Climate change is increasing the probability that tropical cyclones rapidly grow into intense, damaging hurricanes in a few hours, according to a new study published in Nature Communications.

Links between human-caused global warming and the strength of storms have previously been suggested, but now, research shows how a warmer world is making storms transform rapidly into powerful hurricanes or typhoons in a single day, posing a huge challenge to weather forecasters.

The study, co-authored by National Centre for Atmospheric Science scientists, concludes that rising global temperatures are significantly increasing the rate of storms rapidly intensifying.

These stronger storms disproportionately risk lives and devastate homes and businesses, as Hurricane Ian did in Florida in September 2022.

Dr Alex Baker, National Centre for Atmospheric Science and the University of Reading, who co-wrote the study, explains:

“Hurricanes are natural events that have always been with us, and a rare few strengthen rapidly. We have discovered how increasing greenhouse gas emissions are making it much more likely that tropical storms rapidly turn into dangerous and less predictable cyclones, and this is happening globally.”

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-022-34321-6

Researchers at the University of Toronto have found that honey improves key measures of cardiometabolic health, including blood sugar and cholesterol levels -; especially if the honey is raw and from a single floral source.

The researchers conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis of clinical trials on honey, and found that it lowered fasting blood glucose, total and LDL or 'bad' cholesterol, triglycerides, and a marker of fatty liver disease; it also increased HDL or 'good' cholesterol, and some markers of inflammation.

Previous research has shown that honey can improve cardiometabolic health, especially in in vitro and animal studies. The current study is the most comprehensive review to date of clinical trials, and it includes the most detailed data on processing and floral source.

The journal Nutrition Reviews published the findings this week.

"The word among public health and nutrition experts has long been that 'a sugar is a sugar,' said John Sievenpiper, principal investigator and an associate professor of nutritional sciences and medicine at U of T, who is also a clinician-scientist at Unity Health Toronto. "These results show that's not the case, and they should give pause to the designation of honey as a free or added sugar in dietary guidelines."

https://academic.oup.com/nutritionreviews/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nutrit/nuac086/6827512?login=false

Every day, 45,000 planes fly across the United States, carrying some 1.7 million passengers. Aviation dominates a frequent traveler’s individual contribution to climate change, and yet it is one of the most challenging sectors to decarbonize.

The United States is the largest contributor to aviation carbon dioxide emissions in the world and is responsible for more than a quarter of all carbon dioxide emitted from flying.

But what if we could make all U.S. air travel nearly emissions free? What if we could replace carbon-intensive jet fossil fuels with a cleaner alternative: biojet fuels derived from rain-fed grass grown in the U.S.?

New research published today in the journal Nature Sustainability shows a pathway toward full decarbonization of U.S. aviation fuel use by substituting conventional jet fuel with sustainably produced biofuels.

The study, led by a team of Arizona State University researchers, found that planting the grass miscanthus on 23.2 million hectares of existing marginal agricultural lands — land that often lies fallow or is poor in soil quality — across the United States would provide enough biomass feedstock to meet the liquid fuel demands of the U.S. aviation sector fully from biofuels, an amount expected to reach 30 billion gallons per year by 2040.

In the study, the researchers used an integrated framework of land assessments, hydro-climate modeling, ecosystem modeling and economic modeling to assess where and under what conditions across the United States energy crops used for biojet fuels could be grown sustainably using criteria that evaluate both environmental and economic performance.

The criteria were extensive. The team first identified and assessed where optimal marginal agriculture lands already existed in the U.S. They then assessed whether one could grow the right energy crops on the land without using additional water.

The team then analyzed whether growing energy-crop feedstocks on these lands would have detrimental effects on the surrounding climate or soil moisture and predicted the potential productivity of yields of two different grasses — miscanthus and switchgrass — as suitable biomass-energy feedstocks. Finally, the team quantified the amount and the cost of biojet fuel that would be produced and distributed nationwide at scale. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-022-00990-w

A new study at Tel Aviv University found that aerobic exercise can reduce the risk of metastatic cancer by 72%. According to the researchers, intensity aerobic exercise increases the glucose (sugar) consumption of internal organs, thereby reducing the availability of energy to the tumor. The study was led by two researchers from TAU's Sackler Faculty of Medicine: Prof. Carmit Levy from the Department of Human Genetics and Biochemistry and Dr. Yftach Gepner from the School of Public Health and the Sylvan Adams Sports Institute. Prof. Levy emphasizes that by combining scientific knowhow from different schools at TAU, the new study has led to a very important discovery which may help prevent metastatic cancer - the leading cause of death in Israel. The paper was published in the prestigious journal Cancer Research and chosen for the cover of the November 2022 issue.

https://www.news-medical.net/news/20221114/High-intensity-aerobic-exercise-can-cut-metastatic-cancer-risk-by-7225.aspx

The brains of Black adults in the U.S. age more quickly than those of white and Hispanic adults, showing features linked to Alzheimer’s disease and other dementias as early as mid-life, according to a new study.

The study, published Monday in JAMA Neurology, analyzed the MRI scans of nearly 1,500 participants from two racially and ethnically diverse cohorts. It found that Black adults in mid-life — on average, in their mid-50s — were more likely than white or Hispanic adults of the same age to have a higher prevalence of white matter lesions, markers of cerebrovascular disease that are associated with cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease.

Previous research has established stark racial disparities in Alzheimer’s disease, which affects more than 6 million Americans. Hispanic people are 1.5 times more likely to have the disease than white people, while Black people are twice as likely to have the disease compared to those who are white. The new study strengthens the case that vascular disease may be especially detrimental to brain health in Black populations, and may start to affect the brain far earlier in life than previously thought.

https://www.statnews.com/2022/11/14/aging-black-adults-brains/

The lifespans of honey bees living in laboratory environments has dropped about 50% over the last 50 years, hinting at possible causes for the worrisome trends across the beekeeping industry, according to new research by University of Maryland entomologists.

The study published today in the journal Scientific Reports is the first to show an overall decline in honey bee lifespan that is potentially independent of environmental stressors. The findings hint that genetics may be influencing problems like increased colony loss and reduced honey production.

Colony turnover is an accepted factor in the beekeeping business, as bee colonies naturally age and die off. But the higher rates of the past decade mean U.S. beekeepers have to replace more colonies to keep operations viable. In an effort to understand why, researchers have focused on environmental stressors, diseases, parasites, pesticide exposure and nutrition.

When scientists modeled the effect of today’s shorter lifespans independent of environmental factors on beehives, however, the results corresponded with real-world observations of U.S. beekeepers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-022-21401-2?ez_cid=CLIENT_ID(AMP_ECID_EZOIC)

Four new long-COVID studies reveal that 10% of French patients infected early in the pandemic still had symptoms 1 year later, SARS-CoV-2 can profoundly damage the brain for months, and very stressful events exacerbate persistent symptoms.

For some, a long road to recovery French researchers published a new study in JAMA Network Open on 1-year rates of long COVID among 53,047 adults in three population-based groups who took a nationwide survey from Apr 1 to Jun 30, 2020. The researchers obtained blood samples for serologic confirmation of infection from May 1 to Nov 30, 2020, and fielded an online follow-up questionnaire from Jun 1 to Sep 30, 2021. Average participant age was 50.9 years, and 63.7% were women.

In total, 3,972 people had tested positive for SARS-CoV-2, with 2,647 (66.6%) of them reporting at least one symptom during their infections. Of the 2,647 participants, 32.5% said they had at least one COVID-19 symptom for 2 months or longer.

The estimated proportion of participants who had at least one lingering symptom was 18.4% at 6 months, 10.1% at 12 months, and 7.8% after 18 months. Among participants who had symptomatic infections, an estimated 33.6% had more than five symptoms 1 week after infection, falling to 2.8% at 2 months.

An estimated 97.5% of participants with weakness, 94.2% of those with impaired attention or concentration, and 77.5% of those with memory loss reported symptom resolution at 1 year.

The most common long-COVID symptoms were shortness of breath (26.5%), joint pain (26.9%), loss of smell or taste (27.0%), weakness (20.6%), impaired attention or concentration (22.3%), memory loss (40.0%), and sleep disorders (36.6%)

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2798224

Major political and societal events can have dramatic impacts on psychological health and impact sleep and emotional well-being. While conventional wisdom suggests these highly anticipated events, such as elections, can cause stress and disrupt well-being, little research has been published exploring this relationship.

Now, researchers at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) and colleagues show how major sociopolitical events can have global impacts on sleep that are associated with significant fluctuations in the public’s collective mood, well-being, and alcohol consumption. The findings, published in the National Sleep Foundation’s journal Sleep Health show that divisive political events negatively influenced a wide variety of factors related to public mood.

“It is unlikely that these findings will come as shock to many given the political turbulence of the last several years,” said corresponding author Tony Cunningham, PhD, director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at BIDMC. “Our results likely mirror many of our own experiences surrounding highly stressful events, and we felt this was an opportunity to scientifically validate these assumptions.”

As part of a larger study exploring the sleep and psychological repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic, the team surveyed 437 participants in the United States and 106 international participants daily between October 1–13, 2020 (before the election) and October 30–November 12, 2020 (days surrounding the November 3 U.S. election). Participants reported on their duration and quality of sleep, alcohol consumption and subjective experience of overall stress. Their responses revealed reduced sleep quantity and efficiency coupled with heightened stress, negative mood and alcohol use in the period surrounding the election. While these results were observed at a lower level in non-U.S. participants, worsening health habits were significantly correlated with mood and stress only among U.S. residents.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S2352721822001498?via%3Dihub

Self-reported psychological distress, defined as symptoms of depression, anxiety, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), or perceived psychosocial stress, was associated with a 28% greater risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality, a meta-analysis finds.

Investigators from Yale and Brown University conducted a review using research published between 2017 – 2022 from over 600,000 patients and 28 studies on the association between psychological distress and the first diagnosis of cardiovascular disease (CVD). Psychological health screening may significantly reduce CVD risk and improve quality of life for patients at-risk for cardiovascular disease.

The study appears Nov. 7 in the Journal of Cardiopulmonary Rehabilitation.

“Our investigation demonstrates the importance of psychological distress in cardiovascular risk, and that implementing routine psychological health screenings and clinical decision support should be a healthcare priority,” said Allison E. Gaffey, PhD, instructor of medicine and clinical psychologist, and the study’s lead author.

Current evidence suggests that women are more likely to not receive treatment for depression.

https://journals.lww.com/jcrjournal/Abstract/2022/11000/Screening_for_Psychological_Distress_and_Risk_of.4.aspx