Age: the biggest cancer risk factor

This is the first post in a three-part series looking at age and cancer. 

Cancer risk is complicated.

The causes of cancer can be broadly placed into two boxes: things that we can do something about, and things that we can’t. We’ve blogged about the factors we have some control over before – such as not smoking and drinking less alcohol.

But what often doesn’t get talked about is the single biggest risk factor for cancer: age.

The older you are, the more likely you are to develop cancer. And this is true for most cancer types.

Half of all cancer cases occur in people aged 70 and over in the UK. And on average, we’re living longer than ever before. These two factors help explain why the proportion of people who will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime has increased from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2. The good news is, cancer survival has doubled in the last 40 years.

The bigger picture

If the link between cancer and age surprises you, you’re not alone. Cancer Research UK-funded research from 2014 found that most people (64%) believed that cancer wasn’t related to age. And when comparing across similar countries, awareness of the link between cancer risk and age is particularly low in the UK.

One reason for this might be that stories about younger people with cancer tend to appear in the media more often than stories about older people .

It’s important to remember that these stories are particularly news-worthy because they are so rare.

Less than 1 in 100 new cancer cases are diagnosed in people aged under 24. These cases are important, but their coverage in the media can make these situations seem much more common than they are.

 

Copy this link to share our graphic Credit: Cancer Research UK

 

Why does age increase the risk of cancer?

It’s what happens inside our cells as we age that makes them more susceptible to turning cancerous.

Our cells contain a unique code, our DNA, that carries a set of instructions for everything a cell needs to work properly. Cells replicate themselves and their DNA to keep the body healthy.

But this replication isn’t perfect. Errors, known as mutations, occur and build up over time. If too many build up, the cell becomes faulty, and can lead to a normal cell becoming cancerous if it grows uncontrollably.

This doesn’t happen without a safety net. Our cells are normally good at spotting damaged DNA and fixing the problem so it doesn’t cause harm. But there are trillions of cells in our body, and over time some errors will get through.

The older you are, the more your cells will have replicated. So it’s likely that more DNA errors have happened and had time to build up. And because there’s more of them, it’s more likely that these errors will lead to cancer.

Mutations can occur by chance, but factors such as smoking or UV rays from the sun or sunbeds can make them more likely to happen. That’s why it’s important to tackle the factors that can be prevented

What does this mean for me?

We can’t stop the ageing process. But knowing how it increases cancer risk is an important starting point for research and awareness.

We now know that some cancer causes, such as smoking, happen through similar mechanisms to how age increases risk.

Things like smoking, too much exposure to UV rays from the sun, and drinking too much alcohol can make mutations more likely to happen. And these mutations can happen in molecules that provide the cell’s DNA repair safety net, further increasing the damage.

The link between age and the risk of different cancer types is one of the reasons why it’s generally only older people who are invited to take part in NHS screening programmes for bowel, breast, and cervical cancers.

Ageing isn’t a time bomb and not everyone will get cancer. But being aware of your body, so that you’re more likely to notice any unusual or persistent changes, can be even more important as we age.

If you do notice something that doesn’t seem right, especially if it doesn’t go away, it’s important to tell your doctor rather than put it down to age or a different health condition. Most changes won’t be cancer, but if it is, diagnosing it at an early stage means treatment is more likely to be successful.

Consider the context

Cancer awareness is important at any age, and everyone should look out for changes to their body that aren’t usual for them.

But it’s just as important to remember that around 4 in 10 cases of cancer could be prevented through things like not smoking, keeping a healthy weight and drinking less alcohol.

So don’t worry about the things you can’t change, because it’s never too late to change the things you can.

Clare Hyde is a health information officer at Cancer Research UK

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2yrgATV

This is the first post in a three-part series looking at age and cancer. 

Cancer risk is complicated.

The causes of cancer can be broadly placed into two boxes: things that we can do something about, and things that we can’t. We’ve blogged about the factors we have some control over before – such as not smoking and drinking less alcohol.

But what often doesn’t get talked about is the single biggest risk factor for cancer: age.

The older you are, the more likely you are to develop cancer. And this is true for most cancer types.

Half of all cancer cases occur in people aged 70 and over in the UK. And on average, we’re living longer than ever before. These two factors help explain why the proportion of people who will be diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime has increased from 1 in 3 to 1 in 2. The good news is, cancer survival has doubled in the last 40 years.

The bigger picture

If the link between cancer and age surprises you, you’re not alone. Cancer Research UK-funded research from 2014 found that most people (64%) believed that cancer wasn’t related to age. And when comparing across similar countries, awareness of the link between cancer risk and age is particularly low in the UK.

One reason for this might be that stories about younger people with cancer tend to appear in the media more often than stories about older people .

It’s important to remember that these stories are particularly news-worthy because they are so rare.

Less than 1 in 100 new cancer cases are diagnosed in people aged under 24. These cases are important, but their coverage in the media can make these situations seem much more common than they are.

 

Copy this link to share our graphic Credit: Cancer Research UK

 

Why does age increase the risk of cancer?

It’s what happens inside our cells as we age that makes them more susceptible to turning cancerous.

Our cells contain a unique code, our DNA, that carries a set of instructions for everything a cell needs to work properly. Cells replicate themselves and their DNA to keep the body healthy.

But this replication isn’t perfect. Errors, known as mutations, occur and build up over time. If too many build up, the cell becomes faulty, and can lead to a normal cell becoming cancerous if it grows uncontrollably.

This doesn’t happen without a safety net. Our cells are normally good at spotting damaged DNA and fixing the problem so it doesn’t cause harm. But there are trillions of cells in our body, and over time some errors will get through.

The older you are, the more your cells will have replicated. So it’s likely that more DNA errors have happened and had time to build up. And because there’s more of them, it’s more likely that these errors will lead to cancer.

Mutations can occur by chance, but factors such as smoking or UV rays from the sun or sunbeds can make them more likely to happen. That’s why it’s important to tackle the factors that can be prevented

What does this mean for me?

We can’t stop the ageing process. But knowing how it increases cancer risk is an important starting point for research and awareness.

We now know that some cancer causes, such as smoking, happen through similar mechanisms to how age increases risk.

Things like smoking, too much exposure to UV rays from the sun, and drinking too much alcohol can make mutations more likely to happen. And these mutations can happen in molecules that provide the cell’s DNA repair safety net, further increasing the damage.

The link between age and the risk of different cancer types is one of the reasons why it’s generally only older people who are invited to take part in NHS screening programmes for bowel, breast, and cervical cancers.

Ageing isn’t a time bomb and not everyone will get cancer. But being aware of your body, so that you’re more likely to notice any unusual or persistent changes, can be even more important as we age.

If you do notice something that doesn’t seem right, especially if it doesn’t go away, it’s important to tell your doctor rather than put it down to age or a different health condition. Most changes won’t be cancer, but if it is, diagnosing it at an early stage means treatment is more likely to be successful.

Consider the context

Cancer awareness is important at any age, and everyone should look out for changes to their body that aren’t usual for them.

But it’s just as important to remember that around 4 in 10 cases of cancer could be prevented through things like not smoking, keeping a healthy weight and drinking less alcohol.

So don’t worry about the things you can’t change, because it’s never too late to change the things you can.

Clare Hyde is a health information officer at Cancer Research UK

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2yrgATV

Unispace+50 and perspectives for the future

A special, high-level youth and space panel will be held at UNISPACE+50 in Vienna on 19 June, including astronaut Scott Kelly, the UN’s ‘Champion for Space’. The panel will provide a forum to discuss technical advancements and findings in space and new opportunities for society, focussing, as the title implies, on young people!

We asked several young Europeans working at ESA for their perspective on the future and what they hope to see in coming years.

---

Aybike Demirsan
Hometown: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Work: Young Graduate Trainee at ESA working on software for the Cluster mission 

Aybike Demirsan

Two years ago, I entered ESA’s Young Graduate Trainee programme with a position at the Agency’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. I am working on the Cluster mission, comprising four structurally identical spacecraft that fly in formation to measure the solar wind’s effects on Earth’s magnetosphere.

My job, thanks to my background in computer science, is to reengineer the mission’s monitoring tool, so that it would be easier for the flight control team to monitor the upcoming contacts between our spacecraft and the ground stations. The tool employs a simple visual timeline, with many more functionalities than before, to make our lives as spacecraft operations engineers and spacecraft controllers easier.

I also received training on every subsystem of the spacecraft and learned how to operate spacecraft and how to deal with anomalies, which has been a great journey.

However, it’s not only what we do that fascinates me, but also the way we do it. Never before have I worked with such a diverse crowd of people, and as well I have never before worked in such a peaceful, nourishing environment where knowledge is shared, help is always offered and there is belief and trust in others and yourself to do your job with your best effort. For space in the future, I think youth today can look forward to worldwide collaboration and to overcoming artificial human-created borders!

Artur Scholz
Hometown: Erlangen, Germany
Work: Spacecraft Operations Engineer at ESA working on the Cluster and JUICE missions 

Artur Scholz

For space in future, youth today should most look forward to work together openly, with a focus on sharing and collaboration.

The spirit of open source, which comes from the software world, should be applied to all areas of space exploration – because what we need to truly advance access to space is to allow everyone to get involved!

Dr Francesca Letizia
Hometown: Cagliari, Italy
Work: Space Debris Engineer at ESA working on assessing compliance with space debris mitigation guidelines

Francesca Letizia

There are three main aspects of future space activities that I find exciting. The first one is related to exploration: In the upcoming years, we will witness increasing efforts to send astronauts to Mars and, in general, beyond low Earth orbit. Several projects – like the Lunar Orbiing Platform – Gateway and Moon Village – are evaluating extended human presence in orbits much more distant from Earth than the current International Space Station. These initiatives could contribute to a deeper understanding of the limits of the human body (and mind) in space and how to handle these.

Another interesting field is the development of planet-hunter missions, such as NASA’s Kepler spacecraft now in orbit and the planned ESA Plato and Cheops missions. The goal of these spacecraft is to find planets outside our Solar System and, in particular, to identify planets with a habitable environment. The findings of these missions are incredibly fascinating as they shed light on where life could have developed outside of Earth.

Finally, in the future, space will be more and more an enabler of new technology and applications. This is already happening right now with navigation services such as GPS and could be even more exploited and integrated thanks to the improved accuracy offered by Galileo. Other opportunities are offered by the processing of satellite images in fields such as agriculture or monitoring of land and water use.

Adam Vigneron
Hometown: Wilcox, Saskatchewan, Canada
Work: Navigation Engineer, on contract from Telespazio VEGA Deutschland, at ESA’s Navigation Support Office

Adam Vigneron Credit: J. Martin

My work in the Navigation Support Office has given me a profound example of the way in which space technology is an integral part of our everyday life. The work I do now inspires me to dream of a future where the line between space and daily life continues to blur…

For fifty years, uncrewed spaceflight has been a one-way trip. Two related mission families, active debris removal (ADR) and on-orbit servicing (OOS), are looking to turn this trip on its head. Briefly, ADR involves the removal of dead satellites from useful orbits, while OOS includes the refuelling and repairing of satellites already in orbit.

After numerous stops and starts, rumblings are happening in all the right places. Technology demonstrations of advanced robotics are ongoing on the International Space Station, proving technologies for fuel transfer and battery replacement. It looks as though the world’s first ADR mission, e.Deorbit, will gain attention at next year’s ESA Ministerial Council. Discussions continue at UNCOPUOS, the UN body which allows countries to agree on standards and norms for the peaceful use of outer space. Industrial players around the world are jockeying for position as this market emerges. All the while, valuable orbits in LEO and GEO are slowly but steadily filling up with active satellites and debris alike.

ADR/OOS promise an economically viable revolution in space activities to which today’s globally-minded, engaged youth are well-suited. There is a lot of work to be done, but with determination, we can make these missions come to life and change the way we look at space itself by making in-space repair as everyday ordinary as satellite navigation is today.

Editor’s note

Find out more about the misisons and activities mentioned above:

Cluster mission operations

JUICE mission

Space Debris Office

Navigation Support Office

e.Deorbit/Active debris removal

On-orbit servicing

 

 

from Rocket Science https://ift.tt/2ypBwL6
v

A special, high-level youth and space panel will be held at UNISPACE+50 in Vienna on 19 June, including astronaut Scott Kelly, the UN’s ‘Champion for Space’. The panel will provide a forum to discuss technical advancements and findings in space and new opportunities for society, focussing, as the title implies, on young people!

We asked several young Europeans working at ESA for their perspective on the future and what they hope to see in coming years.

---

Aybike Demirsan
Hometown: Frankfurt am Main, Germany
Work: Young Graduate Trainee at ESA working on software for the Cluster mission 

Aybike Demirsan

Two years ago, I entered ESA’s Young Graduate Trainee programme with a position at the Agency’s ESOC mission control centre in Darmstadt, Germany. I am working on the Cluster mission, comprising four structurally identical spacecraft that fly in formation to measure the solar wind’s effects on Earth’s magnetosphere.

My job, thanks to my background in computer science, is to reengineer the mission’s monitoring tool, so that it would be easier for the flight control team to monitor the upcoming contacts between our spacecraft and the ground stations. The tool employs a simple visual timeline, with many more functionalities than before, to make our lives as spacecraft operations engineers and spacecraft controllers easier.

I also received training on every subsystem of the spacecraft and learned how to operate spacecraft and how to deal with anomalies, which has been a great journey.

However, it’s not only what we do that fascinates me, but also the way we do it. Never before have I worked with such a diverse crowd of people, and as well I have never before worked in such a peaceful, nourishing environment where knowledge is shared, help is always offered and there is belief and trust in others and yourself to do your job with your best effort. For space in the future, I think youth today can look forward to worldwide collaboration and to overcoming artificial human-created borders!

Artur Scholz
Hometown: Erlangen, Germany
Work: Spacecraft Operations Engineer at ESA working on the Cluster and JUICE missions 

Artur Scholz

For space in future, youth today should most look forward to work together openly, with a focus on sharing and collaboration.

The spirit of open source, which comes from the software world, should be applied to all areas of space exploration – because what we need to truly advance access to space is to allow everyone to get involved!

Dr Francesca Letizia
Hometown: Cagliari, Italy
Work: Space Debris Engineer at ESA working on assessing compliance with space debris mitigation guidelines

Francesca Letizia

There are three main aspects of future space activities that I find exciting. The first one is related to exploration: In the upcoming years, we will witness increasing efforts to send astronauts to Mars and, in general, beyond low Earth orbit. Several projects – like the Lunar Orbiing Platform – Gateway and Moon Village – are evaluating extended human presence in orbits much more distant from Earth than the current International Space Station. These initiatives could contribute to a deeper understanding of the limits of the human body (and mind) in space and how to handle these.

Another interesting field is the development of planet-hunter missions, such as NASA’s Kepler spacecraft now in orbit and the planned ESA Plato and Cheops missions. The goal of these spacecraft is to find planets outside our Solar System and, in particular, to identify planets with a habitable environment. The findings of these missions are incredibly fascinating as they shed light on where life could have developed outside of Earth.

Finally, in the future, space will be more and more an enabler of new technology and applications. This is already happening right now with navigation services such as GPS and could be even more exploited and integrated thanks to the improved accuracy offered by Galileo. Other opportunities are offered by the processing of satellite images in fields such as agriculture or monitoring of land and water use.

Adam Vigneron
Hometown: Wilcox, Saskatchewan, Canada
Work: Navigation Engineer, on contract from Telespazio VEGA Deutschland, at ESA’s Navigation Support Office

Adam Vigneron Credit: J. Martin

My work in the Navigation Support Office has given me a profound example of the way in which space technology is an integral part of our everyday life. The work I do now inspires me to dream of a future where the line between space and daily life continues to blur…

For fifty years, uncrewed spaceflight has been a one-way trip. Two related mission families, active debris removal (ADR) and on-orbit servicing (OOS), are looking to turn this trip on its head. Briefly, ADR involves the removal of dead satellites from useful orbits, while OOS includes the refuelling and repairing of satellites already in orbit.

After numerous stops and starts, rumblings are happening in all the right places. Technology demonstrations of advanced robotics are ongoing on the International Space Station, proving technologies for fuel transfer and battery replacement. It looks as though the world’s first ADR mission, e.Deorbit, will gain attention at next year’s ESA Ministerial Council. Discussions continue at UNCOPUOS, the UN body which allows countries to agree on standards and norms for the peaceful use of outer space. Industrial players around the world are jockeying for position as this market emerges. All the while, valuable orbits in LEO and GEO are slowly but steadily filling up with active satellites and debris alike.

ADR/OOS promise an economically viable revolution in space activities to which today’s globally-minded, engaged youth are well-suited. There is a lot of work to be done, but with determination, we can make these missions come to life and change the way we look at space itself by making in-space repair as everyday ordinary as satellite navigation is today.

Editor’s note

Find out more about the misisons and activities mentioned above:

Cluster mission operations

JUICE mission

Space Debris Office

Navigation Support Office

e.Deorbit/Active debris removal

On-orbit servicing

 

 

from Rocket Science https://ift.tt/2ypBwL6
v

NHS funding: New money for England is a start, but it must be spent wisely

The Prime Minister has announced that the NHS in England will receive an extra £20bn per year by 2023.

The announcement is welcome backing from the Government for the NHS, and represents a real cash injection. But is it enough? And, most importantly, what’s the money going to be used for?

The new money will see the NHS budget increase by an average of 3.4% each year until 2023, with slightly more funding available in 2019 and 2020. NHS England currently spends £114bn a year.

This is a real increase in the budget, as it goes above what would be expected by simply matching inflation. And with the average yearly increase in the NHS budget having been just above 1% since 2010, this is a big increase in the amount of money going into the NHS.

But over the next 10 years, as the population ages, pressure on the NHS will continue to build. We expect that by 2035, more than 500,000 people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer every year. That’s an annual increase of over 150,000 people compared to the number diagnosed in 2015.

The NHS will need significantly more money to meet this demand, which the Government has recognised in its latest announcement. But independent analysis by the UK’s three biggest health policy research organisations – Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation and the King’s Fund – estimates that the NHS needs funding increases of at least 4% per year both to meet demand and to make services fit for the future.

So, while the amount promised by the Government should do a lot to help the NHS meet demand in the short to medium-term, there are concerns that it isn’t enough to significantly improve services and outcomes.

And crucially, it’s only being provided to NHS England, which funds hospitals, GPs practices, and other healthcare services. The new cash boost won’t apply to the organisations providing our medical education, public health, social care, or vital government-funded medical research.

Without money across the board, it will be difficult for the NHS to match the growing need of patients. So, it will be important to understand what the Government plans for these other budget areas, details of which should come in the autumn.

How will the money be spent?

How the money will be spent is just as important as the amount. And as with any fresh government funding announcement, the details aren’t yet clear. But Theresa May has signalled that she wants cancer to be a focus. She has now asked the head of the NHS in England, Simon Stevens, to draw up a plan for the new funding.

The Prime Minister said today that she wants the new plan to improve cancer survival. We believe the UK should be aiming to be among the countries with the best cancer survival in the world. And to make this a reality, we need to double the pace of improvement in five-year survival over next 10 years.

Without the right staff working in the NHS, this won’t be achievable.

Earlier this month we launched our Shoulder to Shoulder campaign, highlighting how staff shortages are making it harder for the NHS to diagnose cancer earlier and treat it.

The earlier a cancer is diagnosed, the more likely it is to be treated successfully. But more than 1 in 10 NHS diagnostic jobs are vacant, and thousands more NHS staff will be needed in the future.

Nearly 120 MPs signed our letter to the Prime Minister, urging her to prioritise training and employing more NHS staff to diagnose and treat cancer in any new plan for the NHS.

That’s why we were pleased to hear Theresa May say today that workforce is a top priority for the new NHS plan. The Prime Minister is right to say that our NHS staff are the lifeblood of the NHS.

“Our ten year plan for the NHS must include a comprehensive plan for its workforce to ensure we have the right staff, in the right settings, and with the right skills to deliver world class care,” she said.

We will work with the Government and the NHS to help make sure that the NHS has the staff it needs in the future to diagnose and treat cancer earlier.

“Whilst we are concerned that the NHS will still struggle within this financial settlement, there is still much to be gained from how we choose to spend this money. It is essential that there is now a clear plan to train and employ more staff – starting now – so that this NHS investment isn’t a missed opportunity,” says our Chief Executive, Sir Harpal Kumar.

What else is needed?

It’s not just staff that the NHS needs if we are to double the pace of improvement in five-year cancer survival over the next 10 years. The new spending plan is the opportunity to make the changes needed to achieve this.

As well as workforce, we want the new plan to prioritise:

• A health system focussed on prevention and early diagnosis
• The UK becoming a world-leading innovator.

Having the right staff in the right numbers should be the number one priority if the Government is serious about diagnosing more cancers earlier. But the NHS will also need to adopt news ways to diagnose patients that help them access the health system quicker, such as the new multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres currently being trialled.

With the number of people diagnosed with cancer set to increase over the coming decades, more needs to be done to prevent as many cases of cancer as possible too. Around 4 in 10 cancers are preventable. And without a sustainable funding solution for public health, the NHS won’t be able to cope with the damage caused by smoking and obesity, the biggest preventable causes of cancer.

Finally, the new plan must set out how the NHS will become a leader in introducing innovative practice and technology, such as more advanced imaging technology, or blood-based biopsies. To provide truly world-class cancer care it’s essential that the NHS can quickly adopt the latest evidence-based technologies.

What next?

In the autumn the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will confirm exactly how the Government will raise the money to pay for the plan. At the same time, he will confirm whether public health, medical education and other important areas will receive any additional funding. We will be arguing strongly that they should.

Over the coming months, Simon Stevens and other NHS leaders will be putting their heads together to develop the new 10-year plan, which will determine how this new money is used to improve the NHS. We will continue to call for improving cancer outcomes to be a key part of this plan, based on the priorities outlined above. And we will ensure that what matters to patients is central to thinking.

At the moment, this plan and funding settlement is just for the NHS in England. But the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will also receive additional funding, which the Prime Minister urged them to use for their own long-term plans for the NHS. We would like to see these plans used to reset their aspirations for cancer care across the UK.

Matt Case is a policy advisor at Cancer Research UK

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2yjn0EL

The Prime Minister has announced that the NHS in England will receive an extra £20bn per year by 2023.

The announcement is welcome backing from the Government for the NHS, and represents a real cash injection. But is it enough? And, most importantly, what’s the money going to be used for?

The new money will see the NHS budget increase by an average of 3.4% each year until 2023, with slightly more funding available in 2019 and 2020. NHS England currently spends £114bn a year.

This is a real increase in the budget, as it goes above what would be expected by simply matching inflation. And with the average yearly increase in the NHS budget having been just above 1% since 2010, this is a big increase in the amount of money going into the NHS.

But over the next 10 years, as the population ages, pressure on the NHS will continue to build. We expect that by 2035, more than 500,000 people in the UK will be diagnosed with cancer every year. That’s an annual increase of over 150,000 people compared to the number diagnosed in 2015.

The NHS will need significantly more money to meet this demand, which the Government has recognised in its latest announcement. But independent analysis by the UK’s three biggest health policy research organisations – Nuffield Trust, the Health Foundation and the King’s Fund – estimates that the NHS needs funding increases of at least 4% per year both to meet demand and to make services fit for the future.

So, while the amount promised by the Government should do a lot to help the NHS meet demand in the short to medium-term, there are concerns that it isn’t enough to significantly improve services and outcomes.

And crucially, it’s only being provided to NHS England, which funds hospitals, GPs practices, and other healthcare services. The new cash boost won’t apply to the organisations providing our medical education, public health, social care, or vital government-funded medical research.

Without money across the board, it will be difficult for the NHS to match the growing need of patients. So, it will be important to understand what the Government plans for these other budget areas, details of which should come in the autumn.

How will the money be spent?

How the money will be spent is just as important as the amount. And as with any fresh government funding announcement, the details aren’t yet clear. But Theresa May has signalled that she wants cancer to be a focus. She has now asked the head of the NHS in England, Simon Stevens, to draw up a plan for the new funding.

The Prime Minister said today that she wants the new plan to improve cancer survival. We believe the UK should be aiming to be among the countries with the best cancer survival in the world. And to make this a reality, we need to double the pace of improvement in five-year survival over next 10 years.

Without the right staff working in the NHS, this won’t be achievable.

Earlier this month we launched our Shoulder to Shoulder campaign, highlighting how staff shortages are making it harder for the NHS to diagnose cancer earlier and treat it.

The earlier a cancer is diagnosed, the more likely it is to be treated successfully. But more than 1 in 10 NHS diagnostic jobs are vacant, and thousands more NHS staff will be needed in the future.

Nearly 120 MPs signed our letter to the Prime Minister, urging her to prioritise training and employing more NHS staff to diagnose and treat cancer in any new plan for the NHS.

That’s why we were pleased to hear Theresa May say today that workforce is a top priority for the new NHS plan. The Prime Minister is right to say that our NHS staff are the lifeblood of the NHS.

“Our ten year plan for the NHS must include a comprehensive plan for its workforce to ensure we have the right staff, in the right settings, and with the right skills to deliver world class care,” she said.

We will work with the Government and the NHS to help make sure that the NHS has the staff it needs in the future to diagnose and treat cancer earlier.

“Whilst we are concerned that the NHS will still struggle within this financial settlement, there is still much to be gained from how we choose to spend this money. It is essential that there is now a clear plan to train and employ more staff – starting now – so that this NHS investment isn’t a missed opportunity,” says our Chief Executive, Sir Harpal Kumar.

What else is needed?

It’s not just staff that the NHS needs if we are to double the pace of improvement in five-year cancer survival over the next 10 years. The new spending plan is the opportunity to make the changes needed to achieve this.

As well as workforce, we want the new plan to prioritise:

• A health system focussed on prevention and early diagnosis
• The UK becoming a world-leading innovator.

Having the right staff in the right numbers should be the number one priority if the Government is serious about diagnosing more cancers earlier. But the NHS will also need to adopt news ways to diagnose patients that help them access the health system quicker, such as the new multi-disciplinary diagnostic centres currently being trialled.

With the number of people diagnosed with cancer set to increase over the coming decades, more needs to be done to prevent as many cases of cancer as possible too. Around 4 in 10 cancers are preventable. And without a sustainable funding solution for public health, the NHS won’t be able to cope with the damage caused by smoking and obesity, the biggest preventable causes of cancer.

Finally, the new plan must set out how the NHS will become a leader in introducing innovative practice and technology, such as more advanced imaging technology, or blood-based biopsies. To provide truly world-class cancer care it’s essential that the NHS can quickly adopt the latest evidence-based technologies.

What next?

In the autumn the Chancellor, Philip Hammond, will confirm exactly how the Government will raise the money to pay for the plan. At the same time, he will confirm whether public health, medical education and other important areas will receive any additional funding. We will be arguing strongly that they should.

Over the coming months, Simon Stevens and other NHS leaders will be putting their heads together to develop the new 10-year plan, which will determine how this new money is used to improve the NHS. We will continue to call for improving cancer outcomes to be a key part of this plan, based on the priorities outlined above. And we will ensure that what matters to patients is central to thinking.

At the moment, this plan and funding settlement is just for the NHS in England. But the governments in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland will also receive additional funding, which the Prime Minister urged them to use for their own long-term plans for the NHS. We would like to see these plans used to reset their aspirations for cancer care across the UK.

Matt Case is a policy advisor at Cancer Research UK

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2yjn0EL

More wildlife now working the night shift

Red fox under cover of darkness in London. Image via Jamie Hall – for use only with this article.

By Kaitlyn Gaynor, University of California, Berkeley

For their first 100 million years on planet Earth, our mammal ancestors relied on the cover of darkness to escape their dinosaur predators and competitors. Only after the meteor-induced mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago could these nocturnal mammals explore the many wondrous opportunities available in the light of day.

Fast forward to the present, and the honeymoon in the sun may be over for mammals. They’re increasingly returning to the protection of night to avoid the Earth’s current terrifying super-predator: Homo sapiens.

My colleagues and I have made the first effort to measure the global effects of human disturbance on the daily activity patterns of wildlife. In our new study in the journal Science, we documented a powerful and widespread process by which mammals alter their behavior alongside people: Human disturbance is creating a more nocturnal natural world.

Many catastrophic effects of humans on wildlife communities have been well-documented: We are responsible for habitat destruction and overexploitation that have imperiled animal populations around the world. However, just our presence alone can have important behavioral impacts on wildlife, even if these effects aren’t immediately apparent or easy to quantify. Many animals fear humans: We can be large, noisy, novel and dangerous. Animals often go out of their way to avoid encountering us. But it’s becoming more and more challenging for wildlife to seek out human-free spaces, as the human population grows and our footprint expands across the planet.

A badger explores a South London cemetery at night. Image via Laurent Geslin. For use only with this article.

Global increase in nocturnality

My collaborators and I noticed a striking pattern in some of our own data from research in Tanzania, Nepal and Canada: animals from impala to tigers to grizzly bears seemed to be more active at night when they were around people. Once the idea was on our radar, we began to see it throughout the published scientific literature.

It appeared to be a common global phenomenon; we set out to see just how widespread this effect was. Might animals all over the world be adjusting their daily activity patterns to avoid humans in time, given that it is becoming harder to avoid us in space?

To explore this question, we conducted a meta-analysis, or a study of studies. We systematically scoured the published literature for peer-reviewed journal articles, reports and theses that documented the 24-hour activity patterns of large mammals. We focused on mammals because their need for plenty of space often brings them into contact with humans, and they possess traits that allow for some flexibility in their activity.

We needed to find examples that provided data for areas or seasons of low human disturbance – that is, more natural conditions – and high human disturbance. For example, studies compared deer activity in and out of the hunting season, grizzly bear activity in areas with and without hiking, and elephant activity inside protected areas and outside among rural settlement.

Based on reported data from remote camera traps, radio collars or observations, we determined each species’ nocturnality, which we defined as the percentage of the animal’s total activity that occurred between sunset and sunrise. We then quantified the difference in nocturnality between low and high disturbance to understand how animals changed their activity patterns in response to people.

For each species, researchers compared the animals’ active periods when people are nearby to when people aren’t around. The distance between the grey and red dot pair for each animal shows how extreme the shift in nocturnality. Image reprinted with permission from Gaynor et al., Science 360:1232 (2018). For use only with this article.

Overall, for the 62 species in our study, mammals were 1.36 times as nocturnal in response to human disturbance. An animal that naturally split its activity evenly between the day and night, for example, would increase its nighttime activity to 68 percent around people.

While we expected to find a trend toward increased wildlife nocturnality around people, we were surprised by the consistency of the results around the world. Eighty-three percent of the case studies we examined showed some increase in nocturnal activity in response to disturbance. Our finding was consistent across species, continents and habitat types. Antelope on the savanna of Zimbabwe, tapir in the Ecuadorian rainforests, bobcats in the American southwest deserts – all seemed to be doing what they could to shift their activity to the cover of darkness.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the pattern also held across different types of human disturbance, including activities such as hunting, hiking, mountain biking, and infrastructure such as roads, residential settlement and agriculture. Animals responded strongly to all activities, regardless of whether people actually posed a direct threat. It seems human presence alone is enough to disrupt their natural patterns of behavior. People may think our outdoor recreation leaves no trace, but our mere presence can have lasting consequences.

Future of human-wildlife coexistence

We don’t yet understand the consequences of this dramatic behavioral shift for individual animals or populations. Over millions of years, many of the animals included in our study have evolved adaptations to living in the daylight.

Sun bears retreat from the sunny hours when people are nearby. Image via Hakumakuma/Shutterstock.

Sun bears, for example, are typically diurnal and sun-loving creatures; in undisturbed areas less than 20 percent of their activity occurred at the night. But they increased their nocturnality to 90 percent in areas of the Sumatran forest where intensive forest research activity created a disturbance.

Such diurnally adapted animals may not be as successful at finding food, avoiding predators or communicating in the darkness, which could even reduce their survival or reproduction.

However, because our mammalian ancestors evolved under the cover of darkness in the time of the dinosaurs, most mammal species possess traits that allow for some flexibility in their activity patterns. As long as animals are able to meet their needs during the night, they may actually thrive in human-dominated landscapes by avoiding daytime direct encounters with people that could potentially be dangerous for both parties. In Nepal, for example, tigers and people share the exact same trails in the forest at different times of day, reducing direct conflict between humans and these large carnivores. Dividing up the day, through what researchers call temporal partitioning, may be a mechanism by which people and wildlife can coexist on an ever more crowded planet.

An increase in nocturnality among certain species may also have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems, reshaping species interactions and cascading through food webs. In California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, coyotes are becoming more nocturnal in areas with human recreation. By analyzing coyote scat, scientists have linked this behavioral change to dietary shifts from diurnal to nocturnal prey, with implications for small mammal communities and for competition with other predators.

European beaver active at night in Orléans, France. Image via Laurent Geslin – for use only in this article.

Working on this study reminded me that people aren’t alone on the planet. Even if we don’t see large mammals while we’re out and about during the day, they may still be living alongside us, asleep while we are awake and vice versa. In areas where threatened species live, managers may consider restricting human activity to certain times of the day, leaving some daylight just for wildlife.

And it is likely that we need to preserve wilderness areas entirely free of human disturbance to conserve the most vulnerable and sensitive mammal species. Not all animals are willing or able to just switch to a nocturnal lifestyle around people. Those that try to avoid human disturbance entirely may be most vulnerable to the consequences of the expanding human footprint.

Kaitlyn Gaynor, Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Bottom line: Research suggests that to try to avoid people, mammals are shifting activity from the day to the nighttime.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2t5A5fP

Red fox under cover of darkness in London. Image via Jamie Hall – for use only with this article.

By Kaitlyn Gaynor, University of California, Berkeley

For their first 100 million years on planet Earth, our mammal ancestors relied on the cover of darkness to escape their dinosaur predators and competitors. Only after the meteor-induced mass extinction of dinosaurs 66 million years ago could these nocturnal mammals explore the many wondrous opportunities available in the light of day.

Fast forward to the present, and the honeymoon in the sun may be over for mammals. They’re increasingly returning to the protection of night to avoid the Earth’s current terrifying super-predator: Homo sapiens.

My colleagues and I have made the first effort to measure the global effects of human disturbance on the daily activity patterns of wildlife. In our new study in the journal Science, we documented a powerful and widespread process by which mammals alter their behavior alongside people: Human disturbance is creating a more nocturnal natural world.

Many catastrophic effects of humans on wildlife communities have been well-documented: We are responsible for habitat destruction and overexploitation that have imperiled animal populations around the world. However, just our presence alone can have important behavioral impacts on wildlife, even if these effects aren’t immediately apparent or easy to quantify. Many animals fear humans: We can be large, noisy, novel and dangerous. Animals often go out of their way to avoid encountering us. But it’s becoming more and more challenging for wildlife to seek out human-free spaces, as the human population grows and our footprint expands across the planet.

A badger explores a South London cemetery at night. Image via Laurent Geslin. For use only with this article.

Global increase in nocturnality

My collaborators and I noticed a striking pattern in some of our own data from research in Tanzania, Nepal and Canada: animals from impala to tigers to grizzly bears seemed to be more active at night when they were around people. Once the idea was on our radar, we began to see it throughout the published scientific literature.

It appeared to be a common global phenomenon; we set out to see just how widespread this effect was. Might animals all over the world be adjusting their daily activity patterns to avoid humans in time, given that it is becoming harder to avoid us in space?

To explore this question, we conducted a meta-analysis, or a study of studies. We systematically scoured the published literature for peer-reviewed journal articles, reports and theses that documented the 24-hour activity patterns of large mammals. We focused on mammals because their need for plenty of space often brings them into contact with humans, and they possess traits that allow for some flexibility in their activity.

We needed to find examples that provided data for areas or seasons of low human disturbance – that is, more natural conditions – and high human disturbance. For example, studies compared deer activity in and out of the hunting season, grizzly bear activity in areas with and without hiking, and elephant activity inside protected areas and outside among rural settlement.

Based on reported data from remote camera traps, radio collars or observations, we determined each species’ nocturnality, which we defined as the percentage of the animal’s total activity that occurred between sunset and sunrise. We then quantified the difference in nocturnality between low and high disturbance to understand how animals changed their activity patterns in response to people.

For each species, researchers compared the animals’ active periods when people are nearby to when people aren’t around. The distance between the grey and red dot pair for each animal shows how extreme the shift in nocturnality. Image reprinted with permission from Gaynor et al., Science 360:1232 (2018). For use only with this article.

Overall, for the 62 species in our study, mammals were 1.36 times as nocturnal in response to human disturbance. An animal that naturally split its activity evenly between the day and night, for example, would increase its nighttime activity to 68 percent around people.

While we expected to find a trend toward increased wildlife nocturnality around people, we were surprised by the consistency of the results around the world. Eighty-three percent of the case studies we examined showed some increase in nocturnal activity in response to disturbance. Our finding was consistent across species, continents and habitat types. Antelope on the savanna of Zimbabwe, tapir in the Ecuadorian rainforests, bobcats in the American southwest deserts – all seemed to be doing what they could to shift their activity to the cover of darkness.

Perhaps most surprisingly, the pattern also held across different types of human disturbance, including activities such as hunting, hiking, mountain biking, and infrastructure such as roads, residential settlement and agriculture. Animals responded strongly to all activities, regardless of whether people actually posed a direct threat. It seems human presence alone is enough to disrupt their natural patterns of behavior. People may think our outdoor recreation leaves no trace, but our mere presence can have lasting consequences.

Future of human-wildlife coexistence

We don’t yet understand the consequences of this dramatic behavioral shift for individual animals or populations. Over millions of years, many of the animals included in our study have evolved adaptations to living in the daylight.

Sun bears retreat from the sunny hours when people are nearby. Image via Hakumakuma/Shutterstock.

Sun bears, for example, are typically diurnal and sun-loving creatures; in undisturbed areas less than 20 percent of their activity occurred at the night. But they increased their nocturnality to 90 percent in areas of the Sumatran forest where intensive forest research activity created a disturbance.

Such diurnally adapted animals may not be as successful at finding food, avoiding predators or communicating in the darkness, which could even reduce their survival or reproduction.

However, because our mammalian ancestors evolved under the cover of darkness in the time of the dinosaurs, most mammal species possess traits that allow for some flexibility in their activity patterns. As long as animals are able to meet their needs during the night, they may actually thrive in human-dominated landscapes by avoiding daytime direct encounters with people that could potentially be dangerous for both parties. In Nepal, for example, tigers and people share the exact same trails in the forest at different times of day, reducing direct conflict between humans and these large carnivores. Dividing up the day, through what researchers call temporal partitioning, may be a mechanism by which people and wildlife can coexist on an ever more crowded planet.

An increase in nocturnality among certain species may also have far-reaching consequences for ecosystems, reshaping species interactions and cascading through food webs. In California’s Santa Cruz Mountains, coyotes are becoming more nocturnal in areas with human recreation. By analyzing coyote scat, scientists have linked this behavioral change to dietary shifts from diurnal to nocturnal prey, with implications for small mammal communities and for competition with other predators.

European beaver active at night in Orléans, France. Image via Laurent Geslin – for use only in this article.

Working on this study reminded me that people aren’t alone on the planet. Even if we don’t see large mammals while we’re out and about during the day, they may still be living alongside us, asleep while we are awake and vice versa. In areas where threatened species live, managers may consider restricting human activity to certain times of the day, leaving some daylight just for wildlife.

And it is likely that we need to preserve wilderness areas entirely free of human disturbance to conserve the most vulnerable and sensitive mammal species. Not all animals are willing or able to just switch to a nocturnal lifestyle around people. Those that try to avoid human disturbance entirely may be most vulnerable to the consequences of the expanding human footprint.

Kaitlyn Gaynor, Ph.D. Candidate in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

Bottom line: Research suggests that to try to avoid people, mammals are shifting activity from the day to the nighttime.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2t5A5fP

3D view of Amazon rainforest canopy

NASA released this new video on June 12, 2018. It depicts scientists flying over a rainforest canopy in the Brazilian Amazon, using an instrument to fire 300,000 laser pulses per second. Using this technique, NASA scientists have obtained a 3D look at the rainforest canopy and the first-ever measurements of the high number of tree branch falls – and of tree mortality – occurring in the Brazilian Amazon under drought conditions. They found that 65 percent more trees and large branches died due to an El Niño-driven drought in 2015-2016 as compared to an average year.

The new work is published in the peer-reviewed journal New Phytologist. You’ll find the paper online here. The scientists said that understanding the effects of prolonged drought will give them a better sense of what might happen to carbon stored in tropical forests if, as scientists expect, drought events become more common as the climate continues to warm.

Earth system scientist Doug Morton at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a co-author on the research. He commented in a statement:

Climate projections for the Amazon basin suggest warmer and drier conditions in coming decades. Drought events give us a preview of how tropical forests may react to a warmer world.

The NASA statement explained:

When it doesn’t rain in the rainforest, trees are more at risk of dying because they can’t get enough water from the soil to their canopies, which can reach 15 to 20 stories high. In a rainforest as vast as the Amazon, estimating the number of dying or damaged trees, where only branches may fall, is extremely difficult and has been a long-standing challenge.

Traditionally, researchers hike in and survey a few acres of trees to measure living trees and dead debris on the ground. Morton and his colleagues took the bird’s eye perspective using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology mounted onto an airplane to create a 3D reconstruction of the same forest canopy over three separate flights in 2013, 2014 and 2016. With 300,000 laser pulses a second, the LiDAR data provides an incredibly detailed depiction of the forest over a much greater area than they could cover on foot.

In Brazil, the researchers flew two 30-mile (50-km) swaths near the city of Santarém in the state of Pará, one over the Tapajós National Forest and the other over privately-owned forests that have been fragmented by a range of land uses. This region of the Amazon typically has a three-month dry season from October through December, the same period when Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures peak during an El Niño event. El Niño conditions are associated with a delay the start of the rainy season in the central Amazon, leading to an extended dry season that stresses the trees.

Analyzing the three surveys, the team used the LiDAR data to detect new gaps in the canopy where a tree or branch had fallen in the months between observations. During the non-El Niño period from 2013 to 2014, the branch and tree fall events altered 1.8 percent of the forest canopy in the study area, a small number on the surface but scaled up to the size of the entire Amazon, it’s the equivalent of losing canopy trees or branches over 38,000 square miles [98,000 square km], or the area of Kentucky. Tree and branch mortality was 65 percent higher during the El Niño drought period from 2014 to 2016, or 65,000 square miles [168,000 square km], the size of Wisconsin. Small changes in the Amazon add up.

Morton also said that – because it’s a big forest – even a subtle shift in an El Niño year has a big impact on the total carbon budget of the forest. In other words, drought affects the balance between how much carbon dioxide trees remove from the atmosphere to build their trunk, branches, and leaves as they grow versus the amount that returns to the atmosphere when trees die and decompose. These scientists found that drought did not selectively kill a greater proportion of tall trees versus smaller trees, as was previously thought from experiments that simulated drought conditions in small plots. And that’s good news for the carbon budget, Morton said, explaining:

Large trees hold most of the carbon in any forest. If droughts were to preferentially kill large trees, it would boost the total amount of carbon that’s lost from drought as opposed to other disturbance types.

Read more about the Brazilian Amazon study via NASA

In the past, researchers studying the Brazilian Amazon have hiked in and surveyed a few acres of trees to measure living trees and dead debris on the ground. The new study took a bird’s eye perspective, using LiDAR technology mounted onto an airplane to create a 3D reconstruction of the forest canopy. Image via NASA.

Bottom line: Scientists have made the first 3D measurements of rainforest canopies in the Brazilian Amazon, in order to study the effects of prolonged drought in the region.

Source: El Niño drought increased canopy turnover in Amazon forests

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2JW3O4x

NASA released this new video on June 12, 2018. It depicts scientists flying over a rainforest canopy in the Brazilian Amazon, using an instrument to fire 300,000 laser pulses per second. Using this technique, NASA scientists have obtained a 3D look at the rainforest canopy and the first-ever measurements of the high number of tree branch falls – and of tree mortality – occurring in the Brazilian Amazon under drought conditions. They found that 65 percent more trees and large branches died due to an El Niño-driven drought in 2015-2016 as compared to an average year.

The new work is published in the peer-reviewed journal New Phytologist. You’ll find the paper online here. The scientists said that understanding the effects of prolonged drought will give them a better sense of what might happen to carbon stored in tropical forests if, as scientists expect, drought events become more common as the climate continues to warm.

Earth system scientist Doug Morton at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, is a co-author on the research. He commented in a statement:

Climate projections for the Amazon basin suggest warmer and drier conditions in coming decades. Drought events give us a preview of how tropical forests may react to a warmer world.

The NASA statement explained:

When it doesn’t rain in the rainforest, trees are more at risk of dying because they can’t get enough water from the soil to their canopies, which can reach 15 to 20 stories high. In a rainforest as vast as the Amazon, estimating the number of dying or damaged trees, where only branches may fall, is extremely difficult and has been a long-standing challenge.

Traditionally, researchers hike in and survey a few acres of trees to measure living trees and dead debris on the ground. Morton and his colleagues took the bird’s eye perspective using light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology mounted onto an airplane to create a 3D reconstruction of the same forest canopy over three separate flights in 2013, 2014 and 2016. With 300,000 laser pulses a second, the LiDAR data provides an incredibly detailed depiction of the forest over a much greater area than they could cover on foot.

In Brazil, the researchers flew two 30-mile (50-km) swaths near the city of Santarém in the state of Pará, one over the Tapajós National Forest and the other over privately-owned forests that have been fragmented by a range of land uses. This region of the Amazon typically has a three-month dry season from October through December, the same period when Pacific Ocean sea surface temperatures peak during an El Niño event. El Niño conditions are associated with a delay the start of the rainy season in the central Amazon, leading to an extended dry season that stresses the trees.

Analyzing the three surveys, the team used the LiDAR data to detect new gaps in the canopy where a tree or branch had fallen in the months between observations. During the non-El Niño period from 2013 to 2014, the branch and tree fall events altered 1.8 percent of the forest canopy in the study area, a small number on the surface but scaled up to the size of the entire Amazon, it’s the equivalent of losing canopy trees or branches over 38,000 square miles [98,000 square km], or the area of Kentucky. Tree and branch mortality was 65 percent higher during the El Niño drought period from 2014 to 2016, or 65,000 square miles [168,000 square km], the size of Wisconsin. Small changes in the Amazon add up.

Morton also said that – because it’s a big forest – even a subtle shift in an El Niño year has a big impact on the total carbon budget of the forest. In other words, drought affects the balance between how much carbon dioxide trees remove from the atmosphere to build their trunk, branches, and leaves as they grow versus the amount that returns to the atmosphere when trees die and decompose. These scientists found that drought did not selectively kill a greater proportion of tall trees versus smaller trees, as was previously thought from experiments that simulated drought conditions in small plots. And that’s good news for the carbon budget, Morton said, explaining:

Large trees hold most of the carbon in any forest. If droughts were to preferentially kill large trees, it would boost the total amount of carbon that’s lost from drought as opposed to other disturbance types.

Read more about the Brazilian Amazon study via NASA

In the past, researchers studying the Brazilian Amazon have hiked in and surveyed a few acres of trees to measure living trees and dead debris on the ground. The new study took a bird’s eye perspective, using LiDAR technology mounted onto an airplane to create a 3D reconstruction of the forest canopy. Image via NASA.

Bottom line: Scientists have made the first 3D measurements of rainforest canopies in the Brazilian Amazon, in order to study the effects of prolonged drought in the region.

Source: El Niño drought increased canopy turnover in Amazon forests

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2JW3O4x

ESA Diversity Perspective

Guest post by Ersilia Vaudo 

Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta has been working at the European Space Agency since 1991 and she is currently Chief Diversity Officer.

Ersilia Vaudo | Credits: Zoe Vincent/Wired Italy

Today at Unispace+50, the role of women in space has been placed front and centre, and rightly so.

The topic of diversity and inclusiveness (D&I) has been recently placed high on ESA’s corporate agenda. Through this initiative, ESA intends to enhance its wealth of diversity, and at the same time ensure that the values and the objectives pursued through D&I actions become an inherent feature of the Agency’s policies and business practices.

Last September, as part of this effort, ESA’s commitment toward diversity and inclusiveness was made visible, reinforced and underlined in a policy statement that you read on ESA’s official website. The Agency’s final aim is to create and ensure a modern, inclusive working environment where people value diversity in teams, take others’ perspectives into account and feel comfortable being themselves – regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age or working experience, sexual orientation, physical or mental challenges, ethnicity or educational, religious or social background.

Actually, diversity is already a distinctive feature of ESA and is one of its greatest assets – same as for its international character. People from 22 European member states (plus Canada and Slovenia as Cooperating State and Associate State, respectively) – speaking more than 18 different languages – work together, discussing and solving problems every day by combining their different cultural backgrounds. It is that richness of diversity, in competences, skills and points of view that allows us to achieve results that could be impossible to reach on the effort of single nations. The Agency has put a renewed effort into striving to enhance the innovative perspectives brought in by a diverse and gender-balanced pool of talent.

Among the different activities undertaken to foster diversity and inclusiveness at ESA, a special focus has been put in ensuring that space jobs are increasingly attractive to women in ESA member states.

In fact, we observe that, although space is recognised as one of the most inspirational sectors in science and technology in Europe, and the number of girls in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is growing in member states, applications from women to ESA are are only holding steady. In addition, if the situation in Europe is improving in terms of girls graduating in STEM fields, this is still a ‘boys’ club’.

Furthermore, in terms of perspectives, we see that the number of women decreases along the different steps of a STEM career. It becomes therefore clear that we need to challenge stereotypes, become more proactive in promoting space jobs and work for the right conditions for retaining and ensuring career perspectives to women.

ESA is part of a number of external networks with other international organisations to promote discussions on these issues, exchanging ideas as well on current measures and best practices. It is with this aim that ESA has established a network with member states on diversity and inclusiveness, is part of the ad-hoc EIROforum Working Group on Diversity, and has initiated a collaboration with the OECD on the topic of gender and stereotypes in science. ESA is also corporate member of Women in Aerospace Europe.

Ersilia Vaudo | Credits: Zoe Vincent/Wired Italy

With the Agency facing a significant retirement wave coming over the next 10-15 years, this moment really represents the perfect occasion to project the ‘ESA of the future’ and to start injecting more diversity into the workforce.

ESA already has a long-standing commitment to promoting gender diversity and equal opportunities. Focusing on, and strongly committing to, the involvement of women in STEM is more important today than ever in order to continue and expand ESA’s enduring value – and enhance it in the future from a Space 4.0 perspective. In fact, in the next decades we will be more and more in need of a creative and diverse pool of talent to address challenges of the future.

With this overarching objective in mind, the Agency is now working to achieve measurable goals in terms of female recruitment and representation. For example, in terms of new recruitments we will be aiming at a minimum 30% of new positions filled by women by 2019. In addition, efforts have been put in place to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions, which is at ESA around 10%.

Furthermore, since the Agency receives a gender-balanced number of applications at the young-graduate level while the number of women interested in permanent jobs drops to about 20%, ESA is opening the early-career scheme also to people in their 30s with some years of working experience.

Finally, the Chief Diversity Officer and many of ESA’s female professionals regularly engage in branding and outreach activities to inspire girls and young women across Europe to enter STEM disciplines, encouraging in particular careers in science, engineering and space.

Indeed, at ESA we are sure that diversity will help us strengthen innovation, lessen resistance to change, obtain a broader understanding of societal needs, boost motivation, inspire people and foster knowledge sharing. Spurred on by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDGs that aims at equal opportunities for all women and girls, ESA has a major objective to inspire the young generation of girls to enter the STEM field and in particular to attract more women to the wealth of careers and jobs that space can offer.

from Rocket Science https://ift.tt/2HXdCpS
v

Guest post by Ersilia Vaudo 

Ersilia Vaudo Scarpetta has been working at the European Space Agency since 1991 and she is currently Chief Diversity Officer.

Ersilia Vaudo | Credits: Zoe Vincent/Wired Italy

Today at Unispace+50, the role of women in space has been placed front and centre, and rightly so.

The topic of diversity and inclusiveness (D&I) has been recently placed high on ESA’s corporate agenda. Through this initiative, ESA intends to enhance its wealth of diversity, and at the same time ensure that the values and the objectives pursued through D&I actions become an inherent feature of the Agency’s policies and business practices.

Last September, as part of this effort, ESA’s commitment toward diversity and inclusiveness was made visible, reinforced and underlined in a policy statement that you read on ESA’s official website. The Agency’s final aim is to create and ensure a modern, inclusive working environment where people value diversity in teams, take others’ perspectives into account and feel comfortable being themselves – regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age or working experience, sexual orientation, physical or mental challenges, ethnicity or educational, religious or social background.

Actually, diversity is already a distinctive feature of ESA and is one of its greatest assets – same as for its international character. People from 22 European member states (plus Canada and Slovenia as Cooperating State and Associate State, respectively) – speaking more than 18 different languages – work together, discussing and solving problems every day by combining their different cultural backgrounds. It is that richness of diversity, in competences, skills and points of view that allows us to achieve results that could be impossible to reach on the effort of single nations. The Agency has put a renewed effort into striving to enhance the innovative perspectives brought in by a diverse and gender-balanced pool of talent.

Among the different activities undertaken to foster diversity and inclusiveness at ESA, a special focus has been put in ensuring that space jobs are increasingly attractive to women in ESA member states.

In fact, we observe that, although space is recognised as one of the most inspirational sectors in science and technology in Europe, and the number of girls in science, technology, engineering and maths (STEM) is growing in member states, applications from women to ESA are are only holding steady. In addition, if the situation in Europe is improving in terms of girls graduating in STEM fields, this is still a ‘boys’ club’.

Furthermore, in terms of perspectives, we see that the number of women decreases along the different steps of a STEM career. It becomes therefore clear that we need to challenge stereotypes, become more proactive in promoting space jobs and work for the right conditions for retaining and ensuring career perspectives to women.

ESA is part of a number of external networks with other international organisations to promote discussions on these issues, exchanging ideas as well on current measures and best practices. It is with this aim that ESA has established a network with member states on diversity and inclusiveness, is part of the ad-hoc EIROforum Working Group on Diversity, and has initiated a collaboration with the OECD on the topic of gender and stereotypes in science. ESA is also corporate member of Women in Aerospace Europe.

Ersilia Vaudo | Credits: Zoe Vincent/Wired Italy

With the Agency facing a significant retirement wave coming over the next 10-15 years, this moment really represents the perfect occasion to project the ‘ESA of the future’ and to start injecting more diversity into the workforce.

ESA already has a long-standing commitment to promoting gender diversity and equal opportunities. Focusing on, and strongly committing to, the involvement of women in STEM is more important today than ever in order to continue and expand ESA’s enduring value – and enhance it in the future from a Space 4.0 perspective. In fact, in the next decades we will be more and more in need of a creative and diverse pool of talent to address challenges of the future.

With this overarching objective in mind, the Agency is now working to achieve measurable goals in terms of female recruitment and representation. For example, in terms of new recruitments we will be aiming at a minimum 30% of new positions filled by women by 2019. In addition, efforts have been put in place to increase the proportion of women in leadership positions, which is at ESA around 10%.

Furthermore, since the Agency receives a gender-balanced number of applications at the young-graduate level while the number of women interested in permanent jobs drops to about 20%, ESA is opening the early-career scheme also to people in their 30s with some years of working experience.

Finally, the Chief Diversity Officer and many of ESA’s female professionals regularly engage in branding and outreach activities to inspire girls and young women across Europe to enter STEM disciplines, encouraging in particular careers in science, engineering and space.

Indeed, at ESA we are sure that diversity will help us strengthen innovation, lessen resistance to change, obtain a broader understanding of societal needs, boost motivation, inspire people and foster knowledge sharing. Spurred on by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and in particular SDGs that aims at equal opportunities for all women and girls, ESA has a major objective to inspire the young generation of girls to enter the STEM field and in particular to attract more women to the wealth of careers and jobs that space can offer.

from Rocket Science https://ift.tt/2HXdCpS
v

The slowest sunsets happen around now

A June solstice sunset in the nation of Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula, from our friend Priya Kumar. Thank you, Priya!

Here’s a natural phenomenon you might never have imagined. That is, the sun actually sets more slowly around the time of a solstice.

It’s true. The slowest sunsets (and sunrises) occur at or near the solstices. The fastest sunsets (and sunrises) occur at or near the equinoxes. This is true whether you live in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.

And, by the way, when we say sunset here, we’re talking about the actual number of minutes it takes for the body of the sun to sink below the western horizon.

Adrian Strand captured this photo on a beach in northwest England.

When is the solstice? In 2018, the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice – and Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice – will fall on June 21 at 10:07 UTC.

In the United States, that translates to June 21 at 6:07 a.m Eastern Time, 5:07 a.m. Central Time, 4:07 a.m. Mountain Time, 3:07 a.m. Pacific Time, 2:07 a.m. Alaskan Time and 12:07 a.m. Hawaiian Time. Translate to your time zone.

Equinoxes and solstices, via Geosync.

Why does the sun set so slowly around the solstice? As viewed from the entire Earth, the sun rises and sets farthest north at the June solstice and farthest south at the December solstice.

Now consider that the farther the sun sets from due west along the horizon, the shallower the angle of the setting sun. That means a longer duration for sunset at the solstices.

Meanwhile, at an equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west. That means – on the day of an equinox – the setting sun hits the horizon at its steepest possible angle.

The sunset duration varies by latitude, but let’s just consider one latitude, 40 degrees north, the latitude Denver or Philadelphia in the United States, or Beijing in China. At that latitude, on the day of a solstice, the sun sets in about 3 and 1/4 minutes.

On the other hand, at 40 degrees north latitude, the equinox sun sets in roughly 2 and 3/4 minutes.

At more northerly temperate latitudes, the sunset duration is greater; and at latitudes closer to the equator, the sunset duration is less. Near the Arctic Circle (65 degrees north latitude), the duration of a solstice sunset lasts about 15 minutes. At the equator (0 degrees latitude), the solstice sun takes a little over 2 and 1/4 minutes to set.

Regardless of latitude, however, the duration of sunset is always longest at or near the solstices.

As it turns out, the sunset and sunrise are a tad longer on a December solstice than they are on a June solstice. That’s because the sun is closer to Earth in December than it is in June. Therefore, the sun’s disk looms a bit larger in our sky in December, and so it takes slightly longer to set.

Additionally, the closer December sun moves eastward upon the ecliptic at a faster clip, helping to retard the December solstice sunset (and sunrise) even more. For instance, at 50 degrees north latitude, the winter solstice sunset (sunrise) lasts about 4 minutes and 18 seconds, or about 8 seconds longer than the sunset (sunrise) on the summer solstice.

Bottom line: Here’s a natural phenomenon you might never have imagined. That is, the sun actually sets more slowly around the time of a solstice.

Help support EarthSky! Visit the EarthSky store for to see the great selection of educational tools and team gear we have to offer.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2tyeQkB

A June solstice sunset in the nation of Oman, on the Arabian Peninsula, from our friend Priya Kumar. Thank you, Priya!

Here’s a natural phenomenon you might never have imagined. That is, the sun actually sets more slowly around the time of a solstice.

It’s true. The slowest sunsets (and sunrises) occur at or near the solstices. The fastest sunsets (and sunrises) occur at or near the equinoxes. This is true whether you live in the Northern or Southern Hemisphere.

And, by the way, when we say sunset here, we’re talking about the actual number of minutes it takes for the body of the sun to sink below the western horizon.

Adrian Strand captured this photo on a beach in northwest England.

When is the solstice? In 2018, the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice – and Southern Hemisphere’s winter solstice – will fall on June 21 at 10:07 UTC.

In the United States, that translates to June 21 at 6:07 a.m Eastern Time, 5:07 a.m. Central Time, 4:07 a.m. Mountain Time, 3:07 a.m. Pacific Time, 2:07 a.m. Alaskan Time and 12:07 a.m. Hawaiian Time. Translate to your time zone.

Equinoxes and solstices, via Geosync.

Why does the sun set so slowly around the solstice? As viewed from the entire Earth, the sun rises and sets farthest north at the June solstice and farthest south at the December solstice.

Now consider that the farther the sun sets from due west along the horizon, the shallower the angle of the setting sun. That means a longer duration for sunset at the solstices.

Meanwhile, at an equinox, the sun rises due east and sets due west. That means – on the day of an equinox – the setting sun hits the horizon at its steepest possible angle.

The sunset duration varies by latitude, but let’s just consider one latitude, 40 degrees north, the latitude Denver or Philadelphia in the United States, or Beijing in China. At that latitude, on the day of a solstice, the sun sets in about 3 and 1/4 minutes.

On the other hand, at 40 degrees north latitude, the equinox sun sets in roughly 2 and 3/4 minutes.

At more northerly temperate latitudes, the sunset duration is greater; and at latitudes closer to the equator, the sunset duration is less. Near the Arctic Circle (65 degrees north latitude), the duration of a solstice sunset lasts about 15 minutes. At the equator (0 degrees latitude), the solstice sun takes a little over 2 and 1/4 minutes to set.

Regardless of latitude, however, the duration of sunset is always longest at or near the solstices.

As it turns out, the sunset and sunrise are a tad longer on a December solstice than they are on a June solstice. That’s because the sun is closer to Earth in December than it is in June. Therefore, the sun’s disk looms a bit larger in our sky in December, and so it takes slightly longer to set.

Additionally, the closer December sun moves eastward upon the ecliptic at a faster clip, helping to retard the December solstice sunset (and sunrise) even more. For instance, at 50 degrees north latitude, the winter solstice sunset (sunrise) lasts about 4 minutes and 18 seconds, or about 8 seconds longer than the sunset (sunrise) on the summer solstice.

Bottom line: Here’s a natural phenomenon you might never have imagined. That is, the sun actually sets more slowly around the time of a solstice.

Help support EarthSky! Visit the EarthSky store for to see the great selection of educational tools and team gear we have to offer.

Help EarthSky keep going! Please donate what you can to our annual crowd-funding campaign.

from EarthSky https://ift.tt/2tyeQkB