Credit: Reuters/Andrew Cullen

There was a huge global spike in one of the most potent greenhouse gases driving climate change over the last decade, and the U.S. may be the biggest culprit, according a new Harvard University study.

The United States alone could be responsible for between 30 percent and 60 percent of the global growth in human-caused atmospheric methane emissions since 2002 because of a 30 percent spike in methane emissions across the country, the study says. (emphasis added)

The research shows that emissions increased the most in the middle of the country, but the authors said there is too little data to identify specific sources. However, the increase occurred at the same time as America’s shale oil and gas boom, which has been associated with large amounts of methane leaking from oil and gas wells and pipelines nationwide.

Lymphoblast cells eventually become lymphocytes, cells that are responsible for fighting infection, such as T-Cells Corbis

A revolutionary cancer therapy that uses the body’s own immune cells to attack metastatic tumours that have spread is being hailed as a “paradigm shift” in treatment of the disease.

Patients with advanced blood cancers who were not expected to live beyond five months have shown complete remission after 18 months of follow-up checks with no signs of the disease returning, scientists have revealed.

In one trial of a patient’s own T-cells – a type of white blood cell – that were engineered in the laboratory to identify and attack tumour cells, more than 90 per cent of the 35 patients with acute lymphoblastic  leukaemia went into complete remission.

In two other clinical trials involving about 40 patients with either non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma or chronic […]

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U.S. Army soldiers watch garbage burn in a burn-pit at Forward Operating Base Azzizulah in Maiwand District, Kandahar Province, Afghanistan, February 4, 2013.
Credit: Reuters/Andrew Burton

The first 10 pages of “The Burn Pits: The Poisoning of America’s Soldiers” will rip your heart out. In the opening chapter of this new book, Joseph Hickman, a former U.S. Marine and Army sergeant, shares the brief and tragic life story of one Iraq War veteran. In a nutshell, a healthy young man shipped off to Iraq, was stationed at a U.S. military base where he was exposed to a constant stream of toxic smoke, returned home with horrible respiratory problems, was denied care by the VA, developed brain cancer and died.

Public health measures to reduce smoking would have more success if policy makers intervened to curb the vast profitability of the tobacco industry, say University researchers.

The lucrative nature of the cigarette market, dominated by a small number of large shareholder-owned companies, results in a vigorous fight against any new public health measures that may disrupt their profit-making.

The researchers from the University of Bath and University of Ottawa say governments should look to the success of past policies that have transitioned other industries towards products that are less harmful to health, such as the switch from leaded to unleaded petrol.

They suggest a new approach to competition policy and a range of carrot and stick incentives including tax differentials, which place combustible products, like cigarettes, at a marketplace disadvantage compared to less hazardous alternatives like e-cigarettes; giving companies tax credits for the development of lower risk products; and more direct measures such as price controls and product licensing that favours lower risk products.

Effective regulation of the industry to curb profits would create new appeal in less harmful commercial opportunities, such as e-cigarettes, thereby promoting an escape route for corporations and removing their need […]

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Swiss performance artist Milo Moire holds a sign “Respect us! We are no fair game even when we are naked!!!” as she protests naked in front of the Cologne, western Germany, cathedral Friday, Jan. 8, 2016 following the sexual assaults and robberies during the New Year’s Eve festivities in Germany.
Credit: AP Photo/Dorothee Thiesing

The Erich Gutenberg College is a trade school in Mülheim, an economically underdeveloped district in Cologne. Two-thirds of the students here are first- or second-generation immigrants, and most are Muslim. A few days after the incidents in Cologne on New Year’s Eve, in which a large crowd of men with supposed immigrant backgrounds harassed and sexually assaulted women in the city’s main […]

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