Superstorm Sandy came ashore nearly three years ago, pummeling the New England and Mid-Atlantic coast and becoming one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. This week, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study released two new reports finding that the health impacts of Sandy continue to linger, illustrating the deep mental footprint left by catastrophic disasters and the challenges of long-term recovery.
Led by researchers at Rutgers University and New York University, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study is based on 1,000 face-to-face interviews with adults in the nine most-affected counties in New Jersey, with questions related to evacuation and recovery as well as health and well-being. Designed to be representative of the 1 million New Jersey residents caught in Sandy’s path and based on a similar approach used after Hurricane Katrina, the study reported that more than 100,000 residents experienced significant damages to their homes due to Sandy. Among those with home damage, more than a quarter reported moderate to severe mental health distress and 14 percent reported signs of post-traumatic distress more than two years after the disaster.
“The similarities between Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are quite disturbing,” said David Abramson, a principal investigator on the study and director of the Program on Population Recovery and Resiliency at New York University, in a news release. “Many adults and children are still experiencing emotional and psychological effects, so long after the storm passed. In a significant number of cases, housing damage is at the heart of the problem, and it’s very concerning to hear that so many of the federally financed programs have ended even though the needs still clearly persist.”
The findings released this week are published in two reports — the PLACE Report, which focuses on issues related to evacuation, housing, community and restoration, and the PERSON Report, which focuses on physical health, mental health and children’s health. Researchers conducted the resident interviews between August 2014 and May 2015. In the PERSON Report, the authors write:
Exposure to a disaster is among the most complex environmental contributors to poor health that individuals and communities may face. Rather than a single acute exposure, such as a lightning strike, there is often an “exposure continuum” in large-scale disaster settings. The disaster event may generate exposure to multiple hazards and they may unfold over time: for example, there may be traumas associated with exposure to the kinetic force of a hurricane, earthquake or tornado. A disaster may lead to an enduring toxic environment that includes potential exposure to heavy metals, fungi, or other hazardous substances present in the water, soil, air, or surrounding buildings and infrastructure. Beyond that, there is the potential for a more insidious ongoing exposure after a disaster: the fraught emotional landscape of an uncertain environment in which the struggles of daily living can present many steep challenges to recovery and that exact a psychological toll.
Among the study’s health findings, researchers found that regardless of their incomes, people who experienced major damage to their homes reported “remarkably similar” effects to people with household incomes of less than $20,000 a year — a strata the report described as “deep poverty.” For example, among those with significantly damaged homes, 17 percent reported problems making rent or mortgage, 18 percent did not have enough money for utilities and 9 percent often didn’t have enough money for food. In regard to environmental health issues, adults who were exposed to mold were two-and-a-half times as likely as those not exposed to mold to receive an asthma diagnosis and were twice as likely to report mental health distress.
Regarding post-traumatic stress disorder, the study uncovered rates described as fairly typical among people who’ve experienced a disaster in the previous two to three years. However, the study did find that higher rates of PTSD were associated with worse housing damage — for example, the PTSD rate among people with little or no housing damage was 3.5 percent, while the rate among those with major damage was 13 percent. Rates of moderate mental distress were also linked to the severity of housing damage.
Among the children who lived through Superstorm Sandy, those whose homes experienced just minor damage were at particularly high risk for psychological and mental issues. For example, the report found that children in homes with minor storm damage were more than four times as likely to be sad or depressed and more than twice as likely to have problems sleeping. Interestingly, children in homes with minor damage were at greater than those in homes with major damage, which researchers said might be attributed to “greater stress due to burdens on their parents or possibly because they are living in homes that are still undergoing repairs, which can serve as a perpetual reminder of Sandy and prevent closure.”
Researchers wrote that their health findings held a number of implications for policymakers and responders. For instance, based on findings connecting mold exposure and mental distress, the report recommended that mold mitigation efforts include a mental health component. In addition, the report encouraged housing assistance programs to speed up repairs in households with minor children to mitigate mental and emotional health impacts.
“By far, one of the least understood aspects of disaster management is how to make recovery from catastrophic events efficient and rapid, so that people can return to a state of normalcy as quickly as possible,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in a new release. “This prolonged uncertainty and persistent trauma are very difficult for families and especially traumatic for children.”
To download copies of the two Sandy Child and Family Health Study reports, click here.
Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1KF4PZ9
Superstorm Sandy came ashore nearly three years ago, pummeling the New England and Mid-Atlantic coast and becoming one of the deadliest and costliest storms to ever hit the U.S. This week, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study released two new reports finding that the health impacts of Sandy continue to linger, illustrating the deep mental footprint left by catastrophic disasters and the challenges of long-term recovery.
Led by researchers at Rutgers University and New York University, the Sandy Child and Family Health Study is based on 1,000 face-to-face interviews with adults in the nine most-affected counties in New Jersey, with questions related to evacuation and recovery as well as health and well-being. Designed to be representative of the 1 million New Jersey residents caught in Sandy’s path and based on a similar approach used after Hurricane Katrina, the study reported that more than 100,000 residents experienced significant damages to their homes due to Sandy. Among those with home damage, more than a quarter reported moderate to severe mental health distress and 14 percent reported signs of post-traumatic distress more than two years after the disaster.
“The similarities between Hurricanes Katrina and Sandy are quite disturbing,” said David Abramson, a principal investigator on the study and director of the Program on Population Recovery and Resiliency at New York University, in a news release. “Many adults and children are still experiencing emotional and psychological effects, so long after the storm passed. In a significant number of cases, housing damage is at the heart of the problem, and it’s very concerning to hear that so many of the federally financed programs have ended even though the needs still clearly persist.”
The findings released this week are published in two reports — the PLACE Report, which focuses on issues related to evacuation, housing, community and restoration, and the PERSON Report, which focuses on physical health, mental health and children’s health. Researchers conducted the resident interviews between August 2014 and May 2015. In the PERSON Report, the authors write:
Exposure to a disaster is among the most complex environmental contributors to poor health that individuals and communities may face. Rather than a single acute exposure, such as a lightning strike, there is often an “exposure continuum” in large-scale disaster settings. The disaster event may generate exposure to multiple hazards and they may unfold over time: for example, there may be traumas associated with exposure to the kinetic force of a hurricane, earthquake or tornado. A disaster may lead to an enduring toxic environment that includes potential exposure to heavy metals, fungi, or other hazardous substances present in the water, soil, air, or surrounding buildings and infrastructure. Beyond that, there is the potential for a more insidious ongoing exposure after a disaster: the fraught emotional landscape of an uncertain environment in which the struggles of daily living can present many steep challenges to recovery and that exact a psychological toll.
Among the study’s health findings, researchers found that regardless of their incomes, people who experienced major damage to their homes reported “remarkably similar” effects to people with household incomes of less than $20,000 a year — a strata the report described as “deep poverty.” For example, among those with significantly damaged homes, 17 percent reported problems making rent or mortgage, 18 percent did not have enough money for utilities and 9 percent often didn’t have enough money for food. In regard to environmental health issues, adults who were exposed to mold were two-and-a-half times as likely as those not exposed to mold to receive an asthma diagnosis and were twice as likely to report mental health distress.
Regarding post-traumatic stress disorder, the study uncovered rates described as fairly typical among people who’ve experienced a disaster in the previous two to three years. However, the study did find that higher rates of PTSD were associated with worse housing damage — for example, the PTSD rate among people with little or no housing damage was 3.5 percent, while the rate among those with major damage was 13 percent. Rates of moderate mental distress were also linked to the severity of housing damage.
Among the children who lived through Superstorm Sandy, those whose homes experienced just minor damage were at particularly high risk for psychological and mental issues. For example, the report found that children in homes with minor storm damage were more than four times as likely to be sad or depressed and more than twice as likely to have problems sleeping. Interestingly, children in homes with minor damage were at greater than those in homes with major damage, which researchers said might be attributed to “greater stress due to burdens on their parents or possibly because they are living in homes that are still undergoing repairs, which can serve as a perpetual reminder of Sandy and prevent closure.”
Researchers wrote that their health findings held a number of implications for policymakers and responders. For instance, based on findings connecting mold exposure and mental distress, the report recommended that mold mitigation efforts include a mental health component. In addition, the report encouraged housing assistance programs to speed up repairs in households with minor children to mitigate mental and emotional health impacts.
“By far, one of the least understood aspects of disaster management is how to make recovery from catastrophic events efficient and rapid, so that people can return to a state of normalcy as quickly as possible,” said Irwin Redlener, director of the National Center for Disaster Preparedness at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, in a new release. “This prolonged uncertainty and persistent trauma are very difficult for families and especially traumatic for children.”
To download copies of the two Sandy Child and Family Health Study reports, click here.
Kim Krisberg is a freelance public health writer living in Austin, Texas, and has been writing about public health for more than a decade.
“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” –Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
You’ve heard it said many times here: the Universe, since the Big Bang, is 13.8 billion years old. But how do we know this to be true?
Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by me.
Moreover, how many different lines of evidence do we have that leads us to this conclusion? Is it like it is for dark matter, where we have a whole slew of them? Or are there only one or two different things we can look at in order to know?
Image credit: Joel D. Hartman, Princeton University, viahttp://www.astro.princeton.edu/~jhartman/M3_movies.html.
“Youth is the gift of nature, but age is a work of art.” –Stanislaw Jerzy Lec
You’ve heard it said many times here: the Universe, since the Big Bang, is 13.8 billion years old. But how do we know this to be true?
Image credit: Bock et al. (2006, astro-ph/0604101); modifications by me.
Moreover, how many different lines of evidence do we have that leads us to this conclusion? Is it like it is for dark matter, where we have a whole slew of them? Or are there only one or two different things we can look at in order to know?
Image credit: Joel D. Hartman, Princeton University, viahttp://www.astro.princeton.edu/~jhartman/M3_movies.html.
Toy cars took center stage at a Military Child Education Coalition seminar in Washington, D.C., yesterday. While it was a good time for the kids involved, the lessons they inadvertently learned were the real point.
The workshop on Speedometry challenged children to experiment with Hot Wheels on speed bumps, loops and ramps, which taught them science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, concepts.
About to test out a Speedometry racetrack. DoD News photo
“That’s a key thing: They’re learning more than they know they’re learning,” said Fred Freking, associate professor of clinical education at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Speedometry was created with education researchers and toymaker Mattel to help get kids interested in STEM through good old fashioned Hot Wheels fun. The kids use critical thinking, collaboration and scientific practices to build real-world problem-solving skills.
“There’s a challenge to create a track that’s going to make the car go further. You look in that room, and they’ve got chairs on top of tables and tracks going all over the place,” Freking said. “Their creativity in creating and changing models based on their experiences was amazing.”
U.S. Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn talks Speedometry with kids at a Military Child Education Coalition seminar on July 30, 2015. Photo courtesy MCEC photographer Susan Connolly
While the Speedometry curriculum is designed for fourth-grade students, others also took part, and several of them shared their experiences with a panel of military and corporate leaders afterward. One student named Katie said her group tested cars of varying weights, lengths and shapes on tracks they had to modify several times.
“You have to keep changing and testing to find out your actual conclusion, and that’s what I think is fun about science,” she said.
“It is a very good way to learn how aerodynamics work with speed and weight and mass and other things,” said a student named Christian, whose projects also had to be modified repeatedly.
Learning to fail and continue on was an important lesson.
“I think what we saw was the ability of our youth to innovate — to discover solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems,” said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, who was on the Speedometry panel. “In the U.S. Army, we’re all about leaders who can innovate to solve problems, so I’d say we’ve got some future soldiers right in front of us.”
The kids were enthralled by the science of Speedometry. DoD News photo
Allyn said it’s critical that the U.S. expand kids’ interest levels in STEM education to create adaptive leaders, especially when it comes to the Force of the Future initiative, which has a focus on cybersecurity and in-the-field technology. One example he gave was app technology that soldiers currently use on a smartphone-like device called Nett Warrior.
“It can pass critical intelligence. It can provide enough data about the terrain that [a soldier] is about to go over. It can enable him to very quickly send a situation report back just by hitting a couple of toggles on the smartphone instead of having to stop, write a report and send a messenger back 100 miles like they used to have to do in the old days,” Allyn said.
The general also told the kids about how his role as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division made him learn about weight, acceleration, wind and gravity — important things to know when you’re trying not to crash-land.
Kids build a racetrack at the Speedometry workshop. DoD News photo
“The variable you can’t control is your body weight … so the primary way of avoiding a hard landing is turning to the wind,” Allyn explained. “I learned as a very young leader that this application of physics in the real world [is important]. When I was studying that in high school and college, I wasn’t much interested in it, but when I started applying it on drop zones all around the world, it really sunk in.”
“You’re all at the age where you have an opportunity to learn analytics skills — science and math that you were starting to learn today,” Coast Guard Vice Adm. Sandra Stosz, another panel member, told the kids. “That will allow you to be a part of something way bigger than yourselves and will be important work when you’re adults.”
One key point the panel gave: Parents need to let their kids experiment so they can problem-solve for themselves.
Zoom! A Hot Wheels car shoots out of a Speedometry racetrack loop. DoD News photo
“I think we, as parents, want structure, but we also have to let them play a little bit to figure stuff out,” Freking said.
Speedometry is a free curriculum that teachers can bring to their classrooms. All they have to do is go to http://ift.tt/1JB5JEC and download the correct curriculum for their school. Parents can use it, too; the website also offers family activities to download.
Disclaimer: The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense of this website or the information, products or services contained therein. For other than authorized activities such as military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DOD website.
from Armed with Science http://ift.tt/1JB5MA0
By Katie Lange DoD News, Defense Media Activity
Toy cars took center stage at a Military Child Education Coalition seminar in Washington, D.C., yesterday. While it was a good time for the kids involved, the lessons they inadvertently learned were the real point.
The workshop on Speedometry challenged children to experiment with Hot Wheels on speed bumps, loops and ramps, which taught them science, technology, engineering and math, or STEM, concepts.
About to test out a Speedometry racetrack. DoD News photo
“That’s a key thing: They’re learning more than they know they’re learning,” said Fred Freking, associate professor of clinical education at the University of California, Los Angeles.
Speedometry was created with education researchers and toymaker Mattel to help get kids interested in STEM through good old fashioned Hot Wheels fun. The kids use critical thinking, collaboration and scientific practices to build real-world problem-solving skills.
“There’s a challenge to create a track that’s going to make the car go further. You look in that room, and they’ve got chairs on top of tables and tracks going all over the place,” Freking said. “Their creativity in creating and changing models based on their experiences was amazing.”
U.S. Army Gen. Daniel B. Allyn talks Speedometry with kids at a Military Child Education Coalition seminar on July 30, 2015. Photo courtesy MCEC photographer Susan Connolly
While the Speedometry curriculum is designed for fourth-grade students, others also took part, and several of them shared their experiences with a panel of military and corporate leaders afterward. One student named Katie said her group tested cars of varying weights, lengths and shapes on tracks they had to modify several times.
“You have to keep changing and testing to find out your actual conclusion, and that’s what I think is fun about science,” she said.
“It is a very good way to learn how aerodynamics work with speed and weight and mass and other things,” said a student named Christian, whose projects also had to be modified repeatedly.
Learning to fail and continue on was an important lesson.
“I think what we saw was the ability of our youth to innovate — to discover solutions to seemingly insurmountable problems,” said Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Daniel B. Allyn, who was on the Speedometry panel. “In the U.S. Army, we’re all about leaders who can innovate to solve problems, so I’d say we’ve got some future soldiers right in front of us.”
The kids were enthralled by the science of Speedometry. DoD News photo
Allyn said it’s critical that the U.S. expand kids’ interest levels in STEM education to create adaptive leaders, especially when it comes to the Force of the Future initiative, which has a focus on cybersecurity and in-the-field technology. One example he gave was app technology that soldiers currently use on a smartphone-like device called Nett Warrior.
“It can pass critical intelligence. It can provide enough data about the terrain that [a soldier] is about to go over. It can enable him to very quickly send a situation report back just by hitting a couple of toggles on the smartphone instead of having to stop, write a report and send a messenger back 100 miles like they used to have to do in the old days,” Allyn said.
The general also told the kids about how his role as a paratrooper in the 82nd Airborne Division made him learn about weight, acceleration, wind and gravity — important things to know when you’re trying not to crash-land.
Kids build a racetrack at the Speedometry workshop. DoD News photo
“The variable you can’t control is your body weight … so the primary way of avoiding a hard landing is turning to the wind,” Allyn explained. “I learned as a very young leader that this application of physics in the real world [is important]. When I was studying that in high school and college, I wasn’t much interested in it, but when I started applying it on drop zones all around the world, it really sunk in.”
“You’re all at the age where you have an opportunity to learn analytics skills — science and math that you were starting to learn today,” Coast Guard Vice Adm. Sandra Stosz, another panel member, told the kids. “That will allow you to be a part of something way bigger than yourselves and will be important work when you’re adults.”
One key point the panel gave: Parents need to let their kids experiment so they can problem-solve for themselves.
Zoom! A Hot Wheels car shoots out of a Speedometry racetrack loop. DoD News photo
“I think we, as parents, want structure, but we also have to let them play a little bit to figure stuff out,” Freking said.
Speedometry is a free curriculum that teachers can bring to their classrooms. All they have to do is go to http://ift.tt/1JB5JEC and download the correct curriculum for their school. Parents can use it, too; the website also offers family activities to download.
Disclaimer: The appearance of hyperlinks does not constitute endorsement by the Department of Defense of this website or the information, products or services contained therein. For other than authorized activities such as military exchanges and Morale, Welfare and Recreation sites, the Department of Defense does not exercise any editorial control over the information you may find at these locations. Such links are provided consistent with the stated purpose of this DOD website.
Looking for your next summer read? Look no further—catch up on the latest EPA environmental science right here!
Cooking Up Solutions to Climate Change EPA’s 5th annual Science of Climate Change Workshop program focused on climate science and the impacts of climate change. World-class scientists, engineers, and policy experts demonstrated their research and led hands-on activities to encourage innovative thinking.
Private, Government Collaboration Advances Air Sensor Technology Researchers from EPA and Aclima Inc., a San Francisco-based technology company, worked together on a pilot project in Denver, Colorado to assemble a real-time view of pollutant levels and meteorological conditions at the street level. The project involved mapping pollutants measured by three Google Street View cars outfitted with Aclima’s mobile platform of air pollution sensors.
Street View vehicles equipped with air quality sensors clocked 750 hours of drive time and gathered 150 million data points, correlated with data from EPA stationary measurement sites. EPA provided scientific expertise in study design and instrument operations. Image courtesy of Aclima.
If you have any comments or questions about what I share or about the week’s events, please submit them below in the comments section!
About the Author: Kacey Fitzpatrick is a student contractor and writer working with the science communication team in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.
from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1KEdNWu
By Kacey Fitzpatrick
Looking for your next summer read? Look no further—catch up on the latest EPA environmental science right here!
Cooking Up Solutions to Climate Change EPA’s 5th annual Science of Climate Change Workshop program focused on climate science and the impacts of climate change. World-class scientists, engineers, and policy experts demonstrated their research and led hands-on activities to encourage innovative thinking.
Private, Government Collaboration Advances Air Sensor Technology Researchers from EPA and Aclima Inc., a San Francisco-based technology company, worked together on a pilot project in Denver, Colorado to assemble a real-time view of pollutant levels and meteorological conditions at the street level. The project involved mapping pollutants measured by three Google Street View cars outfitted with Aclima’s mobile platform of air pollution sensors.
Street View vehicles equipped with air quality sensors clocked 750 hours of drive time and gathered 150 million data points, correlated with data from EPA stationary measurement sites. EPA provided scientific expertise in study design and instrument operations. Image courtesy of Aclima.
If you have any comments or questions about what I share or about the week’s events, please submit them below in the comments section!
About the Author: Kacey Fitzpatrick is a student contractor and writer working with the science communication team in EPA’s Office of Research and Development.
Hit the reset button as the beginning of August approaches on Saturday! Spend your weekend outdoors with family and friends at one of these fresh, “green”, and affordable events we’ve got featured here for you. Whether you’re fashion forward and attending the Eco-Fashion Show or practicing Yoga on the Beach, make sure to use our ‘Welcome to the Weekend’ #WTWEPA hashtag on twitter so we can share your adventures!
Friday – July 31, 2015
Hip Hop Dance Aerobics Brooklyn Brooklyn Bridge Park 334 Furman Street Friday, July 31, 2015 7 p.m.
Get your groove on this Friday night at the Brooklyn Bridge Park! This cardio workout in disguise features hip hop music and teachers that break down each movement for participants of all levels. Be sure to get there by 6:30pm to complete registration and note that you must fill out a waiver upon sign-in!
Downtown Sounds Glen Cove Glen Cove Village Square Intersection of Glen and Bridge Streets Friday, July 31, 2015 7 – 10 p.m.
Get away from the hustle of the city and head out to Glen Cove for their “Downtown Sounds” event! There will be live music and a chance to check out some great restaurants near Village Square.
Manhattan Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Avenue Friday, July 31, 2015 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Spend your Friday with the kids at the exhibition ‘Saving Place: Fifty Years of New York City Landmarks’. This interactive activity allows for kids to be an architect for the day! They can draw their own New York City while you explore the museum on a self-guided tour.
Did you know that a third of our food waste ends up in landfills? If you’re interested in composting and would like to learn how to turn your food scraps into feed for gardens or household plants, this free workshop is right up your alley. Keep in mind that composting can eliminate up to 30 percent of your household food waste from your garbage can! RSVP by emailing pleasantvillagegarden@gmail.com
Open House at Flagship Farm in LIC Queens Flagship Farm 37-18 Northern Boulevard Long Island City Saturday, August 1, 2015 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Come check out Queens’ very own gigantic rooftop farm this Saturday. Whether you choose to browse the layout, buy some farm-fresh produce, or just enjoy the view – be sure to take it all in! There is no registration necessary for your visit and the open house is free!
Yoga on the Beach Rockaway Beach Beach off 108th Street, Off Shorefront Parkway Saturday, August 1, 2015 8– 9 a.m.
Grab your friends and join yoga instructor Helen Kilgallen for this free, beginner’s Hatha Yoga class. This early morning class will be a wonderful way to unwind after a busy Friday night. Be sure to bring a mat, large towel, or blanket for your practice.
Sunday – August 2, 2015
Eco Fashion in the Park Bronx to Manhattan Highbridge Park (Bridge Area) Enter by 172nd Street and Amsterdam Ave. Sunday, August 2, 2015 3:30– 5 p.m.
This event will guarantee you a very busy Sunday! Get everyone together and head over to Highbridge Park to witness this first-ever fashion show with a runway that spans over the High Bridge. These eco-friendly fashions will be the star of the day but be sure to check out the clothing swap boutique with drop off beginning at 1 p.m. and the actual swap starting at 5 p.m. as well.
Birds of Prey Brooklyn Brooklyn Bridge Park Sunday, August 2, 2015 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Bring the kiddies to Brooklyn Bridge Park on Sunday for a fun few hours of learning! Join Volunteers for Wildlife as they speak about raptors from 11 a.m. to noon and then join Private Picassos for an outdoor pop-up reading room and art activities.
Bark in the Park Brooklyn Municipal Credit Union Park 1904 Surf Ave Sunday, August 2, 2015 11:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
The Alliance for NYC’s Animals and the Brooklyn Cyclones host this awesome, fun-filled event for you and your dog! Watch as the Cyclones take on the Batavia Muckdogs at MCU Park (tickets for one person and up to two dogs are $10). If you’d rather play in the park with your pup, don’t fret. Activities outside the stadium begin at noon, which include free photo-ops and free personalized pet tag give-aways.
from The EPA Blog http://ift.tt/1KEdNWm
Hit the reset button as the beginning of August approaches on Saturday! Spend your weekend outdoors with family and friends at one of these fresh, “green”, and affordable events we’ve got featured here for you. Whether you’re fashion forward and attending the Eco-Fashion Show or practicing Yoga on the Beach, make sure to use our ‘Welcome to the Weekend’ #WTWEPA hashtag on twitter so we can share your adventures!
Friday – July 31, 2015
Hip Hop Dance Aerobics Brooklyn Brooklyn Bridge Park 334 Furman Street Friday, July 31, 2015 7 p.m.
Get your groove on this Friday night at the Brooklyn Bridge Park! This cardio workout in disguise features hip hop music and teachers that break down each movement for participants of all levels. Be sure to get there by 6:30pm to complete registration and note that you must fill out a waiver upon sign-in!
Downtown Sounds Glen Cove Glen Cove Village Square Intersection of Glen and Bridge Streets Friday, July 31, 2015 7 – 10 p.m.
Get away from the hustle of the city and head out to Glen Cove for their “Downtown Sounds” event! There will be live music and a chance to check out some great restaurants near Village Square.
Manhattan Museum of the City of New York 1220 Fifth Avenue Friday, July 31, 2015 11 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Spend your Friday with the kids at the exhibition ‘Saving Place: Fifty Years of New York City Landmarks’. This interactive activity allows for kids to be an architect for the day! They can draw their own New York City while you explore the museum on a self-guided tour.
Did you know that a third of our food waste ends up in landfills? If you’re interested in composting and would like to learn how to turn your food scraps into feed for gardens or household plants, this free workshop is right up your alley. Keep in mind that composting can eliminate up to 30 percent of your household food waste from your garbage can! RSVP by emailing pleasantvillagegarden@gmail.com
Open House at Flagship Farm in LIC Queens Flagship Farm 37-18 Northern Boulevard Long Island City Saturday, August 1, 2015 11 a.m. – 4 p.m.
Come check out Queens’ very own gigantic rooftop farm this Saturday. Whether you choose to browse the layout, buy some farm-fresh produce, or just enjoy the view – be sure to take it all in! There is no registration necessary for your visit and the open house is free!
Yoga on the Beach Rockaway Beach Beach off 108th Street, Off Shorefront Parkway Saturday, August 1, 2015 8– 9 a.m.
Grab your friends and join yoga instructor Helen Kilgallen for this free, beginner’s Hatha Yoga class. This early morning class will be a wonderful way to unwind after a busy Friday night. Be sure to bring a mat, large towel, or blanket for your practice.
Sunday – August 2, 2015
Eco Fashion in the Park Bronx to Manhattan Highbridge Park (Bridge Area) Enter by 172nd Street and Amsterdam Ave. Sunday, August 2, 2015 3:30– 5 p.m.
This event will guarantee you a very busy Sunday! Get everyone together and head over to Highbridge Park to witness this first-ever fashion show with a runway that spans over the High Bridge. These eco-friendly fashions will be the star of the day but be sure to check out the clothing swap boutique with drop off beginning at 1 p.m. and the actual swap starting at 5 p.m. as well.
Birds of Prey Brooklyn Brooklyn Bridge Park Sunday, August 2, 2015 11 a.m. – 1 p.m.
Bring the kiddies to Brooklyn Bridge Park on Sunday for a fun few hours of learning! Join Volunteers for Wildlife as they speak about raptors from 11 a.m. to noon and then join Private Picassos for an outdoor pop-up reading room and art activities.
Bark in the Park Brooklyn Municipal Credit Union Park 1904 Surf Ave Sunday, August 2, 2015 11:30 a.m. – 4 p.m.
The Alliance for NYC’s Animals and the Brooklyn Cyclones host this awesome, fun-filled event for you and your dog! Watch as the Cyclones take on the Batavia Muckdogs at MCU Park (tickets for one person and up to two dogs are $10). If you’d rather play in the park with your pup, don’t fret. Activities outside the stadium begin at noon, which include free photo-ops and free personalized pet tag give-aways.
Tonight, there’s a “Blue Moon” shining brightly in the sky. What you may have wondered is how come the moon didn’t appear so blue? NASA has the answer for you, and as the headline above indicates, it has nothing to do with the color blue.
So while it can appear to have a blue tint if you happen to be near a volcano, or even a reddish tint depending on where you are, the blue moon is simply a second full moon during a month’s span. Still, it’s pretty awesome to see two full moons in a month, knowing that it won’t happen again until January of 2018.
Tonight, there’s a “Blue Moon” shining brightly in the sky. What you may have wondered is how come the moon didn’t appear so blue? NASA has the answer for you, and as the headline above indicates, it has nothing to do with the color blue.
So while it can appear to have a blue tint if you happen to be near a volcano, or even a reddish tint depending on where you are, the blue moon is simply a second full moon during a month’s span. Still, it’s pretty awesome to see two full moons in a month, knowing that it won’t happen again until January of 2018.
I frequently discuss a disturbing phenomenon known as “quackademic medicine.” Basically, quackademic medicine is a phenomenon that has taken hold over the last two decades in medical academia in which once ostensibly science-based medical schools and academic medical centers embrace quackery. This embrace was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) but among quackademics the preferred term is now “integrative medicine.” Of course, when looked at objectively, integrative medicine is far more a brand than a specialty. Specifically, it’s a combination of rebranding some science-based modalities, such as nutrition and exercise, as somehow being “alternative” or “integrative” with the integration of outright quackery, such as reiki and “energy healing,” acupuncture, and naturopathy, into conventional medicine. As my good bud Mark Crislip put it, mixing cow pie with apple pie does not make the cow pie better, but we seem to be “integrating” the cow pie of quackery with the apple pie of science-based medicine thinking that somehow it will improve the smell, taste, and texture of the cow pie.
From time to time, I’ve briefly thought about reviving the academic woo aggregator, but quickly and inevitably ended up giving up trying to come up with lists of the worst of the worst. There are just too many now, and keeping such an aggregator up to date would be too much work, as I discovered when I wrote my Nature Reviews Cancer article on integrative oncology last year. However, I do believe in featuring specific institutions when something comes up that draws my attention to them, and this just happened last week with Georgetown University. Basically, a reader at my not-so-super-secret other blog pointed out the Spring/Summer issue of Georgetown Medicine Magazine. It’s an issue devoted to integrative medicine at Georgetown and it is horrifying to anyone who believes that medicine should be science-based. Not surprisingly, it was a Georgetown alumnus who was so shocked when he received this issue in the mail that his embarrassment knew no bounds for having come from that institution. Worse, from the tone of the articles in this issue, Georgetown is proud of its integrative medicine program, to the point where it is touting it as a strength and featuring it on the cover of its magazine. Just look at its cover, which features a picture of a woman preparing to get an acupuncture needle stuck somewhere, along with the title of the issue, “Caring for the whole person with integrative medicine”. Yes, it’s the “holistic” trope that drives me crazy because you don’t have to embrace quackery to be a holistic physician.
Integrating pseudoscience into the medical curriculum
Longtime readers might remember that I’ve discussed Georgetown before because it was a “pioneer” (if you can call it that) in “integrating” quackery into the medical school curriculum. Having received a grant from the then-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), renamed in December the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), to integrate CAM into its core curriculum, Georgetown proceeded to do just that. Here’s an example, a blast from the past if you will, quoted from a 2003 Georgetown brochure (retrieved again, thanks to Archive.org):
“One of the reasons CAM is usually offered as an elective is that there’s just no time or room in U.S. medical schools to fit in one more massive subject,” says Michael Lumpkin, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown. “When the course is an elective, a self-selected group – maybe 10 or 20 students in a class of 180 medical students – will take it,” Lumpkin says. “What we’ve tried at Georgetown is rather than create all new courses, we take relevant CAM issues and modalities and weave them seamlessly into existing courses.
The “seamless” weaving of CAM into existing classes includes, for instance, a presentation by an acupuncturist on the “anatomy of acupuncture” in the gross anatomy course for first-year students. The same lecturer explores acupuncture’s application in pain relief in the neuroscience course…
Haramati and Lumpkin say Georgetown’s program is distinct from CAM initiatives in other medical schools in two ways: The school is integrating CAM education into existing course work across all four years of each student’s medical education, and the initiative includes a mind-body class to help students use techniques to manage their own health and improve self-care.
Teaching acupuncture points during gross anatomy? You can hear the cringing of advocates of science-based medicine everywhere, given that acupuncture points do not exist except in the minds of acupuncturists, as there are no anatomic correlates to them. So what’s been going on since then? Jane Varner Malhotra tells us in Georgetown’s Evolving Study in Complementary and Alternative Therapies. Here’s what happened after Georgetown got the $1.7 million grant in 2001:
Haramati recalls some uncertainty around the method for how to actually make it happen. “We were walking a path where the advocates were saying, ‘You’ve got to do more,’ while skeptics were saying, ‘What are you doing teaching nonsense?’” he recalls. “And we were going down the path saying, ‘We’re going to look at this objectively.’”
Objectively. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. An objective analysis of acupuncture would not support “integrating” the teaching of acupuncture points into gross anatomy and neurology class. Once again, acupuncture points do not exist except in the minds of acupuncturists, and even then I’m not so sure.
The article also does the requisite rebranding of natural products pharmacology as somehow being “CAM,” when it’s not. There’s a pharmacologist named Hakima Amri, featured smiling with her arms crossed in one of those stereotypical poses that magazines like this like to use in their photos bragging how she had realized that in her research she was “using top-notch technology in the biomedical sciences,” such as PCR, animal studies, cell culture, all “to study a plant extract” (Ginkgo biloba). None of this, of course, is CAM.
And Georgetown credulously teaches homeopathy, The One Quackery to Rule Them All:
Amri enjoys seeing students open their minds to new concepts. Learning disciplines like homeopathy may require students to radically disregard their previous understandings about receptors and responses in toxicology, for example. “I tell students that for the next few hours, put aside all they have learned in biochemistry, pharmacology and cell biology—empty their brains—because homeopathy is a completely different concept. Then I see big eyes on their faces!” laughs Amri.
Yes, Georgetown is telling its medical students, forget all that boring old reductionist “Western” science you’ve learned all these years. Open your mind to the sympathetic magic that is homeopathy. Never mind that it has no basis in science and its precepts violate multiple well-established laws of physics and chemistry. Personally, I don’t mind a medical school teaching homeopathy, but only so that doctors know what it is and how utterly pseudoscientific it is. (Most doctors still think it’s just herbal medicine.) However, clearly that’s not what Georgetown is doing. How a pharmacologist can teach homeopathy as anything but as an example of the most abject pseudoscience is beyond me, but that’s what Amri sure appears to be doing, her claim that “we are teaching them [medical students] how to evaluate the science of the therapy, critically analyze it and learn about these medical systems in the most open-minded way” notwithstanding. She seems to be all about the open-mindedness and not so much about critical thinking, similar to the entire Georgetown CAM curriculum.
And its faculty are proud of Georgetown’s role in promoting quackademic medicine:
Since the early years of complementary medicine research and education at Georgetown, the university has held a critical place on the national scene. Hosting multiple cross-disciplinary dialogues, Georgetown has convened chiropractors and conventional doctors, acupuncturists and anesthesiologists to advance the science-based study of integrative medicine.
And:
Over the past 15 years, the way CAM has been taught at Georgetown has evolved, but the goals have remained constant: to train students to objectively and rigorously assess the safety and efficacy of various modalities, and explain the mechanistic basis for therapies like acupuncture, massage, herbs and supplements, and mind-body interactions.
If Georgetown teaches homeopathy as anything other than an example of pseudoscience and integrates acupuncture into its gross anatomy, physiology, and neuroscience curricula, it’s doing nothing of the sort. Let’s take a look at the sort of research into the “mechanisms” of acupuncture that Georgetown is so proud of.
Torturing rats in the name of acupuncture pseudoscience
In another article in the issue “Where’s the Evidence? Probing the Underlying Mechanisms of Acupuncture“, a recently-published study by a member of the Georgetown faculty is featured as a great example of how Georgetown is doing what it claims with respect to evidence for CAM. First, though, we learn that a nurse anesthetist and licensed acupuncturist Ladan Eshkevari, Ph.D., teaches sessions on acupuncture in the second year physiology class. There, she also teaches TCM medicine pulse analysis. Now, certainly every physician should know how to assess a pulse, but that’s not what’s going on here. What’s going on here is the teaching of an ancient, prescientific method of assessing pulses:
The professor of nursing, pharmacology and physiology shows the students three different pulse points on each hand used in TCM to diagnose the health of specific anatomical organs. The best practitioners employ over 70 different ways to describe the subtle variations in the human pulse, she explains, as the students touch their own wrists. Is the pulse skipping, surging, floating, faint? Determining the right descriptor can be a challenge, Eshkevari adds, but the richness of the options reveals the complexity and nuance of the ancient practice.
“In traditional Chinese medicine, organs are viewed by their energy function, not their anatomic function,” Eshkevari continues, showing visual maps of the body linking heart and small intestine, lung and large intestine. She explains that with holistic medicine, everything is connected, versus the more typical American, allopathic medical practice of dividing the body into compartments and developing specialties.
One notes that these “subtle variations” are in general not reproducibly detected from practitioner to practitioner and have little or no evidence to show that they reliably link to specific organs. The same is true of tongue diagnosis in TCM, in which different organs are mapped to different parts of the tongue, such that examining the tongue can lead to diagnoses of abnormalities of specific organs. It’s utter nonsense, of course, no more than a TCM version of reflexology, which does the same thing, only mapping organs and body parts to the soles of the feet and palms of the hand. Yet at Georgetown, TCM reflexology is taught as fact.
Let’s take a look at the study that is featured in a large chunk of this article:
Eshkevari turned to rats to help her find answers. Using a successful stress model developed by a fellow researcher at Georgetown, she exposed three of four groups of animals to one hour a day in a container with a layer of ice water on the bottom. After two weeks, the rats measured high stress hormone levels that would not come down to baseline. They had chronic stress.
Won’t someone think of the poor lab rats? Well, I already did. I wrote about this sorry excuse for an animal study and useless torturing of rats for no good scientific reason last week. I do note, however, that in the accompanying photo, Eshkevari is shown in the same pose as everyone else, arms crossed, with the exception that the smile is missing and she’s wearing a lab coat standing in front of an impressive lab bench full of chemicals and instruments, the better to paint the picture of her in the mind of the reader as a Very Serious Scientist. At least the photographer restrained himself from filling up Erlenmyer flasks and beakers with multicolored solutions, which is the ultimate photographic cliché in stories of this sort.
Ladan Eshkevari, Ph.D. in her laboratory. Truly, I need to have a picture of myself taken with such a kick-ass “I’m a scientist, ma-an!” pose in my laboratory. Sadly, I don’t have as much stuff on my lab bench and shelves, which mean I must not be as much of a true scientist as Eshkevari, but I could add Erlenmeyer flasks with colored solutions in the background for an even more “science-y” feel.
Be that as it may, the sheer awfulness of this study hasn’t deterred Eshkevari from wanting to “translate” these results to the clinic:
The next stage for her research will be human trials—an expensive and complicated endeavor but one she is determined to explore.
“This is where I’m now stuck,” she explains. “I’m trying to get grant funding to do research on humans to see if these discoveries translate.”
Eshkevari remains hopeful that, with rising interest from both the public and scientific communities, this next critical step will find support.
To me, it would be unethical to carry out a human study based on such poor quality and equivocal preclinical evidence. Unfortunately, it would not surprise me if Eshkevari succeeds in getting funding to do one. Such is the pernicious effect of quackademic medicine on clinical trial ethics. Eshkevari argues that doctors didn’t know how inhalational anesthesia worked when it was first discovered but used it anyway, the implication being that we should not be uncomfortable using acupuncture because we don’t yet understand its mechanism of action. Does anyone see the flaw in that reasoning? It’s obvious. That inhalational anesthesia worked was indisputable. In contrast, there is no good evidence that acupuncture works better than placebo. This brings up another problematic attitude in the mindset of quackademics:
“Western, allopathic physicians and nurse practitioners want to be able to point to the evidence, and see the research published in peer-reviewed journals,” says Eshkevari. “This helps us comfortably recommend complementary medicine to our patients. Finding the evidence—I think that’s the biggest step.”
In other words, rather than finding out if acupuncture works, quackademics like Eshkevari assume that it does work and then go chasing mechanisms. It is, as Harriet Hall so aptly described it, Tooth Fairy science.
Faith healing in the chemotherapy suite
I frequently call homeopathy The One Quackery To Rule Them All. However, there is a definite challenger for that title, which can be looked at a different way as well; i.e., as Saruman trying to usurp Sauron on his dark throne. I’m referring, of course, to “energy medicine.” Whatever form energy medicine takes, it’s based on prescientific vitalism of a variety that posits the existence of a “life energy” that can be manipulated or infused into the patient for healing effect.
The two most common forms of energy medicine in quackademia are therapeutic touch and reiki. Therapeutic touch (TT) is a misnomer in that it doesn’t usually involve actual touching (which negates the potential pleasure of a good massage or back rub), but rather involves the placing of hands close to the body. It rests on the concept that there is a human “energy field” that TT practitioners can manipulate to make patients feel better. It’s a concept so ludicrous that even an 11 year old girl could show that TT practitioners cannot detect a human energy field any better than random chance alone would allow them to guess. Unfortunately, TT is almost ubiquitous in nursing programs and hospitals. The second is reiki. The main differences between the two are that (1) reiki involves more elaborate hand gestures and (2) reiki posits the existence of an external source of life energy (the “universal source”) into which the reiki practitioner can tap to direct the healing energy into the patient. Reiki is, in essence, faith healing based on Eastern mysticism rather than the Christian religion. Unfortunately, reiki is commonly offered in many medical centers, academic or community, and even in NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers.
For a long time Denise von Hengst had a secret she kept from friends and physicians alike. As she was undergoing treatment at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center for a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer—triple positive, HER2 positive—she was also regularly receiving Reiki, an ancient form of Japanese healing, to mitigate the debilitating anxiety and fear that accompanied her cancer diagnosis.
“At first I told no one about the Reiki,” says von Hengst. “Fear of the ‘woo-woo’ factor. People might think I’m nuts.”
No, a patient like Denise von Hengst is not “nuts,” although, it must be noted, she discovered reiki before coming to Georgetown for her cancer and ultimately became a reiki master. However, the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is unethical and irresponsible for offering, in essence, magic to its patients as therapy. If I were not a physician and didn’t know anything about reiki, if an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center offered it I’d think it must be evidence-based. That’s how most patients perceive it. The failure is on Georgetown’s part for offering reiki as though it were anything more than prescientific vitalistic superstition and claiming that it has a scientific basis, not on the part of patients like von Hengst, who trust that doctors are offering science-based therapy. In this case, Georgetown reinforced von Hengst’s initial attraction to reiki by giving it the appearance of scientific validity.
To her credit, the author of this article does acknowledge the “skepticism” that doctors have about reiki:
However, skepticism remains, not only in the general population, but also within the medical field. Recently, several clinical trials have emerged attempting to prove, or disprove, the effectiveness of Reiki. Many of these studies have been criticized for the trial. design, number of participants and reporting mechanisms. Results of the trials are often inconclusive.
Note that Bayes theorem tells us that “inconclusive” results plus an incredibly implausible mechanism = negative trial. So, yes, these are are negative trials. None of that matters, though, because the article quickly shifts gears to use anecdotal evidence and appeals to authority and popularity:
Yet as the anecdotal proof mounts and Reiki’s popularity increases, prestigious medical centers around the country are taking note and offering the treatment to patients at their facilities. Reiki can be found at hospitals and medical centers such as Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Stanford Health Care, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Duke University Health System and Cleveland Clinic, to name a few. Many academic medical centers such as Georgetown incorporate complementary therapies into their teaching curricula.
And all of these hospitals have failed to uphold a science-based standard of care. Sadly, they are not alone. Far from it. Worse, they are training the next generation of doctors to embrace pseudoscience.
Integrating quackery: The future of medicine?
Perhaps the most disturbing part of this issue of Georgetown Medicine is an article entitled “Putting Integrative Medicine Into Practice.” Basically, it’s a profile of medical students and recent Georgetown graduates doing exactly what the title says. It also includes a profile of an acupuncturist named Rebecca Berkson, who works at a Georgetown-affiliated facility, the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, Virginia. In the name of Georgetown, she provides “acupuncture, its associated techniques including moxabustion and cupping, and Chinese herbal medicine.” Cupping, remember, claims to remove unnamed “toxins” from the skin thusly:
It’s a treatment almost as ridiculous as TT, and it’s being offered at Georgetown as though it has validity.
There’s also a medical student from the Howard University class of 2015 named Brian Nwannunu. He graduated from Georgetown’s CAM master’s degree program. Now he’s a believer:
My plan is to go into orthopedic surgery. For my patients experiencing back pain, I will work with CAM practitioners such as acupuncturists and chiropractors in addition to offering allopathic medicine. After my own experience with a low-back injury during a workout, I went to a chiropractor for a few weeks and felt tremendously better.
And:
I took a holistic medicine and pediatrics course last summer, and people were speaking quietly about homeopathy. I find it interesting to see how many practitioners approach complementary medicine like it’s voodoo. But that is changing. As holistic medicine becomes more prevalent, more students are talking about it, and we’re being taught to be aware and accepting.
Pardon me while I pound my head against the nearest wall.
Then there’s Megan Blunda, who graduated from Georgetown in 2011 and is now a family practice doctor:
I worked with Steve Schwartz, M.D., in the Introduction to Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine elective at Georgetown. I have carried the skills I learned in that course to my career as a family physician in Seattle. Over the last year and a half, I have been training in the art of cranial osteopathy. Through work with a mentor and an intensive 40-hour course, I have learned the skills to perform basic treatments for patients with headaches, neck pain and back pain. The ability to actually make a patient’s pain better, instead of masking it with medications, is incredibly fulfilling.
That’s right. Here’s a Georgetown graduate who is practicing cranial osteopathy, also known as craniosacral therapy, which is what Mark Crislip likes to call a “SCAM of infinite jest“—and for very good reason. Worse, Blunda is proud of this, claiming that her integration of such treatments into her practice allows her to “provide higher quality and more personalized care.”
Conclusion: The future of medicine is quacky
Unless checked, this is the future of medicine. Indeed, this entire issue makes the case that integrating quackery into medicine, bringing the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to life as medical schools, is the future of medicine. Unfortunately, strive as we might against it, I’m having a hard time disagreeing. Proponents of “integrating” witchcraft like reiki, acupuncture, homeopathy, and craniosacral therapy into medicine will say that it’s not at all like Hogwarts. They have a point, but not in the way they think. In marked contrast to the magic gaining traction in the current world of quackademic medicine, in J.K. Rowling’s fictional world of Hogwarts, magic could be studied rigorously and actually worked. Would that this Brave New World of integrative medicine could say the same thing.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1I77UNO
I frequently discuss a disturbing phenomenon known as “quackademic medicine.” Basically, quackademic medicine is a phenomenon that has taken hold over the last two decades in medical academia in which once ostensibly science-based medical schools and academic medical centers embrace quackery. This embrace was once called “complementary and alternative medicine” (CAM) but among quackademics the preferred term is now “integrative medicine.” Of course, when looked at objectively, integrative medicine is far more a brand than a specialty. Specifically, it’s a combination of rebranding some science-based modalities, such as nutrition and exercise, as somehow being “alternative” or “integrative” with the integration of outright quackery, such as reiki and “energy healing,” acupuncture, and naturopathy, into conventional medicine. As my good bud Mark Crislip put it, mixing cow pie with apple pie does not make the cow pie better, but we seem to be “integrating” the cow pie of quackery with the apple pie of science-based medicine thinking that somehow it will improve the smell, taste, and texture of the cow pie.
From time to time, I’ve briefly thought about reviving the academic woo aggregator, but quickly and inevitably ended up giving up trying to come up with lists of the worst of the worst. There are just too many now, and keeping such an aggregator up to date would be too much work, as I discovered when I wrote my Nature Reviews Cancer article on integrative oncology last year. However, I do believe in featuring specific institutions when something comes up that draws my attention to them, and this just happened last week with Georgetown University. Basically, a reader at my not-so-super-secret other blog pointed out the Spring/Summer issue of Georgetown Medicine Magazine. It’s an issue devoted to integrative medicine at Georgetown and it is horrifying to anyone who believes that medicine should be science-based. Not surprisingly, it was a Georgetown alumnus who was so shocked when he received this issue in the mail that his embarrassment knew no bounds for having come from that institution. Worse, from the tone of the articles in this issue, Georgetown is proud of its integrative medicine program, to the point where it is touting it as a strength and featuring it on the cover of its magazine. Just look at its cover, which features a picture of a woman preparing to get an acupuncture needle stuck somewhere, along with the title of the issue, “Caring for the whole person with integrative medicine”. Yes, it’s the “holistic” trope that drives me crazy because you don’t have to embrace quackery to be a holistic physician.
Integrating pseudoscience into the medical curriculum
Longtime readers might remember that I’ve discussed Georgetown before because it was a “pioneer” (if you can call it that) in “integrating” quackery into the medical school curriculum. Having received a grant from the then-National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), renamed in December the National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health (NCCIH), to integrate CAM into its core curriculum, Georgetown proceeded to do just that. Here’s an example, a blast from the past if you will, quoted from a 2003 Georgetown brochure (retrieved again, thanks to Archive.org):
“One of the reasons CAM is usually offered as an elective is that there’s just no time or room in U.S. medical schools to fit in one more massive subject,” says Michael Lumpkin, Ph.D., professor and chair of the department of physiology and biophysics at Georgetown. “When the course is an elective, a self-selected group – maybe 10 or 20 students in a class of 180 medical students – will take it,” Lumpkin says. “What we’ve tried at Georgetown is rather than create all new courses, we take relevant CAM issues and modalities and weave them seamlessly into existing courses.
The “seamless” weaving of CAM into existing classes includes, for instance, a presentation by an acupuncturist on the “anatomy of acupuncture” in the gross anatomy course for first-year students. The same lecturer explores acupuncture’s application in pain relief in the neuroscience course…
Haramati and Lumpkin say Georgetown’s program is distinct from CAM initiatives in other medical schools in two ways: The school is integrating CAM education into existing course work across all four years of each student’s medical education, and the initiative includes a mind-body class to help students use techniques to manage their own health and improve self-care.
Teaching acupuncture points during gross anatomy? You can hear the cringing of advocates of science-based medicine everywhere, given that acupuncture points do not exist except in the minds of acupuncturists, as there are no anatomic correlates to them. So what’s been going on since then? Jane Varner Malhotra tells us in Georgetown’s Evolving Study in Complementary and Alternative Therapies. Here’s what happened after Georgetown got the $1.7 million grant in 2001:
Haramati recalls some uncertainty around the method for how to actually make it happen. “We were walking a path where the advocates were saying, ‘You’ve got to do more,’ while skeptics were saying, ‘What are you doing teaching nonsense?’” he recalls. “And we were going down the path saying, ‘We’re going to look at this objectively.’”
Objectively. You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means. An objective analysis of acupuncture would not support “integrating” the teaching of acupuncture points into gross anatomy and neurology class. Once again, acupuncture points do not exist except in the minds of acupuncturists, and even then I’m not so sure.
The article also does the requisite rebranding of natural products pharmacology as somehow being “CAM,” when it’s not. There’s a pharmacologist named Hakima Amri, featured smiling with her arms crossed in one of those stereotypical poses that magazines like this like to use in their photos bragging how she had realized that in her research she was “using top-notch technology in the biomedical sciences,” such as PCR, animal studies, cell culture, all “to study a plant extract” (Ginkgo biloba). None of this, of course, is CAM.
And Georgetown credulously teaches homeopathy, The One Quackery to Rule Them All:
Amri enjoys seeing students open their minds to new concepts. Learning disciplines like homeopathy may require students to radically disregard their previous understandings about receptors and responses in toxicology, for example. “I tell students that for the next few hours, put aside all they have learned in biochemistry, pharmacology and cell biology—empty their brains—because homeopathy is a completely different concept. Then I see big eyes on their faces!” laughs Amri.
Yes, Georgetown is telling its medical students, forget all that boring old reductionist “Western” science you’ve learned all these years. Open your mind to the sympathetic magic that is homeopathy. Never mind that it has no basis in science and its precepts violate multiple well-established laws of physics and chemistry. Personally, I don’t mind a medical school teaching homeopathy, but only so that doctors know what it is and how utterly pseudoscientific it is. (Most doctors still think it’s just herbal medicine.) However, clearly that’s not what Georgetown is doing. How a pharmacologist can teach homeopathy as anything but as an example of the most abject pseudoscience is beyond me, but that’s what Amri sure appears to be doing, her claim that “we are teaching them [medical students] how to evaluate the science of the therapy, critically analyze it and learn about these medical systems in the most open-minded way” notwithstanding. She seems to be all about the open-mindedness and not so much about critical thinking, similar to the entire Georgetown CAM curriculum.
And its faculty are proud of Georgetown’s role in promoting quackademic medicine:
Since the early years of complementary medicine research and education at Georgetown, the university has held a critical place on the national scene. Hosting multiple cross-disciplinary dialogues, Georgetown has convened chiropractors and conventional doctors, acupuncturists and anesthesiologists to advance the science-based study of integrative medicine.
And:
Over the past 15 years, the way CAM has been taught at Georgetown has evolved, but the goals have remained constant: to train students to objectively and rigorously assess the safety and efficacy of various modalities, and explain the mechanistic basis for therapies like acupuncture, massage, herbs and supplements, and mind-body interactions.
If Georgetown teaches homeopathy as anything other than an example of pseudoscience and integrates acupuncture into its gross anatomy, physiology, and neuroscience curricula, it’s doing nothing of the sort. Let’s take a look at the sort of research into the “mechanisms” of acupuncture that Georgetown is so proud of.
Torturing rats in the name of acupuncture pseudoscience
In another article in the issue “Where’s the Evidence? Probing the Underlying Mechanisms of Acupuncture“, a recently-published study by a member of the Georgetown faculty is featured as a great example of how Georgetown is doing what it claims with respect to evidence for CAM. First, though, we learn that a nurse anesthetist and licensed acupuncturist Ladan Eshkevari, Ph.D., teaches sessions on acupuncture in the second year physiology class. There, she also teaches TCM medicine pulse analysis. Now, certainly every physician should know how to assess a pulse, but that’s not what’s going on here. What’s going on here is the teaching of an ancient, prescientific method of assessing pulses:
The professor of nursing, pharmacology and physiology shows the students three different pulse points on each hand used in TCM to diagnose the health of specific anatomical organs. The best practitioners employ over 70 different ways to describe the subtle variations in the human pulse, she explains, as the students touch their own wrists. Is the pulse skipping, surging, floating, faint? Determining the right descriptor can be a challenge, Eshkevari adds, but the richness of the options reveals the complexity and nuance of the ancient practice.
“In traditional Chinese medicine, organs are viewed by their energy function, not their anatomic function,” Eshkevari continues, showing visual maps of the body linking heart and small intestine, lung and large intestine. She explains that with holistic medicine, everything is connected, versus the more typical American, allopathic medical practice of dividing the body into compartments and developing specialties.
One notes that these “subtle variations” are in general not reproducibly detected from practitioner to practitioner and have little or no evidence to show that they reliably link to specific organs. The same is true of tongue diagnosis in TCM, in which different organs are mapped to different parts of the tongue, such that examining the tongue can lead to diagnoses of abnormalities of specific organs. It’s utter nonsense, of course, no more than a TCM version of reflexology, which does the same thing, only mapping organs and body parts to the soles of the feet and palms of the hand. Yet at Georgetown, TCM reflexology is taught as fact.
Let’s take a look at the study that is featured in a large chunk of this article:
Eshkevari turned to rats to help her find answers. Using a successful stress model developed by a fellow researcher at Georgetown, she exposed three of four groups of animals to one hour a day in a container with a layer of ice water on the bottom. After two weeks, the rats measured high stress hormone levels that would not come down to baseline. They had chronic stress.
Won’t someone think of the poor lab rats? Well, I already did. I wrote about this sorry excuse for an animal study and useless torturing of rats for no good scientific reason last week. I do note, however, that in the accompanying photo, Eshkevari is shown in the same pose as everyone else, arms crossed, with the exception that the smile is missing and she’s wearing a lab coat standing in front of an impressive lab bench full of chemicals and instruments, the better to paint the picture of her in the mind of the reader as a Very Serious Scientist. At least the photographer restrained himself from filling up Erlenmyer flasks and beakers with multicolored solutions, which is the ultimate photographic cliché in stories of this sort.
Ladan Eshkevari, Ph.D. in her laboratory. Truly, I need to have a picture of myself taken with such a kick-ass “I’m a scientist, ma-an!” pose in my laboratory. Sadly, I don’t have as much stuff on my lab bench and shelves, which mean I must not be as much of a true scientist as Eshkevari, but I could add Erlenmeyer flasks with colored solutions in the background for an even more “science-y” feel.
Be that as it may, the sheer awfulness of this study hasn’t deterred Eshkevari from wanting to “translate” these results to the clinic:
The next stage for her research will be human trials—an expensive and complicated endeavor but one she is determined to explore.
“This is where I’m now stuck,” she explains. “I’m trying to get grant funding to do research on humans to see if these discoveries translate.”
Eshkevari remains hopeful that, with rising interest from both the public and scientific communities, this next critical step will find support.
To me, it would be unethical to carry out a human study based on such poor quality and equivocal preclinical evidence. Unfortunately, it would not surprise me if Eshkevari succeeds in getting funding to do one. Such is the pernicious effect of quackademic medicine on clinical trial ethics. Eshkevari argues that doctors didn’t know how inhalational anesthesia worked when it was first discovered but used it anyway, the implication being that we should not be uncomfortable using acupuncture because we don’t yet understand its mechanism of action. Does anyone see the flaw in that reasoning? It’s obvious. That inhalational anesthesia worked was indisputable. In contrast, there is no good evidence that acupuncture works better than placebo. This brings up another problematic attitude in the mindset of quackademics:
“Western, allopathic physicians and nurse practitioners want to be able to point to the evidence, and see the research published in peer-reviewed journals,” says Eshkevari. “This helps us comfortably recommend complementary medicine to our patients. Finding the evidence—I think that’s the biggest step.”
In other words, rather than finding out if acupuncture works, quackademics like Eshkevari assume that it does work and then go chasing mechanisms. It is, as Harriet Hall so aptly described it, Tooth Fairy science.
Faith healing in the chemotherapy suite
I frequently call homeopathy The One Quackery To Rule Them All. However, there is a definite challenger for that title, which can be looked at a different way as well; i.e., as Saruman trying to usurp Sauron on his dark throne. I’m referring, of course, to “energy medicine.” Whatever form energy medicine takes, it’s based on prescientific vitalism of a variety that posits the existence of a “life energy” that can be manipulated or infused into the patient for healing effect.
The two most common forms of energy medicine in quackademia are therapeutic touch and reiki. Therapeutic touch (TT) is a misnomer in that it doesn’t usually involve actual touching (which negates the potential pleasure of a good massage or back rub), but rather involves the placing of hands close to the body. It rests on the concept that there is a human “energy field” that TT practitioners can manipulate to make patients feel better. It’s a concept so ludicrous that even an 11 year old girl could show that TT practitioners cannot detect a human energy field any better than random chance alone would allow them to guess. Unfortunately, TT is almost ubiquitous in nursing programs and hospitals. The second is reiki. The main differences between the two are that (1) reiki involves more elaborate hand gestures and (2) reiki posits the existence of an external source of life energy (the “universal source”) into which the reiki practitioner can tap to direct the healing energy into the patient. Reiki is, in essence, faith healing based on Eastern mysticism rather than the Christian religion. Unfortunately, reiki is commonly offered in many medical centers, academic or community, and even in NCI-designated comprehensive cancer centers.
For a long time Denise von Hengst had a secret she kept from friends and physicians alike. As she was undergoing treatment at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center for a particularly aggressive type of breast cancer—triple positive, HER2 positive—she was also regularly receiving Reiki, an ancient form of Japanese healing, to mitigate the debilitating anxiety and fear that accompanied her cancer diagnosis.
“At first I told no one about the Reiki,” says von Hengst. “Fear of the ‘woo-woo’ factor. People might think I’m nuts.”
No, a patient like Denise von Hengst is not “nuts,” although, it must be noted, she discovered reiki before coming to Georgetown for her cancer and ultimately became a reiki master. However, the Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center is unethical and irresponsible for offering, in essence, magic to its patients as therapy. If I were not a physician and didn’t know anything about reiki, if an NCI-designated comprehensive cancer center offered it I’d think it must be evidence-based. That’s how most patients perceive it. The failure is on Georgetown’s part for offering reiki as though it were anything more than prescientific vitalistic superstition and claiming that it has a scientific basis, not on the part of patients like von Hengst, who trust that doctors are offering science-based therapy. In this case, Georgetown reinforced von Hengst’s initial attraction to reiki by giving it the appearance of scientific validity.
To her credit, the author of this article does acknowledge the “skepticism” that doctors have about reiki:
However, skepticism remains, not only in the general population, but also within the medical field. Recently, several clinical trials have emerged attempting to prove, or disprove, the effectiveness of Reiki. Many of these studies have been criticized for the trial. design, number of participants and reporting mechanisms. Results of the trials are often inconclusive.
Note that Bayes theorem tells us that “inconclusive” results plus an incredibly implausible mechanism = negative trial. So, yes, these are are negative trials. None of that matters, though, because the article quickly shifts gears to use anecdotal evidence and appeals to authority and popularity:
Yet as the anecdotal proof mounts and Reiki’s popularity increases, prestigious medical centers around the country are taking note and offering the treatment to patients at their facilities. Reiki can be found at hospitals and medical centers such as Boston Children’s Hospital, Dana Farber Cancer Institute, Stanford Health Care, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, Duke University Health System and Cleveland Clinic, to name a few. Many academic medical centers such as Georgetown incorporate complementary therapies into their teaching curricula.
And all of these hospitals have failed to uphold a science-based standard of care. Sadly, they are not alone. Far from it. Worse, they are training the next generation of doctors to embrace pseudoscience.
Integrating quackery: The future of medicine?
Perhaps the most disturbing part of this issue of Georgetown Medicine is an article entitled “Putting Integrative Medicine Into Practice.” Basically, it’s a profile of medical students and recent Georgetown graduates doing exactly what the title says. It also includes a profile of an acupuncturist named Rebecca Berkson, who works at a Georgetown-affiliated facility, the Kaplan Center for Integrative Medicine in McLean, Virginia. In the name of Georgetown, she provides “acupuncture, its associated techniques including moxabustion and cupping, and Chinese herbal medicine.” Cupping, remember, claims to remove unnamed “toxins” from the skin thusly:
It’s a treatment almost as ridiculous as TT, and it’s being offered at Georgetown as though it has validity.
There’s also a medical student from the Howard University class of 2015 named Brian Nwannunu. He graduated from Georgetown’s CAM master’s degree program. Now he’s a believer:
My plan is to go into orthopedic surgery. For my patients experiencing back pain, I will work with CAM practitioners such as acupuncturists and chiropractors in addition to offering allopathic medicine. After my own experience with a low-back injury during a workout, I went to a chiropractor for a few weeks and felt tremendously better.
And:
I took a holistic medicine and pediatrics course last summer, and people were speaking quietly about homeopathy. I find it interesting to see how many practitioners approach complementary medicine like it’s voodoo. But that is changing. As holistic medicine becomes more prevalent, more students are talking about it, and we’re being taught to be aware and accepting.
Pardon me while I pound my head against the nearest wall.
Then there’s Megan Blunda, who graduated from Georgetown in 2011 and is now a family practice doctor:
I worked with Steve Schwartz, M.D., in the Introduction to Osteopathic Manipulative Medicine elective at Georgetown. I have carried the skills I learned in that course to my career as a family physician in Seattle. Over the last year and a half, I have been training in the art of cranial osteopathy. Through work with a mentor and an intensive 40-hour course, I have learned the skills to perform basic treatments for patients with headaches, neck pain and back pain. The ability to actually make a patient’s pain better, instead of masking it with medications, is incredibly fulfilling.
That’s right. Here’s a Georgetown graduate who is practicing cranial osteopathy, also known as craniosacral therapy, which is what Mark Crislip likes to call a “SCAM of infinite jest“—and for very good reason. Worse, Blunda is proud of this, claiming that her integration of such treatments into her practice allows her to “provide higher quality and more personalized care.”
Conclusion: The future of medicine is quacky
Unless checked, this is the future of medicine. Indeed, this entire issue makes the case that integrating quackery into medicine, bringing the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry to life as medical schools, is the future of medicine. Unfortunately, strive as we might against it, I’m having a hard time disagreeing. Proponents of “integrating” witchcraft like reiki, acupuncture, homeopathy, and craniosacral therapy into medicine will say that it’s not at all like Hogwarts. They have a point, but not in the way they think. In marked contrast to the magic gaining traction in the current world of quackademic medicine, in J.K. Rowling’s fictional world of Hogwarts, magic could be studied rigorously and actually worked. Would that this Brave New World of integrative medicine could say the same thing.
Jrette wandering around watching TV on the iPad, overturning and breaking things in the kitchen. *sigh*
Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
Jrette stole my zombie novel — Carey’s 2014 Girl With All The Gifts — and proclaimed it to be the best book she’s read in ages. Now I am bookless.
Mistakenly read two global catastrophe novels in a row. Now everything around looks temporary.
Jrette is twelve today! I asked her if she doesn’t find the Vampire Diaries scary. “I would, only with a dad who’s a scientist, I’m not afraid of supernatural things.”
Pittentian in Perthshire is a fine place name. Means “Willie No 10″ in Swedish.
No, Google Music’s randomiser, the fact that I like Queens of the Stone Age and a few tunes by Eagles of Death Metal does not mean that you should play me lots of songs by the various bands that Josh Homme sings in, and little else.
The vagueness of Medieval land ownership is infuriating. You could buy a farm, then years later for some reason receive a document from the former owner emphasising again that you did indeed buy the farm, and then his cousin would show up and demand that you hand the farm back because it used to belong to his granddad. Or the Crown. Or a bishop’s see. It had to do with ancient ideas about land belonging to lineages, where one’s relatives could have right of first purchase, or where land could simply be inalienable.
Jrette wore my denim jacket to the movies!
Check out my guest entries in Swedish on the Östergötland County Museum’s blog about the Stensö and Landsjö digs.
New kitchen finally almost done after over two months of awkwardness!
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1UbTdhP
Jrette wandering around watching TV on the iPad, overturning and breaking things in the kitchen. *sigh*
Thorin sits down and starts singing about gold.
Jrette stole my zombie novel — Carey’s 2014 Girl With All The Gifts — and proclaimed it to be the best book she’s read in ages. Now I am bookless.
Mistakenly read two global catastrophe novels in a row. Now everything around looks temporary.
Jrette is twelve today! I asked her if she doesn’t find the Vampire Diaries scary. “I would, only with a dad who’s a scientist, I’m not afraid of supernatural things.”
Pittentian in Perthshire is a fine place name. Means “Willie No 10″ in Swedish.
No, Google Music’s randomiser, the fact that I like Queens of the Stone Age and a few tunes by Eagles of Death Metal does not mean that you should play me lots of songs by the various bands that Josh Homme sings in, and little else.
The vagueness of Medieval land ownership is infuriating. You could buy a farm, then years later for some reason receive a document from the former owner emphasising again that you did indeed buy the farm, and then his cousin would show up and demand that you hand the farm back because it used to belong to his granddad. Or the Crown. Or a bishop’s see. It had to do with ancient ideas about land belonging to lineages, where one’s relatives could have right of first purchase, or where land could simply be inalienable.
Jrette wore my denim jacket to the movies!
Check out my guest entries in Swedish on the Östergötland County Museum’s blog about the Stensö and Landsjö digs.
New kitchen finally almost done after over two months of awkwardness!
A portion of the first preliminary map on Pluto. See below for the complete map.
Following New Horizons’ history-making sweep past Pluto on July 14, 2015, the mission has released maps of Pluto and Charon with preliminary designations for the features found on these distant worlds. A month ago, we’d never seen these worlds as more than blurry balls, and now we have maps of their surfaces! Amazing. The names – which still need to be made official – on Pluto come from many cultures in all parts of Earth. Those on Pluto fall into four major categories: space missions and spacecraft; scientists and engineers; historic explorers; and underworld locales, beings, and travelers.
View larger. | Complete preliminary map of Pluto. Images via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI / New Horizons spacecraft
And guess who named the features on Pluto? You did. In early 2015, the New Horizons mission invited people to submit names corresponding to specific thematic guidelines. NASA released an initial list of the most popular names earlier in July.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) still has to approve the names before they become official, but the New Horizons team is using these names already. Cathy Olkin, a New Horizons scientist who was part of the group in charge of assigning informal names, told BuzzFeed:
We need names to call things. We are working with these data. You can’t just keep on saying, ‘Oh, that canyon up to the left.
Let’s look for a moment at an enhanced image of Pluto as a whole:
View larger. | Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 km) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 km). Image via NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.
That heart-shaped region is called Tombaugh Regio, named for Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. Now here’s a close-up of Tombaugh Regio, with its newly named features:
Buzzfeed, which became one of the first to publish these maps earlier this week, did an excellent job explaining what some of the unfamiliar names mean:
Everyone knows what a crater is. Here’s what some of those other words mean: Cavus (deep-sided depression), Chasma (chasm), Colles (small knobs or hills), Dorsa (ridges), Fossa (long, narrow depression), Linea (elongated marking), Macula (dark spot), Mons (mountain), Montes (mountains), Planum (plateau or high plain), Regio (large bright or dark region), Terra (extensive land mass), Vallis (valley).
Now let’s take a look at the first preliminary map of Charon.
View larger. | Preliminary map of Charon. Image via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI. New Horizons spacecraft.
The naming scheme for Charon fell under four categories as well: fictional explorers and travelers; fictional origins and destinations; fictional vessels; and exploration authors, artists, and directors.
Many features are informally named after science fiction characters, particularly from Star Trek and Star Wars. Some from Alien and Dr Who. Mordor Macular covering the north polar region including the North Pole of Charon, is from The Lord of the Rings.
Kubrick Mons named after Stanley Kubrick, is the curious Mountain in the Moat, the lofty mountain in a depression that does not appear to be an impact crater.
By the way, Charon, largest moon of Pluto is 751 miles (1,207 km) wide. The map above has variable resolution. On the Pluto-facing side – in the middle of the map – the resolution is 1,250 feet ( 400 meters) in places. On the anti-Pluto-facing side – ends of the map – the resolution is typically 25 miles (40 km).
The clearer, higher resolution areas on the Pluto facing side will increase as more images are returned.
Here’s Charon without the map labels. Image via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI. New Horizons spacecraft.
Bottom line: Preliminary maps of Pluto and Charon, from New Horizons’ July 14, 2015 flyby.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1eFCraS
A portion of the first preliminary map on Pluto. See below for the complete map.
Following New Horizons’ history-making sweep past Pluto on July 14, 2015, the mission has released maps of Pluto and Charon with preliminary designations for the features found on these distant worlds. A month ago, we’d never seen these worlds as more than blurry balls, and now we have maps of their surfaces! Amazing. The names – which still need to be made official – on Pluto come from many cultures in all parts of Earth. Those on Pluto fall into four major categories: space missions and spacecraft; scientists and engineers; historic explorers; and underworld locales, beings, and travelers.
View larger. | Complete preliminary map of Pluto. Images via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI / New Horizons spacecraft
And guess who named the features on Pluto? You did. In early 2015, the New Horizons mission invited people to submit names corresponding to specific thematic guidelines. NASA released an initial list of the most popular names earlier in July.
The International Astronomical Union (IAU) still has to approve the names before they become official, but the New Horizons team is using these names already. Cathy Olkin, a New Horizons scientist who was part of the group in charge of assigning informal names, told BuzzFeed:
We need names to call things. We are working with these data. You can’t just keep on saying, ‘Oh, that canyon up to the left.
Let’s look for a moment at an enhanced image of Pluto as a whole:
View larger. | Four images from New Horizons’ Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) were combined with color data from the Ralph instrument to create this enhanced color global view of Pluto. (The lower right edge of Pluto in this view currently lacks high-resolution color coverage.) The images, taken when the spacecraft was 280,000 miles (450,000 km) away, show features as small as 1.4 miles (2.2 km). Image via NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI.
That heart-shaped region is called Tombaugh Regio, named for Clyde Tombaugh, who discovered Pluto in 1930. Now here’s a close-up of Tombaugh Regio, with its newly named features:
Buzzfeed, which became one of the first to publish these maps earlier this week, did an excellent job explaining what some of the unfamiliar names mean:
Everyone knows what a crater is. Here’s what some of those other words mean: Cavus (deep-sided depression), Chasma (chasm), Colles (small knobs or hills), Dorsa (ridges), Fossa (long, narrow depression), Linea (elongated marking), Macula (dark spot), Mons (mountain), Montes (mountains), Planum (plateau or high plain), Regio (large bright or dark region), Terra (extensive land mass), Vallis (valley).
Now let’s take a look at the first preliminary map of Charon.
View larger. | Preliminary map of Charon. Image via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI. New Horizons spacecraft.
The naming scheme for Charon fell under four categories as well: fictional explorers and travelers; fictional origins and destinations; fictional vessels; and exploration authors, artists, and directors.
Many features are informally named after science fiction characters, particularly from Star Trek and Star Wars. Some from Alien and Dr Who. Mordor Macular covering the north polar region including the North Pole of Charon, is from The Lord of the Rings.
Kubrick Mons named after Stanley Kubrick, is the curious Mountain in the Moat, the lofty mountain in a depression that does not appear to be an impact crater.
By the way, Charon, largest moon of Pluto is 751 miles (1,207 km) wide. The map above has variable resolution. On the Pluto-facing side – in the middle of the map – the resolution is 1,250 feet ( 400 meters) in places. On the anti-Pluto-facing side – ends of the map – the resolution is typically 25 miles (40 km).
The clearer, higher resolution areas on the Pluto facing side will increase as more images are returned.
Here’s Charon without the map labels. Image via NASA / JHU-APL / SwRI. New Horizons spacecraft.
Bottom line: Preliminary maps of Pluto and Charon, from New Horizons’ July 14, 2015 flyby.
Tonight – July 31, 2014 – you’ll see a moon in the sky that looks full and round. In fact, for some of us, tonight’s moon is past full. The crest of the moon’s full phase is on July 31 at 10:43 UTC (6:43 a.m. EDT, 5:43 a.m. CDT, 4:43 a.m. MDT or 3:43 a.m. PDT on the morning of July 31). No matter. This will be a popular full moon! It’s the second of two July 2015 full moons, and – although it won’t look blue in color – by popular acclaim, it’ll be called by the name Blue Moon.
How often do we have a Blue Moon in July? For the answer, you have to look to a concept from astronomy and calendar studies, at what’s called the Metonic cycle.
The Metonic cycle is a period of 19 calendar years (235 lunar months), after which the new and full moons return to the same (or nearly the same) dates of the year.
Therefore, 19 years from now, in 2034, we’ll again have another Blue Moon in July.
And 19 years after that, there will be another one, in July, 2053.
There are 235 full moons (235 lunar months) yet only 228 calendar months in the 19-year Metonic cycle. Because the number of full moons outnumber the number of calendar months, that means at least seven of these 228 calendar months must harbor two full moons (235 – 228 = 7 extra full moons).
However, if a February within this 19-year period has no full moon at all – as is the case in February, 2018 – that means this extra 8th full moon must fall into the lap of another calendar month, as well. Therefore, the year 2018 actually sports two Blue Moons, in January and March of 2018, giving us a total of 8 Blue-Moon months in the upcoming 19-year Metonic cycle:
1. January 31, 2018
2. March 31, 2018
3. October 31, 2020
4. August 31, 2023
5. May 31, 2026
6. December 31, 2028
7. September 30, 2031
8. July 31, 2034
Bottom line: The second of two July 2015 full moons falls today, on July 31, 2015. By popular acclaim, the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month is known as a blue moon. Thanks to what is called the Metonic cycle, 19 years from now, in 2034, we’ll again have another Blue Moon in July. And 19 years after that, there will be another one, in July, 2053.
Tonight – July 31, 2014 – you’ll see a moon in the sky that looks full and round. In fact, for some of us, tonight’s moon is past full. The crest of the moon’s full phase is on July 31 at 10:43 UTC (6:43 a.m. EDT, 5:43 a.m. CDT, 4:43 a.m. MDT or 3:43 a.m. PDT on the morning of July 31). No matter. This will be a popular full moon! It’s the second of two July 2015 full moons, and – although it won’t look blue in color – by popular acclaim, it’ll be called by the name Blue Moon.
How often do we have a Blue Moon in July? For the answer, you have to look to a concept from astronomy and calendar studies, at what’s called the Metonic cycle.
The Metonic cycle is a period of 19 calendar years (235 lunar months), after which the new and full moons return to the same (or nearly the same) dates of the year.
Therefore, 19 years from now, in 2034, we’ll again have another Blue Moon in July.
And 19 years after that, there will be another one, in July, 2053.
There are 235 full moons (235 lunar months) yet only 228 calendar months in the 19-year Metonic cycle. Because the number of full moons outnumber the number of calendar months, that means at least seven of these 228 calendar months must harbor two full moons (235 – 228 = 7 extra full moons).
However, if a February within this 19-year period has no full moon at all – as is the case in February, 2018 – that means this extra 8th full moon must fall into the lap of another calendar month, as well. Therefore, the year 2018 actually sports two Blue Moons, in January and March of 2018, giving us a total of 8 Blue-Moon months in the upcoming 19-year Metonic cycle:
1. January 31, 2018
2. March 31, 2018
3. October 31, 2020
4. August 31, 2023
5. May 31, 2026
6. December 31, 2028
7. September 30, 2031
8. July 31, 2034
Bottom line: The second of two July 2015 full moons falls today, on July 31, 2015. By popular acclaim, the second full moon to occur in a single calendar month is known as a blue moon. Thanks to what is called the Metonic cycle, 19 years from now, in 2034, we’ll again have another Blue Moon in July. And 19 years after that, there will be another one, in July, 2053.
It is a mystery no more: A physical model can explain how a bunch of ants are able, with no visible leader (or highly-developed brains, for that matter) to drag that oversized cake crumb or leaf all the way across your floor to their nest. It turns out that there are, indeed, leaders, of a sort. Those ants you see surrounding the prize being hauled are switching places with other ants that have been scouting out the directions to the nest. The new ants then direct the collective movement, at least for a moment or so until they begin to lose their sense of direction and newer ants take over. The model also solves the second half of the mystery: why the moving crumb never takes the shortest route toward the nest, even though it gets there in the end. Each new ant, in effect, corrects the trajectory of the group.
You can see the experiments here:
Somewhere in this is a message about an efficient kind of group behavior – about the proper balance between conforming and individual initiative, about leaders and followers. Not that humans will be adopting ant methods any time soon (though it does make an interesting thought experiment). But the take-home message may be that sometimes leaders are necessary. We just have to be sure they are the ones holding the knowledge we need in order to get to the right place.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1VQRj8f
It is a mystery no more: A physical model can explain how a bunch of ants are able, with no visible leader (or highly-developed brains, for that matter) to drag that oversized cake crumb or leaf all the way across your floor to their nest. It turns out that there are, indeed, leaders, of a sort. Those ants you see surrounding the prize being hauled are switching places with other ants that have been scouting out the directions to the nest. The new ants then direct the collective movement, at least for a moment or so until they begin to lose their sense of direction and newer ants take over. The model also solves the second half of the mystery: why the moving crumb never takes the shortest route toward the nest, even though it gets there in the end. Each new ant, in effect, corrects the trajectory of the group.
You can see the experiments here:
Somewhere in this is a message about an efficient kind of group behavior – about the proper balance between conforming and individual initiative, about leaders and followers. Not that humans will be adopting ant methods any time soon (though it does make an interesting thought experiment). But the take-home message may be that sometimes leaders are necessary. We just have to be sure they are the ones holding the knowledge we need in order to get to the right place.
But according to a new report just published by the San Francisco Public Press, many of these construction projects sit on land susceptible to rising waters due to climate change. And regulators and local governments are not doing much to prepare.
The Public Press found 27 major commercial and residential developments that will be vulnerable to flooding if San Francisco Bay sea levels rise as much as climate researchers like the National Research Council project in the next century. These developments include a new stadium for the Golden State Warriors, campuses being built by Google and Facebook, and revamped public spaces like San Francisco’s iconic ferry terminal and Jack London Square in Oakland.
But according to a new report just published by the San Francisco Public Press, many of these construction projects sit on land susceptible to rising waters due to climate change. And regulators and local governments are not doing much to prepare.
The Public Press found 27 major commercial and residential developments that will be vulnerable to flooding if San Francisco Bay sea levels rise as much as climate researchers like the National Research Council project in the next century. These developments include a new stadium for the Golden State Warriors, campuses being built by Google and Facebook, and revamped public spaces like San Francisco’s iconic ferry terminal and Jack London Square in Oakland.
New research indicates that Washington, D.C., is rapidly sinking into the ocean, news that might not make the rest of the country all that sad.
The research, from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey and several other institutions, projects the land beneath the Washington area will drop 6 or more inches in the next 100 years. That’s in addition to rising sea levels due to climate change, which is melting ice sheets and causing thermal expansion of the oceans. Climate change has already caused 8 inches of sea level rise since 1880, and is expected to raise average global sea levels another 1 to 4 feet by the end of this century.
Relative sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay region is happening faster than any other part of the Atlantic coast, according to tidal records, and twice as fast as global averages.
New research indicates that Washington, D.C., is rapidly sinking into the ocean, news that might not make the rest of the country all that sad.
The research, from the University of Vermont, the U.S. Geological Survey and several other institutions, projects the land beneath the Washington area will drop 6 or more inches in the next 100 years. That’s in addition to rising sea levels due to climate change, which is melting ice sheets and causing thermal expansion of the oceans. Climate change has already caused 8 inches of sea level rise since 1880, and is expected to raise average global sea levels another 1 to 4 feet by the end of this century.
Relative sea level rise in the Chesapeake Bay region is happening faster than any other part of the Atlantic coast, according to tidal records, and twice as fast as global averages.
Bangladesh—a country just east of India on the Bay of Bengal—is known for its lush, tropical environment and extensive river system. It’s capital, Dhaka, is the tenth largest city in the world and travel by boat and Rickshaw is a common way to get around town. While the waterways are an inviting lure to this populated city, water is also the source of many diseases, particularly in Dhaka’s crowded slums. Here, sewage can seep into low-pressure, old, leaky pipes that transport the town’s drinking water, exposing residents to harmful bacteria and viruses.
Drinking contaminated water can lead to diarrheal disease and sometimes even death. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, diarrhea is the second leading killer of children under five years of age worldwide, and it is often caused by contaminated water.
Dr. Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, wanted to change that.
At the time, Luby was working at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Bangladesh, and he was all too familiar with the number of people who were getting sick and dying from preventable waterborne diseases. In the developed world, big expensive water treatment plants clean drinking water. However, poorer countries, like Bangladesh, don’t have the resources to implement these treatment plants. Instead, residents have to clean their drinking water themselves using expensive or fragile filters, chlorine tablets or boiling the water. These types of strategies often prove difficult and cumbersome for residents.
“What that model asks, is to say ‘Let’s have the poorest people in the world each set up a water treatment plant in their home.’ That’s actually a big undertaking. And these are the folks who are already trying to figure out ‘How am I going to get enough money to pay rent and to feed my family?’” explains Luby.
Amy Pickering, a research associate at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, posing with a hand pump. Courtesy of Amy Pickering/ Stanford University
Luby enlisted the help of Amy Pickering, a research associate at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Along with Jenna Davis, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, they were hoping to come up with a solution to clean contaminated water that was much cheaper than traditional centralized water treatment plants, but that didn’t require users to do any extra work. They call their effort the Lotus Water Project .
Pickering went to Dhaka to investigate possible solutions. She observed that women in the slums in Dhaka were using communal hand pumps to collect water in containers and store for later.
"What we realized is that we needed a technology that could be compatible with these manual hand pumps that people are using to extract water from the systems," said Pickering.
They thought that if there was a device that attached to the hand pump that would clean the water as it was pumped out, then residents would have easy access to clean water. Learning that nothing like this already existed, the team realized they were going to have to develop something themselves. So Pickering packed a 70-pound hand pump in her suitcase and brought it back to Stanford.
Under the guidance of Luby and Davis, Pickering and a team of students at Stanford began developing a solution. They needed to create a device that would be cheap, easy to maintain and robust to hot temperatures and monsoons. It also couldn't rely on electricity since electricity can be hard to come by in Dhaka’s slums.
They decided to use liquid chlorine as the way to clean the water because it’s cheap and readily available in household bleach throughout Dhaka and in many places throughout the world.
But how were they going to inject the chlorine into the water without using electricity? They turned to a physics principle called the venturi effect to accomplish this. The venturi effect explains that when water is forced through a constricted pipe, like a funnel, the pressure of the water decreases. Pickering and her team created a system that uses the drop in water pressure caused by the venturi effect to create a suction, which in turn sucks in chlorine stored in an attached tank. At the heart of the system is a funnel-like device that attaches to the outflow of the hand pump. They call the device the venturi and they actually design and 3-D print it themselves.
A funnel-like device attaches directly to the hand pump and is connected to a tank that holds chlorine. When the water starts flowing through the funnel, the drop in water pressure causes the chlorine from the attached tank to be sucked into the water stream, thereby cleaning the water.
They prototyped many different designs both in the lab and in the field in Dhaka. They tested for durability, leaks, ease of use and functionality which included testing water samples for chlorine and bacteria levels. They also interviewed and spoke with residents to understand what they liked and didn’t like about their system. They would then incorporate what they learned from user feedback and field testing by modifying their designs, often 3-D printing new devices throughout the night in their rented apartments in Bangladesh.
They now have proof of concept that their device can work in Dhaka, and they are currently looking at possible business models and talking with companies to try to begin implementing in the field.
“Right now, we’re in conversations with for-profit companies that might be interested in taking this technology and commercializing it, and we’re really excited about that. Because what we want to see is this technology being scaled up and distributed throughout the world,” says Pickering.
They estimate the device capital to cost $20 or less when produced at scale. The eventual goal is that their system will not only be used in Dhaka, but in other places in the developing world where contaminated water is often found at shared water points.
This video is part of our Engineering Is: Cleaning Poop from Drinking Water e-book. The e-book explores the science and engineering principles behind the Lotus Water project's device designed to purify drinking water in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The e-book includes videos, interactives and media making opportunities. Stay tuned for its release at the end of August. You can find our other e-books at kqed.org/ebooks.
Bangladesh—a country just east of India on the Bay of Bengal—is known for its lush, tropical environment and extensive river system. It’s capital, Dhaka, is the tenth largest city in the world and travel by boat and Rickshaw is a common way to get around town. While the waterways are an inviting lure to this populated city, water is also the source of many diseases, particularly in Dhaka’s crowded slums. Here, sewage can seep into low-pressure, old, leaky pipes that transport the town’s drinking water, exposing residents to harmful bacteria and viruses.
Drinking contaminated water can lead to diarrheal disease and sometimes even death. In fact, according to the World Health Organization, diarrhea is the second leading killer of children under five years of age worldwide, and it is often caused by contaminated water.
Dr. Stephen Luby, a professor of medicine at Stanford University and senior fellow at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, wanted to change that.
At the time, Luby was working at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Bangladesh, and he was all too familiar with the number of people who were getting sick and dying from preventable waterborne diseases. In the developed world, big expensive water treatment plants clean drinking water. However, poorer countries, like Bangladesh, don’t have the resources to implement these treatment plants. Instead, residents have to clean their drinking water themselves using expensive or fragile filters, chlorine tablets or boiling the water. These types of strategies often prove difficult and cumbersome for residents.
“What that model asks, is to say ‘Let’s have the poorest people in the world each set up a water treatment plant in their home.’ That’s actually a big undertaking. And these are the folks who are already trying to figure out ‘How am I going to get enough money to pay rent and to feed my family?’” explains Luby.
Amy Pickering, a research associate at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University, posing with a hand pump. Courtesy of Amy Pickering/ Stanford University
Luby enlisted the help of Amy Pickering, a research associate at Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment and in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University. Along with Jenna Davis, a professor in the department of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University and at the Stanford Woods Institute for the Environment, they were hoping to come up with a solution to clean contaminated water that was much cheaper than traditional centralized water treatment plants, but that didn’t require users to do any extra work. They call their effort the Lotus Water Project .
Pickering went to Dhaka to investigate possible solutions. She observed that women in the slums in Dhaka were using communal hand pumps to collect water in containers and store for later.
"What we realized is that we needed a technology that could be compatible with these manual hand pumps that people are using to extract water from the systems," said Pickering.
They thought that if there was a device that attached to the hand pump that would clean the water as it was pumped out, then residents would have easy access to clean water. Learning that nothing like this already existed, the team realized they were going to have to develop something themselves. So Pickering packed a 70-pound hand pump in her suitcase and brought it back to Stanford.
Under the guidance of Luby and Davis, Pickering and a team of students at Stanford began developing a solution. They needed to create a device that would be cheap, easy to maintain and robust to hot temperatures and monsoons. It also couldn't rely on electricity since electricity can be hard to come by in Dhaka’s slums.
They decided to use liquid chlorine as the way to clean the water because it’s cheap and readily available in household bleach throughout Dhaka and in many places throughout the world.
But how were they going to inject the chlorine into the water without using electricity? They turned to a physics principle called the venturi effect to accomplish this. The venturi effect explains that when water is forced through a constricted pipe, like a funnel, the pressure of the water decreases. Pickering and her team created a system that uses the drop in water pressure caused by the venturi effect to create a suction, which in turn sucks in chlorine stored in an attached tank. At the heart of the system is a funnel-like device that attaches to the outflow of the hand pump. They call the device the venturi and they actually design and 3-D print it themselves.
A funnel-like device attaches directly to the hand pump and is connected to a tank that holds chlorine. When the water starts flowing through the funnel, the drop in water pressure causes the chlorine from the attached tank to be sucked into the water stream, thereby cleaning the water.
They prototyped many different designs both in the lab and in the field in Dhaka. They tested for durability, leaks, ease of use and functionality which included testing water samples for chlorine and bacteria levels. They also interviewed and spoke with residents to understand what they liked and didn’t like about their system. They would then incorporate what they learned from user feedback and field testing by modifying their designs, often 3-D printing new devices throughout the night in their rented apartments in Bangladesh.
They now have proof of concept that their device can work in Dhaka, and they are currently looking at possible business models and talking with companies to try to begin implementing in the field.
“Right now, we’re in conversations with for-profit companies that might be interested in taking this technology and commercializing it, and we’re really excited about that. Because what we want to see is this technology being scaled up and distributed throughout the world,” says Pickering.
They estimate the device capital to cost $20 or less when produced at scale. The eventual goal is that their system will not only be used in Dhaka, but in other places in the developing world where contaminated water is often found at shared water points.
This video is part of our Engineering Is: Cleaning Poop from Drinking Water e-book. The e-book explores the science and engineering principles behind the Lotus Water project's device designed to purify drinking water in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The e-book includes videos, interactives and media making opportunities. Stay tuned for its release at the end of August. You can find our other e-books at kqed.org/ebooks.
“To be is to be the value of a variable.” –Willard Van Orman Quine
Those constant, fixed points of light in the night sky — the stars — turn out not to be so constant if you looked with great precision at them. A star like our Sun varies in brightness, periodically, by about 0.1% over the span of a few years, but many stars vary by 99% or more from brightest to dimmest.
Image credit: British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section, via http://ift.tt/1I5BEKY.
For centuries, we knew of only a handful of these objects, yet now they’re known to be commonplace. What causes this spectacular behavior, how did we discover it and what’s the physical mechanism underlying it?
“To be is to be the value of a variable.” –Willard Van Orman Quine
Those constant, fixed points of light in the night sky — the stars — turn out not to be so constant if you looked with great precision at them. A star like our Sun varies in brightness, periodically, by about 0.1% over the span of a few years, but many stars vary by 99% or more from brightest to dimmest.
Image credit: British Astronomical Association Variable Star Section, via http://ift.tt/1I5BEKY.
For centuries, we knew of only a handful of these objects, yet now they’re known to be commonplace. What causes this spectacular behavior, how did we discover it and what’s the physical mechanism underlying it?
California’s accumulated precipitation “deficit” from 2012 to 2014 shown as a percent change from the 17-year average based on TRMM multi-satellite observations. Image credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio
A new NASA study has concluded California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015 – the average amount expected to fall in the state in a single year.
The deficit was driven primarily by a lack of air currents moving inland from the Pacific Ocean that are rich in water vapor, says the report, published today (July 30) in Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.
In an average year, 20 to 50 percent of California’s precipitation comes from relatively few, but extreme events called atmospheric rivers that move from over the Pacific Ocean to the California coast.
Andrey Savtchenko at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is lead author of the study. Savtchenko said:
When they say that an atmospheric river makes landfall, it’s almost like a hurricane, without the winds. They cause extreme precipitation.
Savtchenko and his colleagues examined data from 17 years of satellite observations and 36 years of combined observations and model data to understand how precipitation has varied in California since 1979.
The state as a whole can expect an average of about 20 inches of precipitation each year, with regional differences. But, the total amount can vary as much as 30 percent from year to year, according to the study.
In non-drought periods, wet years often alternate with dry years to balance out in the short term. However, from 2012 to 2014, California accumulated a deficit of almost 13 inches, and the 2014-2015 wet season increased the debt another seven inches, for a total 20 inches accumulated deficit during the course of three dry years.
The majority of that precipitation loss is attributed to a high-pressure system in the atmosphere over the eastern Pacific Ocean that has interfered with the formation of atmospheric rivers since 2011.
The atmospheric rivers that drenched California in December 2014 are shown in this data visualization: water vapor (white) and precipitation (red to yellow).
Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world. They are narrow, concentrated tendrils of water vapor that travel through the atmosphere similar to, and sometimes with, the winds of a jet stream. Like a jet stream, they typically travel from west to east. The ones destined for California originate over the tropical Pacific, where warm ocean water evaporates a lot of moisture into the air. The moisture-rich atmospheric rivers, informally known as the Pineapple Express, then break northward toward North America.
Some of the water vapor rains out over the ocean, but the show really begins when an atmospheric river reaches land. Two reached California around December 1 and December 10, 2014, and brought more than three inches of rain. The inland terrain, particularly mountains, force the moist air to higher altitudes where lower pressure causes it to expand and cool. The cooler air condenses the concentrated pool of water vapor into torrential rains, or snowfall as happens over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where water is stored in the snowpack until the spring melt just before the growing season.
The current drought isn’t the first for California. The researchers recreated a climate record for 1979 to the present. Their efforts show that a 27.5 inch deficit of rain and snow occurred in the state between 1986 and 1994. Savtchenko said:
Drought has happened here before. It will happen again, and some research groups have presented evidence it will happen more frequently as the planet warms. But even if the climate doesn’t change, are our demands for fresh water sustainable?
The current drought has been notably severe because, since the late 1980s, California’s population, industry and agriculture have experienced tremendous growth, with a correlating growth in their demand for water. Human consumption has depleted California’s reservoirs and groundwater reserves, leading to mandatory water rationing.
Bill Patzert is a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the research. Patzert said that this study has added nuance to how scientists may interpret the atmospheric conditions that cause atmospheric rivers and an El Niño’s capacity to bust the drought. Since March, rising sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific have indicated the formation of El Niño conditions. El Niño conditions are often associated with higher rainfall to the western United States, but it’s not guaranteed.
Savtchenko and his colleagues show that El Niño contributes only six percent to California’s precipitation variability and is one factor among other, more random effects that influence how much rainfall the state receives. While it’s more likely El Niño increases precipitation in California, it’s still possible it will have no, or even a drying, effect.
A strong El Niño that lasts through the rainy months, from November to March, is more likely to increase the amount of rain that reaches California, and Savtchenko noted the current El Niño is quickly strengthening.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors El Niño events, ranks it as the third strongest in the past 65 years for May and June. Still, it will likely take several years of higher than normal rain and snowfall to recover from the current drought. Savtchenko said:
If this El Niño holds through winter, California’s chances to recoup some of the precipitation increase. Unfortunately, so do the chances of floods and landslides. Most likely the effects would be felt in late 2015-2016.
Bottom line: According to a NASA study published July 30, 2015 in Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015 – the average amount expected to fall in the state in a single year. The deficit was driven primarily by a lack of air currents moving inland from the Pacific Ocean that are rich in water vapor, says the report.
California’s accumulated precipitation “deficit” from 2012 to 2014 shown as a percent change from the 17-year average based on TRMM multi-satellite observations. Image credit: NASA/Goddard Scientific Visualization Studio
A new NASA study has concluded California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015 – the average amount expected to fall in the state in a single year.
The deficit was driven primarily by a lack of air currents moving inland from the Pacific Ocean that are rich in water vapor, says the report, published today (July 30) in Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres.
In an average year, 20 to 50 percent of California’s precipitation comes from relatively few, but extreme events called atmospheric rivers that move from over the Pacific Ocean to the California coast.
Andrey Savtchenko at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland is lead author of the study. Savtchenko said:
When they say that an atmospheric river makes landfall, it’s almost like a hurricane, without the winds. They cause extreme precipitation.
Savtchenko and his colleagues examined data from 17 years of satellite observations and 36 years of combined observations and model data to understand how precipitation has varied in California since 1979.
The state as a whole can expect an average of about 20 inches of precipitation each year, with regional differences. But, the total amount can vary as much as 30 percent from year to year, according to the study.
In non-drought periods, wet years often alternate with dry years to balance out in the short term. However, from 2012 to 2014, California accumulated a deficit of almost 13 inches, and the 2014-2015 wet season increased the debt another seven inches, for a total 20 inches accumulated deficit during the course of three dry years.
The majority of that precipitation loss is attributed to a high-pressure system in the atmosphere over the eastern Pacific Ocean that has interfered with the formation of atmospheric rivers since 2011.
The atmospheric rivers that drenched California in December 2014 are shown in this data visualization: water vapor (white) and precipitation (red to yellow).
Atmospheric rivers occur all over the world. They are narrow, concentrated tendrils of water vapor that travel through the atmosphere similar to, and sometimes with, the winds of a jet stream. Like a jet stream, they typically travel from west to east. The ones destined for California originate over the tropical Pacific, where warm ocean water evaporates a lot of moisture into the air. The moisture-rich atmospheric rivers, informally known as the Pineapple Express, then break northward toward North America.
Some of the water vapor rains out over the ocean, but the show really begins when an atmospheric river reaches land. Two reached California around December 1 and December 10, 2014, and brought more than three inches of rain. The inland terrain, particularly mountains, force the moist air to higher altitudes where lower pressure causes it to expand and cool. The cooler air condenses the concentrated pool of water vapor into torrential rains, or snowfall as happens over the Sierra Nevada Mountains, where water is stored in the snowpack until the spring melt just before the growing season.
The current drought isn’t the first for California. The researchers recreated a climate record for 1979 to the present. Their efforts show that a 27.5 inch deficit of rain and snow occurred in the state between 1986 and 1994. Savtchenko said:
Drought has happened here before. It will happen again, and some research groups have presented evidence it will happen more frequently as the planet warms. But even if the climate doesn’t change, are our demands for fresh water sustainable?
The current drought has been notably severe because, since the late 1980s, California’s population, industry and agriculture have experienced tremendous growth, with a correlating growth in their demand for water. Human consumption has depleted California’s reservoirs and groundwater reserves, leading to mandatory water rationing.
Bill Patzert is a climatologist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who was not involved in the research. Patzert said that this study has added nuance to how scientists may interpret the atmospheric conditions that cause atmospheric rivers and an El Niño’s capacity to bust the drought. Since March, rising sea surface temperatures in the central equatorial Pacific have indicated the formation of El Niño conditions. El Niño conditions are often associated with higher rainfall to the western United States, but it’s not guaranteed.
Savtchenko and his colleagues show that El Niño contributes only six percent to California’s precipitation variability and is one factor among other, more random effects that influence how much rainfall the state receives. While it’s more likely El Niño increases precipitation in California, it’s still possible it will have no, or even a drying, effect.
A strong El Niño that lasts through the rainy months, from November to March, is more likely to increase the amount of rain that reaches California, and Savtchenko noted the current El Niño is quickly strengthening.
The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), which monitors El Niño events, ranks it as the third strongest in the past 65 years for May and June. Still, it will likely take several years of higher than normal rain and snowfall to recover from the current drought. Savtchenko said:
If this El Niño holds through winter, California’s chances to recoup some of the precipitation increase. Unfortunately, so do the chances of floods and landslides. Most likely the effects would be felt in late 2015-2016.
Bottom line: According to a NASA study published July 30, 2015 in Journal of Geophysical Research – Atmospheres, California accumulated a debt of about 20 inches of precipitation between 2012 and 2015 – the average amount expected to fall in the state in a single year. The deficit was driven primarily by a lack of air currents moving inland from the Pacific Ocean that are rich in water vapor, says the report.
New measurements from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft revealed that Pluto, named for the Greco-Roman god once called Hades, is a little more swollen with ice than previously thought, making it the biggest trans-Neptunian object—more voluminous than rival dwarf planet Eris, which is nevertheless more massive. Greg Laden explains why these orbs are not considered full-fledged planets on his blog.
While Eris orbits the Sun within the ‘scattered disc,’ Pluto orbits in the Kuiper Belt, a collection of gravelly snowballs that Ethan Siegel says outnumber all the planets in our galaxy. The Kuiper Belt begins beyond Neptune, encircling all the planets in our solar system and extending outward for a distance equal to the gap between the Sun and Uranus. It took New Horizons more than nine years to fly to Pluto from Earth, after setting a record for highest launch speed of any man-made object, after getting a massive speed boost from the gravity of Jupiter, and without any need to slow back down. It will now take sixteen months for New Horizons to stream all the scientific data from its brief flyby of Pluto back to Earth. Meanwhile it will attempt to visit another smaller Kuiper Belt object before it runs out of fuel and falls short of the edge of our solar system.
from ScienceBlogs http://ift.tt/1SkwQcz
New measurements from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft revealed that Pluto, named for the Greco-Roman god once called Hades, is a little more swollen with ice than previously thought, making it the biggest trans-Neptunian object—more voluminous than rival dwarf planet Eris, which is nevertheless more massive. Greg Laden explains why these orbs are not considered full-fledged planets on his blog.
While Eris orbits the Sun within the ‘scattered disc,’ Pluto orbits in the Kuiper Belt, a collection of gravelly snowballs that Ethan Siegel says outnumber all the planets in our galaxy. The Kuiper Belt begins beyond Neptune, encircling all the planets in our solar system and extending outward for a distance equal to the gap between the Sun and Uranus. It took New Horizons more than nine years to fly to Pluto from Earth, after setting a record for highest launch speed of any man-made object, after getting a massive speed boost from the gravity of Jupiter, and without any need to slow back down. It will now take sixteen months for New Horizons to stream all the scientific data from its brief flyby of Pluto back to Earth. Meanwhile it will attempt to visit another smaller Kuiper Belt object before it runs out of fuel and falls short of the edge of our solar system.
An EarthSky community member, Greg Hogan, created this image. Thanks, Greg!
John Goss
EarthSky and the Astronomical League – the most established and respected organization of amateur astronomers in the United States – have agreed to partner in the years 2016 to 2018 to bring the wonder, beauty, and mystery of the night sky to the public. The partnership was finalized today (July 30, 2015). John Goss, president of the Astronomical League, said:
The Astronomical League, the nation’s largest federation of astronomical societies, is proud to partner with EarthSky … We recognize the importance of what stargazing and amateur astronomy offer to the betterment of our society, especially to the benefit of our young.
Among many other activities, the Astronomical League hosts a national meeting for all people interested in astronomy. It’s called AlCon, and you are hereby invited for 2017.
Deborah Byrd
Deborah Byrd, founder and editor-in-chief of EarthSky, added:
We are thrilled and honored to be partnering with the Astronomical League, and we’ve got some exciting plans for the coming three years. For example, after surveying our audience and getting their ideas on what they want to see, we’ve been working toward a slightly different design for our website (bigger pictures!), which we hope to implement in early 2016. We also hope to add two new features to EarthSky.org, first, a global map where people can pinpoint their favorite stargazing locations, and, second, a calendar of events (star parties and the like) that people can attend and enjoy. The Astronomical League will be helping us with both features, and we are grateful for their support.
In the coming three years, we also want to help our audience understand, prepare for and enjoy the August 21, 2016 total solar eclipse, which will be visible from North America.
And we want to continue building providing information about astronomy to our audience, enabling them to take next steps toward enjoying astronomy as a lifetime pursuit.
The partnership will include co-promotion of EarthSky and the Astronomical League in each organization’s outreach to club members and the public. And it will include an exchange of information, designed to help each group accomplish their goals.
Bottom line: EarthSky and the Astronomical League announced a partnership for the years 2016-2018.
from EarthSky http://ift.tt/1Jycffl
An EarthSky community member, Greg Hogan, created this image. Thanks, Greg!
John Goss
EarthSky and the Astronomical League – the most established and respected organization of amateur astronomers in the United States – have agreed to partner in the years 2016 to 2018 to bring the wonder, beauty, and mystery of the night sky to the public. The partnership was finalized today (July 30, 2015). John Goss, president of the Astronomical League, said:
The Astronomical League, the nation’s largest federation of astronomical societies, is proud to partner with EarthSky … We recognize the importance of what stargazing and amateur astronomy offer to the betterment of our society, especially to the benefit of our young.
Among many other activities, the Astronomical League hosts a national meeting for all people interested in astronomy. It’s called AlCon, and you are hereby invited for 2017.
Deborah Byrd
Deborah Byrd, founder and editor-in-chief of EarthSky, added:
We are thrilled and honored to be partnering with the Astronomical League, and we’ve got some exciting plans for the coming three years. For example, after surveying our audience and getting their ideas on what they want to see, we’ve been working toward a slightly different design for our website (bigger pictures!), which we hope to implement in early 2016. We also hope to add two new features to EarthSky.org, first, a global map where people can pinpoint their favorite stargazing locations, and, second, a calendar of events (star parties and the like) that people can attend and enjoy. The Astronomical League will be helping us with both features, and we are grateful for their support.
In the coming three years, we also want to help our audience understand, prepare for and enjoy the August 21, 2016 total solar eclipse, which will be visible from North America.
And we want to continue building providing information about astronomy to our audience, enabling them to take next steps toward enjoying astronomy as a lifetime pursuit.
The partnership will include co-promotion of EarthSky and the Astronomical League in each organization’s outreach to club members and the public. And it will include an exchange of information, designed to help each group accomplish their goals.
Bottom line: EarthSky and the Astronomical League announced a partnership for the years 2016-2018.
The Urban Waters Federal Partnership in the Greater Philadelphia Area/Delaware River Watershed is helping communities, protecting urban waterways, and is providing critical job skills. This GreenTreks Network video highlights local programs that provide positive activities for at-risk youth and protect local waters at the same time. The video highlights work done by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society – which received one of the first Urban Waters Small Grants – to support its Roots to Re-entry program. This program gives horticultural and landscaping training to inmates of the Philadelphia Prison System to give them post-release job skills and job placement assistance.
Greater Philadelphia area communities are experiencing the power of partnerships in other ways, too. A second video from GreenTreks Network shows how Urban Waters Federal Partners, including EPA, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Park Service, local water utilities, and a host of local organizations together have the power to create positive change in communities, while protecting the area’s urban waterways.
The Urban Waters Federal Partnership is truly making a difference in the Philadelphia area, and other locations across the country. Check out this map to find out what’s happening in an Urban Waters location near you.
About the author: Dr. Jennie Saxe joined EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region in 2003 and works in the Water Protection Division on sustainability programs
The Urban Waters Federal Partnership in the Greater Philadelphia Area/Delaware River Watershed is helping communities, protecting urban waterways, and is providing critical job skills. This GreenTreks Network video highlights local programs that provide positive activities for at-risk youth and protect local waters at the same time. The video highlights work done by the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society – which received one of the first Urban Waters Small Grants – to support its Roots to Re-entry program. This program gives horticultural and landscaping training to inmates of the Philadelphia Prison System to give them post-release job skills and job placement assistance.
Greater Philadelphia area communities are experiencing the power of partnerships in other ways, too. A second video from GreenTreks Network shows how Urban Waters Federal Partners, including EPA, the U.S. Forest Service, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), the National Park Service, local water utilities, and a host of local organizations together have the power to create positive change in communities, while protecting the area’s urban waterways.
The Urban Waters Federal Partnership is truly making a difference in the Philadelphia area, and other locations across the country. Check out this map to find out what’s happening in an Urban Waters location near you.
About the author: Dr. Jennie Saxe joined EPA’s Mid-Atlantic Region in 2003 and works in the Water Protection Division on sustainability programs
Explore atmospheric pressure by making and drinking from a very long straw in this week's science activity spotlight.
Your straw needs to be long enough to reach both the liquid you are drinking and your mouth, so it generally needs to be just a bit taller than the cup. Most straws are about the same size. There are some bigger ones, of course, that match up to larger cups you might order in a store or restaurant. But whether they are plain or colored, bendy or straight, most straws are pretty similar in length. A straw that is not much taller than your cup probably helps reduce the chance of spilling your drink, but is there a maximum length a straw can be?
Straws are very effective at helping us draw liquid from a cup and up into our mouths, but the science of how this works might surprise you! Did you know that liquid is actually being pushed up into a straw because of changes in pressure that happen when you sip through the straw? In this week's hands-on family science activity, grab straws and tape and build a very long straw and see how long a straw can be and still work. What will give out first, the straw or your ability to draw liquid up and through it?
You may have built marble runs or roller coasters before, but have you ever tried to set a family record for longest straw? Give it a try, and have fun talking about the science at the same time!
Explore atmospheric pressure by making and drinking from a very long straw in this week's science activity spotlight.
Your straw needs to be long enough to reach both the liquid you are drinking and your mouth, so it generally needs to be just a bit taller than the cup. Most straws are about the same size. There are some bigger ones, of course, that match up to larger cups you might order in a store or restaurant. But whether they are plain or colored, bendy or straight, most straws are pretty similar in length. A straw that is not much taller than your cup probably helps reduce the chance of spilling your drink, but is there a maximum length a straw can be?
Straws are very effective at helping us draw liquid from a cup and up into our mouths, but the science of how this works might surprise you! Did you know that liquid is actually being pushed up into a straw because of changes in pressure that happen when you sip through the straw? In this week's hands-on family science activity, grab straws and tape and build a very long straw and see how long a straw can be and still work. What will give out first, the straw or your ability to draw liquid up and through it?
You may have built marble runs or roller coasters before, but have you ever tried to set a family record for longest straw? Give it a try, and have fun talking about the science at the same time!
