Category Archives: Around the World

Racism’s chronic stress likely contributes to health disparities

NPR Health News: You, Me And Them: Experiencing Discrimination In America. “Scientists Start To Tease Out The Subtler Ways Racism Hurts Health.”

“Both studies investigated the impacts of specific, dramatic events — and the results were consistent.

“You could time exactly when it happened,” says Geronimus. “We could measure before and after.”

But she views such events as merely slivers of insight into patterns that may quietly be happening on a much larger scale among many populations. Patterns that are harder to tease out and measure — like the effects of centuries of racism against black Americans, or a persistent series of incidents involving police brutality against minorities.

Maybe, Geronimus says, the cascade of stress that such events initiate sets the stage for health disparities in a generation of children — before they even enter the world.”

Erhöhte Ruthenium-Werte – kein Unfall in einem Kernkraftwerk

Deutsche Welle: Französischer Bericht über Nuklear-Vorfall: Erhöhte Radioaktivität kam aus Russland oder Kasachstan. “Ende September hatten Wetterstationen in Westeuropa erhöhte Werte von radioaktivem Ruthenium-106 gemessen. Pariser Experten glauben nun eine Erklärung gefunden zu haben.”

Bericht vom 09.10.2017: Was ist Ruthenium-106? “Seit Tagen werden in Europa winzige Mengen Radioaktivität in der Luft gemessen. Das Ruthenium-106 soll irgendwo aus dem Ural stammen. Einen Atomunfall schließen Experten aus. Es soll harmlos sein. Und sonst?”

Näheres zu Ruthenium und der Immission im September/Oktober bei Wikipedia.

Hintergrund:

Die Zeit: Ruthenium: Leicht erhöhte Radioaktivität aus dem Ural. “Rätselhaft, aber wohl harmlos. Seit Tagen werden in Europa winzige Mengen Radioaktivität gemessen. Strahlenexperten vermuten, dass das Ruthenium-106 aus dem Ural kommt.” Meldung vom 08.10.2017.

“Von den Partikeln gehe keine Gefahr aus. Ihre Konzentration in der Luft sei sehr gering. “Selbst bei konstanter Einatmung über den Zeitraum von einer Woche ergibt sich daraus eine Dosis, die niedriger ist als die, die durch die natürliche Umgebungsstrahlung in einer Stunde aufgenommen wird”, heißt es in einer Mitteilung des Umweltministeriums. Die gemessene Dosis ist 100.000 mal kleiner als jene, ab der Maßnahmen zum Schutz der Bevölkerung notwendig seien.”

Defeating Shingles

The New York Times: No Excuses, People: Get the New Shingles Vaccine.

“Dr. William Schaffner, preventive disease specialist at the Vanderbilt University School of Medicine, said, “This vaccine has spectacular initial protection rates in every age group. The immune system of a 70- or 80-year-old responds as if the person were only 25 or 30.“

“This really looks to be a breakthrough in vaccinating older adults,“ agreed Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, a physician and researcher at the National Institutes of Health.

What’s causing the enthusiasm: Shingrix, which the pharmaceutical firm GlaxoSmithKline intends to begin shipping this month. Large international trials have shown that the vaccine prevents more than 90 percent of shingles cases, even at older ages.”

Link via MetaFilter.

I will keep an eye on when this vaccine will be available here in Germany for sure.

Hier in Deutschland bzw. in der EU ist Shingrix noch nicht zugelassen, aber die Zulassung wurde bereits im November 2016 bei der EMA beantragt und wird für 2018 erwartet. (Quelle: Robert Koch Institut)

“I can haz all your votes”

The Economist: Once considered a boon to democracy, social media have started to look like its nemesis.. “An economy based on attention is easily gamed.”

“Facebook and Google account for about 40% of America’s digital content consumption, according to Brian Wieser of Pivotal Research, a data provider[.]
[…]
Adult Americans who use Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp spend around 20 hours a month on the three services. Overall, Americans touch their smartphones on average more than 2,600 times a day (the heaviest users easily double that). The population of America farts about 3m times a minute. It likes things on Facebook about 4m times a minute.

The average piece of content is looked at for only a few seconds. But it is the overall paying of attention, not the specific information, that matters. The more people use their addictive-by-design social media, the more attention social-media companies can sell to advertisers—and the more data about the users’ behaviour they can collect for themselves. It is an increasingly lucrative business to be in. On November 1st Facebook posted record quarterly profits, up nearly 80% on the same quarter last year. Combined, Facebook and Alphabet, Google’s parent company, control half the world’s digital advertising.”