Month: November 2018

Suicide rates are rising among U.S. workers, and the risk may depend partly on the types of jobs people do, government researchers suggest.  From 2000 to 2016, the U.S. suicide rate among those aged 16 to 64 rose 34 percent, from 12.9 deaths for every 100,000 people in the population to 17.3 per 100,000, according to the study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).  The highest suicide rate among men was for workers in construction and mining jobs, with 43.6 deaths for every 100,000 workers in 2012 and 53.2 deaths per 100,000 in 2015, the analysis found.  The highest suicide rate among women was for workers in arts, design, entertainment, sports and media, with 11.7 fatalities for every 100,000 workers in 2012 and 15.6 deaths per 100,000 in 2015.  “Since most adults spend a great deal of their time at work, the workplace is an important and underutilized venue for suicide prevention,” said study co-author Deborah Stone, a behavioral scientist at the CDC in Atlanta.  While the study wasn’t designed to prove whether or how specific types of jobs or workplace characteristics might contribute to the risk of suicide, lack of control over employment and a lack of job security can both be stressors that make suicide more likely, Stone said by email.  Many factors outside the workplace can also influence the risk of suicide, including relationship problems, substance use, physical or mental health, finances or legal problems, Stone added.  And ready access to guns and other weapons have a big impact on whether suicidal thoughts turn into actions with fatal outcomes, Stone said.  Guns may explain the …

A U.S. government agency said Wednesday that abortion rates among American women of all ages fell to a decade low in 2015, which both opponents and supporters of abortion rights attributed in part to individual states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure.  The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said that statistics for 2015, the most recent year for which data are available, showed the abortion rate was 11.8 per 1,000 women aged 15 to 44. That was down 26 percent from 2006, when the study began and the rate was 15.9 abortions per 1,000 women.  Teens aged 15 to 19 experienced a greater decrease than older women, with the rate falling 54 percent from 2006 to 2015, the CDC said.  “This decrease in abortion rate was greater than the decreases for women in any older age group,” the CDC said in a statement.  The CDC did not provide any reason for the decline, but abortion rights advocates attributed it to increased use of contraceptives as well as decreased access to abortion services in some states.  “Affordable access to the full range of contraception and family planning options is critical for people deciding if and when they’d like to become parents, develop their careers, plan for their futures and manage their health,” said Rachel Jones, a research scientist at Guttmacher Institute, a reproductive health research group that supports abortion rights.  Opponents of abortion rights said the decrease was primarily the result of many states’ efforts to restrict women’s access to the procedure.  “That is due, in a significant way, to pro-life legislation that seeks to provide life-affirming solutions to abortion, combined with …

Some 115 years after the first powered flight, scientists have developed a radical new approach toward flying in the form of a small, lightweight and virtually noiseless airplane that gets airborne with no moving parts like propellers or turbine blades. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) engineers on Wednesday described successful flight tests at an indoor campus gymnasium of the unmanned airplane powered not by engines that burn fossils fuels but by ion wind propulsion, also called electro-aerodynamic thrust. The aircraft, called Version 2 EAD Airframe, or V2, weighs only 5.4 pounds (2.45 kg) with a wingspan of 16-1/2 feet (5 meters). “This is the first time that an airplane without moving parts has flown,” said MIT aerospace engineer Steven Barrett, who drew inspiration from fictional shuttlecraft from “Star Trek.” Electrical field strength near an array of thin filaments called emitters at the front of the wing ionizes air, meaning electrons are removed and charged molecules called ions are created. These positively charged ions are attracted to negatively charged structures on the plane called collectors. As they move towards the collectors, the ions collide with air molecules, transferring energy to them. This creates a flow of air that gives the plane its thrust. Only time will tell whether the test flights at the duPont Athletic Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts, will become historic like the 1903 test flights of the first airplane by Wilbur and Orville Wright at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. And the engineers readily acknowledge their V2 prototype is inefficient …

The first flight of a SpaceX rocket tailored to fly astronauts to the International Space Station is set for liftoff from Kennedy Space Center in Florida on January 7, NASA said on Wednesday. The launch test is a crucial milestone in the space agency’s Commercial Crew Program, which aims to launch humans to space from U.S. soil for the first time in nearly a decade. The U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration said SpaceX’s Crew Dragon spacecraft — which will shuttle three astronauts to space from the same launch pad that sent Apollo 11’s three-man crew to the moon in 1969 — will make its debut flight atop SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket on January 7. While NASA did not detail the flight path, it said the test would provide data on the performance of the Falcon 9, Crew Dragon capsule, and ground systems, as well as on-orbit, docking and landing operations. SpaceX and Boeing Co are the two main contractors selected under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program to send astronauts to space as soon as 2019, using their Crew Dragon and CST-100 Starliner spacecraft respectively. Since the U.S. space shuttle program was shut down in 2011, NASA has had to rely on Russia to fly astronauts to the space station, a $100 billion orbital research laboratory that flies about 250 miles (402 km) above Earth. The Demo-1 launch is the latest test in a rigorous certification timeline imposed under NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. While SpaceX is targeting early January, NASA spokeswoman …

On a cold and rainy Saturday morning, hundreds of people have camped out all night in cars or huddled in sleeping bags, splayed out in a school parking lot that has been turned into a makeshift medical clinic in Charleston, West Virginia.  By the time the doors open at 6 a.m., some will have been waiting for at least 14 hours to receive medical, dental, and vision care at this free mobile health clinic. Most here say they have no other health care option.  “I’ve never had health insurance – never,” says Benny Cardenas, a construction worker who constantly worries he is an injury away from being in long-term debt. “This here, it’s free. It’s worth the sacrifice – a couple hours of no sleep (rather) than paying thousands of dollars.”  Susan Stephenson, a truck driver from Houston, Texas, is already missing most of her upper teeth. Though she has medical insurance, she can’t afford to go to the dentist. “The copay is so outrageous, it’s like not having insurance at all,” says Stephenson, who drove four hours to attend the RAM Clinic.  Insurance problems persist Stephenson’s story is common. Most Americans get health insurance through their employers, or through government-provided insurance for older and lower-income people. Millions of other people have received health insurance in recent years under the Obama administration’s Affordable Care Act. But many still cannot afford basic dental or vision services.  Since the 2010 passage of the legislation known as “Obamacare,” the uninsured rate has fallen …

A global diabetes epidemic is fueling record demand for insulin but tens of millions will not get the injections they need unless there is a dramatic improvement in access and affordability, a new study concluded on Wednesday. Diabetes — which can lead to blindness, kidney failure, heart problems, neuropathic pain and amputations — now affects 9 percent of all adults worldwide, up from 5 percent in 1980. The vast majority have type 2 diabetes, the kind linked to obesity and lack of exercise, and cases are spreading particularly rapidly in the developing world as people adopt more Western, urban lifestyles. Researchers said the amount of insulin needed to effectively treat type 2 diabetes would rise by more than 20 percent over the next 12 years, but insulin would be beyond the reach of half the 79 million type 2 diabetics predicted to need it in 2030. The shortfall is most acute in Africa, where the team led by Dr Sanjay Basu from Stanford University estimated supply would have to rise sevenfold to treat at-risk patients who had reached the stage of requiring insulin to control their blood sugar. “These estimates suggest that current levels of insulin access are highly inadequate compared to projected need, particularly in Africa and Asia,” Basu said. ​”Despite the U.N.’s commitment to treat non-communicable diseases and ensure universal access to drugs for diabetes, across much of the world insulin is scarce and unnecessarily difficult for patients to access.” Global insulin supply is dominated by three companies …

Public health officials in the United States and Canada on Tuesday warned against eating romaine lettuce while they investigate an outbreak of E. coli that has sickened 50 people in the two countries, including 13 who were hospitalized.  The alerts, issued as millions of Americans plan their Thanksgiving Day menus, covered all forms of romaine, including whole heads, hearts, bags, mixes and Caesar salad.  Officials were uncertain of the source of the tainted lettuce.  “Consumers who have any type of romaine lettuce in their home should not eat it and should throw it away, even if some of it was eaten and no one has gotten sick,” the U.S. Centers for Disease Control said in its food safety alert.  Refrigerator drawers and shelves where romaine lettuce had been stored should be sanitized, the CDC said.  The Public Health Agency of Canada, which is investigating 18 of the E. coli cases, directed its romaine lettuce alert at consumers in Ontario and Quebec.  In the United States, the CDC said the outbreak affected 32 people in 11 states between Oct. 8 and Oct. 31. No deaths have been reported, it said.  Symptoms of the infection often include a moderate fever, severe stomach cramps, vomiting and diarrhea, which is often bloody, the CDC said. Most people get better in five to seven days, but it can be life-threatening, it said.  The agency said the current outbreak is unrelated to another multistate rash of E. coli infections related to romaine lettuce earlier this year that left five people dead and sickened nearly 200.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the CDC traced the origin of that …

Biologists are trying to save the last of the endangered Puerto Rican parrots after more than half the population of the bright green birds with turquoise-tipped wings disappeared when Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico and destroyed their habitat and food sources. In the tropical forest of El Yunque, only two of the 56 wild birds that once lived there survived the Category 4 storm that pummeled the U.S. territory in September 2017. Meanwhile, only 4 of 31 wild birds in a forest in the western town of Maricao survived, along with 75 out of 134 wild parrots living in the Rio Abajo forest in the central mountains of Puerto Rico, scientists said. And while several dozen new parrots have been born in captivity and in the wild since Maria, the species is still in danger, according to scientists. “We have a lot of work to do,” said Gustavo Olivieri, parrot recovery program coordinator for Puerto Rico’s Department of Natural Resources. Federal and local scientists will meet next month to debate how best to revive a species that numbered more than 1 million in the 1800s but dwindled to 13 birds during the 1970s after decades of forest clearing. The U.S. and Puerto Rican governments launched a program in 1972 that eventually led to the creation of three breeding centers. Just weeks before Maria hit, scientists reported 56 wild birds at El Yunque, the highest since the program was launched. But the population decline is now especially worrisome because the parrots …

Mars is about to get its first U.S. visitor in years: a three-legged, one-armed geologist to dig deep and listen for quakes. NASA’s InSight makes its grand entrance through the rose-tinted Martian skies on Monday, after a six-month, 300 million-mile (480 million-kilometer) journey. It will be the first American spacecraft to land since the Curiosity rover in 2012 and the first dedicated to exploring underground. NASA is going with a tried-and-true method to get this mechanical miner to the surface of the red planet. Engine firings will slow its final descent and the spacecraft will plop down on its rigid legs, mimicking the landings of earlier successful missions. That’s where old school ends on this $1 billion U.S.-European effort. Once flight controllers in California determine the coast is clear at the landing site — fairly flat and rock free — InSight’s 6-foot (1.8-meter) arm will remove the two main science experiments from the lander’s deck and place them directly on the Martian surface. No spacecraft has attempted anything like that before. The firsts don’t stop there. One experiment will attempt to penetrate 16 feet (5 meters) into Mars, using a self-hammering nail with heat sensors to gauge the planet’s internal temperature. That would shatter the out-of-this-world depth record of 8 feet (2 { meters) drilled by the Apollo moonwalkers nearly a half-century ago for lunar heat measurements. The astronauts also left behind instruments to measure moonquakes. InSight carries the first seismometers to monitor for marsquakes — if they exist. Yet …

Most healthy children between the ages of four and 10 grow about five centimeters (two inches) a year. So, one family knew something was wrong when their son fit into the same clothes, season after season. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports doctors were able to get him growing once again after testing for a growth hormone. …

A new report has taken the results of thousands of papers on the impacts of climate change and put them together into a giant assessment detailing the multiple ways that climate change will impact humanity in the coming century. Lead researcher Camilo Mora says the report shows what he calls a “massive domino effect” of bad news as climate change intensifies in the coming century if the world doesn’t mitigate the amount of carbon we are pumping into the atmosphere. In the report being published Monday in Nature Climate Change, Mora says there is literally no place on the planet that’s safe. Putting all the data in one place The study is unique in that it doesn’t produce any new information, but is basically a mother of all spreadsheets that takes all of the predicted effects of climate change and puts them into one place. Mora told VOA he and his team of dozens of researchers spent six months gathering and inputting data on climate change into their system and watching how all of these impacts would affect individual sites around the world. What they came up with was exactly 467 ways that climate change is going to negatively impact the weather, from localized changes like more droughts, heatwaves, wildfires, and storms, to the global changes like sea level rise, and changes in ocean chemistry. Mora also looked at how climate change is expected to impact everything from food supplies, to increased susceptibility to disease, as well as more difficult …

People in Finland are using social media to mock U.S. President Donald Trump’s suggestion that they “spend a lot of time raking” in forests in order to prevent wildfires. Trump said Saturday while visiting the area of the deadliest wildfire in California history that Finnish President Sauli Niinisto told him of that method when the two met last week. In an interview published Sunday in the Ilta-Sanomat newspaper, Niinisto said he only told Trump about the country’s warning system and had no recollection of discussing raking. The reaction from Finland included many people posting on Twitter with the hashtag “haravointi,” Finnish for raking. There were lots of posts rebranding Trump’s “Make America Great Again” campaign slogan as “Rake America Great Again.” Some took a more creative approach to the task, employing more efficiency to cleaning the forest floor.   And from Canada, a suggestion that the whole process could be even easier.     …