Bill seeks to expand eligibility for Agent Orange-related benefits


Former United States Army Vietnam Veteran and President of Veterans for Peace David Cline look for his fallen comrades names on the Vietnam War Memorial with member of Veterans For Peace, during a campaign event bringing together victims of Agent Orange exposure, a deforestation chemical used in the Vietnam War, in Washington, D.C. on November 28, 2005. File photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI | License Photo


April 15 (UPI) -- A bipartisan bill introduced Thursday would allow Vietnam veterans who served in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia during the Vietnam War to qualify for disability benefits related to Agent Orange exposure.

Currently, the Department of Veterans Affairs mandates that veterans who served in southeast Asian countries other than Vietnam during the war provide evidence of exposure to the herbicide in order to qualify for benefits

The Veterans Agent Orange Exposure Equity Act, introduced by Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick, R-Penn., and Rep. Matt Cartwright, D-Penn., would allow veterans who served in some other countries during the conflict to access benefits without providing additional evidence.

"Our veterans are heroes and deserve to be treated as such. I am proud to join Rep. Cartwright in introducing legislation that will ensure our Vietnam War veterans who served in Thailand, Laos and Cambodia receive the care they deserve now, and I urge my colleagues in Congress to work across the aisle to support these men and women who have sacrificed so much for our country," Fitzpatrick said in a statement.

"In the United States, we take care of our fellow Americans who have been harmed in the course of their military service. It should be no different in the case of the Vietnam veterans exposed to Agent Orange," Cartwright said in the same statement. "Many of those who have been exposed are living with cancers, heart disease or Parkinson's disease. They deserve relief for the pain and hardship this has caused for them and their families."

Agent Orange is one of several "tactical herbicides" used by the U.S. military during Operation Ranch Hand, a multi-year chemical warfare operation during the Vietnam War.

Operation Ranch Hand exposed millions of people in Southeast Asia and at least 500,000 American troops to the chemical.

RELATED GAO: VA suicide prevention teams need evaluation amid caseload growth, burnout

Veterans began making claims due to health problems related to Agent Orange exposure as early as 1977, but they were often rejected unless patients could prove their health problems began a year after discharge.

The VA has gradually expanded coverage for Agent Orange-related illnesses in the decades since.

Last year's Defense Spending Bill included a provision, introduced by Sen. Jon Tester, D-Mont., that added presumption of service connection for Agent Orange-linked illness for veterans suffering from bladder cancer, hypothyroidism and Parkinson's disease.

RELATED Woman's DDT exposure may affect granddaughter's health, study says

Typically, veterans need to prove -- usually through medical exams and service records -- that their injuries and illnesses are directly connected to time spent in the military, Military Times noted.

Removing that burden helps veterans avoid having to file that additional paperwork.

It's not clear how many veterans would be affected by the change.

Military Times reported that 50,000 U.S. troops were deployed to Thailand alone at the height of operations, but it isn't clear how many later deployed to Vietnam and are already eligible for presumptive benefits status.

Study: Later school start times aid sleep duration, quality for adolescents, teen


Later school start times can help improve sleep quality among children and teens, a new study has found. Photo by Tyler Olson/Shutterstock

April 15 (UPI) -- Starting school later in the morning allows adolescents and teens to get the sleep they need to perform well in the classroom and maintain overall health, a study published Thursday by the journal Sleep found.

By pushing the school day back an hour, high school students obtained an extra four hours or so of sleep per week, the data showed.

More than 10% of students in grades 9 through 12 surveyed as part of the study reported they slept better, and about 20% indicated they experienced less daytime sleepiness, or feeling the need for sleep during the school day, the researchers said.

"Changing school start times is a complicated process that involves a lot of logistical considerations, [including] transportation, food and nutrition, athletics and child care," study co-author Lisa J. Meltzer told UPI in an email.

"However, as shown in a number of school districts across the country, it is possible to make these changes with positive outcomes for the students," said Meltzer, a professor of pediatrics at National Jewish Health in Denver.

Several studies have linked sleep with overall health, social development and academic achievement in young people.

However, lack of sleep is common among children and adolescents, due in part to early school start times and the fact that biological changes to sleep cycles during puberty make falling asleep early difficult for adolescents, according to Meltzer and her colleagues.

For this study, the researchers surveyed approximately 28,000 elementary, middle and high school students and their parents before changes to school start times and for two years afterward.

Elementary schools participating in the study started classes 60 minutes earlier, while middle schools started 40 to 60 minutes later and high schools started 70 minutes later, according to the researchers.

Both student and parent surveys asked about students' usual bedtime and wake time on both during the week and on weekends. Respondents also were asked to report on students' quality of sleep and their experience of daytime sleepiness, the researchers said.

Elementary school-age children saw minimal gains in sleep duration and sleep quality as a result of the earlier start times, likely due to their earlier "bedtimes," which essentially remained the same, according to the researchers.

Children in grades kindergarten through 5 in the study averaged between nine and 11 hours of sleep per night before and after the school start time change, which is the exact range recommended by the Sleep Foundation for people in that age group.

However, high schoolers, or those in grades 9 through 12, saw average sleep times increase by about 45 minutes per night -- or 3.8 hours per week -- due to the later start, to about eight hours, 15 minutes from 7 1/2 hours, the data showed.

This change put them within the eight to 10 hours of sleep per night range recommended by the Sleep Foundation.

In addition, these older students had, on average, 77 minutes per night less of "weekend oversleep," the difference between weekday and weekend sleep times, the researchers said.

Similarly, middle school students obtained 2.4 additional hours of sleep per week with the later school start time, and 12% fewer students in this age group -- grades 6 through 8 -- reported daytime sleepiness, the data showed.

"It is important for families to make sleep a priority [by] having a consistent bedtime and wake time, with no more than an hour delay to either bedtime or wake time on weekends," Meltzer said.

"Families need to recognize that sacrificing sleep means sacrificing physical and mental health, as well as performance, both academic and athletic."


upi.com/7090513

More than 10% of women in U.S. use tobacco, CDC reports



More than one in 10 women in the United States report tobacco use, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Photo by sarahjohnson1/Pixabay


April 15 (UPI) -- More than one in 10 women in the United States say they smoke cigarettes or e-cigarettes, according to figures released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

However, use of tobacco products varies from state to state, with just under 7% of women in California reporting cigarette or e-cigarette smoking, but as many as 75% of those in West Virginia doing so, the data showed.

About 20% of women in Kentucky and Oklahoma report tobacco use, while smoking rates are about 15% or more in many states: Alabama, Arkansas, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Wisconsin and Wyoming, the agency said.

Current tobacco use is highest among women ages 45 to 64, at just over 14%, and among those of American Indian and Alaska Native origin, at 21%, according to the CDC.

RELATED Menthol cigarette ban in Canada boosted quit rates, study shows

However, tobacco use among women has declined since 2017, when 14% reported smoking cigarettes or e-cigarettes, the agency said.

"Although cigarette smoking among women has declined over time, tobacco product use among women across states is still primarily driven by combustible tobacco product use from cigarette smoking," the CDC researchers wrote.

"Multiple social, environmental, and personal factors influence tobacco use among women," who, research indicates, may be more susceptible to peer pressure to take up the habit in their youth, they said.

RELATED Majority of e-cigarette users want to quit, study finds

The new data is based on an analysis of tobacco use among women in the United States in 2018 and 2019, the last year for which information is available, the CDC said.

Up to 40 million adults nationally use tobacco products, and the numbers have been on the decline since 2000, according to the CDC.

However, more than 200,000 women die annually from health complications related to smoking, primarily cancers, based on recent estimates.

RELATED Study: Daily emails on smoking danger encourages people to quit

For this analysis, CDC researchers surveyed nearly 75,000 adult women ages 18 years and older from all 50 states and Washington, D.C.

Participants were asked about their tobacco use in the past year, including cigarettes and e-cigarettes, or vaping devices, the researchers said.

Nationally, just under 12% of the women participants reported tobacco use, with 10% citing cigarette smoking and nearly 2% indicating that they vaped, the data showed.

Just over 1% of the participants said they used both products, the CDC said.

Women ages 35 to 44 were nearly three times as likely to report tobacco use compared to those ages 18 to 24 years, according to the agency.

"As the tobacco product landscape continues to evolve, public health messaging efforts can emphasize to women that all tobacco products carry inherent risks," the CDC researchers wrote.

In addition, they can highlight "that multiple tobacco product users are at increased risk for nicotine addiction and dependence," they said.

Woman's Abdominal Cavity Inflated Like A Balloon During Oral Sex



BE CAREFUL DURING CUNNILINGUS.

By James Felton 06 APR 2021,

IFLSCIENCE

There have been a number of unusual medical cases over the years that have highlighted the need for detailed sexual education.

One such fact that doesn't seem to come up very often, for instance, is that there is access between the vagina and the abdomen. While this rarely comes up in conversation or affects your life in any way, there are times when knowing this would be helpful to you – more specifically, during oral sex.

A 24-year-old woman showed up at the emergency department of Stanford University, California, after experiencing severe abdominal and chest pain, which had lasted for 6 hours. Her pain was sharp, and had moved from her lower right quadrant – the bottom right of her belly – before moving upwards and spreading. Other than the pain, which was aggravated as she moved, she was experiencing no other problems.

 
However, she had experienced it several times before, 6 and 12 months before this particular visit. Upon further inspection through X-ray, the result was always the same: the air was discovered in the abdominal (peritoneal) cavity, known as pneumoperitoneum. Pneumoperitoneum can be caused by anything from perforated ulcers to bowel cancer. They can cause air embolisms, where bubbles become trapped in a blood vessel, blocking it, which in turn can lead to death. As such, they require immediate investigation into the cause.

Despite tests on both prior occasions, no cause was found, and the air was gradually reabsorbed by surrounding tissue, which usually takes place within a week, her team writes in the Journal of the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. This time, a complete sexual history was taken, and the cause of her inflation explained: her partner had inflated her like a balloon.

 

A brief explainer of how the air makes its way into the abdominal cavity. 

Image credit: Christoph Mundhenke (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0)

"The patient revealed that she had intercourse, during which her partner forcefully blew air into her vagina prior to all episodes of pneumoperitoneum," the team explained.

"She remembered that the pain had started four hours after each occasion."

She was monitored for the next day while the gas diffused, before being discharged and advised to avoid oro-vaginal insufflation. She was unharmed, but others have not been so lucky. The condition – which is more common during pregnancy – can kill, as was the case with one young pregnant woman whose partner accidentally forced air into her vaginal cavity with his hands, leading to her eventual death. She is far from the only case of deaths by this cause.

"Cunnilingus is a common sexual practice all over the world. During such activity, whereby gas can be forcefully blown into the vagina by mouth or insufflated by other mechanisms, unintended large amounts of gas can be forced under pressure into the vagina," the team wrote in their report.

"The gas can find its way through the uterus and, after dilating the tubes, into the abdomen, thereby causing a non-surgical pneumoperitoneum. The patient often has no knowledge of the open access between the vagina and abdomen, and the medical staff is often inadequately informed on the patho-mechanism."

Nerve stimulation cuts pain, opioid use after orthopedic surgery, study finds


Nerve stimulation treatments reduce the need for opioids for post-surgical pain, according to a new study. Photo by skeeze/Pixabay

April 15 (UPI) -- Nerve stimulation treatments are effective for reducing pain in patients recovering from orthopedic surgery and limit the need for potentially addictive opioid medications, a study published Thursday by the journal Anesthesiology found.

A treatment called percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation lowered patients' post-operative pain scores after common procedures by an average of 50%, the data showed.

The treatment delivers small amounts of electricity to surgically affected nerves and interrupts the transmission of pain signals to the brain, the researchers said.

In addition, patients' use of opioid-based pain medications dropped by 80% during the first week after the treatments, according to the researchers, who described the findings as "impressive."

RELATED Study: Patients use a fraction of opioids prescribed after surgery

The benefits of postoperative nerve stimulation were "much greater than what we had anticipated," researchers from the University of California-San Diego wrote.

The results "stand on their own and indicate that percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation is highly effective for acute pain," they said.

Reducing the need for opioid-based pain medications after surgical procedures has become a point of emphasis in recent years due to the risk that patients might become addicted to the drugs.

RELATED Hospital costs for substance use patients exceed $13B annually, study finds

Prescription opioid-based pain medications have helped fuel an "epidemic" of abuse and misuse of these drugs, which have similar intoxicating effects to illegal drugs such as "heroin," according to the National Institute on Drug Abuse.

For this study, the researchers enrolled 65 adults who underwent a common outpatient joint surgery, such as foot bunion removal and shoulder rotator cuff repair.

All study participants had electrical leads placed near the nerve or nerves that serve the surgical joints, with half of them receiving active electrical stimulation adjusted to achieve the desired sensory change sometimes described as feeling like a "pleasant massage," the researchers said.

RELATED Study: One-third of U.S. teens, young adults misuse prescription drugs

The remaining participants received an inactive treatment, with a pulse generator that appeared to function normally, but did not deliver electrical current, according to the researchers.

After one week, participants who received active percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation showed significantly lower pain ratings, with average scores on a zero-to-10 scale of about 1, compared to just over 3 in the sham treatment group, the data showed.

Participants in the active treatment group used, on average, about 5 milligrams of opioid pain relievers during the first week following surgery, or about one-tenth of the amount used by those the in the sham treatment group, the researchers said.

"Percutaneous peripheral nerve stimulation will most likely prove the optimal management after painful surgical procedures," they wrote.

upi.com/7090534

Think twice about releasing pet fish as they invade our natural waterways

Duration: 01:34 

 The Weather Network

The Pentagon has stopped laughing about UFOs. Why hasn't Silicon Valley?

Rizwan Virk 

NBC

4/16/2021


In our era of life-changing innovation, there are major breakthroughs that could well come from the serious study of a phenomenon we too often mock: UFOs. The government has reversed its official position of publicly ignoring UAPs (unidentified aerial phenomenon, the new trendy name for UFOs) and is starting to tackle the subject openly. But within academia and industry, the topic is still too frequently dismissed with a chuckle accompanied by some trite remark about “extraterrestrials.”

© Provided by NBC News

In February, for instance, one of the biggest innovators of this century, Elon Musk, was asked what he thought about the recent Pentagon acknowledgment that Navy pilots have seen objects flying in our airspace using advanced technology we can’t identify, let alone understand or explain or reproduce. Musk’s answer was, “Honestly, I think I would know if there were aliens,” and, honestly, this response could have come from any number of prominent scientists or industry figures.

Musk’s nonanswer was revealing because it suggested that he wasn’t aware of — or interested in — basic unclassified facts about military sightings of UFOs, or that the government is looking into the possibility that they are made from advanced technology that our scientists can’t yet figure out.

In June, a new task force championed by Sen. Marco Rubio, R-Fla., must submit an unclassified report on unidentified aerial phenomena to Congress. It comes as several erstwhile officials, including former Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid and two former CIA directors, have called for a more rigorous look at these sightings.

The most famous example (the one Musk was asked about) occurred when Navy pilots reported a craft resembling a Tic Tac that was moving unlike anything seen in the U.S. arsenal: They said it “wasn’t behaving by the normal laws of physics.”

The craft’s movements were, however, typical of both military and civilian UFO reports: Descending from 80,000 feet to 20,000 feet in an instant; stopping in midair and reversing direction without inertial effects; exceeding the speed of sound without generating a sonic boom; and submerging into the ocean. After The New York Times and The Washington Post reported on it in 2017 along with the military’s secret UFO tracking program, the Pentagon publicly acknowledged last year that the leaked videos in the stories were authentic.

Videos of UFO encounters released by Pentagon


Now recently retired national security officials are speaking out. In the run-up to the task force’s report in June, John Ratcliffe, former director of national intelligence, told Fox News last month that there were “a lot more sightings than have been made public.” Similarly, James Woolsey, former director of the CIA, said on a podcast this month he was taking the subject seriously, as did a successor at the CIA, John Brennan, in December.

The Pentagon hasn’t offered an official explanation for UAPs like the Tic Tac craft, calling them “unidentified.” Former officials don’t seem to be willing to utter the word “alien,” but it’s the implication of what they do say. Lue Elizondo, who ran the secret Pentagon UFO tracking unit, has publicly ruled out the theory that the Tic Tac craft came from the U.S. arsenal or from the arsenals of our adversaries, leaving only the theory that it came from “someone or something else.”

According to Brennan, some of the phenomena we’re seeing “could involve some type of activity that some might say constitutes a different form of life.” U.S. Navy pilots who have actually seen the Tic Tac craft are even more direct, with one telling the Post it was “Something not from the Earth.”

While it’s good that the government is finally taking UFOs more seriously, its job is primarily to figure out whether they represent a military threat. But these unidentified objects may also represent an opportunity to advance our science and technology significantly — if our other two pillars of innovation, academia and industry, are willing to catch up.

Unfortunately, when scientists are asked about UFOs, they generally laugh off the subject. The well-known astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson, for one, said he would only take the idea seriously when aliens send him a dinner invite.

Why do leading scientists show such a profound lack of curiosity in a subject that might redefine not just their fields, but also all of science? It could lead to a new understanding of our place in the universe, and new advances in materials science, biology, quantum physics, cosmology and social sciences.

Part of the problem likely stems from an academic version of the old IBM rule in industry that “No one ever gets fired for buying IBM.” Similarly, no professor ever gets fired for mocking UFOs. The case of Harvard Medical School’s Dr. John Mack, though, shows the dangers if you don’t.

Thankfully, small cracks are appearing in academia’s wall of mockery. Avi Loeb, chief astronomer at Harvard University, was willing to say in his new book, “Extraterrestrial,” that he thinks that ‘Oumuamua, the first object we have spotted in the night sky whose origin is definitely from outside our solar system, was most likely a technological artifact of a long-vanished alien civilization.

Most academics, though, still invoke some version of Musk’s nonargument: “If aliens were here, we would know!” But the government is saying that it does know: These craft exist. My purpose today is not to convince you of the evidence, however, but to encourage academics and industry leaders to move beyond their biases into an open-minded investigation to figure out who or what created them, and how they work.

I’m not naïve enough to assume that academics will study UFOs just to further human knowledge. But to point out the obvious: In the long term, there could be multiple Nobel prizes, not to mention new laws of physics, for those who are willing to dive in and risk ridicule in the short term.


Elon Musk talks about SpaceX’s first all-civilian mission to space

Scientists in Europe who dismissed the idea of rocks falling out of the sky eventually opened their minds enough to discover meteorites — ending up with a more complex understanding of the universe. The results this time could lead to new kinds of transportation devices capable of submerging into the ocean and in the air, transporting cargo and passengers across the globe in minutes, as well as ferrying humans safely beyond planet Earth.

Similar rewards await industry risk-takers as well, especially innovators in Silicon Valley who are interested in speculative topics such as the Singularity and the Simulation Hypothesis. To some extent, their apathy is the predictable spillover effect from the ivory tower: Venture capital firms aren’t going to invest in something that academics haven’t stamped as “viable” technology.

But peer pressure may also be at work here, too. Businessman Joe Firmage, for instance, was once the toast of the valley only to resign so as not to hurt his company’s reputation after speaking of his interest in UFOs (and being skewered as “the Fox Mulder of Silicon Valley” in the press).

Despite the risks, there are some encouraging signs. Recently, Prof. Garry Nolan of Stanford University and Jacques Vallee, a venture capitalist who worked with J. Allen Hynek — a part of the Air Force’s first UFO investigation group, Project Blue Book, from 1947-1969 — have teamed up to investigate samples of materials supposedly ejected at purported UFO landing sites.

As a starting point, if the ratios of the metals’ specific isotopes don’t naturally occur on Earth, the chemical composition could open up new opportunities for high-performance craft materials on- and off-planet. Vallee (inspiration for the French scientist in director Steven Spielberg’s “Close Encounters of the Third Kind”) told me they would go through the academic peer-review processes, which might greatly advance respect for the subject.

Where does this leave us?

We will know more when the Pentagon’s report on unidentified aerial phenomena comes out in June, but now that the government is starting to take UFOs seriously, it’s high time that more academics and industry leaders step up to do the same.

Pentagon Confirms Newly Leaked UFO Footage Was Filmed By Navy

RECENT YEARS HAVE SEEN A NUMBER OF HIGH-PROFILE UFO SIGHTINGS BY US MILITARY PERSONNEL. ANURAKE SINGTO-ON/SHUTTERSTOCK.COM
ADVERTISMENT

The Pentagon has confirmed that a number of freshly leaked videos appearing to show UFOs, or "unidentified aerial phenomena" (UAP) as they are officially known, were taken by Navy personnel. However, there's no word yet on what exactly these mysterious sightings actually are.

The footage was recently shared by TV investigative journalist George Knapp at MysteryWire.com and documentary filmmaker Jeremy Corbell at ExtraordinaryBeliefs.com, both of whom are well-versed in the world of UFOs.

The first of the leaked videos, captured on a night vision camera, shows a "pyramid"-shaped UAP buzzing above the USS Russell warship off the coast of San Diego in July 2019.

Another set of images was captured by the USS Omaha, appearing to show an orb-like shape. The object was reportedly spotted in the sky but proceeded to descend into the water without destruction. Corbell notes that the US Navy deployed a submarine to search for the object, but it appears nothing was found.

The Pentagon has confirmed that the images and footage were taken by Navy personnel, but made no further comment on what the sights might have been.

“I can confirm that the referenced photos and videos were taken by Navy personnel. The UAPTF has included these incidents in their ongoing examinations,” Susan Gough, a Pentagon spokesperson, told The Black Vault. “As we have said before, to maintain operations security and to avoid disclosing information that may be useful to potential adversaries, DOD does not discuss publicly the details of either the observations or the examinations of reported incursions into our training ranges or designated airspace, including those incursions initially designated as UAP.”

Aside from a few short descriptions, not much information about the footage has been released. Is it a UFO from another world? An experimental military aircraft? Spyware, weather balloons, drones? Or simply a camera artifact? The sightings have already divided opinion, but there's little denying it's intriguing footage.

Recent years have seen a number of high-profile UFO sightings by military personnel, combined with a renewed sense of openness on the subject from the Pentagon. Just last year, the US Department of Defense acknowledged and publically released three videos of "unidentified aerial phenomena," including the famous "Tic Tac" video shot by a US Navy jet pilot.

As per the New York Times, there's even been an uptick of UFO sightings in the US since the COVID-19 pandemic began. Nationwide, sightings shot up by more than 1,000 reports compared to an average year to a total of at least 7,200 sightings in 2020. However, even hardcore "ufologists" conceded that this is not necessarily evidence of an incoming alien invasion, but simply a reflection of more people having time to stargaze during the lockdown

By Tom Hale 14 APR 2021,

Why The West's 'First World Problems' Over AstraZeneca Are A Deadly Risk For The Planet's Poorest

New research from Oxford University deserves publicity in Europe and beyond.


By Paul Waugh
HUFFINGTON POST

4/15/2021
You’re reading The Waugh Zone, our daily politics briefing. 

“Vaccine nationalism” is one of those practices that every country disowns, but some secretly indulge. And when it comes to their handling of the pandemic more broadly, politicians are often happy to comment on other countries’ failures while bristling at any outsider verdict on their own.

We had a flavour of that over the past 24 hours after Canada’s Justin Trudeau blurted out that the UK was ahead of the world on vaccinations “yet they maintain very strong restrictions and are facing a very serious third wave”. It was a (characteristically) hamfisted attempt to justify his own continued lockdown and sparked a wave of British indignation.

There was a gentle rebuff on Thursday from Boris Johnson’s spokesperson, who said “I don’t have a specific response for Justin Trudeau, but I think the case data speaks for itself with this”. He then proceeded to say that UK case numbers, hospitalisations and deaths had all fallen and “that’s a tribute to our vaccine roll out and the work of the British public and our NHS”.

The only problem with that response is that, well, the PM himself this week made plain that vaccination wasn’t the real driver of those falling numbers. And while Trudeau’s claim about a “serious” third wave certainly baffled scientists here, Johnson and Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance have all warned there will be a third wave of some kind, it’s just unclear when or how big it will be.

Although the Oxford/AstraZeneca vaccine is not a “British” vaccine as such, there was also some early government defensiveness on its behalf as other countries raised concerns about possible links to blood clots. Now that our own regulator has paused the jab for under-30s, there is unsurprisingly some European muttering of “we told you so”.

Of course, it all comes down to a balance of risks, and the need to make informed assessments of that risk. And a brand new Oxford study concluded that the risk of cerebral venous thrombosis (CVT) is – wait for it – around eight to 10 times higher after catching the virus than getting vaccinated.

Based on data from more than 500,000 Covid-19 patients, the experts calculated the occurrence of CVT was 39 in a million people. Among those who had a vaccine made by AstraZeneca, the occurrence was about five in a million after the first dose. Intriguingly, they found for the Pfizer or Moderna vaccines the occurrence of CVT was around four in a million. That’s not much different from AZ, yet neither has the same PR problem.

Crucially, Professor Paul Harrison, who led the study, said that the risk was still higher “even for those under 30”. The much less diplomatic Professor John Bell put it bluntly: “If you don’t get a vaccine you’re going to get Covid. And if you get Covid you’ll have a very, very much higher risk of getting a bad clotting problem.”

The new research paper has come too late for some countries. On Wednesday, Denmark had actually become the first European country to completely halt its AstraZeneca rollout, to all age groups. It admitted “the risk in absolute terms is slight” but went ahead with the ban anyway.

Yet today, as Europe passed the awful milestone of a million deaths (with France set to pass 100,000 tonight), there was a genuinely jaw-dropping revelation about Denmark. The WHO’s Europe chief Hans Kluge said he’d been told by Soren Brostrom, director general of the Danish Health Authority, that “the ministry of foreign affairs of Denmark is ready to, or looking already into options, for sharing AstraZeneca vaccines with poorer countries.”

Yes, you read that right: they’re saying this vaccine is not safe enough for Danes, but it is for the developing world. That betrays a shocking assumption about the comparative value placed on lives in richer and poorer states. But the truly shocking factor is the failure to properly weigh the risks. As the Oxford study shows, the chances of dying from Covid are much higher than of dying from a vaccine – even among the young.

There is also a real danger that our old friend “an abundance of caution” is not the benign concept it seems, and is in fact utterly deadly. Actions like Denmark’s can only undermine confidence in the AstraZeneca jab, the only not-for-profit vaccine, in the very countries that depend on it most. Gordon Brown and others urged global action today, as 90% of people in poor countries already face a 2021 without any vaccines at all.

Being able to reject a vaccine on grounds of the “slight” risk it poses, simply because you have plentiful alternative stocks (as Denmark claims), brings a whole new tawdriness to that phrase “First World problems”. The risk is a continued spread that ends up becoming a global problem. Let’s hope that the reassuring findings of the new Oxford research can drown out the messages that somehow the AstraZeneca jab is “unsafe".

Blood clots as prevalent with Pfizer and Moderna vaccine as with AstraZeneca's: study

Published: April 15, 2021 

By 

Steve Goldstein

Referenced Symbols

PFE
+2.58% 
MRNA
+6.84% 
AZN
-0.18% 

A study by Oxford University found the number of people who receive blood clots after getting vaccinated with a coronavirus vaccine are about the same for those who get Pfizer PFE, +2.58% and Moderna MRNA, +6.84% vaccines as they are for the AstraZeneca AZN, -0.18% vaccine that was produced with the university's help. According to the study, 4 in 1 million people experience cerebral venous thrombosis after getting the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine, versus 5 in 1 million people for the AstraZeneca vaccine. The risk of getting CVT is much higher for those who get COVID-19 -- 39 in a million patients -- than it is for those who get vaccinated. AstraZeneca's vaccine use has been halted or limited in many countries on blood clot concerns.

Scientists Create Whitest Paint In The World That Could Help Us Fight Global Warming


By Dr Alfredo Carpineti15 APR 2021, 19:00


Last October, scientists announced the creation of ultra-white paint so reflective it could be used to keep surfaces and even entire buildings cool. That breakthrough really pushed the envelope on new ways to fight global warming. Now, they've produced an even whiter paint.

The ultra-white paints are considered the opposite of vantablack, which absorbs 99.9 percent of light. They reflect so much light that a surface painted with them actually ends up being cooler than the ambient temperature around them.

The paint revealed in October was based on calcium carbonate (CaCO3), the mineral that makes chalk. It had a reflectance of about 95.5 percent, meaning that less than 5 percent of sunlight hitting it would be absorbed as heat.

The new one, detailed in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, uses barium sulfate instead, something that is already employed commercially in paper and cosmetics. The team estimates that 98.1 percent of sunlight is reflected back by the new paint, meaning only 1.9 percent of heat is absorbed.

“In our experiment, the new paint doubles the cooling power of the previous one,” senior author Professor Xiulin Ruan from Purdue University told IFLScience.

Professor Xiulin Ruan holds up his lab's sample of the whitest paint on record. Image credit: Purdue University/Jared Pike

Tests have shown that during strong sunlight noon hours material covered in the new paint was 4.4°C (8°F) cooler than ambient temperature. At night, the material kept a temperature of 10.5°C (19°F) below the surrounding areas.

This extraordinary ability to cool could be a game-changer in the fight against global warming. This paint could be used to cool buildings instead of air conditioners.
The whitest white paint square seen with a normal camera (left) and in infrared (right). The infrared shows the temperature difference with the whitest paint cooling not only itself but also the board it is attached to. Image Credit: Purdue University/joseph peoples

“Conventional air conditioners consume power that is often from burning fossil fuel. Meanwhile, while they move the heat from inside of a house to the outside, they turn the electricity into heat and leave even more heat to the ambient and earth, further causing a heat island effect and warming up the Earth,” explained Professor Ruan to IFLScience.

“In contrast, our paint does not consume any power, and directly sends off all the heat to the deep space, hence helping cooling down the Earth. According to a previous model, painting 0.5-1% of the Earth's surface (roofs, roads, cars, unused land, etc) with our paint will stop the warming trend.”

While painting that fraction of the Earth's surface might be very difficult, employing the paint on human-made structures could still have a major impact. The team has shown that the barium sulfate paint can handle outdoor conditions and is compatible with standard commercial paint processes. A patent h.as also been filed for the paint. If and when available for commercial use, this could be a simple solution towards combatting and mitigating the complex issue of global warming.e paint. If and when available for commercial use, this could be a simple solution towards combatting and mitigating the complex issue of global warming

Just 3 percent of terrestrial habitat is 'ecologically intact'


In Africa, there is a surprising amount of usable habitat, but due to poaching threats, elephants only utilize a small percentage. File Photo by Daniel Irungu/EPA

April 15 (UPI) -- For more than 30 years, conservationists and policy makers have prioritized the protection of wilderness and intact habitat, acreage undisturbed by human activities.

More recently, scientists and policy makers have called for more concrete definitions of "wilderness." In its efforts to combat climate change and preserve biodiversity, the United Nations has highlighted the importance of ecosystem integrity.

As new research proves, intact habitat doesn't guarantee ecosystem integrity. In fact, the new analysis -- published Thursday in the journal Frontiers in Forests and Global Change -- suggests an overwhelming majority of the planet's terrestrial ecosystems are compromised.

"We know intact habitat is increasingly being lost, and the values of intact habitat have been demonstrated for both biodiversity and people," lead study author Andrew Plumptre, biodiversity expert at the University of Cambridge's Conservation Research Institute, said in a news release. "But this study found that much of what we consider as intact habitat is missing species that have been hunted by people, or lost because of invasive species or disease."

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Numerous studies have highlighted the problem of ecosystem fragmentation, but few have quantified the issue. In Africa, there is a surprising amount of usable habitat, but due to poaching threats, elephants only utilize a small percentage. Even the planet's protected wilderness is highly fragmented.

Previous efforts to quantify and map ecosystem integrity have focused exclusively on the influence of human activity -- including the incursion of human settlements, roads and light and noise pollution -- on terrestrial acreage all over the world. Estimates suggest between 20 and 40 percent of terrestrial habitat is free from human influence.

For the new study, scientists added another level of analysis. Plumptre and his research partners compared current plant and animal diversity levels in intact habitat with historical biodiversity benchmarks.

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They determined only between 2 and 3 percent of habitat identified as intact still hosts a full slate of animal and plant diversity and remains mostly free of invasive species.

Many of the regions identified as ecologically intact are places managed by Indigenous communities.

"Areas identified as functionally intact included east Siberia and northern Canada for boreal and tundra biomes, parts of the Amazon and Congo basin tropical forests and the Sahara Desert," the study's authors wrote.

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According to the new study, there is hope for recovery. Scientists determined as much as 20 percent of Earth's terrestrial habitat could be restored to faunal intactness.

"The results show that it might be possible to increase the area with ecological intactness back to up to 20 percent through the targeted reintroductions of species that have been lost in areas where human impact is still low, provided the threats to their survival can be addressed and numbers rebuilt to a level where they fulfill their functional role," Plumptre said.

Numerous studies have highlighted the importance of ecosystem integrity and biodiversity for maintaining vital ecosystems services, curbing climate change and promoting human health. Scientists hope their latest research will help conservationists and policy makers improve protection and restoration plans.