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Published1 hour agoShareclose panelShare pageCopy linkAbout sharingImage source, Getty ImagesBy Tiffanie TurnbullBBC News, SydneyRecreational vaping will be banned in Australia, as part of a major crackdown amid what experts say is an “epidemic”.Minimum quality standards will also be introduced, and the sale of vapes restricted to pharmacies.Nicotine vapes already require a prescription in Australia, but the industry is poorly regulated and a black market is thriving.Health Minister Mark Butler says the products are creating a new generation of nicotine addicts in Australia.Also known as e-cigarettes, vapes heat a liquid – usually containing nicotine – turning it into a vapour that users inhale. They are widely seen as a product to help smokers quit.But in Australia, vapes have exploded in popularity as a recreational product, particularly among young people in cities.”Just like they did with smoking… ‘Big Tobacco’ has taken another addictive product, wrapped it in shiny packaging and added sweet flavours to create a new generation of nicotine addicts,” Mr Butler said in a speech announcing reforms on Tuesday.”We have been duped.”Vapes are considered safer than normal cigarettes because they do not contain harmful tobacco – the UK government is even handing them to some smokers for free in its “swap to stop” program.But health experts advise that vapes are not risk-free – they can often contain chemicals – and the long-term implications of using them are not yet clear. Vaping – is it a risk-free option?Young non-smokers told not to take up vapingThe Australian government argues they are a public health threat, disproportionately affecting young people, many of whom haven’t smoked before. Research suggests one in six Australians aged 14-17 years old has vaped, and one in four people aged 18-24.”Only 1 in 70 people my age has vaped,” said Mr Butler, who is 52.He said the products are being deliberately targeted at kids and are readily available “alongside lollies and chocolate bars” in retail stores. He added that vaping had become the “number one behavioural issue” in high schools. Some have begun installing vape detectors in bathrooms, Australian media has reported.Reforms toughen already strict rulesAustralia already has some of the strongest anti-smoking laws in the world. Mr Butler on Tuesday compared the new vape reforms to those used to reduce cigarette smoking in Australia to one of the lowest levels among advanced countries.How Australia is stubbing out smokingThe reforms include a ban on all disposable vapes and a crackdown on the import of non-prescription products.Scripts will be necessary for the vaping products that remain legal, and they will be required to have pharmaceutical-like packaging. Restrictions on flavours, colours, nicotine concentrations and other ingredients will also be introduced.”No more bubble-gum flavours, pink unicorns or vapes disguised as highlighter pens for kids to hide them in their pencil cases,” Mr Butler said.However he said the government will also make it easier for people to get a prescription for “legitimate therapeutic use”.A timeline for implementation will be announced at a later date.A handful of other countries, like Singapore and Thailand, have also banned vaping and Australia’s medicines regulator – the Therapeutic Goods Administration – has been recommending reform.The Cancer Council said the changes could “reverse the e-cigarette epidemic and prevent history repeating itself for a new generation of Australians”.But some politicians, industry bodies and health professionals say Australia should be relaxing its laws.National Party leader David Littleproud has previously argued the country should emulate New Zealand’s approach and regulate nicotine vapes much like cigarettes. Others have expressed concern harsher restrictions could see more people turn to the unregulated illegal market.

A new study has found that people who were exposed to even moderate levels of aircraft noise were less likely to receive the minimum recommended amount of sleep each night, and this risk increased among people living in the Western U.S., near a major cargo airport, or near a large water body, and among people with no hearing loss.
As major airline officials predict another record summer air travel season, a new analysis by Boston University School of Public Health (BUSPH) and Oregon State University has found that exposure to even moderate levels of airplane noise may disrupt sleep, building upon a growing body of research on the adverse health effects of environmental noise.
Published in the journal Environmental Health Perspectives, the study found that people who were exposed to airplane noise at levels as low as 45 dB were more likely to sleep less than 7 hours per night. For comparison, the sound of a whisper is 30 dB, a library setting is 40 dB, and a typical conversation at home is 50 dB.
Sleep is essential to overall health and well-being, including daily physical and mental functioning, and a lack of adequate sleep can lead to increased risks of cardiovascular disease, depression, diabetes, cancer, and numerous other health conditions. Health experts state that most adults need seven to nine hours of sleep each night for healthy functioning.
This study is the first large-scale analysis of aircraft noise and sleep duration that accounts for the disruptive effects of multiple environmental exposures in communities, such as greenery and light at night (LAN).
Despite how common exposure to noise from aircraft is for many people, little is known about the health effects of aircraft noise, particularly in the U.S., according to study lead author Matthew Bozigar, assistant professor of epidemiology at OSU, and study senior author Junenette Peters, associate professor of environmental health at BUSPH.

“This study helps us understand the potential health pathways by which aircraft noise may act, such as through disrupted sleep,” Peters says.
For the study, Dr. Peters, Dr. Bozigar and colleagues from BUSPH, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health examined airplane noise exposure and self-reported sleep disturbance among more than 35,000 participants living around 90 of the major US airports. The participants were selected from the Nurses’ Health Study (NHS), an ongoing, prospective study of US female nurses who have completed biennial questionnaires since 1976.
The team examined aircraft noise levels every five years from 1995 to 2015, focusing on two measurements: a nighttime estimate (Lnight) that captures airplane noise occurring when people sleep, and a day-night estimate (DNL) that captures the average noise level over a 24-hour period and applies a 10 dB adjustment for aircraft noise occurring at night, when background noise is low. The DNL is also the primary metric that the FAA uses for aircraft noise policies, and the threshold for significant noise impacts is above DNL 65 dB. The team linked these measures at multiple thresholds with the nurses’ geocoded residential addresses.
After accounting for a range of factors, including demographics, health behaviors, comorbidities, and environmental exposures such as greenery and light at night (LAN), the results showed that the odds of sleeping less than seven hours rose as airplane noise exposure increased.
Short sleep duration was also more likely among nurses who lived on the West Coast, near a major cargo airport or a large body of water, as well as among nurses who reported no hearing loss.
“We found surprisingly strong relationships for particular subgroups that we are still trying to understand,” Bozigar says. “For instance, there was a relatively strong signal between aircraft noise and both dimensions of disrupted sleep, short sleep duration and poor sleep quality, near major cargo airports. There is likely more going on to this story, as cargo operations tend to use larger, older, heavily laden, and therefore noisier aircraft that often fly through the nighttime hours. And the quantity of cargo shipped by air has been steadily increasing over the last couple of decades, possibly linked to more e-commerce. If the trends continue, it could mean more aircraft noise impacts to more groups of people.”
While the results suggested a clear link between airplane noise and sleep duration, the researchers observed no consistent association between aircraft noise and quality of sleep.
“Though we cannot recommend policy changes from the results from a single study, our study around 90 U.S. airports did reveal a connection between aircraft noise and getting less than the recommended amount of sleep,” says Dr. Bozigar. “Current gaps in knowledge could be filled in the future by including additional demographic groups — such as children, men, minority groups — and more detailed metrics of aircraft noise rather than a nightly or 24-hour average in studies. There are also more detailed ways of measuring sleep than from self-reports, such as wearable activity monitors, like a Fitbit, that researchers are incorporating more frequently in studies. And we still need to design studies that include other common sources of transportation noise, such as from cars and trains, to determine the impact of each type on health.”

The Academies accepted millions of dollars from members of the Sackler family — including some who led Purdue Pharma, makers of OxyContin — even while advising federal officials on opioid policy.More than 75 members of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine demanded on Thursday that the organization explain why it has for years failed to return or repurpose millions of dollars donated by the Sackler family, including some who led Purdue Pharma.The company’s drug, OxyContin, helped set in motion a prescription opioid crisis that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives. The New York Times reported this month that even as the Academies advised the government on opioid policy, the organization accepted $19 million from the Sackler family and appointed influential members to its committees who had financial ties to Purdue Pharma.One report issued by the Academies claimed that 100 million, or 40 percent of Americans, were in chronic pain. The figure, later found to be inflated, was cited by drugmakers to convince doctors to write large numbers of opioid prescriptions.In a letter delivered to Marcia McNutt, president of the National Academies of Sciences, scientists and economists called on the organization to clarify how research committee members who ran nonprofits heavily funded by Purdue were chosen to provide guidance to federal authorities on opioid policy: “How did the system fail in the past?” the letter asked.“The academy was looking like it had been morally asleep for the last 30 years,” Robert Putnam, an author of the letter and Harvard public policy professor, said in an interview.“We of course take the concerns of National Academy of Sciences members seriously, and their concerns were in part what prompted very serious conversations here about returning or repurposing the funds, to which the N.A.S. remains committed,” the organization said in a statement on Friday.The National Academies was chartered in 1863 by Abraham Lincoln to advise the nation on scientific and medical questions. The institution elects new members each year — elite scientists and physicians — and delivers influential advice to the White House, Congress and federal agencies.Though about 70 percent of the National Academies budget comes from federal funds, it also raises private donations from individuals, nonprofits and companies, including Chevron, Google, Merck and Medtronic.“If they begin to see the problem — that is, this huge influx of private money, and private money often comes with implicit strings — they will see it’s a threat to the core principles of the Academies,” Dr. Putnam said of the National Academies’ current leadership.Signatories of the letter include eight Nobel Prize winners. Two authors are National Academies of Sciences members who in 2017 urged top officials to distance the organization from the Sacklers.Robert M. Hauser, a prominent social scientist, wrote in an October 2017 email to two top Academies officials: “I have been thinking about the willingness of the N.A.S. to accept support from the Sackler family and to produce events and awards — lectures, forums, colloquia, prizes — however meritorious, in their name.”He and another Academies member had concluded “that the N.A.S. should disassociate itself from the Sacklers.” The other member was Angus Deaton, a Nobel Laureate and co-author of a book about surging deaths tied to substance use and suicide among members of the white working class.Dr. Deaton said in an interview that he and Dr. Hauser had asked for a call with top officials about the Sacklers’ involvement.“We wanted more than anything to warn them that there was a lot of trouble ahead down this route, and that tens of thousands of people were dying and the Sacklers were giving them money,” Dr. Deaton recalled in an interview.The organization accepted $19 million from the Sackler family and appointed influential members to its committees who had financial ties to Purdue Pharma.Eric Baradat/Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesDr. Hauser, who worked at the National Academies from 2010 to 2016, referenced an in-depth New Yorker article about the Sackler family’s “ruthless” marketing of OxyContin in the email, which was sent to Bruce Darling, then the executive officer, and James Hinchman, then the chief operating officer.“Sooner or later I thought this was going to blow up in their faces,” Dr. Hauser said in an interview. “And it would really besmirch the reputation of the Academies, which I felt strongly about defending.”Four minutes after Dr. Hauser’s initial request was emailed, he received a reply from Mr. Darling: “We had a conversation at the N.A.S. Council this past summer on the very issue that you raise, and we made a decision that I would be pleased to discuss with you.”Mr. Darling and Mr. Hinchman did not respond to messages requesting comment.Dr. Hauser recalled that Mr. Darling summarized the Sacklers’ donations as something that had been discussed and required no new action. Dr. Deaton and Dr. Hauser felt their concerns had been dismissed.Two National Academies reports on opioids have faced criticism from experts. One published in 2011 included two panelists with significant financial ties to Purdue and concluded that 100 million Americans were in chronic pain, a number that proved to be greatly inflated. (The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention later estimated that roughly 52 million adults suffered from chronic pain, and more than 17 million U.S. adults experience high-impact or more severe chronic pain.)Still, the report armed drug companies with a talking point that proved influential with Food and Drug Administration officials who oversaw opioid approvals. It was also cited by Purdue Pharma attorneys in their response to a Senate inquiry.Another Academies committee on opioid policy was singled out by Senator Ron Wyden, Democrat of Oregon, because of some members’ links to Purdue. That panel, formed in 2016, went forward with a study after four members were replaced.Articles in The Progressive and in The BMJ, or the British Medical Journal, have also noted the Sacklers’ ties to the Academies and identified additional committee members with links to Purdue.The letter on Friday asked for “clear answers” to what procedures are in place to “ensure that advisory committee members are properly vetted,” among other questions.The Academies told The Times that beginning in 2019 Sackler family donations were no longer used for science-related events, research and awards, the purposes for which they were intended. The funds “were never used to support any advisory activities on the use of opioids,” Megan Lowry, a spokeswoman, said.The donations amounted to roughly $19 million and, as invested funds in the institution’s endowment, were worth about $31 million in late 2021, the most recent accounting available. Universities that accepted Sackler funds, including Tufts and Brown, have reallocated some of the money to addiction prevention and treatment efforts.Members of the Sackler family who were active in running Purdue Pharma began donating in 2008 to the National Academies of Sciences. The money was used to sponsor forums and studies.In 2015, family members donated $10 million to launch the Raymond and Beverly Sackler Prize in Convergence Research, according to reports by the organization’s treasurer. Dr. and Ms. Sackler died in 2017 and 2019. An attorney for the family said those donations had “nothing at all to do with pain, medications or anything related to the company.”Dame Jillian Sackler, whose husband, Arthur, died years before OxyContin arrived on the market, began giving to the Academies in 2000, and donated $5 million by 2017, Academies reports show.A day after The Times’s report ran, the National Academies issued a statement saying it had explored returning or repurposing the funds. “Doing so in an ethical and transparent manner will be the most important consideration,” the organization said.A perceived lack of urgency in the statement helped prompt the new letter from Academies members. “It’s another brushoff the way we read it,” Dr. Hauser said.He added: “We wrote our letter to tell them, ‘You guys have to be serious, prompt and sufficient about this.’”

A new study on herpes infections of the eye from University of Illinois Chicago researchers helps shed light on the question of viral reinfections by identifying a key protein involved in viral reinfections that could be targeted by antiviral drugs.
The UIC team examined how the heparanase protein, which is present in all our cells, affects reinfection from the herpes simplex virus type 1 in mice. They found that inhibiting heparanase activity can protect the eyes from being reinfected. Mice that had their heparanase protein blocked showed no signs of cloudiness in their corneas after a second infection, as compared with mice with normal heparanase, whose corneas showed significant signs of reinfection.
Additionally, the researchers found that when the protein is activated due to infection, the immune system may exacerbate the symptoms during a second infection. The study, published recently in Science Advances, also discovered that when heparanase is malfunctioning, the virus is more likely to cause disease in individuals previously infected with the virus.
Taken together, the findings suggest that inhibiting the activity of the heparanase protein can be an effective way to prevent herpes simplex virus type 1 reinfection, potentially leading to a breakthrough in preventing the recurrence of these infections.
“We wanted to know if we could better protect them from infection, and we found that we could,” explained Chandrashekhar D. Patil, co-lead author on the study, and a visiting scholar in the department of ophthalmology and visual science.
Reducing reinfections is of crucial importance because people infected multiple times with the herpes simplex virus type 1 are at increased risk of health complications, such as an ulcerative disease and even blindness. These findings can also have a significant impact on public health, as they help inform scientists about the possible mechanics of reinfection with other viruses, such as coronavirus. Other research has indicated that heparanase plays a role in COVID-19 reinfections, as well.
While more research is needed to understand the most effective way of inhibiting heparanase to prevent viral reinfections, these findings indicate that blocking the protein could be a promising drug target, explains Deepak Shukla, the Marion Schenk Esq. Professor of Aging Eye Research and the corresponding author of the study.
“This could be the wonder drug down the road,” he said. “We could be looking at a broad spectrum antiviral drug.”
Co-authors of the study are UIC’s Rahul K. Suryawanshi, Alex Agelidis, Raghuram Koganti, Tejabhiram Yadavalli, Joshua Ames and Hemant Borase. Funding for the research came from the National Institutes of Health, the National Eye Institute and the Illinois Society for the Prevention of Blindness.

In a recent experiment, researchers used large language models to translate brain activity into words.Scientists recorded M.R.I. data from three participants as they listened to 16 hours of narrative stories to train the model to map between brain activity and semantic features that captured the meanings of certain phrases and the associated brain response.Think of the words whirling around in your head: that tasteless joke you wisely kept to yourself at dinner; your unvoiced impression of your best friend’s new partner. Now imagine that someone could listen in.On Monday, scientists from the University of Texas, Austin, made another step in that direction. In a study published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the researchers described an A.I. that could translate the private thoughts of human subjects by analyzing fMRI scans, which measure the flow of blood to different regions in the brain.Already, researchers have developed language-decoding methods to pick up the attempted speech of people who have lost the ability to speak, and to allow paralyzed people to write while just thinking of writing. But the new language decoder is one of the first to not rely on implants. In the study, it was able to turn a person’s imagined speech into actual speech and, when subjects were shown silent films, it could generate relatively accurate descriptions of what was happening onscreen.“This isn’t just a language stimulus,” said Alexander Huth, a neuroscientist at the university who helped lead the research. “We’re getting at meaning, something about the idea of what’s happening. And the fact that that’s possible is very exciting.”The study centered on three participants, who came to Dr. Huth’s lab for 16 hours over several days to listen to “The Moth” and other narrative podcasts. As they listened, an fMRI scanner recorded the blood oxygenation levels in parts of their brains. The researchers then used a large language model to match patterns in the brain activity to the words and phrases that the participants had heard.Large language models like OpenAI’s GPT-4 and Google’s Bard are trained on vast amounts of writing to predict the next word in a sentence or phrase. In the process, the models create maps indicating how words relate to one another. A few years ago, Dr. Huth noticed that particular pieces of these maps — so-called context embeddings, which capture the semantic features, or meanings, of phrases — could be used to predict how the brain lights up in response to language.In a basic sense, said Shinji Nishimoto, a neuroscientist at Osaka University who was not involved in the research, “brain activity is a kind of encrypted signal, and language models provide ways to decipher it.”In their study, Dr. Huth and his colleagues effectively reversed the process, using another A.I. to translate the participant’s fMRI images into words and phrases. The researchers tested the decoder by having the participants listen to new recordings, then seeing how closely the translation matched the actual transcript.Almost every word was out of place in the decoded script, but the meaning of the passage was regularly preserved. Essentially, the decoders were paraphrasing.Original transcript: “I got up from the air mattress and pressed my face against the glass of the bedroom window expecting to see eyes staring back at me but instead only finding darkness.”Decoded from brain activity: “I just continued to walk up to the window and open the glass I stood on my toes and peered out I didn’t see anything and looked up again I saw nothing.”While under the fMRI scan, the participants were also asked to silently imagine telling a story; afterward, they repeated the story aloud, for reference. Here, too, the decoding model captured the gist of the unspoken version.Participant’s version: “Look for a message from my wife saying that she had changed her mind and that she was coming back.”Decoded version: “To see her for some reason I thought she would come to me and say she misses me.”Finally the subjects watched a brief, silent animated movie, again while undergoing an fMRI scan. By analyzing their brain activity, the language model could decode a rough synopsis of what they were viewing — maybe their internal description of what they were viewing.A decoded segment from brain recordings collected while a user watched a clip from the movie Sintel without sound. The decoder captured the gist of the scene.Jerry Tang and Alexander Huth, Blender FoundationThe result suggests that the A.I. decoder was capturing not just words but also meaning. “Language perception is an externally driven process, while imagination is an active internal process,” Dr. Nishimoto said. “And the authors showed that the brain uses common representations across these processes.”Greta Tuckute, a neuroscientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology who was not involved in the research, said that was “the high-level question.”“Can we decode meaning from the brain?” she continued. “In some ways they show that, yes, we can.”This language-decoding method had limitations, Dr. Huth and his colleagues noted. For one, fMRI scanners are bulky and expensive. Moreover, training the model is a long, tedious process, and to be effective it must be done on individuals. When the researchers tried to use a decoder trained on one person to read the brain activity of another, it failed, suggesting that every brain has unique ways of representing meaning.Participants were also able to shield their internal monologues, throwing off the decoder by thinking of other things. A.I. might be able to read our minds, but for now it will have to read them one at a time, and with our permission.

The NewsMental health-related visits to emergency rooms by children, teenagers and young adults soared from 2011 to 2020, according to a report published on Monday in the Journal of the American Medical Association. The sharpest increase was for suicide-related visits, which rose fivefold. The findings indicated an “urgent” need for expanded crisis services, according to the team of researchers and physicians who published the report.The research, drawn from data from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, looked at the annual number of mental health-related E.R. visits by people 6 to 24 years old. From 2011 to 2020, the figure rose from 4.8 million to 7.5 million, the team found, a period in which the overall number of pediatric E.R. visits fell. In effect, the proportion of E.R. visits for mental health-related issues roughly doubled, from 7.7 percent to 13.1 percent.The number of visits rose for many conditions, including mood and behavioral disorders, substance use and psychosis. But the increase in suicide-related issues was most pronounced, increasing to 4.2 percent of all pediatric emergency room visits in 2020 from 0.9 percent in 2011.Tim Gruber for The New York TimesWhy It MattersA growing number of children and adolescents are grappling with mental distress, but medical systems have not kept up. Insufficient treatment options and availability of preventive care is leading many families to seek help in emergency rooms, which are ill-equipped to deal with mental health-related issues. A recent New York Times investigation found that hundreds of young people sleep in emergency rooms every night, as they wait for placement in proper treatment programs.“A dedicated national commitment will be needed to address the gaps,” the JAMA paper concluded.BackgroundFor many decades, the nation’s medical infrastructure was built to serve young people dealing with infections, broken bones and other injuries suffered in accidents. Even as those issues remain, a significant shift has taken place in the nature of ailments suffered by children, teenagers and young adults. In 2019, the American Academy of Pediatrics issued a report noting that “mental health disorders have surpassed physical conditions” as the most common issues causing “impairment and limitation” among adolescents.The training of pediatricians has not kept pace, and emergency rooms are designed to triage patients, not to serve as psychiatric units, even as options for inpatient and outpatient treatment have eroded.What’s NextThe JAMA investigation describes a “critical need” to expand nonhospital treatment options, including programs in schools and more outpatient centers and urgent care clinics, with round-the-clock service. Legislators in some states and at the federal level are exploring ways to expand coverage to deal with changing risks faced by young people.

Astronomers from McGill University are part of an international team that has discovered 25 new sources of repeating fast radio bursts (FRBs), these explosions in the sky that come from far beyond the Milky Way. This discovery brings the total number of confirmed FRB sources to 50. Based on data gathered by the CHIME/FRB collaboration, the new study, published this week in The Astrophysical Journal, may also bring scientists closer to understanding the origins of these mysterious phenomena.
A new way of identifying FRBs
Thanks to the radio telescopes such as those at CHIME, which scan the entire northern sky every day, the number of detected FRBs has grown exponentially in recent years. The research team used a new set of statistical tools they developed to go over the data gathered by CHIME between September 30, 2019, and May 1, 2021, to confirm whether what they were saying were indeed FRBs.
“We combed through the data to find every repeating source detected so far, including the less obvious ones,” says Ziggy Pleunis, the first author of the paper who started working on the research as a PhD student at McGill University. He is now a Dunlap Postdoctoral Fellow at the Dunlap Institute for Astronomy and Astrophysics. “These new tools were essential for this study because we can now accurately calculate the probability that two or more bursts coming from similar locations are not just a coincidence. It should be very useful for similar research going forward.”
“These new discoveries will allow the scientific community to study more repeating FRBs in fantastic detail across the full electromagnetic spectrum and help answer a major open-question in the field: Do repeating and non-repeating FRBs originate from distinct populations?” Adds Aaron Pearlman, an FRQNT postdoctoral fellow at McGill University’s Trottier Space Institute who also collaborated on the paper. “I’m excited for the new insights that will be unlocked as a result of our study.”
“It is exciting that CHIME/FRB saw multiple flashes from the same locations, as this allows for the detailed investigation of their nature,” says Adaeze Ibik, a PhD student in the David A. Dunlap Department for Astronomy and Astrophysics at the University of Toronto, who has led the search for the galaxies in which some of the newly identified repeating FRBs are embedded.
“We were able to hone in on some of these repeating sources and have already identified likely associated galaxies for two of them.”
Shedding light on the mysterious origins of FRBs
FRBs are considered one of the biggest mysteries in astronomy, but their exact origins are unknown. Astronomers do know that they come from far outside our Milky Way and are most likely produced by the cinders left behind after stars die.
One unexpected finding described in the paper is that contrary to what has previously been thought, all FRBs may be repeaters rather than one-offs. It is simply that many repeating FRBs are surprisingly inactive, producing fewer than one burst per week, and that the apparently one-off FRBs have simply not been observed for long enough until now for a second burst to be detected.
Pleunis notes that this new research brings us closer to understanding what FRBs are.
“FRBs are likely produced by the leftovers from explosive stellar deaths. By studying repeating FRB sources in detail, we can study the environments that these explosions occur in and understand better the end stages of a star’s life. We can also learn more about the material that’s being expelled before and during the star’s demise, which is then returned to the galaxies that the FRBs live in.”

It’s generally accepted we will lose muscle strength and slow down as we age, making it more difficult to perform simple tasks such as getting up, walking and sitting down.
But new Edith Cowan University (ECU) research indicates this could also be a signal for another sinister health concern of ageing: late-life dementia.
To investigate the relationship between muscle function and dementia, the research teams from ECU’s Nutrition & Health Innovation Research Institute and Centre for Precision Health used data from the Perth Longitudinal Study of Ageing in Women to examine more than 1000 women with an average age of 75.
In collaboration with the University of Western Australia, the team measured the women’s grip strength and the time it took for them to rise from a chair, walk three metres, turn around and sit back down — known as a timed-up-and-go (TUG), test.
These tests were repeated after five years to monitor any loss of performance.
Over the next 15 years, almost 17 per cent of women involved in the study were found to have had a dementia event, categorised as a dementia-related hospitalisation or death.

The team found lower grip strength and slower TUG were significant risk factors for presenting with dementia, independent of genetic risk and lifestyle factors such as smoking, alcohol intake and physical activity levels.
Relationship established
The women with the weakest grip strength were found to be more than twice as likely to have a late-life dementia event than the strongest individuals.
A similar relationship emerged between TUG performance and dementia, with the slowest in their TUG test more than twice as likely to experience dementia than the quickest.
When researchers looked at the changes in grip strength and TUG test results after five years, a decrease in performance was also linked with greater dementia risk.

Those who had experienced the biggest decline in grip strength and TUG speed were approximately 2 and 2.5 times more likely, respectively, to have had a dementia event, compared to those in the group who recorded the smallest decline in performance.
Women with the biggest drop in TUG performance were found to be over four times more likely to have a dementia-related death than the fastest.
An early warning
Senior researcher Dr Marc Sim said grip strength, which can be easily measured using a handheld device known as a dynamometer, may be a measure of brain health due to the overlapping nature of cognitive and motor decline.
“Possibly due to a range of underlying similarities, grip strength may also present as a
surrogate measure of cardiovascular disease, inflammation and frailty, which are known risk factors for dementia,” Dr Sim said.
Dr Sim said the findings from the study could help health professionals to identify dementia risk in patients earlier.
“Both grip strength and TUG tests aren’t commonly performed in clinical practice, but both are inexpensive and simple screening tools,” he said.
“Incorporating muscle function tests as part of dementia screening could be useful to identify high-risk individuals, who might then benefit from primary prevention programs aimed at preventing the onset of the condition such as a healthy diet and a physically active lifestyle.
“The exciting findings were that decline in these measures was associated with substantially higher risk, suggesting that if we can halt this decline, we may be able to prevent late-life dementias. However, further research is needed in this area.”
Centre for Precision Health Director Professor Simon Laws said there has been encouraging progress in identifying early warning signs of dementia.
“We are now starting to see a number of simple yet indicative screening assessments that could be combined with other biological and clinical measures to provide a holistic risk-profile for individuals presenting to their GP with, for example, memory concerns,” he said.
‘Impaired muscle function, including its decline, is related to greater long-term late-life dementia risk in older women’ was published in the Journal of Cachexia, Sarcopenia and Muscle.

Un nuevo estudio sugiere que el bilingüismo desde temprana edad podría retrasar el deterioro cognitivo en las personas mayores así como protegerlas de la demencia.Hablar dos idiomas proporciona la envidiable capacidad de hacer amigos en lugares insólitos. Un nuevo estudio sugiere que el bilingüismo puede tener otra ventaja: mejorar la memoria en la vejez.Tras estudiar a cientos de pacientes de edad avanzada, unos investigadores alemanes descubrieron que quienes decían utilizar dos idiomas a diario desde temprana edad obtenían mejores resultados en pruebas de aprendizaje, memoria, lenguaje y autocontrol que los pacientes que solo hablaban un idioma.Los hallazgos, publicados en el número de abril de la revista Neurobiology of Aging, se suman a dos décadas de trabajos que sugieren que el bilingüismo protege de la demencia y el deterioro cognitivo en las personas mayores.“Es prometedor que reporten que el bilingüismo en la edad temprana y media de la vida tiene un efecto benéfico en la salud cognitiva en edad avanzada”, comentó Miguel Arce Rentería, neuropsicólogo de la Universidad de Columbia que no participó en el estudio. “Esto concuerda con estudios actuales”.En los últimos años, los científicos han adquirido un mayor conocimiento sobre el bilingüismo y el envejecimiento del cerebro, aunque no todos sus hallazgos han coincidido. Algunos han descubierto que si las personas que dominan dos idiomas desarrollan demencia, lo harán a una edad más tardía que las personas que hablan un solo idioma. Pero otras investigaciones no han revelado ningún beneficio claro del bilingüismo.La hipótesis de los neurocientíficos es que, dado que las personas bilingües cambian con fluidez entre dos idiomas, pueden ser capaces de desplegar estrategias similares en otras habilidades —como hacer más de una tarea al mismo tiempo, la gestión de las emociones y el autocontrol— que ayuden a retrasar la demencia más adelante.El nuevo estudio analizó a 746 personas de entre 59 y 76 años. Cerca del 40 por ciento de los voluntarios no tenía problemas de memoria, mientras que el resto fueron pacientes de clínicas de memoria y habían experimentado confusión o pérdida de memoria.Todos fueron sometidos a diversas pruebas de vocabulario, memoria, atención y cálculo. Por ejemplo, se les pidió recordar objetos previamente nombrados, deletrear palabras al revés, seguir órdenes en tres partes y copiar diseños que se les mostraban.Los voluntarios que declararon hablar una segunda lengua a diario entre los 13 y los 30 años o entre los 30 y los 65 años obtuvieron puntuaciones más altas en lenguaje, memoria, concentración, atención y capacidad de decisión en comparación con los que no eran bilingües a esas edades.Según Boon Lead Tee, neuróloga de la Universidad de California en San Francisco, quien no participó en la investigación, investigar el bilingüismo en distintas etapas de la vida es un criterio excepcional. Añadió que, gracias al impresionante tamaño de la muestra, es probable que los autores del estudio puedan generar otros resultados novedosos, como por ejemplo si la edad a la que una persona aprendió cada idioma afectó su cognición en etapas posteriores de la vida.Sin embargo, advirtió que el estudio se centraba en un solo aspecto del bilingüismo: el uso diario de dos lenguas durante largos periodos de tiempo. Los efectos positivos en la cognición podrían deberse a otro factor, como la edad en la que las dos lenguas se codificaron en la memoria o las experiencias demográficas o de vida concretas de las personas bilingües.Otros expertos coincidieron en que los resultados podrían haber sido otros si los investigadores hubieran preguntado a los voluntarios si habían hablado una segunda lengua una vez a la semana, o incluso con menos frecuencia, en lugar de todos los días.“Creo que no hay una definición con la que todo el mundo concuerde y creo que nunca la habrá porque ser bilingüe es un amplio espectro”, señaló Esti Blanco-Elorrieta , quien investiga idiomas en la Universidad de Harvard.Blanco-Elorrieta, que habla euskera, inglés, alemán y español, afirma que también es fundamental que las futuras investigaciones analicen los beneficios más extensos del bilingüismo.“La ventaja de ser bilingüe no reside realmente en estos milisegundos de ventaja que uno puede tener en una tarea cognitiva”, dijo. “Creo que la importancia de ser bilingüe es poder comunicarse con dos culturas y dos maneras de ver el mundo”.

The medical professionals who remain face meager supplies and harrowing conditions, even setting up field hospitals in living rooms amid the fighting.With the battle for control of Sudan entering its third week, health care services are rapidly unraveling in the nation’s capital, Khartoum, a grim consequence of the brutal fighting that has raised fears the conflict could devolve into a wider humanitarian crisis.The total collapse of the health care system could be days away, the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union warned.Hospitals have been shelled, and two-thirds of those in Khartoum have closed, according to the World Health Organization. More than a dozen health care workers have been killed, officials say. Beyond that, “hidden victims” are dying of illness and disease as basic medical services have become scarce, said Dr. Abdullah Atia, secretary general of the doctors’ union.“We receive a lot of calls every day: ‘Where shall I go?’” he said. “These are the questions we are not able to answer.”The fighting that erupted April 15 between a paramilitary group called the Rapid Support Forces and the Sudanese Army — both led by warring generals — has left more than 500 people dead and thousands of others hurt, the W.H.O. says, throwing Africa’s third-largest nation into chaos as one declared cease-fire after another has collapsed.A photograph released by Doctors Without Borders shows a hospital in El Fasher in Sudan’s North Darfur region on April 19.Ali Shukur/Doctors Without Borders, via Agence France-Presse — Getty ImagesMillions of civilians remained trapped. The latest truce to allow civilians to escape was to end at midnight on Sunday, and though the Rapid Support Forces said it would extend a humanitarian cease-fire for three more days, fighting was reported in the capital.The Sudanese Army agreed in a statement on Sunday to extend the truce, but it has accused the Rapid Support Forces of violating the truce and of occupying a hospital. The R.S.F., in turn, has said the army has been looting medical supplies.As the situation has deteriorated, other nations have scrambled to evacuate their citizens by any means necessary. Britain had airlifted more than 2,122 people by Saturday on 21 flights, with one more evacuation flight from Port Sudan in eastern Sudan planned for Monday, the British government announced on Sunday. American citizens have fled in long convoys of buses, trucks and cars heading to Egypt to the north or to Port Sudan, where they hoped to board ships to Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. Sudan’s Health Ministry is nowhere to be found, with the doctors’ union saying it had received no support and little communication from the government. Health facilities have been used by fighters as defensive positions, witnesses and officials say, and warehouses holding medical supplies have been looted, doctors say.What’s more, the paramilitary forces have occupied the national laboratory, officials say. Samples of diseases like malaria or tuberculosis could become weaponized in the wrong hands, said Dr. Atia, who, like others, spoke by phone from Khartoum. Uncollected bodies in morgues and others in the street are another concern, he added.Hundreds of doctors have fled, and there are rumors that fighters with the Rapid Support Forces are kidnapping medics and forcing them at gunpoint to treat their wounded comrades. While the abductions have not been confirmed, Dr. Atia said, dozens of members of the Sudan Doctors’ Trade Union are unaccounted for.The severe shortage of doctors and other health care workers has left hospitals with barely enough staff to cope. Al Ban Jadid hospital in east Khartoum usually has a staff of at least 400 people but now has only eight health care workers. Al Joda Hospital in southern Khartoum is hobbling along with four people: a surgeon, an anesthetist and two nurses, Dr. Atia said.A hospital in Khartoum. Two-thirds of the hospitals in the city are closed because of the fighting.EPA, via ShutterstockSome nongovernmental organizations have offered a glimmer of hope. Doctors Without Borders said it had donated medical supplies to three hospitals in Khartoum, while the International Committee of the Red Cross announced on Sunday that eight tons of medical supplies was en route to Port Sudan from Saudi Arabia.“Health care workers in Sudan have been doing the impossible, caring for the wounded without water, electricity and basic medical supplies,” Patrick Youssef, the Red Cross’s regional director for Africa, said in a statement.The Sudan doctors’ union issues a notice on Facebook several times a day listing the few hospitals still operating in Khartoum, or an urgent alert for doctors to report to the field hospitals set up in homes across the city.Away from hospitals, medical staff must use their wits and whatever tools they can find to treat the wounded.In a field hospital in Al Mamoura, Dr. Mohamed Karrar improvised an intercostal drain system using a sterilized soda bottle to pump the blood from a gunshot victim’s punctured lung. Long shifts in the trauma ward of the now-shuttered Ibrahim Malik Teaching Hospital in central Khartoum helped prepare him, but Dr. Karrar must now contend with the sound of war while working in a living room converted into an operating room.“I know I’m in danger in these areas,” he said, “but those sick, wounded people need me.”At Al Nada, one of the few hospitals still operating, medical workers take cover multiple times a day, hiding with their patients under beds and tables from aerial bombardments and heavy artillery fire. Everyone is so jittery, said Dr. Mohamed Fath, a doctor there, that the sound of an oxygen canister being opened can send staff fleeing.Dr. Mohamed Fath at Al Nada Hospital in Khartoum. He and his wife decided to stay in the city, even as thousands have fled.Al Nada, a private facility, is now offering free pediatric services, thanks in part to a donation from the Sudanese American Physician Association. Early in the conflict, the hospital’s management decided to treat only pregnant women and children in order to provide a haven for a small fraction of the more than 24,000 women who, according to the W.H.O., are expected to give birth in Sudan in the next few weeks.In the weeks since the fighting began, 220 babies have been born there, and most have survived, Dr. Fath said.One woman sped through active combat zones and barely made it to the emergency room, he said. Later, her husband showed Dr. Fath the bullet holes in his car. Another woman gave birth at home, but because of complications the baby needed urgent medical care. The mother and child were trapped in their home for days with artillery fire whizzing overhead, the doctor said. When they finally made it to the hospital, it was too late for the infant, who died.“They have to go through this hell to get to the hospital,” Dr. Fath said.Neighbors seeking care have taken to ringing Dr. Fath’s doorbell at home. Twice last week, he said, he pronounced two people dead in Omdurman Althawra, north of the city. Both were diabetics who ran out of insulin in a city where pharmacies have been ransacked and a medical black market is thriving.Now, the doctor said, he spirits home medicine hidden in his car. But in neighborhoods that can quickly turn from ghost towns to active war zones, even the mile-long trip between the hospital and his home can imperil his life.Before the war, Dr. Fath was filling out application forms to work in hospitals in South Africa, where he planned to specialize in pediatric neurology. But he and his wife, also a doctor, whose final exam was set for May 6, made the decision to stay.“If you see what I saw every day, in a day-to-day practice,” Dr. Fath said, “you would understand my situation.”In Bahri, also known as Khartoum North, abandoned vehicles revealed the effects of the fighting on Sunday.via Reuters