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New Study: Racism Can Make Kids Sick—for the Rest of Their Lives

by OliverPowlett Posted on September 14, 2015

Mother Jones

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Racism is still one of America’s greatest social ills—and it might actually be making people sick. According to a new study out of Northwestern University, racial discrimination experienced in adolescence can have a profound impact on health later in life.

Controlling for other factors that might cause stress, including socioeconomic status, health behaviors, and depression, researchers found that adults who had reported higher levels of discrimination when they were young had disrupted stress hormone levels 20 years later—and that African Americans experienced the effects at greater levels than their white counterparts.

“There’s sometimes a tendency to say, ‘Oh, they are just kids—they will get over it,'” says developmental psychologist and head researcher Emma Adam. “But it turns out there can be lasting impact.”

Using participants from the Maryland Adolescent Development Context Study—a large-scale, 20-year survey that included adolescents from a broad range of socioeconomic backgrounds—the researchers were able to compare levels of the stress hormone cortisol in adults to the responses they gave as 12-year-olds.

Normal cortisol levels are high when you wake up, increase about 30 minutes later, and then slowly decline throughout the day, winding you down until it’s time for bed. “The high morning levels are there to activate you for the day, giving you the energy and focus, and stimulate your appetite to basically rev you up to face the demands of your day,” Adam says.

But, the researchers found, those who reported they had experienced discrimination when they were 12 years old now have much flatter cortisol ranges. “Under stress you lose some of that important cycle,” Adam says. “You get a drop of those morning levels, you wake up groggier, and it is harder to sleep at night.”

While the effects on daily functioning are troublesome, the long-term effects are far worse: These flat rhythms are associated with higher risk for life-threatening health problems like cardiovascular disease and diabetes, and also can cause depression and chronic fatigue.

African Americans reported experiencing discrimination at much higher levels over the course of the study, and Adam believes that likely triggered chronic stress. “The stress hormones I study respond to not just the presence of discrimination but even the anticipation that it might happen,” she says. “That is why discrimination is such a pervasive negative influence and really harmful to biology and health.”

While the study did not look into ways to mitigate the effects, Adam says previous research indicates increased emotional support and getting enough sleep can help improve hormone levels.

“I think the message is: For folks who would like to say that this is a thing of the past—it is not,” she says. “These are concerns that are affecting the daily functioning, the health, and the well-being of African Americans, and it should be of concern to the whole country.”

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New Study: Racism Can Make Kids Sick—for the Rest of Their Lives

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It’s Now Open Season on China

by GitaOov11667597 Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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In the midst of Trumpmania, it’s good to see that some things never change. Here is Scott Walker today:

Americans are struggling to cope with the fall in today’s markets driven in part by China’s slowing economy and the fact that they actively manipulate their economy….massive cyberattacks….militarization of the South China Sea….economy….persecution of Christians….There’s serious work to be done rather than pomp and circumstance. We need to see some backbone from President Obama on U.S.-China relations.

China bashing is the little black dress of presidential campaigns: always appropriate, always in style.

Of course, Donald “China is killing us!” Trump got there before Walker. And more than that: he not only bashed China, but was able to claim that he’d been warning of this all along. If only we’d sent Carl Icahn over there from the start, things would be OK today.

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It’s Now Open Season on China

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Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

by KindraPVLC Posted on August 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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Everyone is writing about my pet topics today!

Aaron Carroll busts the myth that you should drink eight glasses of water every day.
Kiera Butler sings the praises of food irradiation.
Dylan Matthews writes that Intuit and H&R Block continue to oppose any effort to make taxes easier to file.
Larry Summers makes the case for continued low interest rates because “the global economy has difficulty generating demand for all that can be produced.”

Go read them all.

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Good Stuff on the Intertubes Today

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No, Smartphones Aren’t Responsible for the Drop in Teen Sex

by RussByrumlqsg Posted on July 23, 2015

Mother Jones

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Over at Wonkblog, we learn that American teenagers are having less sex than they used to. But why?

Crotchety adults may joke: Maybe they’re too busy messing with their iPhones.

That’s actually a decent theory, said Dr. Brooke Bokor, an Adolescent Medicine Specialist at the Children’s National Health System. More teenagers than ever have smartphones….Many are more comfortable searching in private for credible information about sexual health….They could be better educated about the risks.”

….Another possible driver of the sexual slowdown is the growing popularity of the HPV vaccine, which is now widely offered to boys and girls as young as 11. The shots, of course, come with an educational conversation. Kids learn earlier about the prevalence of STIs and how they’re spread.

Alert readers will understand immediately not only why these aren’t decent theories, but why they’re ridiculous ones. In case you need a hint, it’s in the chart on the right.

As you can see, the percentage of teens who report ever having intercourse has been dropping since the late 80s, and dropped especially sharply during the 90s. There were no smartphones in the 90s. There was no HPV vaccine in the 90s. No matter how appealing these theories might be at first glance, neither is even remotely credible as an explanation for the decline in teen sexual activity.

So what’s the answer? How about video games? Or hip hop? Or energy drinks? I have no evidence for any of these, and clean-living adults might be scandalized at the idea that any of them could have tangible benefits, but they’re all better theories than smartphones or the HPV vaccine. At least the timing fits decently.

These provocations aside, I suppose you’re now expecting me to get serious and suggest that the decline in childhood lead exposure is responsible for the drop in teen sex. Maybe! There is, after all, some evidence that reduced lead exposure is associated with the drop in teen pregnancy over the past few decades, and it’s reasonable to suspect that less teen pregnancy might be the result of less teen sex. But there are at least two problems with this. First, pregnancy rates can go down even if sex doesn’t, simply due to more widespread use of birth control. Second, the data on teen sex comes from the CDC, and their cohort breakdown doesn’t seem to fit the lead theory. In particular, the percentage of ninth graders reporting sexual experience didn’t start dropping until 2001, and if lead is responsible you’d expect the youngest cohort to drop earlier than older cohorts. At first glance, then, I’m not sure lead explains what’s going on. But it might. I’d just need to see more and better data to be sure.

In other words: we don’t really know for sure why teen sex is down. What we do know is that on a whole range of measures—crime rates, pregnancy, drug and alcohol use, cigarette smoking, math and reading proficiency, high school completion—teenagers have become better behaved over the past couple of decades. They just aren’t as scary as they used to be. That’s a little hard to take if you’re a social conservative who’s convinced that liberal values are destroying America, but it’s true nonetheless. And good news too.

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No, Smartphones Aren’t Responsible for the Drop in Teen Sex

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Medicare Cost Projections Are Down Stunningly in 2015 Report

by AbdulTihtsobwxb Posted on July 22, 2015

Mother Jones

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As long as we’re on the subject of annual trustees reports, the 2015 Medicare report was released today too. And if the Social Security report was slightly good news, the Medicare report is, once again, spectacularly good news. Here’s the 75-year spending projection from ten years ago vs. today:

Ten years ago, Medicare was a runaway freight train. Spending was projected to increase indefinitely, rising to 13 percent of GDP by 2080. This year, spending is projected to slow down around 2040, and reaches only 6 percent of GDP by 2090.

Six percent! That’s half what we thought a mere decade ago. If that isn’t spectacular, I don’t know what is.

The 2005 projection was based on past performance, which showed costs rising ceaselessly every year. That turned out to be wrong. This year’s projection is also based on past performance, which shows that costs have flattened substantially since 2008. Will it turn out to be wrong too? Come back in 2025 and I’ll tell you.

In any case, this illustrates the big difference between cost projections for Social Security and Medicare. Social Security is basically just arithmetic. We know how many people are going to retire, we know how long they’re going to live, and we know how much we’re going to pay them. Do the math and you know how much the program will cost us. It can change a bit over time, as projections of things like GDP growth or immigration rates change, but that happens at the speed of molasses. There are very few surprises with Social Security.

Medicare has all that, but it also has one more thing: the actual cost of medical care. And that’s little more than an educated guess when you start projecting more than a decade ahead. Will costs skyrocket as expensive new therapies multiply? Or will costs plummet after someone invents self-sustaining nanobots that get injected at birth and keep us healthy forever at virtually no cost? I don’t know. No one knows.

Beyond that, it’s always foolish to assume that costs will rise forever just because they have in the past. Medicare is a political program, and at some point the public will decide that it’s not willing to fund it at higher levels. It’s not as if it’s on autopilot, after all. We live in a democracy, and after lots of yelling and fighting, we’ll eventually do something about rising medical costs if we simply don’t think the additional spending is worth it.

Still, the news for now is pretty good. I happen to think the slowdown in medical costs is real, and will continue for some time (though not at the extremely low rates of the past few years). For more on this, see here, here, and here. Others think it’s a temporary blip due to the recession, and big increases will return in a few years. We’ll see.

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Medicare Cost Projections Are Down Stunningly in 2015 Report

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Climate action by cities could help us avoid the worst of climate change

by EricaMorgans Posted on July 7, 2015

Climate action by cities could help us avoid the worst of climate change

By on 7 Jul 2015commentsShare

In the tepid slugfest that is international climate negotiations, governments around the world are currently submitting their emission reduction pledges to the U.N. in the run-up to the climate summit in Paris this December. Some countries, of course, are doing a bit better than others. (New Zealand released a provisional pledge today that Oxfam cited as a “slap in the face” to the country’s at-risk Pacific Island neighbors. See? Nearly a slugfest.)

If national governments don’t get the job done, who will? The Global Commission on the Economy and Climate, an all-star team of former heads of state, finance ministers, and banking executives chaired by former President of Mexico Felipe Calderón, argues that city governments and the private sector have a massive role to play in climate change mitigation and adaptation. Local governments may not be the most obvious tool for battling something as monumental as climate change, but unconventional groups like these — known as subnational and nonstate actors — are becoming increasingly popular movers and shakers in this space.

The Commission’s 2015 New Climate Economy report, released today, details the steps necessary for looping subnational and nonstate actors in on the delivery of “better growth and a better climate.” Other recommendations of the 11-chapter report target agricultural productivity, clean energy, smart infrastructure, and carbon pricing. One message, however, rings clear: Local climate action and urban development can and should go hand in hand.

But what does subnational climate action actually look like? From the Guardian:

Chief among the measures the New Climate Economy group advocates is action taken by cities, to reduce carbon output by improving public transport, making public buildings and private housing more energy efficient, and dealing with waste better. These measures are frequently not taken account of in emissions targets set by national governments, showing that more can be done to arrest the growth in carbon dioxide output.

These measures, if taken by cities, could also save money, up to $17tn globally by 2050, the group found.

Cities are already gearing up to take action, with more than 75 of the world’s biggest cities forming the C40 group, under former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg, and pledging to reduce emissions substantially in the next three decades.

Groups like the C40, along with other organizations like Local Governments for Sustainability (ICLEI) and the Compact of Mayors, have been drumming up successful local climate action case studies for years. Take, for example, the recent ecomobility initiative of Kaohsiung, Chinese Taipei, in which the city integrated its bus, metro rail, light rail, and bike sharing systems via some sneaky urban planning. In five years, the program increased public transportation use from 34.5 million to 101.7 million passengers.

It’s no surprise that the first of the New Climate Economy recommendations focuses on low-carbon development in cities. Cities count for upwards of 70 percent of global greenhouse gas emissions, which makes ignoring local climate contributions a bit like dieting by switching to Diet Coke. You’re not fooling anyone.

Source:
Carbon emission cuts at a local level could avoid dangerous global warming

, The Guardian.

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Climate action by cities could help us avoid the worst of climate change

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Study: Air Pollution May Make Your Brain Age Faster

by LaylaS95wbhh Posted on June 24, 2015

Mother Jones

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If you want to prevent cognitive decline with old age, doctors have long recommended eating well, getting enough rest, exercising, reading plenty of books, and staying socially active. Pretty soon, they might start recommending a move out to the countryside.

Living in places with high levels of air pollution, such as cities and along busy highways, may accelerate aging of the brain. In a new study published in the Annals of Neurology, researchers found that over time, increased exposure to air pollution in a group of elderly women without dementia led to significant decreases in their brains’ white matter, which is important for cognition.

The researchers, led by Dr. Jiu-Chiuan Chen of the University of Southern California, looked in particular at exposure to fine particles, which can come from fires, coal-fired power plants, agricultural and industrial emissions, and especially cars and trucks. These particles, which are about 36 times finer than a grain of sand, can enter the lungs and travel into the bloodstream, causing serious damage to the body. The researchers estimated air pollution exposure for a group of 1,403 elderly women from 1999 to 2006, and found that those who were exposed to an increase of 3.49 micrograms of fine particles per cubic meter of air—similar to the increase in pollution you’d get by moving right next to a busy road—experienced a decrease in white matter volume as if their brains had aged an extra one or two years.

These findings support a growing body of new evidence—uncovered today in a Mother Jones investigation by Aaron Reuben—that suggests air pollution’s assault on the body goes much deeper than we previously believed. While scientists have long understood that exposure to fine particles is linked with increased risk of heart attack, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases, as well as respiratory illnesses and cancers, they are only just beginning to suspect that this type of pollution may also be leading to or exacerbating degenerative diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s.

As Reuben reports, when we inhale fine particles, they can actually travel along a pathway from our noses directly into our brains. This results in inflammation, the body’s natural response to pathogens that, over time, can lead to a wide range of chronic diseases. Over the past decade or so, a number of studies, controlling for things like ethnicity, income, education, and other environmental factors, have shown that elderly people living in polluted places seem to lose their mental abilities faster, show more predementia symptoms, and develop Alzheimer’s disease at greater rates than those who breathe cleaner air. Even children in polluted places have shown signs of brain trauma. To learn more about the terrifying new science behind these findings, check out Reuben’s full investigation here.

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Study: Air Pollution May Make Your Brain Age Faster

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Friday Cat Blogging – 19 June 2015

by KristalSilvey Posted on June 19, 2015

Mother Jones

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This is our latest horror story. For reasons unknown (and they’re always unknown, aren’t they?) Hopper has decided that it’s great fun to jump up on the second-story bannister and walk around. We can’t think of any way to stop her from doing this, but one of these days she’s going to set a paw wrong and go flying off the wrong side. Being a cat, maybe it won’t hurt her. But it’s a twelve-foot drop, and some of it is onto a hardwood floor. We have visions of splat going through our heads.

What do we do? Put up a net, like those ones they have on the Golden Gate Bridge to catch jumpers? Get rid of the quilts and install razor wire? Put cat-size exercise weights on Hopper’s feet so she can’t jump so high? There’s got to be an answer.

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Friday Cat Blogging – 19 June 2015

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Look At These Crazy Wave Clouds!

by AdaPutilin Posted on March 31, 2015

Mother Jones

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Look! In the sky! It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a cloud that looks like neither a bird or a plane! A wave! It looks like a wave!

High above South Carolina yesterday “wave clouds” rippled through the sky. They are bonkers!

Look at this video:

Now look at this one:

Weather.com has a whole gallery of crazy shots.

What is a wave cloud? WIRED explains:

These crazy clouds that look like a row of crashing waves are known as Kelvin-Helmholz waves. They form when two layers of air or liquid of different densities move past each other at different speeds, creating shearing at the boundary.

“It could be like oil and vinegar,” Chuang said. “In the ocean, the top is warm and the bottom is really cold. It’s like a thin layer of oil on a big puddle of water.”

When these two layers move past each other, a Kelvin-Helmholz instability is formed that is sort of like a wave. Parts of the boundary move up and parts move down. Because one layer is moving faster than the other, the shear causes the tops of the waves to move horizontally, forming what looks like an ocean wave crashing on the beach.

“It really is like breaking waves,” Chuang said. “A wave breaks when the water on top moves so much faster than the water below that it kind of piles up on itself.”

The world is a weird and beautiful place.

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Look At These Crazy Wave Clouds!

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John Coltrane for Experts

by GiselleBatson Posted on March 9, 2015

Mother Jones

The John Coltrane Quintet Featuring Eric Dolphy
So Many Things: The European Tour 1961
Acrobat
So many “things” indeed! This intriguing four-disc collection of concert performances from November 1961 features six different renditions of the standard “My Favorite Things, each running 20 to 29 minutes, along with more compact versions of “Blue Train,” “I Want to Talk About You.” and other Coltrane favorites. These previously bootlegged concerts were taken from radio broadcasts and suffer slightly from thin sound, but are more than listenable. If So Many Things isn’t for beginners, it’s great extra-credit listening: With multi-instrumentalist Eric Dolphy briefly in the lineup, Coltrane was pushing his tenor and soprano sax chops into new territory, leaving behind traditional melodies and song structures in a restless search for fresh ideas and approaches—a quest he would continue until his death in 1967. The harsher extremes of his final years are yet to be reached, and there’s a mesmerizing, meditative quality to the music throughout that’s dreamy, yet subtly urgent.

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John Coltrane for Experts

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