Gigantic Gravity Waves to Mix Summer With Winter? Wrecked Jet Stream Now Runs From Pole-to-Pole

Stephan:  While the media continues to focus on Donald Trump because his racism, fear, and nonsense increases medias' profits, the forces of climate change continue unabated. And now we are moving into an increasingly weird and never before seen phase. Here is the story, and you should be quite concerned; this is going to change your life.
Credit: NOAA

Credit: NOAA

It’s as if global warming were ringing the Earth’s atmosphere like some great, cacophonous alarm bell. The upper level zonal winds are swinging wildly from record high positive anomalies to record low negative anomalies. Gravity waves — the kinds of big atmospheric waves that tend to move air from the Tropics all the way to the Poles and are powerful enough to cause the Caribbean Sea to ‘whistle’ in the satellite monitors — are growing larger. And the Jet Stream now has redefined all boundaries — flowing at times from the East Siberian Sea in the Arctic across the Equator and all the way south to West Antarctica.

(Northern Hemisphere Jet Stream crosses the Equator in this Earth Nullschool screen capture to merge with the Southern Hemisphere Jet Stream. It’s the very picture of weather weirding due to climate change. Something that would absolutely not happen in a normal world. Something, that if it continues, basically threatens seasonal integrity.)

The big trough today begins near the Northern Hemisphere Pole. It pulls Arctic air […]

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Cannabinoids remove plaque-forming Alzheimer’s proteins from brain cells

Stephan:  Here is more good news about the therapeutics of marijuana. When I read these stories though I always think, "if we had started this research 30 years ago, how much suffering could have been avoided, how many lives would have been improved."
Preliminary lab studies by Salk Professor David Schubert suggest that the molecule THC reduces beta amyloid proteins in human neurons. Credit: Salk Institute

Preliminary lab studies by Salk Professor David Schubert suggest that the molecule THC reduces beta amyloid proteins in human neurons.
Credit: Salk Institute

Salk Institute scientists have found preliminary evidence that tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and other compounds found in marijuana can promote the cellular removal of amyloid beta, a toxic protein associated with Alzheimer’s disease. (emphasis added)

While these exploratory studies were conducted in neurons grown in the laboratory, they may offer insight into the role of inflammation in Alzheimer’s disease and could provide clues to developing novel therapeutics for the disorder.

“Although other studies have offered evidence that cannabinoids might be neuroprotective against the symptoms of Alzheimer’s, we believe our study is the first to demonstrate that cannabinoids affect both inflammation and amyloid beta accumulation in nerve cells,” says Salk Professor David Schubert, the senior author of the paper.

Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive brain disorder that leads to memory loss and […]

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Doctors Are Burned Out by Busywork: Study

Stephan:  I have written about the issue of physician burnout and their being turned into clerks over and over. This article discusses one aspect of the issue but, as you read it, bear in mind this is just one facet of the failure of the illness profit system.  You could do another article on the physician shortage, nurse shortage, hospital bed shortage, or the drug shortages. Or drug prices. You really can't understand how bad American healthcare is until you look at the social outcome data of other developed nations and compare it to that of the U.S. Except for a few small very profitable segments, breast cancer research and treatment, our healthcare is second tier at best. And it is so unbelievably expensive. The only candidate that really addressed healthcare was Bernie Sanders, and I believe he has made a major miscalculation and severely diluted his ability to influence events. As a people we just can't seem to muster the political will to choose wellness.
Credit: hellostockphoto.com

Credit: hellostockphoto.com

Of all professionals in the U.S., doctors experience some of the highest rates of burnout: the feeling of being so emotionally exhausted from work that you start to feel indifferent about those you’re serving. More than half of doctors feel this way, recent research shows.

If that sounds like a bad thing for people whose job it is to heal others, it is. (Check out TIME’s in-depth investigation into doctor stress for more.) Studies have linked burnout to a rise in unprofessional behavior, a drop in patient satisfaction and a greater chance that a doctor will make a major medical error.

There’s no one cause for doctor burnout, but a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings has found a major one: the increasingly electronic nature of medicine. The digital parts of doctoring, like maintaining electronic health records, were linked to physician burnout.

Like many of us, doctors are spending more and more time in front of their screens. Health records are now maintained electronically and doctors submit […]

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Scientists’ breakthrough in modelling universe

Stephan:  A significant breakthrough has occurred in our ability to model spacetime. The results of this research have recently been published in the journal Physical Review D.
A visualisation of galaxies floating on the curved spacetime sea. Cosmological researchers are developing a model of the universe using Einstein's full general theory of relativity equations to create the most precise and detailed representation of the cosmos ever Credit: James Mertens

A visualisation of galaxies floating on the curved spacetime sea. Cosmological researchers are developing a model of the universe using Einstein’s full general theory of relativity equations to create the most precise and detailed representation of the cosmos ever
Credit: James Mertens

Research teams in Europe and the USA – including a cosmologist from the University of Portsmouth – have begun modelling the universe for the first time using Einstein’s full general theory of relativity.

The teams have independently created two new computer codes they say will lead to the most accurate possible models of the universe and provide new insights into gravity and its effects.

One hundred years since it was developed, Einstein’s theory remains the best theory of gravity, consistently passing high-precision tests in the solar system and successfully […]

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30 million may lose homes to sea rise

Stephan:  Part of the reason Brexit occurred was unresolved migration. Part of the reason for the rising Rightist atavistic nationalism is the migration of Middle Eastern Muslims into Europe. Migration is one of this century's meta-trends. And what we have seen so far is nothing to what is coming. Here is just one piece of the puzzle we can expect.

Melting polar ice may leA climate march in Dhaka expressing solidarity ahead of the Paris Climate Summit.ave 30 million people in Bangladesh without homes by the end of the century as sea levels are expected to rise by about a metre around the world. (emphasis added)

A climate march in Dhaka expressing solidarity ahead of the Paris Climate Summit. Photo: AFP

A new documentary, called Thirty Million, looks at what will happen to those people in Bangladesh, where more than 17 percent of the land is expected to disappear by the end of the century.

The nation of 160 million people is feeling the effects of rising tides right now.

The documentary’s co-director, Adrien Taylor, told Sunday Morningthat makes it the country most vulnerable to climate change.

“When you’re living in Europe, one degree, two degrees, doesn’t make a massive difference.

“But when you’re living on the fringe, in the Bay of Bengal which is incredibly prone to cyclones and sea level […]

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