role of climate change

Instrumental records only go back so far. In Australia, they cover only the last 120 years or so. Scientists can gauge local, yearly climate further back in time, by deciphering clues written in tree rings, corals, and buried ice (known as ice cores), among other archives.

To look at previous occurrences of megadroughts, we consolidated findings drawn from such datasets and a range of other long-term records.

Historically, droughts have been defined by rainfall deficits, and these deficits can be largely attributed to complex interactions between oceans and the atmosphere over a long time. For example, decades-long La Niña conditions have been linked to medieval droughts in North and South America.

In contrast, research suggests human-caused climate change is now playing a more important role in amplifying drought conditions, as rising global temperatures increase evaporation.

There is some uncertainty in climate models about the effect of climate change on rainfall at local and regional scales. However, climate change is putting places that have previously endured megadroughts—such as Australia—at an increased risk of megadroughts in future.

Megadroughts and collapsing civilizations

Currently, parts of the United States—including Arizona, Nevada and Utah—are in the throes of a megadrought, lasting some two decades. Historically, megadroughts have profoundly impacted societies and environments.

In the American southwest, megadroughts in the late 1200s likely contributed to the desertion of the Mesa Verde cliff dwellings. Likewise, the Hohokam peoples relied heavily on a canal system, and this dependence in a time of severe and extended drought may have contributed to their decline over the 14th and 15th centuries.

In Central America, a megadrought between 1149 and 1167 likely brought instability to the Toltec state. And a megadrought between 1514–1539 weakened the Aztec state just prior to Spanish conquest.

Europe and Asia have had their share of megadroughts, too. Research shows severe megadroughts in Asia in the 1300s and early 1400s quite likely helped cause the collapse of Cambodia's vast Khmer Empire.

Megadroughts in Australia

While many Australians may remember the severity of the Millennium Drought between 1997 and 2009, we found this drought wasn't actually particularly unusual. Megadroughts of the same or greater severity have occurred over the past 1,000 years across several parts of Australia, and were relatively common over much of eastern Australia.

This includes megadroughts between 1500 and the 1520s, and between the 1820s and 1840s. And while relatively short, a dry period between 1789 and 1795, coinciding with European invasion, included several years of severe drought. The year 1792 in particular was extremely dry over almost all of eastern Australia.

Western Australia's wheat belt is currently experiencing a decline in rainfall. This, too, isn't unusual compared to droughts there in the past. Tree rings in the region reveal that longer, more severe droughts occurred there six times in the last 700 years, including the years 1393–1407, 1755–1785, and 1889–1908.

Even in Tasmania, evidence suggests prolonged dry periods occurred in the latter part of the 16th century, with a shorter but more severe downturn from 1670–1704.

We need to be better prepared

Water management in Australia has relied on short instrumental data. These do not capture the full range of variability in our rainfall.

This means, for example, that Australia's infrastructure may be inadequately designed or managed to cope with major flood events or prolonged dry conditions.

Now, even relatively short but very dry periods can lead to major problems. We saw this recently in Tasmania in the summer of 2015 and 2016 when, after a dry winter and spring, water levels in major catchments were minimal and fires raged in the west. The Basslink cable, which connects Tasmania to the national grid, broke, resulting in the use of diesel power generation to keep power on in the state.

Future megadroughts will amplify the pressures on already degraded Australian ecosystems. We know from Australia's recent past the harm relatively smaller droughts can impose on the environment, the economy, and our mental and physical health.

We must carefully consider whether current management regimes and water infrastructure are fit-for-purpose, given the projected increased frequency of megadroughts.

It's difficult to plan effectively without fully understanding even natural variability. And this means better appreciating the data we have from archives such as tree rings, corals and ice cores—crucial windows to our distant past.Historical review shows megadroughts could become permanent in some places due to climate change

Provided by The Conversation 

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.