Could the devices being blamed for teen depression be useful in revealing it?

Studies have linked heavy smartphone use with worsening teen mental health. But as teens spend time on sites like Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube, they also leave digital trails that may offer signs about their mental well-being.

Experts say possible warning signs include changes in writing speed, voice quality, word choice and how often a student stays home from school.

There are more than 1,000 smartphone “biomarkers,” said Dr. Thomas Insel, former head of the National Institute of Mental Health, which is the largest mental health research organization in the world. Insel is a leader in the smartphone psychiatry movement.

Researchers are testing smartphone apps that use artificial intelligence, or AI, to predict depression and possible self-harm. Using smartphones as mental health detectors require permission from users to download an app, and permission could be revoked any time.

Nick Allen, a psychologist at the University of Oregon, has created an app being tested on young people who have attempted suicide. Allen says the biggest barrier is discerning the mental health crisis signals in the information on people’s phones.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people between the ages of 10 and 34 in the United States. By 2015, suicide rates among teen boys rose to 14 in every 100,000 and five in every 100,000 people, among girls. A recent study suggested a rise in smartphone use has probably worsened the crisis.

People with mental illness, Insel said, usually get treatment “when they’re in crisis and very late. … We want to have a method to identify the earliest signs.”

If smartphones can become effective predictors, app developers say the goal might be to offer automated text messages and links to assistance, or digital messages to parents, doctors and first responders.

Facebook employs “proactive detection.” Last year, after a suicide was broadcast on Facebook Live, the company trained its AI systems to look for words in online posts that could predict possible self-harm. Friends’ comments expressing concern about the user’s well-being are part of that detection system.

Facebook has helped first responders quickly reach around 3,500 people in the past year. But the company did not offer followup details on those people.

Ongoing research includes a Stanford University study of about 200 teens. Many of them are at risk for depression because of bullying, family issues or other problems. Teens who have been studied since grade school get an experimental phone app that asks them questions about their mood three times a day for two weeks.

Laurel Foster, 15, is part of the study. Foster said she is stressed about school and friendships. Depression is common at her San Francisco high school, she said. The smartphone app felt a little like being spied on, she said, but many websites are already following users’ behaviors.

Alyssa Lizarraga, 19, is also part of the study. Lizarraga said she has had depression since high school, and worries about her heavy use of smartphones and social media. She said comparing herself with others online sometimes causes her sadness. But she believes using smartphones to identify mental health problems might help push people to seek early treatment.

At the University of California, Los Angeles, researchers offer online counseling and an experimental phone app to students who show signs of at least minor depression on a test. It is part of a larger effort launched in 2017 by the university to battle depression in its students. About 250 UCLA students agreed to use the app during their first year.

At the University of Illinois’ Chicago campus, researchers are using crowdsourcing to test their experimental phone app. Nearly 2,000 people have downloaded the app and agreed to let researchers follow typing behaviors. Alex Leow, a professor of psychiatry and bioengineering at the university, helped develop the app.

The study is for people 18 and older, but Leow said it could also be used for children if successful.

Along with studies at universities, technology companies such as Mindstrong and Verily — the tech health division of Google — are testing their own experimental apps.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.
…

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The world’s oceans are rising in temperature faster than previously believed as they absorb most of the world’s growing climate-changing emissions, scientists said Thursday.

Ocean heat – recorded by thousands of floating robots – has been setting records repeatedly over the last decade, with 2018 expected to be the hottest year yet, displacing the 2017 record, according to an analysis by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

That is driving sea level rise, as oceans warm and expand, and helping fuel more intense hurricanes and other extreme weather, scientists warn.

The warming, measured since 1960, is faster than predicted by scientists in a 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that looked at ocean warming, according to the study, published this week in the journal Science.

“It’s mainly driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human activities,” said Lijing Cheng, a lead author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The increasing rate of ocean warming “is simply a signature of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Cheng said.

Leading climate scientists said in October that the world has about 12 years left to shift the world away from still rising emission toward cleaner renewable energy systems, or risk facing some of the worst impacts of climate change.

Those include worsening water and food shortages, stronger storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather, and rising seas.

For the last 13 years, an ocean observing system called Argo has been used to monitor changes in ocean temperatures, Cheng said, leading to more reliable data that is the basis for the new ocean heat records.

The system uses almost 4,000 drifting ocean robots that dive to a depth of 2,000 meters every few days, recording temperature and other indicators as they float back to the surface.

Through the data collected, scientists have documented increases in rainfall intensity and more powerful storms such as hurricanes Harvey in 2017 and Florence in 2018.

Cheng explained that oceans are the energy source for storms, and can fuel more powerful ones as temperatures – a measure of energy – rise.

Storms over the 2050-2100 period are expected, statistically, to be more powerful than storms from the 1950-2000 period, the scientist said.

Cheng said that the oceans, which have so far absorbed over 90 percent of the additional sun’s energy trapped by rising emissions, will see continuing temperature hikes in the future.

Because the ocean has large heat capacity it is characterized as a ˜delayed response” to global warming, which means that the ocean warming could be more serious in the future,” the researcher said.

“For example, even if we meet the target of Paris Agreement (to limit climate change), ocean will continue warming and sea level will continue rise. Their impacts will continue.” If the targets of the Paris deal to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, or preferably 1.5C can be met, however, expected damage by 2100 could be halved, Cheng said.

For now, however, climate changing emissions continue to rise, and I don’t think enough is being done to tackle the rising temperatures,” Cheng said.

 
…

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The world’s oceans are rising in temperature faster than previously believed as they absorb most of the world’s growing climate-changing emissions, scientists said Thursday.

Ocean heat – recorded by thousands of floating robots – has been setting records repeatedly over the last decade, with 2018 expected to be the hottest year yet, displacing the 2017 record, according to an analysis by the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

That is driving sea level rise, as oceans warm and expand, and helping fuel more intense hurricanes and other extreme weather, scientists warn.

The warming, measured since 1960, is faster than predicted by scientists in a 2013 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report that looked at ocean warming, according to the study, published this week in the journal Science.

“It’s mainly driven by the accumulation of greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide in the atmosphere due to human activities,” said Lijing Cheng, a lead author of the study from the Chinese Academy of Sciences.

The increasing rate of ocean warming “is simply a signature of increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” Cheng said.

Leading climate scientists said in October that the world has about 12 years left to shift the world away from still rising emission toward cleaner renewable energy systems, or risk facing some of the worst impacts of climate change.

Those include worsening water and food shortages, stronger storms, heatwaves and other extreme weather, and rising seas.

For the last 13 years, an ocean observing system called Argo has been used to monitor changes in ocean temperatures, Cheng said, leading to more reliable data that is the basis for the new ocean heat records.

The system uses almost 4,000 drifting ocean robots that dive to a depth of 2,000 meters every few days, recording temperature and other indicators as they float back to the surface.

Through the data collected, scientists have documented increases in rainfall intensity and more powerful storms such as hurricanes Harvey in 2017 and Florence in 2018.

Cheng explained that oceans are the energy source for storms, and can fuel more powerful ones as temperatures – a measure of energy – rise.

Storms over the 2050-2100 period are expected, statistically, to be more powerful than storms from the 1950-2000 period, the scientist said.

Cheng said that the oceans, which have so far absorbed over 90 percent of the additional sun’s energy trapped by rising emissions, will see continuing temperature hikes in the future.

Because the ocean has large heat capacity it is characterized as a ˜delayed response” to global warming, which means that the ocean warming could be more serious in the future,” the researcher said.

“For example, even if we meet the target of Paris Agreement (to limit climate change), ocean will continue warming and sea level will continue rise. Their impacts will continue.” If the targets of the Paris deal to hold warming to “well below” 2 degrees Celsius, or preferably 1.5C can be met, however, expected damage by 2100 could be halved, Cheng said.

For now, however, climate changing emissions continue to rise, and I don’t think enough is being done to tackle the rising temperatures,” Cheng said.

 
…

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Congo’s Health Ministry says a baby has been born to a mother who recovered from the Ebola virus — a bright spot in an outbreak that is the second-deadliest in history.

The Health Ministry tweeted a photo of “baby Sylvana” in her smiling mother’s arms.

The ministry says the baby is the first in this outbreak born to a mother who has recovered. This is rare, though babies have been born to Ebola survivors in previous outbreaks.

 

Baby Sylvana was born on Sunday at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, a troubled city where rebel attacks have threatened health workers’ attempts to contain the outbreak.

 

The Health Ministry says that “she is in good health and is not infected with Ebola.”

 

This outbreak has killed more than 330 people.

 

 
…

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Congo’s Health Ministry says a baby has been born to a mother who recovered from the Ebola virus — a bright spot in an outbreak that is the second-deadliest in history.

The Health Ministry tweeted a photo of “baby Sylvana” in her smiling mother’s arms.

The ministry says the baby is the first in this outbreak born to a mother who has recovered. This is rare, though babies have been born to Ebola survivors in previous outbreaks.

 

Baby Sylvana was born on Sunday at an Ebola treatment center in Beni, a troubled city where rebel attacks have threatened health workers’ attempts to contain the outbreak.

 

The Health Ministry says that “she is in good health and is not infected with Ebola.”

 

This outbreak has killed more than 330 people.

 

 
…

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Astronomers in Canada have detected a mysterious volley of radio waves from far outside our galaxy, according to two studies published Wednesday in Nature.

What corner of the universe these powerful waves come from and the forces that produced them remain unknown.

The so-called repeating fast radio bursts were identified during the trial run last summer of a built-for-purpose telescope running at only a fraction of its capacity.

Known by its acronym CHIME, the world’s most powerful radio telescope, spread across an area as big as a football pitch, is poised to detect many more of the enigmatic pulses now that it is fully operational.

“At the end of the year, we may have found 1,000 bursts,” said Deborah Good, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia and one of 50 scientists from five institutions involved in the research.

High energy bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) flash only for a micro-instant, but can emit as much energy as the sun does in 10,000 years.

Exactly what causes these high-energy surges of long waves at the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum remains the subject of intense debate.

More than 60 bursts have been cataloged since 2007, but only one other, observed in 2012 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was a repeater.

“FRBs, it seems, are likely generated in dense, turbulent regions of host galaxies,” Shriharsh Tendulkar, a corresponding author for both studies and an astronomer at McGill University, told AFP.

Cosmic convulsions created by the turbulent gas clouds that give rise to stars, or stellar explosions such a supernovae, are both possible incubators.

But consecutive radio bursts are a special case.

​No little green men

“The fact that the bursts are repeated rules out any cataclysmic models in which the source is destroyed while generating the burst,” Tendulkar added.

“An FRB emitted from a merger of two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole, for example, cannot repeat.”

It is not yet clear whether the breeding grounds of repeating bursts are different from those that produce only a single radio pulse.

Significantly, the 2012 and 2018 “repeaters” have strikingly similar properties.

CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) also spotted a dozen single burst radio waves, but with an unusual profile.

Most FRBs spotted so far have wavelengths of a few centimeters, but these had intervals of nearly a meter, opening up a whole new line of inquiry for astronomers.

Could these enigmatic radio pulses point to intelligence elsewhere in the Universe? Might they be messages in a bottle?

“It is extremely, extremely unlikely,” Tendulkar said.

“As a scientist I can’t rule it out 100 percent. But intelligent life is not on the minds of any astronomer as a source of these FRBs.”

Constructed in British Columbia, CHIME is composed of four, 100-meter long half-pipe cylinders of metal mesh, which reconstruct images of the sky by processing the radio signals recorded by more than a thousand antennas.

“This signal processing system is the largest of any telescope on Earth,” the researchers said in a communique.

The other institutions with leading roles are the University of Toronto, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Perimeter Institute.
…

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Astronomers in Canada have detected a mysterious volley of radio waves from far outside our galaxy, according to two studies published Wednesday in Nature.

What corner of the universe these powerful waves come from and the forces that produced them remain unknown.

The so-called repeating fast radio bursts were identified during the trial run last summer of a built-for-purpose telescope running at only a fraction of its capacity.

Known by its acronym CHIME, the world’s most powerful radio telescope, spread across an area as big as a football pitch, is poised to detect many more of the enigmatic pulses now that it is fully operational.

“At the end of the year, we may have found 1,000 bursts,” said Deborah Good, a PhD student at the University of British Columbia and one of 50 scientists from five institutions involved in the research.

High energy bursts

Fast radio bursts (FRBs) flash only for a micro-instant, but can emit as much energy as the sun does in 10,000 years.

Exactly what causes these high-energy surges of long waves at the far end of the electromagnetic spectrum remains the subject of intense debate.

More than 60 bursts have been cataloged since 2007, but only one other, observed in 2012 at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, was a repeater.

“FRBs, it seems, are likely generated in dense, turbulent regions of host galaxies,” Shriharsh Tendulkar, a corresponding author for both studies and an astronomer at McGill University, told AFP.

Cosmic convulsions created by the turbulent gas clouds that give rise to stars, or stellar explosions such a supernovae, are both possible incubators.

But consecutive radio bursts are a special case.

​No little green men

“The fact that the bursts are repeated rules out any cataclysmic models in which the source is destroyed while generating the burst,” Tendulkar added.

“An FRB emitted from a merger of two neutron stars, or a neutron star and a black hole, for example, cannot repeat.”

It is not yet clear whether the breeding grounds of repeating bursts are different from those that produce only a single radio pulse.

Significantly, the 2012 and 2018 “repeaters” have strikingly similar properties.

CHIME (Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment) also spotted a dozen single burst radio waves, but with an unusual profile.

Most FRBs spotted so far have wavelengths of a few centimeters, but these had intervals of nearly a meter, opening up a whole new line of inquiry for astronomers.

Could these enigmatic radio pulses point to intelligence elsewhere in the Universe? Might they be messages in a bottle?

“It is extremely, extremely unlikely,” Tendulkar said.

“As a scientist I can’t rule it out 100 percent. But intelligent life is not on the minds of any astronomer as a source of these FRBs.”

Constructed in British Columbia, CHIME is composed of four, 100-meter long half-pipe cylinders of metal mesh, which reconstruct images of the sky by processing the radio signals recorded by more than a thousand antennas.

“This signal processing system is the largest of any telescope on Earth,” the researchers said in a communique.

The other institutions with leading roles are the University of Toronto, the National Research Council of Canada, and the Perimeter Institute.
…

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Drivers on the U.S. East Coast may soon start paying for their climate pollution.

Nine states and the District of Columbia have announced plans to introduce a system that puts a price on the carbon dioxide produced from burning gasoline and diesel fuel.

As the federal government pulls back from taking action on climate change, the proposal is an example of how states and cities are aiming to move forward.

Details are slim at this point, but the Transportation and Climate Initiative would likely require fuel suppliers to pay for each ton of carbon dioxide that burning their products would produce. Costs would presumably be passed on to consumers.

The announcement says revenues would go toward improving transportation infrastructure and low-emissions alternatives to cars, trucks and buses.

The program could raise $1.5 billion to $6 billion per year, by one estimate.

“You can imagine, that could do a lot to modernize transportation infrastructure, improve mass transit, build out electric transportation options,” said Fatima Ahmad at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, based in Washington, D.C.

Reducing traffic congestion, “which is legendary in this area,” is a priority for the region’s lawmakers, she added. Those investments could create an estimated 91,000 to 125,000 new jobs.

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. While electric utilities have cut production of carbon dioxide by switching from coal to natural gas and renewables, emissions from the transportation sector have been growing since 2012.

Following California

California is the only state so far that has put a price on carbon emissions from transportation fuels. The state included gas and diesel in its cap-and-trade program beginning in 2015. That program also regulates greenhouse gases from power plants and industries.

For transportation fuels, wholesalers buy the permits and pass on the cost. At the current price of about $15 per ton, the program adds about 13 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas.

The additional cost is less than the differences in pump price among gas stations in the same city, noted communications director Stanley Young at the California Air Resources Board, which administers the program.

“When you consider the few cents that the cap and trade program adds on to [the cost at the pump], it kind-of pales,” he said.

The state has raised more than $9 billion from permit sales since the program began in 2012.

Funds have paid for renewable energy and efficiency upgrades, mass transit, low-emissions vehicles, land preservation and other investments.

To help ease the burden on low-income consumers, a third of the funds are targeted to disadvantaged communities.

However, California’s program has not stopped vehicle CO2 emissions from rising. After a period of decline from 2007 to 2013, greenhouse gases from vehicles have increased every year since then.

The state is studying the impact of car sharing and autonomous vehicles on reducing emissions. Young said officials are also looking into land use planning, so people live closer to work or transit.

“We invented sprawl,” he said, “and now we’re trying to deal with it.”

Hard to change

Transportation is one of the hardest sources of greenhouse gases to tackle, experts say.

Unlike the next biggest source of carbon pollution, power plants, transportation emissions come from millions of individual vehicles, and the choices their owners and drivers make have a big impact on how much carbon dioxide they produce.

There are essentially three ways to reduce their emissions, according to David Bookbinder at the Niskanen Center, a centrist research institution: make vehicles more efficient, reduce the amount of CO2 produced per unit of energy, or raise the price of fuel.

“It’s never popular to raise the price [of fuel],” Bookbinder said. Even so, “you have to really, really, really raise the price of gasoline before it has an impact on people’s use.”

France’s “yellow vest” protests are one extreme reaction to raising fuel prices. They sparked the biggest outrage where driving is least avoidable: outside city centers and in areas lacking good public transit. And they demonstrate another risk: policies that make gas more expensive can have the biggest impact on the people who can least afford it.

One way to reduce the impact is by returning to consumers the money raised by pricing carbon. That’s the preferred approach in a proposal by a group of Republican elder statesmen. Investing in affordable public transit is another, Bookbinder says.

The members of the Transportation and Climate Initiative — Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — will spend a year designing their individual programs.

Some states can put programs in place with agency regulations. Others will have to go through their state legislatures. That will test voters’ appetites to pay for their climate pollution.
…

your ads here!

Drivers on the U.S. East Coast may soon start paying for their climate pollution.

Nine states and the District of Columbia have announced plans to introduce a system that puts a price on the carbon dioxide produced from burning gasoline and diesel fuel.

As the federal government pulls back from taking action on climate change, the proposal is an example of how states and cities are aiming to move forward.

Details are slim at this point, but the Transportation and Climate Initiative would likely require fuel suppliers to pay for each ton of carbon dioxide that burning their products would produce. Costs would presumably be passed on to consumers.

The announcement says revenues would go toward improving transportation infrastructure and low-emissions alternatives to cars, trucks and buses.

The program could raise $1.5 billion to $6 billion per year, by one estimate.

“You can imagine, that could do a lot to modernize transportation infrastructure, improve mass transit, build out electric transportation options,” said Fatima Ahmad at the Center for Climate and Energy Solutions, based in Washington, D.C.

Reducing traffic congestion, “which is legendary in this area,” is a priority for the region’s lawmakers, she added. Those investments could create an estimated 91,000 to 125,000 new jobs.

Transportation is the largest source of greenhouse gas emissions in the United States. While electric utilities have cut production of carbon dioxide by switching from coal to natural gas and renewables, emissions from the transportation sector have been growing since 2012.

Following California

California is the only state so far that has put a price on carbon emissions from transportation fuels. The state included gas and diesel in its cap-and-trade program beginning in 2015. That program also regulates greenhouse gases from power plants and industries.

For transportation fuels, wholesalers buy the permits and pass on the cost. At the current price of about $15 per ton, the program adds about 13 cents to the cost of a gallon of gas.

The additional cost is less than the differences in pump price among gas stations in the same city, noted communications director Stanley Young at the California Air Resources Board, which administers the program.

“When you consider the few cents that the cap and trade program adds on to [the cost at the pump], it kind-of pales,” he said.

The state has raised more than $9 billion from permit sales since the program began in 2012.

Funds have paid for renewable energy and efficiency upgrades, mass transit, low-emissions vehicles, land preservation and other investments.

To help ease the burden on low-income consumers, a third of the funds are targeted to disadvantaged communities.

However, California’s program has not stopped vehicle CO2 emissions from rising. After a period of decline from 2007 to 2013, greenhouse gases from vehicles have increased every year since then.

The state is studying the impact of car sharing and autonomous vehicles on reducing emissions. Young said officials are also looking into land use planning, so people live closer to work or transit.

“We invented sprawl,” he said, “and now we’re trying to deal with it.”

Hard to change

Transportation is one of the hardest sources of greenhouse gases to tackle, experts say.

Unlike the next biggest source of carbon pollution, power plants, transportation emissions come from millions of individual vehicles, and the choices their owners and drivers make have a big impact on how much carbon dioxide they produce.

There are essentially three ways to reduce their emissions, according to David Bookbinder at the Niskanen Center, a centrist research institution: make vehicles more efficient, reduce the amount of CO2 produced per unit of energy, or raise the price of fuel.

“It’s never popular to raise the price [of fuel],” Bookbinder said. Even so, “you have to really, really, really raise the price of gasoline before it has an impact on people’s use.”

France’s “yellow vest” protests are one extreme reaction to raising fuel prices. They sparked the biggest outrage where driving is least avoidable: outside city centers and in areas lacking good public transit. And they demonstrate another risk: policies that make gas more expensive can have the biggest impact on the people who can least afford it.

One way to reduce the impact is by returning to consumers the money raised by pricing carbon. That’s the preferred approach in a proposal by a group of Republican elder statesmen. Investing in affordable public transit is another, Bookbinder says.

The members of the Transportation and Climate Initiative — Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. — will spend a year designing their individual programs.

Some states can put programs in place with agency regulations. Others will have to go through their state legislatures. That will test voters’ appetites to pay for their climate pollution.
…

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When Bangkok’s oldest university called for ideas for a symbol to mark its centenary year, landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom successfully pitched a design for a park.

It was intended not only as a welcome green space in the middle of the congested city of about 10 million people, but as a place that could also retain large amounts of water, reducing monsoon flooding around Chulalongkorn University.

Parks and “green roofs” planted with vegetation soak up rain during the annual monsoon and help dense urban centers like Bangkok adapt to climate change, Kotchakorn said.

“We need to be thinking about everything we build in the context of mitigating climate-change impact. It can’t be just about aesthetics, but also about serving a purpose,” she said.

“This was Bangkok’s first park in many years, so we had to make it count,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Bangkok, built on the floodplains of the Chao Phraya River, is expected to be one of the urban areas hit hardest by warming temperatures.

Nearly 40 percent of Bangkok may be inundated each year as soon as 2030 due to more extreme rainfall, according to the World Bank.

The city, once a network of canals that earned it the moniker “Venice of the East,” has filled in many of those water channels for construction, and is sinking by more than 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) each year, according to climate experts.

Flooding in many parts of the city is common during the annual monsoon. The rains in 2011 brought the worst floods in decades, putting a fifth of the city under water.

“With so much construction and fewer canals, there is nowhere for the water to go,” said Kotchakorn, who heads Bangkok-based landscape architecture firm Landprocess.

“But instead of building embankments along the river or thinking of ways to get rid of the water, we should be thinking about how to live with the water – how to manage the water.”

Monkey’s cheeks

From Mumbai to Manila, unchecked sprawl has led to increased and deadly urban flooding.

A plan to build a promenade along the Chao Phraya River will worsen floods in Bangkok, environmentalists warn.

The Thai capital also has one of the lowest ratios of green space: just 3.3 square meters (35.5 sq ft) per person, compared to New York City’s 23.1 sq m and Singapore’s 66, according to the Siemens Green City Index.

A “metro forest” project in a Bangkok suburb has converted two acres (0.8 hectares) of abandoned land into a local forest with native trees, to make a start on reversing urban sprawl.

The city’s 11-acre Chulalongkorn Centenary Park designed by Kotchakorn is inclined at a three-degree angle, so that rain and floodwater flow to its lowest point, into a retention pond.

At the park’s highest end, a museum is topped by a green roof covered with native plants, which filter rainwater before it is stored in large tanks underground.

Rainwater also flows through the park’s lawn and wetlands where native vegetation filters the water, while its walkways are made of porous concrete.

The park can hold up to 1 million gallons of water that can be discharged later or used in the dry season, much like a monkey holds food in its cheeks until it needs to eat, said Kotchakorn, echoing an idea of Thailand’s revered late King Bhumibol Adulyadej to contain flooding in the city.

“No water that falls into the park is wasted,” said Kotchakorn, who is also creating a 36-acre park and green roof for Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

’Softer’ measures crucial

City officials, meanwhile, are building flood barriers and underground tunnels that can carry rainwater faster to the river.

But while infrastructure upgrades are an essential part of tackling urban flood risk, “softer” measures are also crucial, said Diane Archer, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bangkok.

A key part of that is working with local people so that they can learn to take action themselves, she said.

“This includes highlighting the important role that green roofs and permeability of driveways and yards can play in reducing surface (water) runoff, with added benefits in reducing urban heat island effects,” she said.
…

your ads here!

When Bangkok’s oldest university called for ideas for a symbol to mark its centenary year, landscape architect Kotchakorn Voraakhom successfully pitched a design for a park.

It was intended not only as a welcome green space in the middle of the congested city of about 10 million people, but as a place that could also retain large amounts of water, reducing monsoon flooding around Chulalongkorn University.

Parks and “green roofs” planted with vegetation soak up rain during the annual monsoon and help dense urban centers like Bangkok adapt to climate change, Kotchakorn said.

“We need to be thinking about everything we build in the context of mitigating climate-change impact. It can’t be just about aesthetics, but also about serving a purpose,” she said.

“This was Bangkok’s first park in many years, so we had to make it count,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Bangkok, built on the floodplains of the Chao Phraya River, is expected to be one of the urban areas hit hardest by warming temperatures.

Nearly 40 percent of Bangkok may be inundated each year as soon as 2030 due to more extreme rainfall, according to the World Bank.

The city, once a network of canals that earned it the moniker “Venice of the East,” has filled in many of those water channels for construction, and is sinking by more than 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) each year, according to climate experts.

Flooding in many parts of the city is common during the annual monsoon. The rains in 2011 brought the worst floods in decades, putting a fifth of the city under water.

“With so much construction and fewer canals, there is nowhere for the water to go,” said Kotchakorn, who heads Bangkok-based landscape architecture firm Landprocess.

“But instead of building embankments along the river or thinking of ways to get rid of the water, we should be thinking about how to live with the water – how to manage the water.”

Monkey’s cheeks

From Mumbai to Manila, unchecked sprawl has led to increased and deadly urban flooding.

A plan to build a promenade along the Chao Phraya River will worsen floods in Bangkok, environmentalists warn.

The Thai capital also has one of the lowest ratios of green space: just 3.3 square meters (35.5 sq ft) per person, compared to New York City’s 23.1 sq m and Singapore’s 66, according to the Siemens Green City Index.

A “metro forest” project in a Bangkok suburb has converted two acres (0.8 hectares) of abandoned land into a local forest with native trees, to make a start on reversing urban sprawl.

The city’s 11-acre Chulalongkorn Centenary Park designed by Kotchakorn is inclined at a three-degree angle, so that rain and floodwater flow to its lowest point, into a retention pond.

At the park’s highest end, a museum is topped by a green roof covered with native plants, which filter rainwater before it is stored in large tanks underground.

Rainwater also flows through the park’s lawn and wetlands where native vegetation filters the water, while its walkways are made of porous concrete.

The park can hold up to 1 million gallons of water that can be discharged later or used in the dry season, much like a monkey holds food in its cheeks until it needs to eat, said Kotchakorn, echoing an idea of Thailand’s revered late King Bhumibol Adulyadej to contain flooding in the city.

“No water that falls into the park is wasted,” said Kotchakorn, who is also creating a 36-acre park and green roof for Bangkok’s Thammasat University.

’Softer’ measures crucial

City officials, meanwhile, are building flood barriers and underground tunnels that can carry rainwater faster to the river.

But while infrastructure upgrades are an essential part of tackling urban flood risk, “softer” measures are also crucial, said Diane Archer, a research fellow at the Stockholm Environment Institute in Bangkok.

A key part of that is working with local people so that they can learn to take action themselves, she said.

“This includes highlighting the important role that green roofs and permeability of driveways and yards can play in reducing surface (water) runoff, with added benefits in reducing urban heat island effects,” she said.
…

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The fight against poverty is getting help from a new direction: up.

Satellite imagery is helping researchers map areas of extreme poverty. It may help officials identify faster and more accurately when development policies and programs are working, and when they aren’t.

Eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015.

Experts usually measure poverty by using census data and household surveys. But these tools are expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive. Countries typically do them only once every several years.

On the other hand, satellites map the entire surface of the globe at high resolution every several days. The imagery is getting better and cheaper as a growing number of public and private satellite networks go into service.

What satellites see

Researchers have used the brightness of lights in nighttime photos to estimate a region’s economic activity. Others have applied machine learning to identify richer and poorer villages from satellite imagery. Another group sorted wealthy and impoverished villages and neighborhoods based on building density and vegetation cover.

A new study takes the most detailed look to date. Within a single village, it distinguished the poorest individual households from their wealthier neighbors with 62 percent accuracy.

The study focuses on Sauri, a village in rural Kenya that was part of the Millennium Villages Project, a large-scale poverty alleviation experiment. Detailed information on each household’s income and assets was collected in 2005.

In satellite images of the village, researchers measured the size of each dwelling and studied the agricultural land surrounding it.

Not surprisingly, smaller homes generally housed poorer people.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that poorer households tended to have more bare farm fields in September. In this part of Kenya, that usually means farmers are preparing the land for a second crop.

That’s a risky undertaking, said University of Edinburgh geographer and study lead author Gary Watmough, because the late-season rains fail up to half the time in this region.

“Generally, [late-season planting] is only done by the poorer households because it’s a necessity,” he said. “They either don’t have enough land or they need to have that insurance, just in case something else goes wrong.”

Satellite imagery also found poorer households’ fields were growing crops for shorter periods of time.

“When we looked back into our field data, we could see that often poorer households were actually not planting their crops in their own fields as early as others,” Watmough said. “That was because they were contracting themselves out to plant other, wealthier households’ crops first.”

The money they earned went toward buying seeds. But that meant their own crops had less time to grow.

Exciting and a little scary

The study is a big step forward, demonstrating “the potential for satellite data to distinguish between the wealth of you and your neighbor,” said World Bank economist David Newhouse, who was not involved with the research. “Which is scary, a little bit, but also somewhat exciting.”

He suggested that privacy concerns would need to be addressed before it could be scaled up.

Also, the markers of poverty found in this area will not be the same everywhere. The approach would need to be tailored to different locations. And the system’s accuracy — 62 percent — is not great on its own.

“I think the science is pretty far ahead of the practical feasibility,” Newhouse said.

It’s probably best not to rely solely on satellite data, experts say. The charity GiveDirectly used satellite images to target donations to people in villages with a high proportion of thatched roofs. These villages were considered worse off than those with more metal roofs.

But people figured it out. Some claimed to live in thatched-roof structures next to their metal-roofed houses in order to qualify for donations.

“This is really a way to use the data, but it’s also an example of how people can quickly game it,” said remote sensing expert Damien Jacques. GiveDirectly has since changed its methods.

There’s power, however, in combining satellite data and on-the-ground surveys.   

“Using the two types of data, one that is cheap to collect and very frequently available to complement traditional data that are expensive to collect and not frequent, you can get the best of the two,” Jacques said.

And remote sensing data on its own can be helpful in places surveyors can’t go, such as Yemen or North Korea, or in the wake of disasters.

But it’s not clear that changes in poverty are visible from space. That’s something Watmough and colleagues will be investigating. They have survey data from Sauri from 2005 and 2008. The next step is to look for differences in the imagery.

“Nobody has ever looked at how poverty has changed over a time period and looked at how a satellite image has changed over that same time period,” he said.
…

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The fight against poverty is getting help from a new direction: up.

Satellite imagery is helping researchers map areas of extreme poverty. It may help officials identify faster and more accurately when development policies and programs are working, and when they aren’t.

Eliminating extreme poverty by 2030 is the first of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals adopted by the United Nations in 2015.

Experts usually measure poverty by using census data and household surveys. But these tools are expensive, time-consuming and labor-intensive. Countries typically do them only once every several years.

On the other hand, satellites map the entire surface of the globe at high resolution every several days. The imagery is getting better and cheaper as a growing number of public and private satellite networks go into service.

What satellites see

Researchers have used the brightness of lights in nighttime photos to estimate a region’s economic activity. Others have applied machine learning to identify richer and poorer villages from satellite imagery. Another group sorted wealthy and impoverished villages and neighborhoods based on building density and vegetation cover.

A new study takes the most detailed look to date. Within a single village, it distinguished the poorest individual households from their wealthier neighbors with 62 percent accuracy.

The study focuses on Sauri, a village in rural Kenya that was part of the Millennium Villages Project, a large-scale poverty alleviation experiment. Detailed information on each household’s income and assets was collected in 2005.

In satellite images of the village, researchers measured the size of each dwelling and studied the agricultural land surrounding it.

Not surprisingly, smaller homes generally housed poorer people.

Interestingly, the researchers also found that poorer households tended to have more bare farm fields in September. In this part of Kenya, that usually means farmers are preparing the land for a second crop.

That’s a risky undertaking, said University of Edinburgh geographer and study lead author Gary Watmough, because the late-season rains fail up to half the time in this region.

“Generally, [late-season planting] is only done by the poorer households because it’s a necessity,” he said. “They either don’t have enough land or they need to have that insurance, just in case something else goes wrong.”

Satellite imagery also found poorer households’ fields were growing crops for shorter periods of time.

“When we looked back into our field data, we could see that often poorer households were actually not planting their crops in their own fields as early as others,” Watmough said. “That was because they were contracting themselves out to plant other, wealthier households’ crops first.”

The money they earned went toward buying seeds. But that meant their own crops had less time to grow.

Exciting and a little scary

The study is a big step forward, demonstrating “the potential for satellite data to distinguish between the wealth of you and your neighbor,” said World Bank economist David Newhouse, who was not involved with the research. “Which is scary, a little bit, but also somewhat exciting.”

He suggested that privacy concerns would need to be addressed before it could be scaled up.

Also, the markers of poverty found in this area will not be the same everywhere. The approach would need to be tailored to different locations. And the system’s accuracy — 62 percent — is not great on its own.

“I think the science is pretty far ahead of the practical feasibility,” Newhouse said.

It’s probably best not to rely solely on satellite data, experts say. The charity GiveDirectly used satellite images to target donations to people in villages with a high proportion of thatched roofs. These villages were considered worse off than those with more metal roofs.

But people figured it out. Some claimed to live in thatched-roof structures next to their metal-roofed houses in order to qualify for donations.

“This is really a way to use the data, but it’s also an example of how people can quickly game it,” said remote sensing expert Damien Jacques. GiveDirectly has since changed its methods.

There’s power, however, in combining satellite data and on-the-ground surveys.   

“Using the two types of data, one that is cheap to collect and very frequently available to complement traditional data that are expensive to collect and not frequent, you can get the best of the two,” Jacques said.

And remote sensing data on its own can be helpful in places surveyors can’t go, such as Yemen or North Korea, or in the wake of disasters.

But it’s not clear that changes in poverty are visible from space. That’s something Watmough and colleagues will be investigating. They have survey data from Sauri from 2005 and 2008. The next step is to look for differences in the imagery.

“Nobody has ever looked at how poverty has changed over a time period and looked at how a satellite image has changed over that same time period,” he said.
…

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A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. Those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.

Fewer than three in 10 young Zimbabweans have steady jobs. Many are idle and see no economic opportunity. For some, that leads to problems with alcohol and drugs. 

Church leaders, community leaders, and government officials have started warning youths of the impact of drug and alcohol abuse in Zimbabwe and its effect on their physical wellbeing and mental health.

With drug use growing in Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has called for an all-stakeholders meeting on February 1 to come up with possible solutions.

Zimbabwe’s deputy director of Mental Health Services, Dr. Chido Rwafa, says the government cannot deal with the problem of substance abuse alone.

“Alcohol and substance use is a rising problem in all of Africa, and also in Zimbabwe, and it has become one of our top three diagnoses that we are seeing in our mental health unit, so it is becoming a problem. We need a coordinated approach to this problem. It is a multi-sectorial problem. We need a combined effort between government, between non-governmental organizations, with the community itself,” Rwafa said.

Youths are susceptible to peer pressure and can easily gain access to drugs, says Dr. Rwafa. Once hooked on drugs, they also become more likely to engage in criminal activities. 

This 20-year-old asked us not to film him when he was smoking cannabis. He says drug use would fall if more people could find employment. 

“The best way is just to improve our country economically such that all those people loitering in the streets will find jobs and will be focused. We are going nowhere. Even if you are to look (in the streets), there are some other people damaged (by drugs). Fifty percent of youths in the streets, they can not even work. Their life has been destructed by drugs etc. It is not that they want drug abuse,” Mandizha said.

Roman Catholic Priest Cloudy Maganga is trying to reduce substance abuse by youths by keeping them busy and offering counseling. 

“Within our hall, upstairs we are creating what we call a study center for the young people. We will have computers… We have also started what we call the sports for the young people. We have created a volleyball pitch, we have created also a netball pitch for the young people so that when they are free, during their free time, they can be engaged in sports, everyone here. So at least with that we are removing them from being just idle,” Maganga said.

While that may help, when young people have finished playing, they still find themselves unemployed and in the same conditions youths like Takudzwa Mandizha say make them turn to drugs.

 
…

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A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. Those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.

Fewer than three in 10 young Zimbabweans have steady jobs. Many are idle and see no economic opportunity. For some, that leads to problems with alcohol and drugs. 

Church leaders, community leaders, and government officials have started warning youths of the impact of drug and alcohol abuse in Zimbabwe and its effect on their physical wellbeing and mental health.

With drug use growing in Zimbabwe, President Emmerson Mnangagwa’s government has called for an all-stakeholders meeting on February 1 to come up with possible solutions.

Zimbabwe’s deputy director of Mental Health Services, Dr. Chido Rwafa, says the government cannot deal with the problem of substance abuse alone.

“Alcohol and substance use is a rising problem in all of Africa, and also in Zimbabwe, and it has become one of our top three diagnoses that we are seeing in our mental health unit, so it is becoming a problem. We need a coordinated approach to this problem. It is a multi-sectorial problem. We need a combined effort between government, between non-governmental organizations, with the community itself,” Rwafa said.

Youths are susceptible to peer pressure and can easily gain access to drugs, says Dr. Rwafa. Once hooked on drugs, they also become more likely to engage in criminal activities. 

This 20-year-old asked us not to film him when he was smoking cannabis. He says drug use would fall if more people could find employment. 

“The best way is just to improve our country economically such that all those people loitering in the streets will find jobs and will be focused. We are going nowhere. Even if you are to look (in the streets), there are some other people damaged (by drugs). Fifty percent of youths in the streets, they can not even work. Their life has been destructed by drugs etc. It is not that they want drug abuse,” Mandizha said.

Roman Catholic Priest Cloudy Maganga is trying to reduce substance abuse by youths by keeping them busy and offering counseling. 

“Within our hall, upstairs we are creating what we call a study center for the young people. We will have computers… We have also started what we call the sports for the young people. We have created a volleyball pitch, we have created also a netball pitch for the young people so that when they are free, during their free time, they can be engaged in sports, everyone here. So at least with that we are removing them from being just idle,” Maganga said.

While that may help, when young people have finished playing, they still find themselves unemployed and in the same conditions youths like Takudzwa Mandizha say make them turn to drugs.

 
…

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A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.
…

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A group of concerned Zimbabweans has started an anti-alcohol and drug campaign, targeting communities in which unemployed young people resort to drinking and using narcotics to alleviate the stress of not having work. As Columbus Mavhunga reports from Harare, those involved in the campaign say the solution lies largely with improving the country’s moribund economy.
…

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The Australian owners of a restaurant in East Timor are hoping to use their passion for the local cuisine to combat malnutrition in the tiny Southeast Asian nation.

East Timor has Asia’s worst rates of child malnutrition, with more than 50 percent of children suffering from stunting – a condition that permanently affects their mental and physical development – according to the United Nations.

But this is not primarily due to a shortage of food – instead, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF blames a lack of education and knowledge about local foods.

Development worker turned restaurateur Mark Notaras said traditional dishes like batar da’an – a kind of corn stew served at his Agora Food Studio restaurant in the capital Dili – were looked down on as “poor people’s food.”

“If you came to visit Timor, you could eat at 150 restaurants and never find it on a menu,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Notaras and his wife, Alva Lim, launched the non-profit Timor-Leste Food Innovators Exchange (TLFIX) last year to educate people across the country about cooking with healthy and local ingredients.

They hope to persuade them to supplement diets of white rice and instant noodles – which provide cheap calories but little nutrition – with the indigenous plants that grow there.

“We encourage people to eat a wider array of foods they already have around them in order to improve their nutrition,” said Notaras.

UNICEF already trains mothers in East Timor to provide more nutritious meals, showing them how to incorporate locally grown carrots and leafy greens into the rice that children are traditionally fed.

Lim and Notaras take a more innovative approach.

“We use food storytelling and food innovation to promote better livelihoods, including through nutrition,” said Notaras.

In doing so, they are joining a worldwide movement to return to local produce as populations have shifted away from traditional diets to increasingly consume imported foods that tend to be cheaper but less nutritious.

Organizations like the Rome-based non-profit Bioversity International are trying to reverse that trend by promoting indigenous crops, such as “Mayan spinach” in Central America.

That requires governments to introduce policies that encourage local crops rather than imports, and individual behaviors may need to change too, said Ronnie Vernooy of Bioversity International.

“People may need to invest more time in going to the local market rather than just the supermarket,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by Skype from the Netherlands.

But it may not be that simple.

Rice grown in East Timor can cost three times as much as the low-quality varieties imported from Vietnam, said Notaras, and changing attitudes and market dynamics could take decades.

Lim said she hoped the people of East Timor could push back against the processed food that has flooded the Philippines, where her family originates, and where “the same few bottled and packet sauces” have become ubiquitous.

“There is a lot of diversity in this region and I will be incredibly sad if it disappears,” she said.
…

your ads here!

The Australian owners of a restaurant in East Timor are hoping to use their passion for the local cuisine to combat malnutrition in the tiny Southeast Asian nation.

East Timor has Asia’s worst rates of child malnutrition, with more than 50 percent of children suffering from stunting – a condition that permanently affects their mental and physical development – according to the United Nations.

But this is not primarily due to a shortage of food – instead, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF blames a lack of education and knowledge about local foods.

Development worker turned restaurateur Mark Notaras said traditional dishes like batar da’an – a kind of corn stew served at his Agora Food Studio restaurant in the capital Dili – were looked down on as “poor people’s food.”

“If you came to visit Timor, you could eat at 150 restaurants and never find it on a menu,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Notaras and his wife, Alva Lim, launched the non-profit Timor-Leste Food Innovators Exchange (TLFIX) last year to educate people across the country about cooking with healthy and local ingredients.

They hope to persuade them to supplement diets of white rice and instant noodles – which provide cheap calories but little nutrition – with the indigenous plants that grow there.

“We encourage people to eat a wider array of foods they already have around them in order to improve their nutrition,” said Notaras.

UNICEF already trains mothers in East Timor to provide more nutritious meals, showing them how to incorporate locally grown carrots and leafy greens into the rice that children are traditionally fed.

Lim and Notaras take a more innovative approach.

“We use food storytelling and food innovation to promote better livelihoods, including through nutrition,” said Notaras.

In doing so, they are joining a worldwide movement to return to local produce as populations have shifted away from traditional diets to increasingly consume imported foods that tend to be cheaper but less nutritious.

Organizations like the Rome-based non-profit Bioversity International are trying to reverse that trend by promoting indigenous crops, such as “Mayan spinach” in Central America.

That requires governments to introduce policies that encourage local crops rather than imports, and individual behaviors may need to change too, said Ronnie Vernooy of Bioversity International.

“People may need to invest more time in going to the local market rather than just the supermarket,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by Skype from the Netherlands.

But it may not be that simple.

Rice grown in East Timor can cost three times as much as the low-quality varieties imported from Vietnam, said Notaras, and changing attitudes and market dynamics could take decades.

Lim said she hoped the people of East Timor could push back against the processed food that has flooded the Philippines, where her family originates, and where “the same few bottled and packet sauces” have become ubiquitous.

“There is a lot of diversity in this region and I will be incredibly sad if it disappears,” she said.
…

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An asteroid-circling spacecraft has captured a cool snapshot of home.

 

NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft took the picture days before going into orbit around asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve.

 

The tiny asteroid — barely one-third of a mile (500 meters) across — appears as a big bright blob in the long-exposure photo released last week. Seventy million miles (110 million kilometers) away, Earth appears as a white dot, with the moon an even smaller dot but still clearly visible.

Osiris-Rex is the first spacecraft to orbit such a small celestial body, and from such a close distance — about a mile (1,600 meters) out.

 

Next year, Osiris-Rex will attempt to gather some samples from the carbon-rich asteroid, for return to Earth in 2023.

 

Osiris-Rex launched from Florida in 2016.
…

your ads here!

An asteroid-circling spacecraft has captured a cool snapshot of home.

 

NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft took the picture days before going into orbit around asteroid Bennu on New Year’s Eve.

 

The tiny asteroid — barely one-third of a mile (500 meters) across — appears as a big bright blob in the long-exposure photo released last week. Seventy million miles (110 million kilometers) away, Earth appears as a white dot, with the moon an even smaller dot but still clearly visible.

Osiris-Rex is the first spacecraft to orbit such a small celestial body, and from such a close distance — about a mile (1,600 meters) out.

 

Next year, Osiris-Rex will attempt to gather some samples from the carbon-rich asteroid, for return to Earth in 2023.

 

Osiris-Rex launched from Florida in 2016.
…

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The U.S. cancer death rate has hit a milestone: It’s been falling for at least 25 years, according to a new report.

Lower smoking rates are translating into fewer deaths. Advances in early detection and treatment also are having a positive impact, experts say.

But it’s not all good news. Obesity-related cancer deaths are rising, and prostate cancer deaths are no longer dropping, said Rebecca Siegel, lead author of the American Cancer Society report published Tuesday.

Cancer also remains the nation’s No. 2 killer. The society predicts there will be more than 1.7 million new cancer cases, and more than 600,000 cancer deaths, in the U.S. this year.

A breakdown of what the report says:

Decline

There’s been a lot of bad news recently regarding U.S. death rates. In 2017, increases were seen in fatalities from seven of the 10 leading causes of death, according to recently released government data. But cancer has been something of a bright spot.

The nation’s cancer death rate was increasing until the early 1990s. It has been dropping since, falling 27 percent between 1991 and 2016, the Cancer Society reported.

Lung cancer is the main reason. Among cancers, it has long killed the most people, especially men. But the lung cancer death rate dropped by nearly 50 percent among men since 1991. It was a delayed effect from a decline in smoking that began in the 1960s, Siegel said.

Prostate cancer

The report has some mixed news about prostate cancer, the second leading cause of cancer death in men.

The prostate cancer death rate fell by half over two decades, but experts have been wondering whether the trend changed after a 2011 decision by the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force to stop recommending routine testing of men using the PSA blood test. That decision was prompted by concerns the test was leading to overdiagnosis and overtreatment.

The prostate cancer death rate flattened from 2013 to 2016. So, while the PSA testing may have surfaced cases that didn’t actually need treatment, it may also have prevented some cancer deaths, the report suggests.

Obesity

Of the most common types of cancer in the U.S., all the ones with increasing death rates are linked to obesity, including cancers of the pancreas and uterus.

Another is liver cancer. Liver cancer deaths have been increasing since the 1970s, and initially most of the increase was tied to hepatitis C infections spread among people who abuse drugs. But now obesity accounts for a third of liver cancer deaths, and is more of a factor than hepatitis, Siegel said.

The nation’s growing obesity epidemic was first identified as a problem in the 1990s. It can take decades to see how a risk factor influences cancer rates, “so we may just be seeing the tip of the iceberg in terms of the effect of the obesity epidemic on cancer,” Siegel said.

Disparity

There’s been a decline in the historic racial gap in cancer death rates, but an economic gap is growing — especially when it comes to deaths that could be prevented by early screening and treatment, better eating and less smoking.

In the early 1970s, colon cancer death rates in the poorest counties were 20 percent lower than those in affluent counties; now they’re 30 percent higher. Cervical cancer deaths are twice as high for women in poor counties now, compared with women in affluent counties. And lung and liver cancer death rates are 40 percent higher for men in poor counties.

Dr. Darrell Gray, deputy director of Ohio State University’s Center for Cancer Health Equity, called the findings “important but not surprising.”

“We’ve known for some time that race is a surrogate” for other factors, like poverty and difficulty getting to — or paying for — doctor’s appointments, he said.
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