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Amazon's coral reef
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Upfront
US health is more equal HOW are you feeling, America? Not too bad, according to the latest assessment of the nation’s health. Compiled by the US National Center for Health Statistics, the report finds that health gaps between white and black people are finally closing, and people are living longer, although heart disease, cancer and obesity continue to loom large. Between 2004 and 2014, life expectancy increased by an extra 1.1 years for women and 1.4 years for men, according to the report. The US has a history of racial disparity in life expectancy – generally, white people are expected to live the longest, while black people have the shortest lifespan. But this gap appears to be narrowing. In 1980, for example,
white men were expected to live 6 years longer than black men – by 2014 the difference was 4.2 years. Heart disease and cancer are the biggest killers, together responsible for 46 per cent of all US deaths in 2014. The good news is that these disorders aren’t fatal for as many people as they used to be – death rates decreased by 25 per cent for heart disease and 14 per cent for cancer between 2004 and 2014. But suicide is on the rise, particularly among adults aged between 45 and 64. In this age group, suicide rates increased by 27 per cent over a decade. And in the midst of the US opioid epidemic, deaths from heroin poisoning are also on the up, with five times as many deaths in 2014 as in 2004.
–Living life to the full–
Stop Oz drug abuse NEEDS must. The state of Victoria in south-east Australia has announced it will spend A$30 million on setting up realtime monitoring of all addictive prescription drugs to tackle soaring rates of addiction and death. Last year, more people in Victoria died from prescription drug overdoses than from illicit drugs or road accidents. The picture is similar across the rest of the country, with coroners’ reports revealing a seven-fold rise
“We hope it will allow us to intervene before drug addictions become more deep-seated” in deaths related to prescription painkiller oxycodone (OxyContin) between 2001 and 2011. The government of Victoria intends to set up a monitoring system that creates a real-time record each time a person gets a prescription filled for any medication classed as a “drug of dependence” – including 6 | NewScientist | 30 April 2016
oxycodone, morphine and alprazolam (Xanax). The hope is that this will identify people who are “doctor shopping” – visiting multiple physicians to obtain additional prescriptions for addictive drugs. The database should allow family doctors, pharmacists and hospitals to run on-the-spot checks, as well as offer treatment and counselling to addicts. “We’ve been calling for this for years,” says Tony Bartone, president of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association. “We hope it will give us the opportunity to intervene at an early stage before the addiction becomes more deep-seated.” A similar monitoring system was implemented in the state of Tasmania in 2012, although it does not track several key drugs, including Valium (diazepam). But early unpublished findings suggest that Tasmania’s system may have simply pushed many opioid addicts to switch to illegal drugs like heroin instead. One problem is that many lack affordable access to addiction treatment programmes.
Amazon’s coral reef OCEANOGRAPHERS are flabbergasted at the discovery of a 1000-kilometre-long coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon river. The river spews out some of the muddiest water, making it an unlikely location for corals, which usually derive most of their energy from photosynthetic algae that need light. But when scientists from Brazil and the US dredged the estuary floor, they pulled up coral, sponges, starfish and fish (Science Advances, doi.org/bfnv).
The reef consists mainly of sponges and rhodoliths, red algae that deposit calcium carbonate in their cell walls. Unlike coral, rhodoliths can thrive in low light. “The presence of these reefs suggests that otherwise poorly studied deeper areas of the continental shelf edge are reservoirs of biodiversity,” says Fabiano Thompson at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He says the reef needs protection as the government has sold 80 licences for oil exploration and drilling in the region.
Disco ball Earth’s mystery lights THE blue marble sometimes turns into a disco ball. Blue blobs that form above clouds during thunderstorms have been snapped from the International Space Station for the first time by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen. “We wanted to see what happens above a thunderstorm,” says Olivier Chanrion of the National Space Institute in Denmark, who presented the photos (see image, right) at the European Geosciences Union
meeting in Vienna last week. There is incredible activity, he says, including the mystery blue blobs. “They were dancing over the top of the cloud, and we called them glimpses,” says Chanrion. “We sometimes saw around 100 glimpses per minute, and we think they’re integrated between the top and bottom layers of the cloud. But we need to find out more.” The team says the phenomena are worth studying because so little is known about lightning.
Upfront
US health is more equal HOW are you feeling, America? Not too bad, according to the latest assessment of the nation’s health. Compiled by the US National Center for Health Statistics, the report finds that health gaps between white and black people are finally closing, and people are living longer, although heart disease, cancer and obesity continue to loom large. Between 2004 and 2014, life expectancy increased by an extra 1.1 years for women and 1.4 years for men, according to the report. The US has a history of racial disparity in life expectancy – generally, white people are expected to live the longest, while black people have the shortest lifespan. But this gap appears to be narrowing. In 1980, for example,
white men were expected to live 6 years longer than black men – by 2014 the difference was 4.2 years. Heart disease and cancer are the biggest killers, together responsible for 46 per cent of all US deaths in 2014. The good news is that these disorders aren’t fatal for as many people as they used to be – death rates decreased by 25 per cent for heart disease and 14 per cent for cancer between 2004 and 2014. But suicide is on the rise, particularly among adults aged between 45 and 64. In this age group, suicide rates increased by 27 per cent over a decade. And in the midst of the US opioid epidemic, deaths from heroin poisoning are also on the up, with five times as many deaths in 2014 as in 2004.
–Living life to the full–
Stop Oz drug abuse NEEDS must. The state of Victoria in south-east Australia has announced it will spend A$30 million on setting up realtime monitoring of all addictive prescription drugs to tackle soaring rates of addiction and death. Last year, more people in Victoria died from prescription drug overdoses than from illicit drugs or road accidents. The picture is similar across the rest of the country, with coroners’ reports revealing a seven-fold rise
“We hope it will allow us to intervene before drug addictions become more deep-seated” in deaths related to prescription painkiller oxycodone (OxyContin) between 2001 and 2011. The government of Victoria intends to set up a monitoring system that creates a real-time record each time a person gets a prescription filled for any medication classed as a “drug of dependence” – including 6 | NewScientist | 30 April 2016
oxycodone, morphine and alprazolam (Xanax). The hope is that this will identify people who are “doctor shopping” – visiting multiple physicians to obtain additional prescriptions for addictive drugs. The database should allow family doctors, pharmacists and hospitals to run on-the-spot checks, as well as offer treatment and counselling to addicts. “We’ve been calling for this for years,” says Tony Bartone, president of the Victorian branch of the Australian Medical Association. “We hope it will give us the opportunity to intervene at an early stage before the addiction becomes more deep-seated.” A similar monitoring system was implemented in the state of Tasmania in 2012, although it does not track several key drugs, including Valium (diazepam). But early unpublished findings suggest that Tasmania’s system may have simply pushed many opioid addicts to switch to illegal drugs like heroin instead. One problem is that many lack affordable access to addiction treatment programmes.
Amazon’s coral reef OCEANOGRAPHERS are flabbergasted at the discovery of a 1000-kilometre-long coral reef at the mouth of the Amazon river. The river spews out some of the muddiest water, making it an unlikely location for corals, which usually derive most of their energy from photosynthetic algae that need light. But when scientists from Brazil and the US dredged the estuary floor, they pulled up coral, sponges, starfish and fish (Science Advances, doi.org/bfnv).
The reef consists mainly of sponges and rhodoliths, red algae that deposit calcium carbonate in their cell walls. Unlike coral, rhodoliths can thrive in low light. “The presence of these reefs suggests that otherwise poorly studied deeper areas of the continental shelf edge are reservoirs of biodiversity,” says Fabiano Thompson at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He says the reef needs protection as the government has sold 80 licences for oil exploration and drilling in the region.
Disco ball Earth’s mystery lights THE blue marble sometimes turns into a disco ball. Blue blobs that form above clouds during thunderstorms have been snapped from the International Space Station for the first time by Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen. “We wanted to see what happens above a thunderstorm,” says Olivier Chanrion of the National Space Institute in Denmark, who presented the photos (see image, right) at the European Geosciences Union
meeting in Vienna last week. There is incredible activity, he says, including the mystery blue blobs. “They were dancing over the top of the cloud, and we called them glimpses,” says Chanrion. “We sometimes saw around 100 glimpses per minute, and we think they’re integrated between the top and bottom layers of the cloud. But we need to find out more.” The team says the phenomena are worth studying because so little is known about lightning.