Radioactive space rocks could have seeded life on Earth, new research suggests

Story by Ben Turner • 

A special type of radioactive meteorite could have seeded life on Earth, a new study found.

The meteors contain radioactive elements energetic enough to synthesize amino acids.© University of Glasgow

Carbonaceous chondrites, a type of radioactive meteorite chock full of water and organic compounds, produce energetic gamma rays that can drive the chemical reactions to synthesize amino acids — the building blocks of life — researchers discovered.

Meteorites are leftovers from the formation of the young solar system’s rocky inner planets, which first clotted from the hot clouds of gas and dust billowing near the sun roughly 4.6 billion years ago. At the time, the planets were too close to the sun to form oceans and so couldn’t harbor life, leaving scientists puzzling over how Earth transformed into an oasis of life from its initial barren state. A previous study suggested that water could have been brought to Earth by carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Now a new study, published Dec. 7 in the journal ACS Central Science, shows that the same meteorites might have brought life’s building blocks too.

Related video: Asteroid danger looms! Colossal 170-foot space rock heading for Earth today, says NASA | DNA India (DNA)

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To see if this was possible, the researchers mixed ammonia, methanol and formaldehyde into water in quantities similar to those found inside meteorites. Then, to see if the radioactive, gamma-ray producing elements such as aluminum-26 inside the meteorites could generate the heat needed for amino acid synthesis, the researchers irradiated their mixture with gamma rays from an analog isotope called cobalt-60.

Sure enough, the scientists found that the gamma-ray bombardment caused a spike in the production of amino acids inside the solution. Higher gamma-ray production increased the rate of amino acid synthesis. Additionally, the researchers discovered that the proportions of lab-produced amino acids matched those found in the Murchison meteorite — a 2205-pound (100 kilograms) space rock that landed in Australia in 1969. Further analysis revealed that it would have taken anywhere from 1,000 to 100,000 years to produce the amino acid quantities found inside the Murchison meteorite.

It should be noted that amino acids can be made by many different processes, so while the mechanism the researchers have discovered is a possible candidate for how Earth was seeded by amino acids, it is not the only one. Future research will need to compare this mechanism with others to establish which one likely predominated during Earth’s earliest years.

Surprising loss of sea ice after record-breaking Arctic storm is a mystery to scientists

Story by JoAnna Wendel • 


Early in 2022, the Arctic experienced its strongest cyclone on record, with wind speeds reaching 62 mph (100 km/h). Although storms aren't rare in the Arctic, this one led to an extensive loss of sea ice that surprised Arctic researchers.


A research vessel travels through the Arctic Ocean in October 2015.

© Ed Blanchard-Wrigglesworth/University of Washington

In the Arctic, sea ice — frozen seawater that floats over the ocean in the polar regions — reaches its largest coverage in March and what is thought to be its thickest maximum in April, researchers told Live Science. But as sea ice was building up this year, it hit a major setback. Between Jan. 20 and Jan. 28, the storm developed over Greenland and traveled northeast into the Barents Sea, where massive waves reached 26 feet (8 meters) high. Like a wild bronco, those waves bucked sea ice at the edge of an icy pack 6 feet (2 m) up and down, while even larger waves swept 60 miles (100 km) toward the center of the pack. Although weather models accurately predicted the evolution of the storm, sea ice models did not predict just how much the storm would affect ice thickness.

Six days after the storm dissipated, the sea ice in the affected waters north of Norway and Russia had thinned 1.5 feet (0.5 m) — twice as much as what sea ice models had predicted. Researchers analyzed the storm in a study published Oct. 26 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres.

Related: The Arctic's most stable sea ice is vanishing alarmingly fast

"The loss of sea ice in six days was the biggest change we could find in the historical observations since 1979, and the area of ice lost was 30% greater than the previous record," lead author Ed Blanchard-Wrigglesworth, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Washington in Seattle, said in a statement. "The ice models did predict some loss, but only about half of what we saw in the real world."

The study found that atmospheric heat from the storm affected the area minimally, so something else must have been going on.

The paper authors offered a few ideas for why the sea ice thinned so much, so fast. It could have been that their models had wrongly estimated the sea ice thickness before the storm. Or perhaps the storm's violent waves broke up the sea ice more than anticipated. It could also be that the waves churned up deeper, warmer water, which then rose to melt the sea ice pack from the bottom.

Sea ice thickness is notoriously hard to study and model. Interactions between the ice, ocean and atmosphere affect sea ice thickness in ways that scientists don't fully understand. And some of these interactions happen on too small of a scale to model. For instance, scientists know that pools of melted water that appear on the top of sea ice in the Arctic summer do influence sea ice thickness, but that effect is hard to model. Melt pools also can throw off satellites, which may measure those pools as "ocean" rather than water on top of sea ice.

And as the climate warms, it's more important than ever to understand Arctic storms and their effect on sea ice. In a paper published in the journal Nature Communications in November, a team of NASA scientists found that sea ice loss and warmer temperatures will lead to stronger Arctic storms by the end of the century. Those more intense storms could bring rainfall that could melt sea ice, cause warmer temperatures and churn up warmer water from deep below.

"Going into the future, this is something to keep in mind, that these extreme events might produce these episodes of huge sea ice loss," Blanchard-Wrigglesworth said.

Cuba accuses United States of blocking participation in World Baseball Classic

Story by By Dave Sherwood and Nelson Acosta • Yesterday

Carlos Fernandez de Cossio speaks with Reuters in an interview in Havana© Thomson Reuters

HAVANA (Reuters) - The United States is blocking some of Cuba´s top players from participating in the upcoming World Baseball Classic, Cuba´s vice foreign minister said on Wednesday, the latest in a series of spats over a sport beloved by fans in both nations.

Cuba last month asked several players who in recent years had defected from the Caribbean island - long famed for its baseball talent - to represent their home country in the World Baseball Classic in March 2023. Others volunteered on their own.

Vice Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said that development was a "positive step," marking a change in tone in a country that has long branded defectors as traitors who abandoned their homeland.

But he said the United States, despite authorizing Cuba´s participation in the Classic, had yet to approve U.S.-based Cuban players competing in the event with their home country team.

"In the U.S. everything to do with Cuba is prohibited," de Cossio told Reuters in an interview in Havana. "Doing business, travel, having a drink in Cuba, even playing baseball if you live in the United States."

"That is the situation faced by ballplayers trained in Cuba that today play for the big leagues in the United States and who say they are willing to play with their home country team."

The U.S. State Department did not immediately provide answers to Reuters’ questions.

A U.S. Cold War-era embargo and more recent sanctions prohibit or complicate business and financial transactions with Cuba. Those rules make it impossible for a Cuban ballplayer to sign with a U.S. team without defecting from their home country.

As a result, Cuba´s baseball talent has fled the country in unprecedented numbers in the past decade, emptying dugouts and denting national pride.

More than 650 Cuban ballplayers have defected to the United States and elsewhere over the past six years alone, according to state-run media reports.

Cuba´s talented ballplayers led the country to gold medals in the Olympic Games in Barcelona in 1992, Atlanta in 1996 and Athens in 2004, but the country failed to qualify for the first time for the games in Tokyo in 2020.

Cuba is expected to play its first match in the classic in Taiwan on March 8.

(Reporting by Dave Sherwood and Nelson Acosta in Havana; Additional reporting by Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

DECRIMINALIZE DRUGS

MDMA Use at Start of Pandemic Rose Almost 300 Percent in New England Town

Story by Jess Thomson • Yesterday 

Use of MDMA in a small town in New England rose by almost 300 percent at the start of the COVID pandemic, along with huge spikes in cocaine, fentanyl and methadone.

Sheree Pagsuyoin, an expert on wastewater monitoring for drugs and COVID-19 at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell, and her research team had been collecting samples from the town's wastewater twice each month between September 2018 to August 2020, to look for trends in drug use. Samples were tested for morphine, codeine, hydrocodone, methadone, fentanyl, cocaine, methamphetamine, amphetamine (MDMA), and methyldiethanolamine (MDEA).

There are high rates of consumption and deaths from prescription drugs such as fentanyl, oxycodone, hydrocodone, methadone, codeine and morphine in New England, with the area being one of the hotspots of the opioid crisis in the U.S., according to one 2019 study in the journal Preventive Medicine.

Delaware had the second highest age-adjusted death rate from opioid overdose of all U.S. states in 2020 at 47.3 per 100,000 people, CDC data shows, with Maryland, Pennsylvania, Maine and Connecticut all falling into the top 10 worst-affected states. The highest death rate was found in Kentucky, where there were 49.2 deaths per 100,000 people.

Opioids are responsible for a large number of deaths across the country, with the U.S. considered to be in the grips of an opioid crisis. CDC data shows that opioids were involved in 68,630 overdose deaths in 2020, a number that amounts to 74.8 percent of all drug overdose deaths that year.

Understanding when and where drugs are being used can help inform public health authorities about issues facing communities.

Presenting their findings at the Society for Risk Analysis on December 6, Pagsuyoin and colleagues said they found that a variety of drugs spiked in use during the first few months of the pandemic, with MDMA use increasing by 286 percent. Drug use was also seen to increase during exam periods.

They also found that more fentanyl was used in the research town during this period than in other rural and university settings in the U.S. that had been analyzed previously.

Drugs find their way into the wastewater via the urine of people taking them. "When people take drugs of any kind (medicinal or illicit) only a portion of it is metabolized," Dan Aberg, a wastewater pharmaceutical compounds researcher at Bangor University in the U.K. who was not involved in the Society for Risk Analysis study, told Newsweek. "A percentage of the drug is then released unchanged in the urine. Various intermediate metabolites are also released, some of which are environmentally damaging at certain concentrations."



Drugs can enter the water system via urine.

 iStock / Getty Images Plus© iStock / Getty Images Plus

Prescribed and over-the-counter pharmaceuticals can also be detected in the wastewater, as they are also not entirely metabolized by the body.

This latest wastewater research shows that communities may be facing a similar drug usage and overdose issue with stimulant drugs as well. "Our findings reflect the region-wide problem with opioid-related overdoses and increasing stimulant prescription rates," Pagsuyoin said in a statement.

Increased drug use during the pandemic has been documented previously. The CDC found that as of 2020, 13 percent of Americans said that they began taking drugs—or increased their usage— to deal with the emotional impact of the pandemic. Overdosages also increased after the start of the COVID-19 lockdown, with there being an 18 percent increase in overdoses countrywide compared to the same month in 2019.

Similar results were found in a June 2022 study of several Belgian cities published in the International Journal of Drug Policy. This study found that amphetamine use increased in three of the four cities during lockdown, as well as increased cocaine and MDMA use.

Drugs in the water system may also impact other wildlife. When in wastewater, the water is processed before it re-enters circulation via filtration and disinfection, which removes some—but not all—of the drugs dissolved. However, at locations where people may urinate directly onto the ground, such as music festivals, the drugs may directly enter the freshwater system.

A paper published by Aberg and his colleagues in the journal Environmental Research earlier this year revealed that at the site of Glastonbury Festival in the U.K., MDMA was found at concentrations 104 times greater downstream from the festival in comparison to upstream sites, while cocaine and benzoylecgonine were found at 40 times higher concentrations downstream.

The presence of drugs in the natural water system, both from wastewater and freshwater drainage, can result in strange and destructive impacts on the local wildlife.

Platypuses in Australia's contaminated streams ingest over half a daily adult dose of antidepressants. Other serotonin-altering drugs also impact the learning and memory of cuttlefish, cause shore crabs to behave in more "risky" manners, and cause shrimp to be more likely to swim toward a light source.


Stock image of a duck-billed platypus, which can be impacted by drugs in the water system. iStock / Getty Images Plus© iStock / Getty Images Plus

Additionally, the presence of cocaine in waterways has been found to impact European eels in a variety of ways. One study published in the journal Science of the Total Environment found that cocaine accumulates in the brain, muscles, gills, skin, and other tissues of the eels.

"All the main functions of these animals could be altered," Anna Capaldo, a research biologist at the University of Naples Federico II and the lead author of the eel study, told National Geographic in 2018.

More research is required to determine whether illegal drugs are more harmful to wildlife than pharmaceuticals like antidepressants.

"Illicit drugs tend to be more psychoactive than other pharmaceuticals so often require lower concentrations to cause noticeable effects, however due to their legal status research on them is not wide enough to paint an accurate enough picture," Aberg said.

One way to combat the pipeline of drugs from human urine to wildlife would be to increase the purification ability of wastewater treatment. Standard water treatment plants clean wastewater via removing larger clumps of material, filtering and disinfecting the water. If the pores of the filtration system are not small enough to remove the miniscule particles of drugs in the water, they are passed through the system.

"Pharmaceuticals are found in all freshwater ecosystems, as many wastewater treatment plants have poor removal rates for them due to their complexity," Aberg said.

Using a more sophisticated filtration system would enable pharmaceuticals to be completely removed. However, this would likely be very expensive.

Is there a health issue that's worrying you? Do you have a question about drugs or wastewater? Let us know via health@newsweek.com. We can ask experts for advice, and your story could be featured on Newsweek.

References

Pagsuyoin, S., et al. Analysis of wastewater in a New England college town reveals high usage of stimulants and a rise in drug use during the pandemic. Society for Risk Analysis. 2022.

Aberg, D., et al. The environmental release and ecosystem risks of illicit drugs during Glastonbury Festival. Environmental Research, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.envres.2021.112061

Stopka, T. J., et al. The opioid epidemic in rural northern New England: An approach to epidemiologic, policy, and legal surveillance. Preventative Medicine. 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ypmed.2019.05.028

Boogaerts, T., et al. Temporal monitoring of stimulants during the COVID-19 pandemic in Belgium through the analysis of influent wastewater. International Journal of Drug Policy. DOI: 10.1016/j.drugpo.2022.103679

Capaldo A., et al. Effects of environmental cocaine concentrations on the skeletal muscle of the European eel (Anguilla anguilla). Science of the Total Environment, 2018. doi: 10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.05.357.

Zucatto, E., et al. Illicit drugs, a novel group of environmental contaminants. Water Research, 2008. DOI:10.1016/j.watres.2007.09.010

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Legalizing Weed Reduced Opioid Use in America's Cancer Patients

Trump hosts event featuring QAnon, 'Pizzagate' conspiracy theorist at Mar-a-Lago

A prominent adherent of the QAnon and "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories posed for photos with former President Donald Trump at his Mar-a-Lago resort Tuesday night after speaking at an event hosted at the club, according to photos and videos posted to social media.

The event came two weeks after Trump had dinner at Mar-a Lago with rapper Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who recently spoke positively about Hitler, and far-right YouTuber Nick Fuentes, who the Department of Justice has labeled a white supremacist. The meeting sparked outrage despite Trump's claim he did not know who Fuentes was.

Videos and photos posted to social media appear to show Liz Crokin, a prominent promoter of QAnon and pro-Trump conspiracy theories, speaking at an event at Mar-a-Lago and later posing for photos with Trump. In one photo, the duo make a "thumbs up" sign together.MORE: Texas Gov. Greg Abbott bans TikTok on state devices

According to social media posts, the event was billed as a fundraiser in support of a "documentary" on sex trafficking -- one of the pillars of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The website for the film, which includes multiple falsehoods and claims of mass sex-trafficking in Hollywood, boasts that it is "Banned by YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and PayPal."

Mar-a-Lago often hosts events for outside groups.

"You are incredible people, you are doing unbelievable work, and we just appreciate you being here and we hope you're going to be back," Trump said in remarks to the crowd, according to a video of his speech.

A representative for the Trump campaign did not respond to ABC News' request for comment.

"Tonight I had the privilege and honor to speak at America's Future fundraiser to combat child trafficking at Mar-A-Lago," Crokin wrote in a social media post, claiming that while she was at Trump's club she discussed "Pizzagate" -- a viral conspiracy theory that falsely claims prominent Democrats were running a child-sex trafficking ring out of a pizza shop in Washington, D.C.

Crokin has expressed her belief in the conspiracy theory as recently as 2020. In an interview with Salon, she said the theory had not been debunked, according to the outlet.MORE: Trump hosts Kanye West, Nick Fuentes at Mar-a-Lago dinner

Darlene Swaffar, a former Republican congressional candidate who attended the event, told ABC News she was happy to see the former president address attendees. She also said that other prominent conservatives who were in attendance included former national security adviser and retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn, former Alaska governor Sarah Palin, and Seth Keshel, a retired U.S. Army captain who has worked to challenge the results of the 2020 presidential election. Swaffar posted photos with both Flynn and Palin taken at the event.

Swaffar told ABC News the fundraiser had different events based on how much attendees gave. "For attendees there was a reception portion, and for those that contributed a little bit more there was the dinner portion," she said.

When asked about the event hosting a QAnon conspiracy theorist, Swaffar told ABC News she did not hear anything about QAnon or conspiracy theories at the event, saying she didn't see "any communication on that."MORE: Pence, some other Republicans rebuke Trump for dinner with white nationalist

Crokin was featured in the HBO Docuseries "Q: Into the Storm." In a video, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene said she first was introduced to the conspiracy theory by Crokin.

According to a report on an another interview she gave, Crokin said of Trump that as president, Trump was "dismantling the deep state and one of his top priorities is to end sex trafficking."

Crokin did not respond to ABC News' request for comment on the event or whether she still believes in the QAnon and "Pizzagate" conspiracy theories.

In recent weeks, Trump's newly announced 2024 campaign has been playing defense on multiple fronts. On Wednesday, Trump's namesake real estate company was found guilty by a jury in New York of tax fraud. Last week, Trump on social media called for "termination" of "of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution" over false claims of election fraud.

Researchers Find the Remains of 5 WWII-Era U.S. Bombers in the Adriatic Sea

Story by Kyle Mizokami • 



Researchers from the University of Delaware and the U.S. military have discovered 5 B-24 Liberator bombers in the Adriatic Sea.

The bombers were lost while returning from missions, plunging into the ocean.

The planes are linked to at least 23 airmen declared missing in action.

A joint research team from the University of Delaware and the Pentagon has discovered five B-24 Liberator bombers in the Adriatic Sea. The planes, which went down in the ocean between Italy and Croatia, likely had received battle damage and crashed short of a safe landing. The planes will help resolve the fate of nearly two dozen aircrew listed as MIA for nearly 80 years.

Researchers from the University of Delaware and the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) found the bombers during a two-week mission in August. The team also included Croatian archaeologists, scientists, divers, and military personnel assisting in the search. DPAA, which travels the globe to resolve the fate of those declared prisoners of war or missing in action, sponsored the search.


An autonomous underwater vehicle similar to this one used in 2014 to search for the missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, was used to find the five B-24 bombers.© Handout - Getty Images

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs)—torpedo-shaped robots that combed the bottom of the Adriatic with sonar for possible aircraft wrecks—located the five bombers. The AUVs, using side-scan sonar, generated “massive” amounts of sonar data for analysis. According to Stars and Stripes, the AUVs covered a 24-square-mile area. The search team also used magnetometers to detect buried metals and a high-resolution video camera.

Once a promising lead was discovered, human divers went in to investigate further and verify the existence of the wreck.

Of the five bombers located, three were positively identified from service records. The three planes were collectively associated with 23 aircrew listed as missing in action. The identification of the wrecks likely closes the book on the status of the crew members, allowing them to be re-designated from missing in action to killed in action.

The Consolidated B-24 Liberator was a heavy bomber used during World War II by the U.S. Army Air Forces, the predecessor of the U.S. Air Force. The Liberator was a four-engine bomber with a crew of up to ten, a top speed of 297 miles per hour, and the ability to carry up to 5,000 pounds of bombs on long-range missions. The bombers were likely assigned to the 15th Air Force, based in Foggia, Italy, which carried out bombing missions across southern Europe.

Sanders eyeing Yemen war powers resolution vote ‘hopefully next week’

Story by Brad Dress • 

Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said he could introduce a war powers resolution soon that would block U.S. support for the war in Yemen led by Saudi Arabia.


Sanders eyeing Yemen war powers resolution vote ‘hopefully next week’© Provided by The Hill

In an interview with The Intercept published Tuesday, Sanders said he could bring the resolution to the floor “hopefully” by next week and that he believes he has the votes for the measure.

The war powers resolution is considered privileged and can be brought to the floor without approval from Senate leadership after a certain amount of time has passed. Sanders told The Intercept the time has already elapsed for the resolution.

The Vermont senator previously sponsored a war powers resolution to end U.S. involvement in Yemen in 2019, which was vetoed by former President Trump. He introduced another resolution to block support over the summer along with a companion resolution from House lawmakers.

“This war has created the world’s worst humanitarian crisis today and it is past time to end U.S. complicity in those horrors,” Sanders said in a July statement.

Yemen’s civil war, which has killed tens of thousands of people and left millions more starving and suffering from disease, resumed in October after a six-month cease-fire.

Iranian-backed Houthi rebels have been fighting with the Yemeni government, backed by Saudi Arabia, since 2014.

The Friends Committee on National Legislation, which advocates for global peace, led 100 other groups this week in urging Congress to pass a resolution ending U.S. support in the war.

“We call on all members of Congress to say ‘no’ to Saudi Arabia’s war of aggression by fully ending all U.S. support for a conflict that has caused such immense bloodshed and human suffering,” the organizations wrote in a Wednesday letter to Congress.

If introduced next week, the war powers resolution would come to the floor amid fracturing relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S.

The Biden administration courted Saudi Arabia, the de facto leader of oil producing alliance OPEC+, for months this year amid soaring gas prices in the U.S., only to see OPEC slash production by 2 million barrels beginning in November.

Reportedly irate administration officials and Democrats on Capitol Hill have floated the idea of a response to Saudi Arabia for the oil production cuts. But a U.S. federal judge on Tuesday dismissed a lawsuit against Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman for the 2018 murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi, after the Biden administration granted the Saudi leader immunity.

In his first month in office, Biden ended U.S. support for Saudi-led offensives in Yemen, but critics point out the U.S. continues to sell arms to Saudi Arabia and share intelligence.

The war powers resolution introduced over the summer by Sanders in the Senate and a bipartisan coalition of House lawmakers would end U.S. intelligence sharing, logistical support and American direct military personnel support for Saudi-led forces.

The House Foreign Affairs Committee is also holding a public briefing on the Yemen war next week.

The Hill.

Flu Deaths Have Dropped Dramatically, Thanks to COVID-19 Prevention Efforts

Story by Korin Miller •

The flu is back this winter, along with other illnesses

Flu season, which runs from October through May, usually results in millions of infections and thousands of deaths.

Doctors explain how COVID-19 prevention efforts have diminished flu-related deaths in the past.

RSV and COVID-19 are dominating headlines right now, but there’s another potentially serious illness simmering in the background: the flu. People have written off the flu in the past, but doctors say that’s a mistake. “Prior to COVID-19, the flu was the most deadly respiratory virus we saw each year in the U.S.,” says Thomas Russo, M.D., professor and chief of infectious disease at the University at Buffalo in New York. “Now, COVID is an estimated five times more lethal.”


Flu activity remains low for the 2022-2023 season due to COVID-19 prevention efforts. But how many people die from the flu each year? Doctors explain.© Helin Loik-Tomson - Getty Images

But with all of the warnings about the flu being deadly, how many people die from the flu each year? Caveat: It’s hard to come by exact numbers, but there are estimates. Here’s the deal.

How many people die from the flu each year?

The answer is slightly complicated: The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) doesn’t have an exact count of the number of people who die from influenza each year. Instead, the federal agency develops estimates based on rates of confirmed hospitalizations from the flu.

For that reason, it’s difficult to compare flu deaths with those of COVID-19, which are actual documented deaths, says Dr. Russo. “COVID deaths have been very specific—you have to have a positive COVID test for it to be attributable to COVID,” he says.

According to preliminary estimates from the CDC, 25,000 people died from flu in the 2019-2020 flu season. There were no estimates for the 2020-2021 season due to “minimal influenza activity,” the CDC says, and it’s estimated that 5,000 people died from the flu last year.

The number of flu deaths varies by season, though. In the 2018-2019 season, an estimated 52,000 people died of the flu, per CDC data.

And, of course, COVID-19 has screwed things up a bit. Flu death estimates traditionally incorporated pneumonia cases and “COVID has made that challenging” given that people can also die of pneumonia caused by COVID-19, says infectious disease expert Amesh A. Adalja, M.D., a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. “Many times in the past, death certificates would simply say ‘pneumonia’” if someone died from pneumonia caused by the flu, Dr. Adalja says.

“The CDC knows that they need to make adjustments to the way influenza deaths are tracked now—they just haven’t figured out what that should be,” Dr. Adalja says.

Why can the flu be so deadly?

The flu is a contagious respiratory illness that’s caused by influenza viruses that infect the nose, throat, and lungs, the CDC explains. There are two main types—influenza A and B—that regularly circulate each year. While plenty of people get the flu, have a miserable period of illness, and then recover, others can actually die of the virus.

“Influenza is a respiratory virus that has the ability to kill at a very high rate, even in the modern era,” Dr. Adalja says. “In severe cases, it causes pneumonia that can be complicated with a secondary bacterial infection.”

Other possible serious complications triggered by the flu, per the CDC, can include:
inflammation of the heart (myocarditis)
inflammation of the brain (encephalitis)
inflammation of the muscle tissues (myositis, rhabdomyolysis)
multi-organ failure (like respiratory and kidney failure)
Sepsis, a life-threatening response to an infection

Who is most at risk of dying from the flu?

The CDC has a list of people who are at a higher-than-average risk of getting seriously ill with the flu and even dying of it:
Adults 65 and up
Pregnant people
Young children
Young children with neurological disease

Certain health conditions can also put people at a higher risk of severe flu, the CDC says, including:
Asthma
Heart disease and stroke
Diabetes
HIV/AIDS
Cancer
Chronic kidney disease

“The flu tends to kill people at the extremes of age: very young and very old,” Dr. Adalja says. “The very young and the old may have very low physiological reserve when it comes to fighting influenza off.”

How many total flu-related deaths are expected for the 2022-2023 season?

The CDC releases estimates on flu cases and deaths each year. Right now, the agency estimates that between 730 and 2,100 people have died of the flu from Oct. 1 through Oct. 29—and the season has just started.

Still, the same disease-prevention practices we’ve mastered to slow the spread of COVID-19 can also impact impacted flu transmission, says David Cennimo, M.D., assistant professor of medicine-pediatrics infectious disease at Rutgers New Jersey Medical School. While flu rates are higher than last year’s low numbers, they’re still lower than your average flu season. That’s “a byproduct” of efforts like masking, hand-washing, and social distancing, Dr. Cennimo says.

How to protect yourself from the flu

If you haven’t already gotten your flu shot, William Schaffner, M.D., an infectious disease specialist and professor at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, recommends doing it ASAP, as it takes time to build immunity. Flu season continues through May, after all. “It’s still not too late to get vaccinated,” he says.

Since there’s no hard and fast data on how many people die from the flu each year, it can be tricky to calculate how much getting the flu shot protects you from death, Dr. Russo says. “We do know that dying from the flu is much less likely if you’ve been vaccinated than if you don’t get the vaccine,” he says. “Certainly, the more vulnerable you are, the greater benefit the vaccine in decreasing the likelihood of a bad outcome.”

The following precautions can also protect you from the flu, per the CDC:

Avoid close contact with people who are sick.

Wash your hands often with soap and water for at least 20 seconds.

If soap and water aren’t available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer.

Avoid touching your eyes, nose, and mouth.

Clean and disinfect high-touch surfaces and objects.

Methods that help prevent the spread of COVID-19, like wearing a mask in crowded indoor spaces when flu cases are high in your area can also help you prevent a cold, flu, RSV, and other respiratory illnesses, Dr. Russo says.

If you suspect you may have the flu, Dr. Adalja recommends contacting your doctor ASAP or visiting your local urgent care clinic. “Have a low threshold to be tested and prescribed an antiviral,” he says. Medications like oseltamivir (Tamiflu) work best when they’re taken soon after you develop symptoms, he points out, so timing is important.

An extinction-level asteroid that could someday hit Earth was found hiding near Venus

Story by Matthew Rozsa • SALON


Those who have driven a car are surely familiar with the idea of blind spots — the areas around you where you can't easily see, and thus, are uniquely vulnerable to threats. That principle applies to asteroid hunting just as easily. As telescope technology continues to advance, astronomers have used their scopes to peer into those nearby areas of our solar system that are normally difficult to observe.


Meteorite from outer space, falling toward planet EarthGetty Images/dottedhippo© Provided by Salon


"This study shows that we still have a ways to go discovering and tracking asteroids that could hit the Earth."

This brings us to the recent telescopic observations at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile. As the scientists there published in September in The Astronomical Journal, there are three near-Earth asteroids (or NEAs) hiding within the glare of the sun, and which apparently had not been previously noticed. These particular asteroids are lurking between the orbits of Earth and its closest neighbor in the direction of the Sun, Venus. One of them is the largest potentially hazardous NEA spotted in eight years.

The finding is particularly alarming because they suggest that there are some uncatalogued potentially dangerous asteroids that humanity has missed in its quest to catalogue and identify possible civilization-destroying asteroids or comets. In particular, the newly-discovered asteroid dubbed 2022 AP7 orbits the Sun in such a manner that it might someday intersect and strike Earth.


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Can humanity make peace with its death?

The B612 Foundation, a nonprofit focused on protecting the planet from impacts by dangerous space objects, is focused on stopping humanity from suffering the same fate as the dinosaurs. "This study shows that we still have a ways to go discovering and tracking asteroids that could hit the Earth," said Dr. Ed Lu, three-time NASA astronaut and the Executive Director of the B612 Foundation's Asteroid Institute. "We have the technology to deflect asteroids, but this technology is only useful if we can discover and track asteroids first."


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The good news, as Lu told Salon, is that "the great majority (but not quite all) asteroids large enough to wipe out human civilization have already been tracked." Yet there are many untracked asteroids that are smaller and, while not big enough to constitute an extinction event, could still wipe out millions of lives; these include asteroids of the size that could wipe out a city. Lu noted that these kinds of space rocks "are thousands of times more numerous," and yet we only know about a "small percentage" of them.

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Policy makers have on occasion tried to make up for this lack of knowledge. When they do so, however, they only wind up learning more about just the urgency of humanity's need for more information about all manner of Near Earth Objects.

"In 2005, the US Congress tasked NASA to find 90% of all Near Earth Objects (NEOs) larger than 140 meters, the size of a football stadium," Harvard astronomer Avi Loeb wrote to Salon. "As of now, no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance to hit Earth for the next century. However, less than half of the estimated 25,000 NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in size have been found to date."

"Less than half of the estimated 25,000 [Near Earth Asteroids] that are 140 meters and larger in size have been found to date."

According to Lu, more efforts are being undertaken to continue spotting asteroids like those three NEAs recently detected between the orbits of Venus and Earth. Thanks to the construction of new observatories like the Vera Rubin Observatory (also in Chile) and the development of new computational techniques such as those produced by the Asteroid Institute, "within a few years we expect to greatly increase our ability to track asteroids and provide many decades of warning of potential impacts," Lu told Salon.

If nothing else, the discovery of the asteroid 2021 PH27 — roughly a kilometer in size and, as Loeb noted, "which has the closest approach to the Sun, 13% of the Earth-Sun separation, and the largest precession as a result of Einstein's theory of General Relativity, known for any body in the solar system" — justifies the use of this new technology.

"Accelerating the rate of asteroid discovery requires funding, whether it's for an organization like B612 or NASA," B612 Foundation President Danica Remy wrote to Salon. "We, collectively, need to both fund and advocate for the development of advanced computational tools and new observational capabilities."

Biden signs #MeToo law curbing confidentiality agreements


President Joe Biden on Wednesday signed legislation curbing the use of confidentiality agreements that block victims of sexual harassment from speaking publicly about misconduct in the workplace.


Biden signs #MeToo law curbing confidentiality agreements© Provided by The Canadian Press

White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said Biden had acted on the bipartisan Speak Out Act, which bars the use of nondisclosure agreements that employees or contractors are required to sign, often as a condition of employment.

The new law, among the workplace changes pushed in the wake of the #MeToo movement, applies to any nondisclosure agreements, also known as NDAs, signed before a dispute has occurred.

“Instead of protecting trade secrets as it was initially intended, abusive use of NDAs silence employees and covers up serious and systemic misconduct,” said New York Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat who introduced the measure.

The law would make existing nondisclosure agreements unenforceable. It also would apply to any agreements between providers of goods and services and their customers.

Gillibrand cited massage parlors and assisted living facilities as examples of places where mandatory NDAs have been used.

Any agreements signed after a dispute or regarding any other allegations, such as discrimination based on race or religion, would not be affected by the law.

Employers and consumers sometimes unknowingly sign away their rights with the agreements and that allows harassment to continue by silencing victims and shielding perpetrators, a group of Democratic and Republican lawmakers said in a statement last month after the House passed the measure on a 315-109 vote.

“Today, 1 in 3 workers is subjected to NDAs that hide sexual misconduct in order to protect a business’s reputation,” the lawmakers said. “We’re taking the gag off of survivors and pushing businesses to create safer work environments.”

The Senate approved the measure unanimously.

Former Fox News anchor Gretchen Carlson, who accused the now-deceased network CEO Roger Ailes of making unwanted advances and harming her career when she rejected him, pushed for the change and has spoken about how the NDA she signed has barred her from telling her story.

The law would not apply to Carlson’s NDA, which was signed as part of a reported $20 million settlement with Fox News.

The law follows another bipartisan change Biden approved in March that gave workplace victims of sexual assault or harassment the right to seek resource in the courts rather than being forced to settle cases through arbitration. The process often benefits employers and keeps allegations from becoming public.

Both measures, coming five years after the #MeToo movement sparked a global reckoning against sexual misconduct, received rare, broad bipartisan support in Congress.

Gillibrand said she is working with South Carolina Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham, who partnered with her on the bills, to pass similar laws related to age discrimination in the workplace.

Michelle L. Price, The Associated Press