Trafikbuller orsakar varje år 10.000 fall av för tidig död i Europa, enligt en rapport från Sweco. Världshälsoorganisationen WHO skärpte nyligen sina rekommendationer för buller. Men Sverige har gått åt motsatt håll och tillåter högre bullernivåer intill bostäder.

Los Angeles (otrevlig plats på jorden - jag har varit där - usch!))

Kan man lita på sådana ? Nej !

▸ Corazza Bildt (bilden) lämnar Moderaterna eftersom hon inte fick förtroendet att fortsätta i EU-parlamentet. Sicken en ...

Super

Och ...ingen av orkestermedlemmarna har, av vad vi kan se, inte tatuerat sig. Bara en sån sak!

11 Things We’d Really Like to Know

1. Does the Universe Still Need Einstein?

2. When Will We Solve Mental Illness?

3. How Did We Get to Be Human?

4. Will We Survive Climate Change?

5. How Long Can People Live?

6. Where’s Our Warp Drive to the Stars?

7. Will We Ever Cure Alzheimer’s?

8. Why Are We Still So Fat?

9. How Will We Outsmart A.I. Liars?

10. Why Don’t We Have Vaccines Against Everything?

11. How Can We Unleash the Immune System?

Mental illness

When Will We Solve Mental Illness?

Biology was supposed to cure what ails psychiatry. Decades later, millions of people with mental disorders are still waiting.

By Benedict Carey
Nothing humbles history’s great thinkers more quickly than reading their declarations on the causes of madness. Over the centuries, mental illness has been attributed to everything from a “badness of spirit” (Aristotle) and a “humoral imbalance” (Galen) to autoerotic fixation (Freud) and the weakness of the hierarchical state of the ego (Jung).

The arrival of biological psychiatry, in the past few decades, was expected to clarify matters, by detailing how abnormalities in the brain gave rise to all variety of mental distress. But that goal hasn’t been achieved — nor is it likely to be, in this lifetime.

Still, the futility of the effort promises to inspire a change in the culture of behavioral science in the coming decades. The way forward will require a closer collaboration between scientists and the individuals they’re trying to understand, a mutual endeavor based on a shared appreciation of where the science stands, and why it hasn’t progressed further.

“There has to be far more give and take between researchers and the people suffering with these disorders,” said Dr. Steven Hyman, director of the Stanley Center for Psychiatric Research at the Broad Institute of M.I.T. and Harvard. “The research cannot happen without them, and they need to be convinced it’s promising.”

The course of Science Times coincides almost exactly with the tear-down and rebuilding of psychiatry. Over the past 40 years, the field remade itself from the inside out, radically altering how researchers and the public talked about the root causes of persistent mental distress.

The blueprint for reassembly was the revision in 1980 of psychiatry’s field guide, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, which effectively excluded psychological explanations.

Gone was the rich Freudian language about hidden conflicts, along with the empty theories about incorrect or insufficient “mothering.” Depression became a cluster of symptoms and behaviors; so did obsessive-compulsive disorder, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, autism and the rest.

This modernized edifice struck many therapists as a behavioral McMansion: an eyesore, crude and grandiose. But there was no denying that the plumbing worked, the lighting was better, and the occupants had a clear, agreed-upon language.

Researchers now had tidier labels to work with; more sophisticated tools, including M.R.I.s, animal models, and genetic analysis, to guide their investigations of the brain; and a better understanding of why the available drugs and forms of psychotherapy relieved symptoms for many patients.

Science journalists, and their readers, also had an easier time understanding the new vocabulary. In time, mental problems became mental disorders, then brain disorders, perhaps caused by faulty wiring, a “chemical imbalance” or genes.

But the actual science didn’t back up those interpretations. Despite billions of dollars in research funding, and thousands of journal articles, biological psychiatry has given doctors and patients little of practical value, never mind a cause or a cure.

Nonetheless, that failure offers two valuable guideposts for the next 40 years of research.

One is that psychiatry’s now-standard diagnostic system — the well-lighted structure, with all its labels — does not map well onto any shared biology. Depression is not one ailment but many, expressing different faces in different people. Likewise for persistent anxiety, post-traumatic stress, and personality issues such as borderline personality disorder.

As a result, the best place for biological scientists to find traction is with individuals who have highly heritable, narrowly defined problems. This research area has run into many blind alleys, but there are promising leads.

In 2016, researchers at the Broad Institute found strong evidence that the development of schizophrenia is tied to genes that regulate synaptic pruning, a natural process of brain reorganization that ramps up during adolescence and young adulthood.

“We are now following up hard on that finding,” said Dr. Hyman. “We owe it those who are suffering with this diagnosis.”

Scientists also foresee a breakthrough in understanding the genetics of autism. Dr. Matthew State, chief of psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, said that in a subset of people on the autism spectrum, “the top 10 associated genes have huge effects, so a clinical trial using gene therapies is in plausible reach.”

The second guidepost concerns the impact of biology.

Although there are several important exceptions, measurable differences in brain biology appear to contribute only a fraction of added risk for developing persistent mental problems. Genetic inheritance surely plays a role, but it falls well short of a stand-alone “cause” in most people who receive a diagnosis.

The remainder of the risk is supplied by experience: the messy combination of trauma, substance use, loss and identity crises that make up an individual’s intimate, personal history. Biology has nothing to say about those factors, but people do. Millions of individuals who develop a disabling mental illness either recover entirely or learn to manage their distress in ways that give them back a full life. Together, they constitute a deep reservoir of scientific data that until recently has not been tapped.

Gail Hornstein, a professor of psychology at Mount Holyoke College, is now running a study of people who attend meetings of the Hearing Voices Network, a grass-roots, Alcoholics Anonymous-like group where people can talk with one another about their mental health struggles.

Many participants are veterans of the psychiatric system, people who have received multiple diagnoses and decided to leave medical care behind. The study will analyze their experiences, their personal techniques to manage distress, and the distinctive characteristics of the Hearing Voices groups that account for their effectiveness.

“When people have an opportunity to engage in ongoing, in-depth conversation with others with similar experiences, their lives are transformed,” said Dr. Hornstein, who has chronicled the network and its growth in the United States. “We start with a person’s own framework of understanding and move from there.”

She added: “We have underestimated the power of social interactions. We see people who’ve been in the system for years, on every med there is. How is it possible that such people have recovered, through the process of talking with others? How has that occurred? That is the question we need to answer.”

To push beyond the futility of the last 40 years, scientists will need to work not only from the bottom up, with genetics, but also from the top down, guided by individuals who have struggled with mental illness and come out the other side.

Their expertise is fraught with the pain of having been misunderstood and, often, mistreated. But it’s also the kind of expertise that researchers will need if they hope to build a science that even remotely describes, much less predicts, the fullness of human mental suffering.

Tips: artikel i dagens New York Times

"Palm Oil Was Supposed to Help Save the Planet. Instead It Unleashed a Catastrophe."

Copa Libertadores

För Guds skull (hm), lämna folket på North Sentinel Island ifred

The people Mr. Chau chose for his mission are among the most impenetrable communities in the world, known for their intense hostility to outsiders. They have killed or tried to kill many outsiders who attempted to step on their rugged island 700 miles off India’s mainland, where they are one of the last undiluted hunter and gatherer societies.

On Friday, Indian police officials shared Mr. Chau’s last writing, part of which has been published by other news organizations over the past two days.

North Sentinel Island is a far-flung territory of India, and for years the Indian authorities have declared it off limits in an attempt to preserve its culture. The Indian Navy patrols the waters around it, making sure no one gets close.

But that didn’t stop Mr. Chau.

Nu ska Nasa landa på Mars igen – här kan du följa livesändningen

https://www.idg.se/2.1085/1.710537/nasa-landa-mars-live

InSight

Synes vara en mycket vacker stad. Tyvärr aldrig varit där.

Somini Sengupta

Somini Sengupta, The Times’s international climate reporter, tells the stories of communities and landscapes most vulnerable to the effects of climate change. A George Polk Award-winning foreign correspondent, she has reported from a Congo River ferry, a Himalayan glacier, the streets of Baghdad and Mumbai and many places in between. As The Times’s United Nations correspondent, she reported on global challenges from war to women's rights.

Her first book, “The End of Karma: Hope and Fury Among India's Young,” was published in 2016 by W.W. Norton. She grew up in India, Canada and the United States, graduating from the University of California at Berkeley

By Somini Sengupta

An open pit mine in Burdwan, West Bengal,
Coal, the fuel that powered the industrial age, has led the planet to the brink of catastrophic climate change.India. Coal is the single largest source of electricity worldwide. 

Scientists have repeatedly warned of its looming dangers, most recently on Friday, when a major scientific report issued by 13 United States government agencies warned that the damage from climate change could knock as much as 10 percent off the size of the American economy by century’s end if significant steps aren’t taken to rein in warming. An October report from the United Nations` scientific panel on global warming found that avoiding the worst devastation would require a radical transformation of the world economy in just a few years. Central to that transformation: Getting out of coal, and fast. And yet, three years after the Paris agreement, when world leaders promised action, coal shows no sign of disappearing. While coal use looks certain to eventually wane worldwide, according to the latest assessment by the International Energy Agency , it is not on track to happen anywhere fast enough to avert the worst effects of climate change. Last year, in fact, global production and consumption increased after two years of decline.

Cheap, plentiful and the most polluting of fossil fuels, coal remains the single largest source of energy to generate electricity worldwide. This, even as renewables like solar and wind power are rapidly becoming more affordable. Soon, coal could make no financial sense for its backers.

So, why is coal so hard to quit?

Because coal is a powerful incumbent. It’s there by the millions of tons under the ground. Powerful companies, backed by powerful governments, often in the form of subsidies, are in a rush to grow their markets before it is too late. Banks still profit from it. Big national electricity grids were designed for it. Coal plants can be a surefire way for politicians to deliver cheap electricity — and retain their own power. In some countries, it has been a glistening source of graft.

And even while renewables are spreading fast, they still have limits: Wind and solar power flow when the breeze blows and the sun shines, and that requires traditional electricity grids to be retooled.

“The main reason why coal sticks around is, we built it already,” said Rohit Chandra, who earned a doctoral degree in energy policy at Harvard, specializing in coal in India.

The battle over the future of coal is being waged in Asia.

A coal-fired power plant under
 construction in Ramagundam, Telangana State, India.

The world’s coal juggernaut

Home to half the world’s population, Asia accounts for three-fourths of global coal consumption today. More important, it accounts for more than three-fourths of coal plants that are either under construction or in the planning stages — a whopping 1,200 of them, according to Urgewald, a German advocacy group that tracks coal development. Heffa Schücking, who heads Urgewald, called those plants “an assault on the Paris goals.”

Indonesia is digging more coal. Vietnam is clearing ground for new coal-fired power plants. Japan, reeling from 2011 nuclear plant disaster, has resurrected coal.

The world’s juggernaut, though, is China. The country consumes half the world’s coal. More than 4.3 million Chinese are employed in the country’s coal mines. China has added 40 percent of the world’s coal capacity since 2002, a huge increase for just 16 years. “I had to do the calculation three times,” said Carlos Fernández Alvarez, a senior energy analyst at the International Energy Agency. “I thought it was wrong. It’s crazy.”

Spurred by public outcry over air pollution, China is now also the world leader in solar and wind power installation, and its central government has tried to slow down coal plant construction. But an analysis by Coal Swarm, a U.S.-based team of researchers that advocates for coal alternatives, concluded that new plants continue to be built, and other proposed projects have simply been delayed rather than stopped. Chinese coal consumption grew in 2017, though at a far slower pace than before, and is on track to grow again in 2018, after declining in previous years.

China’s coal industry is now scrambling to find new markets, from Kenya to Pakistan. Chinese companies are building coal plants in 17 countries, according to Urgewald. Its regional rival, Japan, is in the game too: nearly 60 percent of planned coal projects developed by Japanese companies are outside the country, mostly financed by Japanese banks.

That contest is particularly stark in Southeast Asia, one of the world’s last frontiers of coal expansion.

An open pit mine in Sindh Province, Pakistan.

‘Even the trees are dying’

Nguy Thi Khanh has seen the contest close-up in Vietnam. Born in 1976, a year after the end of the war, she remembers doing homework by the light of a kerosene lamp. In her northern village, the electricity failed several hours a day. When it rained, there was no power at all. When it came, it came from a coal plant not far away. When her mother hung laundry to dry, ash settled on the clothes.

Today, pretty much every household in Vietnam, population 95 million, has electricity. Hanoi, the capital, where Ms. Nguy now lives, is in a frenzy of new construction, with soaring demand for cement and steel — both energy guzzlers. The economy is galloping. And, up and down the coast, 1,600 kilometers in length, foreign companies, mainly from Japan and China, are building coal plants.

One such project is in Nghi Son, a onetime fishing village south of Hanoi and now home to a sprawling industrial zone. The first power plant opened here in 2013. Japan’s overseas aid organization, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, paid for it. The Japanese trading house Marubeni developed it.

A second coal-fired power plant, far bigger, is under construction next door. Marubeni is building that too, along with a Korean company. The Japan Bank for International Cooperation, an export credit agency meant to lower financial risk for private lenders, is helping to fund it.

In the shadow of the smokestack, Nguyen Thi Thu Thien was drying shrimp on the side of the road and complaining bitterly. She had moved out of her house after the power plant built an ash pond right in front. “The coal dust has blackened my house,” she said. “Even the trees are dying. We can’t live there.”

Idag final Copa Libertadores. Match 2 av 2.Troliga laguppställningar. Fantastisk fotboll.

River Plate

Boca Juniors

Two of Argentina’s biggest clubs Boca Juniors and River Plate contest in one of the fiercest rivalries in world football when they come across each other in the South American nation’s domestic competitions. But this time, it will all take a whole new level when the ‘Superclasico’ takes place in the final of the Copa Libertadores and many expect the fixture to wreak havoc across the country!

If you thought El Clasico between Barcelona and Real Madrid is the biggest and most intense football rivalries in the world, wait until you hear about the Superclasico! It is contested between two Argentinean clubs — Boca Juniors (that boasts of having had players like Diego Maradona, Gabriel Batistuta and Juan Riquelme) and Club Atletico River Plate (notable players include Alfredo di Stefano and Hernan Crespo).
Från första matchen:


Från första matchen (som slutade 2-2):

Welcome in the hell

Disease and Famine as Weapons of War in Yemen

How can the medical community take stock of the humanitarian disaster in Yemen? The 3-year-old war intermittently garners attention from Western media — for example, in August, when an air strike on a school bus killed more than 50 civilians, mostly children — but is woefully underreported relative to the magnitude of the ongoing crisis. Such neglect highlights the numbing of our collective sensitivity to atrocity. Although the human toll of any war is dreadful, the infliction of suffering in Yemen has particularly toxic characteristics that we believe demand attention from health care providers worldwide: the destruction of health care facilities and the spread of disease and hunger as apparent means of waging war.

A Mobile Phone Tower Destroyed in Sa’ada, July 2018.

Yemen was beset with widespread poverty and an ailing health care system when this conflict began. Most health indicators ranked in the bottom quartile of the world, with 1 in 25 children not surviving to the age of 5. In March 2015, after the Houthis, a faction based in the north of the country, took over Sana’a (the capital city), a coalition led by Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates and supported by the United States, the United Kingdom, and France, launched air strikes in the country to overturn the Houthis. In more than 3 years of air strikes, Yemeni hospitals and clinics have continued to be destroyed, both indiscriminately and sometimes apparently deliberately. With access to health care almost entirely eliminated owing to bombings  and blockades, infections have spread as — at best indirect and at worst direct — weapons of war.

A massive cholera outbreak is the most obvious example of the devastating impact of the war on health. It is suspected that more than 1.1 million people have had cholera, and at least 2000 people have died from it, nearly 20% of them children under 5 years old.Geospatial patterns of cases of diarrheal disease reveal alignment of the spread of cholera with patterns of aerial bombardment by the Saudi-led coalition. Civilians living in Houthi-held areas had higher cholera attack rates and higher case fatality rates between September 2016 and March 2018 than those in government-held areas.

The Saudi-led coalition — heavily supported by the United States through munitions sales, military training, and aerial refueling — has bombed both medical facilities and water-treatment centers in these areas. Within the first few months of the war, a major water-treatment plant outside Sana’a was out of operation because its electrical grid had been bombed. Subsequent restriction of fuel imports by a Saudi-led blockade caused the facility to lose all power and become inoperable, according to UNICEF. Then the deadly grip of diarrheal disease took hold. Shockingly, water-treatment plants and sewage systems continue to be bombed. UNICEF reports that between March and July 2018, water-treatment facilities in the Sa’ada governorate were repeatedly attacked, which left much of the nearby civilian population without safe drinking water and caused thousands of dollars of damages to water-treatment projects.

Direct bombardment of medical facilities has triggered the spread of disease and put health care personnel and relief workers in danger since the start of the war. Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) reported that 39 hospitals were bombed during the first 7 months of the conflict despite the fact that they were clearly marked as medical centers and their GPS coordinates had been shared with Saudi authorities. Both MSF and Physicians for Human Rights have reported that assaults on hospitals, mobile clinics, ambulances, and cholera treatment centers continue to occur.

Targeting of health care facilities by warring parties is strictly prohibited by the fourth Geneva Convention, which also stipulates the need for free mobility of medical personnel within a conflict zone to carry out humanitarian assistance. Yet humanitarian organizations report that medical staff and supplies have been restricted from reaching the populations in greatest need.

Diphtheria is another ancient scourge that has emerged in Yemen as a result of the war. The 48 reported cases in 19 governorates (according to the World Health Organization) probably reflect a larger unmeasured epidemic, given that the country currently has limited diagnostic capacity and few functional health centers. More than 3000 cases of measles were reported in 2018,probably largely attributable to a documented drop in immunization rates in Yemen since 2013 for all childhood vaccines.There is serious concern about a potential outbreak of polio.

Saudi-led blockades of ports of entry to Yemen have severely limited the ability of international agencies to support the local response to outbreaks, prevented fuel importation, and exacerbated food insecurity to the point of near-famine. Even after a blockade in late 2017 was eased, importation of essential medicines, vaccines, and health care equipment remains limited. The problem has only worsened since attacks on the port city of Hodeida in June 2018 strangulated the entry point for much of the country’s food imports. Currently, half of health facilities are reported to be nonfunctional; 14 million people are at risk of starvation, according to the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs; and the value of the local currency, the Yemeni rial, has depreciated rapidly. This situation makes a dire public health emergency almost impossible to address.

With so many humanitarian crises facing us, why should physicians give special attention to the war in Yemen? The Yemeni medical disasters are man-made, with outbreaks of infectious diseases and starvation following bombing. The war has been characterized by a violation of medical neutrality — the principles and laws protecting health care workers and hospitals from being targets in conflict. As hospitals have been attacked, the country’s remaining physicians and nongovernmental organizations have endured sometimes deadly risks to their own safety.

When health care facilities and the movement of health care workers are consistently the casualties of a war, condemnation from medical and public health communities around the world should follow. How can we accept these violations of our duty to care? We believe that physicians everywhere have a special responsibility to advocate for a complete cessation of attacks on civilian and health care infrastructure, an end to blockades on Yemen’s ports of entry, and full access by humanitarian actors to all parts of the country. The U.S. government has agreed to more than $100 billion in arms sales to the Saudi military, in addition to ongoing logistic and diplomatic support. As evidence mounts that these armaments are used in civilian attacks, including on health facilities,we ought to advocate for the United States to suspend military support for the war in Yemen, as was proposed in a bipartisan Senate resolution this year.

Impartial bodies such as the International Humanitarian Fact-Finding Commission — established to respond to incidents related to international humanitarian law — should be allowed to investigate attacks on medical facilities and personnel committed by parties on either side of the conflict. Whether the devastation has resulted from deliberate targeting or gross negligence, the perpetrators of such attacks ought to face legal repercussions.

These responses are, in our view, the only just course of action and are the way to erect necessary safeguards for the future. We rely on humanitarian programs and on the principle of medical neutrality as a salve for the painful consequences of armed conflict. The moral responsibility for this catastrophe is collective. Those of us whose governments support the war’s attack on civilians and civilian infrastructure through their direct actions or through their inaction at the United Nations Security Council can do more than stand by silently wondering what the warring parties hope to inherit at the end of the day. A generation of Yemeni people is being sacrificed.

Disclosure forms provided by the authors are available at NEJM.org.

This article was published on November 21, 2018, at NEJM.org.

Immunförsvarets betydelse för flyttfåglar

Av Jan Olsson - publicerad den 22 november 2018

Biologer vid naturvetenskapliga fakulteten i Lund har genomfört två studier av sjukdomars inverkan på småfåglars flyttning till övervintringsplatser i Afrika söder om ekvatorn och till sydvästra Europa. Undersökningarna har gjorts i Falsterbo i Skåne.

I den ena studien har forskarna simulerat sjukdom genom att vaccinera fåglar, som på så vis får en känsla av att de är sjuka. I den andra studien har forskarna fångat fåglar och undersökt om de är infekterade av fågelmalaria. För att mäta immunförsvarets styrka har forskarna tagit blodprov på fåglarna. Slutligen har de försett varje fågel med en liten sändare som väger 0,3 gram. Sedan har de släppts. Med hjälp av sändarna har forskarna kunnat följa samtliga individer och med exakthet kunnat mäta när sjuka respektive friska fåglar påbörjar flyttningen över Östersjön och hur länge de vilar innan de ger sig iväg.

Film om hur forskarna har gått till väga.

Resultaten visar att vaccinerade fåglar verkar tro att de är sjuka och därför avvaktar innan de flyger vidare efter några dagar. Forskarna konstaterar också att småfåglar som har en verklig sjukdom (kronisk malariainfektion) lämnar Falsterbo senare på dygnet jämfört med sina friska artfränder. Slutsatsen är att de flyger kortare sträcka innan de mellanlandar för att vila och att hela flyttningen därför tar längre tid, vilket kan vara ofördelaktigt.

Båda undersökningarna visar också på skillnader beroende på var övervintringsplatserna är belägna. Sjuka småfåglar som ska till platser söder om Sahara har mer bråttom att ge sig iväg jämfört med arter som tillbringar vintern i Sydvästeuropa. De som ska till tropiska Afrika stannar en extra dag i Falsterbo för att ta igen sig. De som ska till sydvästra Europa återhämtar sig mer än dubbelt så lång tid innan de lyfter, nästan tre dagar.  

Järnsparv försedd med radiosändare, bara antennen syns. Foto: Arne Hegemann

– Oavsett vart de ska så fortsätter de sin flyttning innan de blivit helt återställda. Men pressen på att fortsätta verkar vara större på dem som är på väg till södra Afrika och har längre sträcka att flyga, säger biologen Arne Hegemann som lett undersökningarna.

– Om det går åt för mycket tid för att vila, återhämta sig och bli återställda så får det konsekvenser för hela flyttningen. Kommer fåglarna fram senare till sina övervintringsplatser kan förutsättningarna ha förändrats rejält. Exempelvis kan tillgången på mat i form av insekter ha minskat jättemycket, säger han.

Undersökningarna har gjorts i Falsterbo i Skåne. Foto: Arne Hegemann

Forskarna poängterar betydelsen av att flyttningen går snabbt. Enklaste sättet att påverka den är att minimera tiden när fåglarna mellanlandar och därför är ett starkt immunförsvar viktigt. Arne Hegemann vill utveckla de studier som nu gjorts i Falsterbo genom att följa de infekterade småfåglarna hela vägen till övervintringsplatserna.

– Halkar de efter hela vägen eller tar de igen tiden och kommer ikapp när de har blivit helt återställda?

Undersökningarna publiceras i Journal of Animal Ecology samt i tidskriften Oecologia.