New research, June 11-17, 2018

A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.

Climate change mitigation

Climate change communication

Climate Hypocrisies: A Comparative Study of News Discourse

What makes them believe in the low-carbon energy transition? Exploring corporate perceptions of the credibility of climate policy mixes (open access)

Analyzing the factors that influence U.S. public support for exporting natural gas

Turkish public preferences for energy

Nature Articulations in Norwegian Advertising Discourse: A Depoliticized Discourse of Climate Change

Weather, Climate, and Narrative: A Relational Model for Democratizing Risk Communication

Cold winters warming? Perceptions of climate change in the North Country

Emission savings

Electric vehicles: solution or new problem?

Leveraging material efficiency as an energy and climate instrument for heavy industries in the EU

Mangrove conservation for climate change mitigation in Indonesia

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining yield in the croplands of Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, China

AFM special issue – Greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from livestock production

Ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions at beef cattle feedlots in Alberta Canada

Tradeoffs in the quest for climate smart agricultural intensification in Mato Grosso, Brazil (open access)

Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from animal production

The impact of socioeconomic and behavioural factors for purchasing energy efficient household appliances: A case study for Denmark

The availability of life-cycle assessment, water footprinting, and carbon footprinting studies in Brazil

Does energy efficiency matter to real estate-consumers? Survey evidence on willingness to pay from a cost-optimal analysis in the context of a developing country

Energy production

Large methane emissions from natural gas vehicles in Chinese cities

The Water‐Energy Nexus of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Global Hydrologic Analysis for Shale Oil and Gas Extraction (open access)

Drivers of growth in commercial-scale solar PV capacity

The Fukushima Accident and Public Perceptions About Nuclear Power Around the Globe – A Challenge & Response Model

Application of German energy transition in Taiwan: A critical review of unique electricity liberalisation as a core strategy to achieve renewable energy growth

Carbon pathways in the global gas market: An attributional lifecycle assessment of the climate impacts of liquefied natural gas exports from the United States to Asia

Climate Policy

Conflicting energy policy priorities in EU energy governance (open access)

Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes (open access)

Socioeconomic factors and future challenges of the goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 °C

Reducing global GHG emissions by replicating successful sector examples: the ‘good practice policies’ scenario

Geoengineering

Cost-Risk Trade-Off of Mitigation and Solar Geoengineering: Considering Regional Disparities Under Probabilistic Climate Sensitivity

The Effects of Carbon Dioxide Removal on the Carbon Cycle (open access)

Climate change

Temperature, precipitation, wind

Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI

Temperature and precipitation extremes under current, 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming above pre-industrial levels over Botswana, and implications for climate change vulnerability (open access)

Winds: intensity and power density simulated by RegCM4 over South America in present and future climate

Extreme events

Tornado Warnings at Night: Who Gets the Message?

Drought Monitoring of Southwestern China Using Insufficient GRACE Data for the Long-term Mean Reference Frame under Global Change

East Asian dust storm in May 2017: observations, modelling, and its influence on the Asia-Pacific region (open access)

Hurricane Strikes and Migration: Evidence from Storms in Central America and the Caribbean

Forcings and feedbacks

Latitudinal variability of the dynamic linkage between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations

"In the latitude belts surrounding the equator (0°− 24° N and 0°− 24° S), the link seems very similar. On the opposite, the patterns of the temperature CO2 link in the Arctic is very distant from those concerning the equatorial regions and other latitude bands in the South Hemisphere. This big distance is consistent with the so-called Arctic amplification phenomenon. Further, it is important to underline that this observational data-based analysis provides an independent statistical confirmation of the results from global circulation modelling."

Generation of common coefficients to estimate global solar radiation over different locations of India 

On the Cause of Recent Variations in Lower Stratospheric Ozone (open access)

Source Apportionments of Aerosols and Their Direct Radiative Forcing and Long‐Term Trends Over Continental United States (open access)

Ozone response to emission reductions in the southeastern United States (open access)

Cryosphere

A new tracking algorithm for sea ice age distribution estimation (open access)

Thin Arctic sea ice in L-band observations and an ocean reanalysis (open access)

How does the ice sheet surface mass balance relate to snowfall? Insights from a ground-based precipitation radar in East Antarctica (open access)

Antarctic sub-shelf melt rates via PICO (open access)

Bathymetric controls on calving processes at Pine Island Glacier (open access)

Reemergence of Antarctic sea ice predictability and its link to deep ocean mixing in global climate models 

Atmospheric and oceanic circulation

Cycles in oceanic teleconnections and global temperature change

"During the period 1940–1950, the LL[leading–lagging] relations for the long cycles were circular (nomenclature x leads y: x → y): GTA[global temperature anomaly] → NAO → SOI → PDO → GTA. However, after 1960, the LL relations become more complex and there are indications that GTA leads to both NAO and PDO."

Large scale climate oscillation impacts on temperature, precipitation and land surface phenology in Central Asia (open access)

A barotropic mechanism for the response of jet stream variability to Arctic Amplification and sea ice loss

Carbon cycle

Where is the residual terrestrial carbon sink?

Persistent carbon sink at a boreal drained bog forest (open access)

Drought, Heat, and the Carbon Cycle: a Review (open access)

Quantification of carbon dioxide and methane emissions in urban areas: source apportionment based on atmospheric observations

Can we separate industrial CH₄ emission sources from atmospheric observations? - A test case for carbon isotopes, PMF and enhanced APCA

Climate change impacts

Mankind

Health risks of warming of 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and higher, above pre-industrial temperatures (open access)

Limiting global-mean temperature increase to 1.5–2 °C could reduce the incidence and spatial spread of dengue fever in Latin America

A universal model for predicting human migration under climate change: examining future sea level rise in Bangladesh (open access)

Limits to growth redux: A system dynamics model for assessing energy and climate change constraints to global growth

Changes in rainfed and irrigated crop yield response to climate in the western US (open access)

Adaptability of global olive cultivars to water availability under future Mediterranean climate

Estimating spring frost and its impact on yield across winter wheat in China

Resistance to relocation in flood-vulnerable coastal areas: a proposed composite index

Is agricultural adaptation to global change in lower-income countries on track to meet the future food production challenge?

Biosphere

Increased growth of Qinghai spruce in northwestern China during the recent warming hiatus

Impacts of recent climate extremes on spring phenology in arid-mountain ecosystems in China

Ocean acidification and nutrient limitation synergistically reduce growth and photosynthetic performances of a green tide alga Ulva linza (open access)

Asymmetric responses of primary productivity to altered precipitation simulated by ecosystem models across three long-term grassland sites (open access)

Invoking adaptation to decipher the genetic legacy of past climate change

The potential of 230Th for detection of ocean acidification impacts on pelagic carbonate production (open access)

The effects of food stoichiometry and temperature on copepods are mediated by ontogeny (open access)

Other impacts

Disentangling the impact of nutrient load and climate changes on Baltic Sea hypoxia and eutrophication since 1850

Other papers

Palaeoclimatology

Svalbard glaciers re‐advanced during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition

Climate sensitivity and meridional overturning circulation in the late Eocene using GFDL CM2.1 (open access)

Statistical reconstruction of global vegetation for the last glacial maximum

from Skeptical Science https://ift.tt/2Ikc1uw

A selection of new climate related research articles is shown below.

Climate change mitigation

Climate change communication

Climate Hypocrisies: A Comparative Study of News Discourse

What makes them believe in the low-carbon energy transition? Exploring corporate perceptions of the credibility of climate policy mixes (open access)

Analyzing the factors that influence U.S. public support for exporting natural gas

Turkish public preferences for energy

Nature Articulations in Norwegian Advertising Discourse: A Depoliticized Discourse of Climate Change

Weather, Climate, and Narrative: A Relational Model for Democratizing Risk Communication

Cold winters warming? Perceptions of climate change in the North Country

Emission savings

Electric vehicles: solution or new problem?

Leveraging material efficiency as an energy and climate instrument for heavy industries in the EU

Mangrove conservation for climate change mitigation in Indonesia

Reducing greenhouse gas emissions while maintaining yield in the croplands of Huang-Huai-Hai Plain, China

AFM special issue – Greenhouse gas and ammonia emissions from livestock production

Ammonia and greenhouse gas emissions at beef cattle feedlots in Alberta Canada

Tradeoffs in the quest for climate smart agricultural intensification in Mato Grosso, Brazil (open access)

Mitigation of greenhouse gas emissions from animal production

The impact of socioeconomic and behavioural factors for purchasing energy efficient household appliances: A case study for Denmark

The availability of life-cycle assessment, water footprinting, and carbon footprinting studies in Brazil

Does energy efficiency matter to real estate-consumers? Survey evidence on willingness to pay from a cost-optimal analysis in the context of a developing country

Energy production

Large methane emissions from natural gas vehicles in Chinese cities

The Water‐Energy Nexus of Hydraulic Fracturing: A Global Hydrologic Analysis for Shale Oil and Gas Extraction (open access)

Drivers of growth in commercial-scale solar PV capacity

The Fukushima Accident and Public Perceptions About Nuclear Power Around the Globe – A Challenge & Response Model

Application of German energy transition in Taiwan: A critical review of unique electricity liberalisation as a core strategy to achieve renewable energy growth

Carbon pathways in the global gas market: An attributional lifecycle assessment of the climate impacts of liquefied natural gas exports from the United States to Asia

Climate Policy

Conflicting energy policy priorities in EU energy governance (open access)

Overcoming public resistance to carbon taxes (open access)

Socioeconomic factors and future challenges of the goal of limiting the increase in global average temperature to 1.5 °C

Reducing global GHG emissions by replicating successful sector examples: the ‘good practice policies’ scenario

Geoengineering

Cost-Risk Trade-Off of Mitigation and Solar Geoengineering: Considering Regional Disparities Under Probabilistic Climate Sensitivity

The Effects of Carbon Dioxide Removal on the Carbon Cycle (open access)

Climate change

Temperature, precipitation, wind

Land Surface Air Temperature Data Are Considerably Different Among BEST‐LAND, CRU‐TEM4v, NASA‐GISS, and NOAA‐NCEI

Temperature and precipitation extremes under current, 1.5 °C and 2.0 °C global warming above pre-industrial levels over Botswana, and implications for climate change vulnerability (open access)

Winds: intensity and power density simulated by RegCM4 over South America in present and future climate

Extreme events

Tornado Warnings at Night: Who Gets the Message?

Drought Monitoring of Southwestern China Using Insufficient GRACE Data for the Long-term Mean Reference Frame under Global Change

East Asian dust storm in May 2017: observations, modelling, and its influence on the Asia-Pacific region (open access)

Hurricane Strikes and Migration: Evidence from Storms in Central America and the Caribbean

Forcings and feedbacks

Latitudinal variability of the dynamic linkage between temperature and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations

"In the latitude belts surrounding the equator (0°− 24° N and 0°− 24° S), the link seems very similar. On the opposite, the patterns of the temperature CO2 link in the Arctic is very distant from those concerning the equatorial regions and other latitude bands in the South Hemisphere. This big distance is consistent with the so-called Arctic amplification phenomenon. Further, it is important to underline that this observational data-based analysis provides an independent statistical confirmation of the results from global circulation modelling."

Generation of common coefficients to estimate global solar radiation over different locations of India 

On the Cause of Recent Variations in Lower Stratospheric Ozone (open access)

Source Apportionments of Aerosols and Their Direct Radiative Forcing and Long‐Term Trends Over Continental United States (open access)

Ozone response to emission reductions in the southeastern United States (open access)

Cryosphere

A new tracking algorithm for sea ice age distribution estimation (open access)

Thin Arctic sea ice in L-band observations and an ocean reanalysis (open access)

How does the ice sheet surface mass balance relate to snowfall? Insights from a ground-based precipitation radar in East Antarctica (open access)

Antarctic sub-shelf melt rates via PICO (open access)

Bathymetric controls on calving processes at Pine Island Glacier (open access)

Reemergence of Antarctic sea ice predictability and its link to deep ocean mixing in global climate models 

Atmospheric and oceanic circulation

Cycles in oceanic teleconnections and global temperature change

"During the period 1940–1950, the LL[leading–lagging] relations for the long cycles were circular (nomenclature x leads y: x → y): GTA[global temperature anomaly] → NAO → SOI → PDO → GTA. However, after 1960, the LL relations become more complex and there are indications that GTA leads to both NAO and PDO."

Large scale climate oscillation impacts on temperature, precipitation and land surface phenology in Central Asia (open access)

A barotropic mechanism for the response of jet stream variability to Arctic Amplification and sea ice loss

Carbon cycle

Where is the residual terrestrial carbon sink?

Persistent carbon sink at a boreal drained bog forest (open access)

Drought, Heat, and the Carbon Cycle: a Review (open access)

Quantification of carbon dioxide and methane emissions in urban areas: source apportionment based on atmospheric observations

Can we separate industrial CH₄ emission sources from atmospheric observations? - A test case for carbon isotopes, PMF and enhanced APCA

Climate change impacts

Mankind

Health risks of warming of 1.5 °C, 2 °C, and higher, above pre-industrial temperatures (open access)

Limiting global-mean temperature increase to 1.5–2 °C could reduce the incidence and spatial spread of dengue fever in Latin America

A universal model for predicting human migration under climate change: examining future sea level rise in Bangladesh (open access)

Limits to growth redux: A system dynamics model for assessing energy and climate change constraints to global growth

Changes in rainfed and irrigated crop yield response to climate in the western US (open access)

Adaptability of global olive cultivars to water availability under future Mediterranean climate

Estimating spring frost and its impact on yield across winter wheat in China

Resistance to relocation in flood-vulnerable coastal areas: a proposed composite index

Is agricultural adaptation to global change in lower-income countries on track to meet the future food production challenge?

Biosphere

Increased growth of Qinghai spruce in northwestern China during the recent warming hiatus

Impacts of recent climate extremes on spring phenology in arid-mountain ecosystems in China

Ocean acidification and nutrient limitation synergistically reduce growth and photosynthetic performances of a green tide alga Ulva linza (open access)

Asymmetric responses of primary productivity to altered precipitation simulated by ecosystem models across three long-term grassland sites (open access)

Invoking adaptation to decipher the genetic legacy of past climate change

The potential of 230Th for detection of ocean acidification impacts on pelagic carbonate production (open access)

The effects of food stoichiometry and temperature on copepods are mediated by ontogeny (open access)

Other impacts

Disentangling the impact of nutrient load and climate changes on Baltic Sea hypoxia and eutrophication since 1850

Other papers

Palaeoclimatology

Svalbard glaciers re‐advanced during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition

Climate sensitivity and meridional overturning circulation in the late Eocene using GFDL CM2.1 (open access)

Statistical reconstruction of global vegetation for the last glacial maximum

from Skeptical Science https://ift.tt/2Ikc1uw

The NHS must adapt now to care for older cancer patients

In the second part of our series on old age and cancer, we look at how the NHS needs to adapt as the number of cancer cases diagnosed in older people is projected to rise.

Every year around 130,000 people aged 75 and over in the UK are told they have cancer. By 2035 this is projected to rise to around 234,000.

This means that in just under 20 years, almost half (46%) of people diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK will be over 75.

Cancer is primarily a disease of ageing. And as we age, we’re more likely to develop other health conditions too. This means older cancer patients often need extra support to get through treatment or to recover from it.

This added complexity of cancer care, alongside growing numbers of patients, points to a future where the NHS will need to adapt to provide this additional support and the best care possible.

The problem is the NHS is already under a lot of pressure, including facing severe staff shortages. And there’s the added challenge that older patients already tend to have poorer outcomes than their younger counterparts. If the UK is to give all cancer patients the best chance of survival, the NHS must focus on improving outcomes for older patients.

Our new report published today summarises the challenges facing the NHS as our population ages. It’s based on interviews and surveys with patients, health professionals and people who make decisions about NHS care. And the conclusions highlight how services must act to make sure they’re working well for older people with cancer now, and in the future.

What’s the problem?

Evidence shows that right now, UK cancer services aren’t doing as well as they should for older people with cancer.

Cancer survival is generally lower for older patients, even when taking into account other health conditions that older people may also have. The cancer survival gap between the UK and other similar countries is also worse for older patients than it is for younger patients.

And despite survival doubling over the past 40 years, the gap in survival between younger and older patients remains.

One explanation for this is that older patients are less likely to have several different types of treatment that could help them live longer.

Why are older patients not having as much treatment?

In some cases, patients might choose not to have intensive treatment, either because they’re not well enough or because they’re prioritising their independence and quality of life, rather than trying to extend their lives at any cost. That decision is up to each patient and their loved ones. But it raises the challenge of how to have complex conversations when consultation times and NHS staff are stretched.

But sometimes, the treatment people are offered isn’t based on a full assessment of how fit they are, how much support they need, or how well they will be able to cope with treatment. This means that sometimes older patients aren’t given the best possible treatment for them.

In contrast, from speaking to older people with cancer in our research, we heard that some feel under pressure by their doctors to have intense treatment, and don’t feel like their doctors give them enough information about the side effects they could face.

Mostly, it was assumed that I would do whatever they suggested […] I do not feel in hindsight that I was given much choice, or indeed support to make that choice

– Patient

The NHS needs to get the balance right. No two patients are the same, so cancer treatment and care plans should be shaped around each person’s individual situation – including their social and medical needs.

What’s the solution?

It can be difficult to make a busy health service a personalised one. And when staff are under so much pressure, it’s hard to find enough time for in-depth conversations about options. But it’s vital the NHS finds a way.

Today I had a patient who has cancer but has other comorbidities […] so I had to discuss that […] and make it clear to them that these are the risk factors, these are the things that go wrong […] that 20/30 minutes […] gets dragged on to 45 minutes. We can’t just stop the consultation because it’s been running out of time

– Anaesthetist

But there are ways that this process can be made easier. And we think it hinges on finding better ways of assessing older patients’ needs.

This was highlighted in the 2015 Cancer Strategy for England, which said that methods of assessing older patients weren’t fit for purpose, “resulting in older people’s needs not being identified or understood”.

In our research, we found that although doctors know that gauging frailty is important, very few places use the most comprehensive tests and assessments. We’d like to see this change.

These assessments help doctors predict how well a patient will cope with treatment, and the support they might need. They should be used consistently for everyone. That’s why we want health services to roll these out across UK cancer services. And we’ll be exploring how research might help improve assessments in the next post in this series.

The NHS must also make sure patients receive the support they and their loved ones need to get through treatment and recover from it.

It’s one thing to choose to decline treatment, because the effort of chemotherapy and how ill it’s going to make you feel isn’t worth (it) […] It’s very different to making a decision based on ‘I can’t get the care for my husband or I can’t get the care for my wife or I don’t have transport to get to the chemotherapy […] or I’ll feel too rubbish afterwards and there’s nobody around to do my cooking and cleaning’

– National interviewee

There are also ways to help make sure cancer teams have enough time to discuss complicated cases in depth, by making the multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTs) more efficient and effective.

One of the issues for all MDTs is managing to comprehensively get through the cases in a meaningful way in which we [healthcare professionals] make the right selection of treatment strategies when you’ve maybe got […] forty patients plus at an MDT

– Clinical oncologist

Fundamental to all of this is information, which needs to be shared more effectively. This means sharing information between GPs, doctors and cancer teams. But perhaps most importantly, it means sharing information with patients, to help support discussions and decisions.

This isn’t easy, and there are lots of different groups involved. So, to make all of this happen, and to do it well, the NHS needs more staff.

For 70 years, the NHS has been at the forefront of fighting cancer. But it needs more investment in staff. And while it’s great that there’s now extra funding, this falls short of what’s needed to transform how patients of all ages are cared for.

If the Government is serious about its bold ambitions for improving cancer survival and care, this needs to change. And older patients need to be a part of it.

Rose Gray is a policy manager at Cancer Research UK

Read more

• Age: the biggest cancer risk factor

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2M929G1

In the second part of our series on old age and cancer, we look at how the NHS needs to adapt as the number of cancer cases diagnosed in older people is projected to rise.

Every year around 130,000 people aged 75 and over in the UK are told they have cancer. By 2035 this is projected to rise to around 234,000.

This means that in just under 20 years, almost half (46%) of people diagnosed with cancer each year in the UK will be over 75.

Cancer is primarily a disease of ageing. And as we age, we’re more likely to develop other health conditions too. This means older cancer patients often need extra support to get through treatment or to recover from it.

This added complexity of cancer care, alongside growing numbers of patients, points to a future where the NHS will need to adapt to provide this additional support and the best care possible.

The problem is the NHS is already under a lot of pressure, including facing severe staff shortages. And there’s the added challenge that older patients already tend to have poorer outcomes than their younger counterparts. If the UK is to give all cancer patients the best chance of survival, the NHS must focus on improving outcomes for older patients.

Our new report published today summarises the challenges facing the NHS as our population ages. It’s based on interviews and surveys with patients, health professionals and people who make decisions about NHS care. And the conclusions highlight how services must act to make sure they’re working well for older people with cancer now, and in the future.

What’s the problem?

Evidence shows that right now, UK cancer services aren’t doing as well as they should for older people with cancer.

Cancer survival is generally lower for older patients, even when taking into account other health conditions that older people may also have. The cancer survival gap between the UK and other similar countries is also worse for older patients than it is for younger patients.

And despite survival doubling over the past 40 years, the gap in survival between younger and older patients remains.

One explanation for this is that older patients are less likely to have several different types of treatment that could help them live longer.

Why are older patients not having as much treatment?

In some cases, patients might choose not to have intensive treatment, either because they’re not well enough or because they’re prioritising their independence and quality of life, rather than trying to extend their lives at any cost. That decision is up to each patient and their loved ones. But it raises the challenge of how to have complex conversations when consultation times and NHS staff are stretched.

But sometimes, the treatment people are offered isn’t based on a full assessment of how fit they are, how much support they need, or how well they will be able to cope with treatment. This means that sometimes older patients aren’t given the best possible treatment for them.

In contrast, from speaking to older people with cancer in our research, we heard that some feel under pressure by their doctors to have intense treatment, and don’t feel like their doctors give them enough information about the side effects they could face.

Mostly, it was assumed that I would do whatever they suggested […] I do not feel in hindsight that I was given much choice, or indeed support to make that choice

– Patient

The NHS needs to get the balance right. No two patients are the same, so cancer treatment and care plans should be shaped around each person’s individual situation – including their social and medical needs.

What’s the solution?

It can be difficult to make a busy health service a personalised one. And when staff are under so much pressure, it’s hard to find enough time for in-depth conversations about options. But it’s vital the NHS finds a way.

Today I had a patient who has cancer but has other comorbidities […] so I had to discuss that […] and make it clear to them that these are the risk factors, these are the things that go wrong […] that 20/30 minutes […] gets dragged on to 45 minutes. We can’t just stop the consultation because it’s been running out of time

– Anaesthetist

But there are ways that this process can be made easier. And we think it hinges on finding better ways of assessing older patients’ needs.

This was highlighted in the 2015 Cancer Strategy for England, which said that methods of assessing older patients weren’t fit for purpose, “resulting in older people’s needs not being identified or understood”.

In our research, we found that although doctors know that gauging frailty is important, very few places use the most comprehensive tests and assessments. We’d like to see this change.

These assessments help doctors predict how well a patient will cope with treatment, and the support they might need. They should be used consistently for everyone. That’s why we want health services to roll these out across UK cancer services. And we’ll be exploring how research might help improve assessments in the next post in this series.

The NHS must also make sure patients receive the support they and their loved ones need to get through treatment and recover from it.

It’s one thing to choose to decline treatment, because the effort of chemotherapy and how ill it’s going to make you feel isn’t worth (it) […] It’s very different to making a decision based on ‘I can’t get the care for my husband or I can’t get the care for my wife or I don’t have transport to get to the chemotherapy […] or I’ll feel too rubbish afterwards and there’s nobody around to do my cooking and cleaning’

– National interviewee

There are also ways to help make sure cancer teams have enough time to discuss complicated cases in depth, by making the multidisciplinary team meetings (MDTs) more efficient and effective.

One of the issues for all MDTs is managing to comprehensively get through the cases in a meaningful way in which we [healthcare professionals] make the right selection of treatment strategies when you’ve maybe got […] forty patients plus at an MDT

– Clinical oncologist

Fundamental to all of this is information, which needs to be shared more effectively. This means sharing information between GPs, doctors and cancer teams. But perhaps most importantly, it means sharing information with patients, to help support discussions and decisions.

This isn’t easy, and there are lots of different groups involved. So, to make all of this happen, and to do it well, the NHS needs more staff.

For 70 years, the NHS has been at the forefront of fighting cancer. But it needs more investment in staff. And while it’s great that there’s now extra funding, this falls short of what’s needed to transform how patients of all ages are cared for.

If the Government is serious about its bold ambitions for improving cancer survival and care, this needs to change. And older patients need to be a part of it.

Rose Gray is a policy manager at Cancer Research UK

Read more

• Age: the biggest cancer risk factor

from Cancer Research UK – Science blog https://ift.tt/2M929G1

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.

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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

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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.

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