Lack of sleep has been linked to heart disease, poor mood and loneliness. Being tired could also make us less generous, researchers report August 23 in PLOS Biology. The hour of sleep lost in the switch over to Daylight Savings Time every spring appears to reduce people’s tendency to help others, the researchers found in one of three experiments testing the link between sleep loss and generosity. Specifically, they showed that average donations to one U.S.-based nonprofit organization dropped by around 10 percent in the workweek after the time switch compared with four weeks before and after the change. In Arizona and Hawaii, states that do not observe Daylight Savings Time, donations remained unchanged.
The amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has shot past a key milestone—more than 50% higher than pre-industrial times—and is at levels not seen since millions of years ago when Earth was a hothouse ocean-inundated planet, federal scientists announced Friday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said its long-time monitoring station at Mauna Loa, Hawaii, averaged 421 parts per million of carbon dioxide for the month of May, which is when the crucial greenhouse gas hits its yearly high. Before the industrial revolution in the late 19th century carbon dioxide levels were at 280 parts per million, scientists said, so humans have significantly changed the atmosphere. Some activists and scientists want a level of 350 parts per million. Industrial carbon dioxide emissions come from the burning of coal, oil and gas.
Nearly 15 million more people died during the pandemic than would have in normal times, the World Health Organization said on Thursday, a staggering measure of Covid’s true toll that laid bare how vastly country after country has undercounted victims. In Mexico, the excess death toll during the first two years of the pandemic was twice as high as the government’s official tally of Covid deaths, the W.H.O. found. In Egypt, excess deaths were roughly 12 times as great as the official Covid toll. In Pakistan, the figure was eight times as high. Those estimates, calculated by a global panel of experts assembled by the W.H.O., represent what many scientists see as the most reliable gauge of the total impact of the pandemic. Faced with large gaps in global death data, the expert team set out to calculate excess mortality: the difference between the number of people who died in 2020 and 2021 and the number who would have been expected to die during that time if the pandemic had not happened.
С 23 мая по 12 июня 2022 года по инициативе Министерства здравоохранения Республики Беларусь в стране проводится республиканская информационно-образовательная акция «Беларусь против табака» в рамках Всемирного дня без табака. Всемирная организация здравоохранения (далее – ВОЗ) объявила о проведении глобальной кампании по случаю Всемирного дня без табака 2022г. на тему «Табак – угроза нашей окружающей среде». Эта кампания направлена на повышение осведомленности общественности в отношении воздействия табака во время его выращивания, производства и распространения, а также его отходов на окружающую среду. Для лиц, употребляющих табак, это станет еще одной причиной для отказа от табака.
With the help of the CRISPR/Cas molecular scissors, genetic information in a plant can be modified to make the latter more robust to pests, diseases, or extreme climatic conditions. Researchers have now developed this method further to eliminate the complete DNA of specific cell types and, thus, prevent their formation during plant development. This will also help researchers better understand development mechanisms in plants.