Month: June 2018

U.S. astronaut Peggy Whitson, who has spent more time in space than any other American, retired Friday.

During her career, Whitson logged 665 days in space over three missions, the equivalent of about one year and 10 months outside the Earth’s atmosphere.

Whitson was also the first woman to command the International Space Station, holding the position twice, and the oldest woman ever to fly in space.

“It’s been the greatest honor to live out my lifelong dream of being a @NASA Astronaut,” Whitson wrote on Twitter. She thanked “all who have supported me along the way” and said “my journey at NASA has been out of this world!”

Whitson, 58, is a biochemist who grew up in Iowa. She joined NASA as a researcher in 1986 and became an astronaut in 1996. Whitson completed her last spaceflight in September 2017, after spending close to 10 months in space. 

During that mission, Whitson and the other crew members aboard the space station pursued hundreds of experiments in biology, biotechnology, physical science and Earth science.

Only Russian male astronauts have spent more time in space than Whitson. The world record belongs to Russia’s Gennady Padalka, who spent 879 days in space.

While not in space, Whitson also broke barriers at NASA operations. She served as chief of the astronaut corps from 2009 to 2012, becoming

both the first woman to hold the position and the first nonmilitary head of the corps.

“Peggy Whitson is a testament to the American spirit,” NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine said in a statement Friday. “Her determination, strength of mind, character, and dedication to science, exploration and discovery are an inspiration to NASA and America.”
…

By now, you have probably heard that suicide rates in the United States have increased sharply over the past two decades.

There was a lot of media coverage after fashion designer Kate Spade and celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain took their own lives. Their suicides happened around the same time that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued a report showing a 25 percent increase in suicide in the U.S. since 1999. Suicide is now the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.

Deborah Stone, a behavioral scientist at the CDC, said the increase wasn’t surprising, as researchers have been seeing these rates going up for a long time.

“The data really speak volumes that the problem is getting worse, and what is really needed is suicide prevention,” Stone told VOA.

Risk factors

She said the risk factors are similar to the risk factors for homicides or mass killings. A person has relationship problems, including conflicts with a spouse or partner, is a victim of bullying, breaks up with or loses a loved one.

Substance abuse can also be involved. In 2016, there were 64,000 overdose deaths in the U.S. Some of the deaths were not intentional, but some were.

Homelessness, loss of a job, and financial problems are also risk factors, as are health problems.

Stone said both physical and mental health problems make people more vulnerable to committing suicide. The report said almost half of those who committed suicide had a known mental health condition, but more than half — 54 percent — did not.

Jennifer Payne, a psychiatrist at Johns Hopkins Medicine, said just because the CDC reported a majority of those who committed suicide did not have a known mental illness, does not mean they didn’t have one.

“I think it’s likely that a majority of cases of suicide are related to a mental health diagnosis,” she said.

The illness could have been undiagnosed, or because of the stigma associated with mental illness, people may have not sought treatment.

Psychiatrist Bashkin Kadriu at the National Institute of Mental Health said, “When you do that psychological autopsy, or the examination of people who have committed suicide, over 90 percent of them have an undiagnosed mental illness.”

In the U.S., mental health treatment is often expensive. Not all psychiatrists accept insurance, which puts treatment out of reach for many. Payne attributes this to a shortage of psychiatrists. 

Payne treats depression, which often leads to suicide, and depression is not always a life-long affliction. It can intensify for a while, and it can also go away. It can also be treated with medication.

No surprise

Paul Gionfriddo, head of Mental Health America, an advocacy group, said it’s no surprise suicide rates have risen.

“The time frame of the CDC report is troubling in that by using 1999 as a reference point, it captures what has happened in post-9/11 America. During that time, we have been subjected to major traumatic events, and our young people have fought in two very long and seemingly endless wars,” he said.

Gionfriddo said trauma and exposure to violence cause mental health conditions which, in turn, can lead to suicide.

The CDC report found that most suicides were committed in rural areas where people lack access to immediate care and where they often live in isolation — yet another risk factor.

Most U.S. suicides are also committed with guns.

Dr. Georges Benjamin, head of the American Public Health Association, told VOA that people who buy guns, even for self- protection, are at more risk of being hurt by their own gun than to be shot by a stranger.

He said the gun lobby has prevented research on how to make guns safer.

“For political reasons, people are not doing the kinds of things you would normally do if we had airplanes crashing every day,” Benjamin said.

Stone said the main thing is that suicide is preventable.

“It’s a public health problem that requires a public health approach. It’s not just due to one thing. And so, our strategies need to be multifaceted to address all of the range of suicides,” she added.

Suicide is a global problem, as well. The World Health Organization reports that suicide is the second-leading cause of death among 15- to 29-year-olds, and that 75 percent of all suicides occur in low- and middle-income countries. 

Close to 800,000 people die by suicide every year. Nearly 45,000 people took their lives in the U.S. in 2016.
…

Once again, hard facts support the claim that the planet is getting warmer. According to a new report, published in the scientific journal Nature, Antarctica is losing ice so fast that by the end of this century, the sea level could rise as much as 16 centimeters. This may not sound like much, but scientists say the trend is alarming. VOA’s George Putic has more.
…

Lions and tigers and bears are increasingly becoming night owls because of us, a new study says.

Scientists have long known that human activity disrupts nature. Besides becoming more vigilant and reducing time spent looking for food, many mammals may travel to remote areas or move around less to avoid contact with people.

The latest research found even activities like hiking and camping can scare animals and drive them to become more active at night.

Presence has consequences

“It suggests that animals might be playing it safe around people,” said Kaitlyn Gaynor, an ecologist at the University of California, Berkeley, who led the study. “We may think that we leave no trace when we’re just hiking in the woods, but our mere presence can have lasting consequences.”

Gaynor and her colleagues analyzed 76 studies involving 62 species on six continents. Animals included lions in Tanzania, otters in Brazil, coyotes in California, wild boars in Poland and tigers in Nepal.

Researchers compared how much time those creatures spent active at night under different types of human disturbance such as hunting, hiking and farming. On average, the team found that human presence triggered an increase of about 20 percent in nighttime activity, even in animals that aren’t night owls.

Results were published Thursday in the journal Science.

Robust study

The findings are novel because “no one else has compiled all this information and analyzed it in such a … robust way,” said Ana Benitez Lopez of Radboud University in the Netherlands, who reviewed the study.

Marlee Tucker, an ecologist at Goethe University Frankfurt in Germany who was not part of the research, was surprised that any kind of human activity is enough for mammals to see people as a threat.

“It’s a little bit scary,” she said. “Even if people think that we’re not deliberately trying to impact animals, we probably are without knowing it.”

Gaynor said animals that don’t adapt well to the darkness will be affected. But she said that behavioral shift could also help other animals reduce direct encounters with people.

“Humans can do their thing during the day; wildlife can do their thing at night,” she said. That way, people would be sharing the planet “with many other species that are just taking the night shift while we’re sleeping.”
…

The beautiful, all-you-can-eat sushi platter you shared with friends last week might have included a special ingredient: plastic.

Microplastics — the remnants of plastic bags, takeout containers and straws that almost-but-not-quite disintegrate in the oceans — are found in 3 out of 4 fish, such as squid, cuttlefish and swordfish in markets around the world, say the authors of a February study.

“These fish inhabit a remote area, so theoretically they should be pretty isolated from human influences, such as microplastics,” said Alina Wieczorek, lead author of the Frontiers study.

“However, as they regularly migrate to the surface, we thought that they may ingest microplastics there,” she said.

Food chain pollutants

Consumers are waking up to pollutants in their food chain, and scientists are joining them to raise awareness and combat other issues like overfishing. Last week, thousands marched in the United States and 25 other countries for World Oceans Day.

Under the hood of a shark costume was Brian Yurasits, director of development at the nonprofit TerraMar Project, which educates and promotes ocean issues. Yurasits circulated with about 3,000 others at the march in the shadow of the Washington Monument and a life-size, inflatable blue whale.

Holding a sign that read, “Sharks are friends, not food,” Yurasits emphasized that issues about ocean health “is more than just plastic.”

[See our video interview with Yurasits here.]

“It’s overfishing, climate change, invasive species and habitat loss,” he said.

The youth-led Sea Youth Rise Up advocates for ocean conservation, including reduced single-use plastics such as plastic straws, water bottles and shopping bags, which the ocean breaks down into microplastics. Much of the plastic that ends up in the oceans was blown into rivers first from uncontained trash on land.

Microplastics are microscopic and smaller than plankton, a popular food choice of larger marine life. They are made of hydrocarbons, a compound found in petroleum and natural gas, and attract other pollutants, according to the National Association of Geoscience Teachers.

Because microplastics can’t be digested, they build up in the fish that consume them.

“The biggest impacts aren’t the ones we can see very easily,” said Katie Farnsworth, a professor and marine geologist who studies coastal sediments at the Indiana University of Pennsylvania. “The biggest danger is those microplastics, because they are being eaten by things in the bottom of the food web, and then move their way up through the chain.”

The plastics can give off toxins, she said, because plastic is made from hydrocarbons. And hydrocarbons, she explained, attract and bind with other pollutants that are in the ocean.

Carbon dioxide

But microplastics aren’t the only threat to marine life. Ocean acidification and overfishing also imperil the health of oceans.

Ocean acidification occurs when seawater absorbs carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Carbon dioxide is released into the air by burning fossil fuels, like oil and coal. That makes the ocean more acidic, which harms shellfish, other marine life and plants.

Ocean acidity has increased about 25 percent since the Industrial Revolution starting in 1760, the EPA reports, commonly depicted by billowing smokestacks at coal-burning factories.

Julia Dohner is a second-year Ph.D. student studying marine chemistry and geochemistry at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography in San Diego. She is also a surfer who spends lots of time in the Pacific Ocean.

“Everything I think about is through the context of carbon dioxide,” Dohner said. “For me, reducing one’s carbon footprint is really important. It’s kind of a straightforward task, if you want to do something about the environment.”

Dohner said she believes awareness of ocean acidification has increased in the past few years.

“There’s been a lot of effort going into understanding how quickly our oceans are acidifying and understanding how those conditions will affect various forms in the ocean,” Dohner said.

Overfishing

Overfishing also threatens ocean health. It occurs when more fish are caught than the population can replace through natural reproduction. According to the World Wildlife Federation, several important commercial fish populations, such as Atlantic bluefin tuna, have declined to the point where their survival as a species is threatened.

Regulating overfishing is nearly impossible because “fish could care less about political boundaries,” said Farnsworth, meaning fishing boats follow the fish, often disregarding lines drawn around territorial boundaries. 

“Regulations in one country don’t help very much because you have to get treaties to get everybody in agreement,” she said.

Dohner said she believes that the biggest threat the ocean faces is a lack of awareness of these issues.

“There’s all this research going on about how our planet is changing and what it’s going to look like in the future,” Dohner said. “But at the end of the day, if we can’t convince people such that there is tangible policy changes enacted, then what have we really accomplished?”

Join the Student Union conversation on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn social media pages.
…

Millions of high school students are done. So done.

In flowing gowns and square caps, more than 3 million will walk across a stage this month and be handed a diploma, what they’ve been working toward for 12 years.

Latavea Cole, a graduating senior at Paul Laurence Dunbar High School in Baltimore, Maryland, wore a black cap decorated with yellow feathers and words that glittered.

“Mine says ‘Black girl magic,’” Cole told VOA. “It’s an inspirational thing, and graduating is really just … magic.”

Personalized caps

Many students personalize their caps with inspirational quotes, feathers and glitter to stand out in a sea of other graduates for family and friends in the grandstands. Some just want to celebrate their hard-won achievement that culminates in filing into a gymnasium and walking across a stage to receive their diplomas.

At Dunbar, the high school attended by the late rap artist Tupac Shakur, nearly 200 graduates filed in one by one as the school band played “Pomp and Circumstance,” the traditional music of graduations throughout America.

Over half of the caps were vividly decorated, with rhinestones that reflected the gymnasium’s light, and fake flowers mirroring real ones gifted to the graduates by their families.

On to college

Cole said she will pursue a degree in special education at a nearby community college after leaving Dunbar, which specializes in preparing students for careers in health care.

“Dunbar high school is a high school for professional health careers, and it gets you ready for college and the next level,” Kelvin Williams, a fellow graduating senior, told VOA.

Williams will move to North Carolina in the fall to major in sports medicine with plans to become a doctor to “help athletes.”

“The entire group is just dynamic, boisterous. They’re looking at wonderful things in their future,” said Tameka Taylor, an English teacher at Dunbar.

“They’re going to colleges in Arizona, Kansas, all over the state of Maryland, with over $500,000 to $1 million in scholarships. So, we are just excited, and we can’t wait to usher them out into the world,” Taylor said.

Before and after the ceremony, many students pondered their four-year journey through high school.

“I had a great experience. It was fun. There were some serious times, but mostly fun. I wouldn’t pick a different school,” Cole said.

“It’s been hard, but it’s been great,” her classmate Carl Kuniken added.

“Mine says I’m a draguate’,” said Jahi Chatman, turning around to show the camera his decorated cap. He will be headed to military basic training in the fall.

“I dragged my way through high school, so I’m a draguate!”
…