The American lifestyle -- diet, obesity, lack of exercise -- and perhaps other factors as well, seems to be significantly increasing the incidence of Alzheimer disease and related dementias (ADRD) at the end of life. I urge all my readers, particularly those who are older to reorder your life to increase your wellbeing.
The research paper upon which this report is based was published and can be found in the journal JAMA Health Forum.
Credit: Steven HWG / Unsplash)
ANN ARBOR, MICHIGAN — The number of people living with dementia may be higher than anyone thinks, according to a new study. Researchers from the University of Michigan have discovered that nearly half of all older adults now die with a diagnosis for dementia on their medical records.
Just two decades ago, that number was only 36 percent. According to the Alzheimer’s Association, roughly one in nine Americans (10.7%) over the age of 65 has Alzheimer’s — the most common form of dementia. However, the new report reveals 47 percent of seniors die while dealing with some form of the memory-robbing disease.
Are cases rising or is there more awareness?
Researchers examined data on 3.5 million people over the age of 67 who died between 2004 and 2017 during their study. The review focused on bills each patient’s healthcare provider submitted to the Medicare system during the final two years of their life.
In 2004, those record show that only 35 percent of billing claims mentioned dementia at least one time. By […]
Noah Gordon, Acting Co-director of the Sustainability, Climate, and Geopolitics Program and a Fellow in the Europe Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace - Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
Stephan:
The Biden administration has done some very positive things to deal with climate change, approving the Willow Project is not one of them. This is a bad mistake for a whole range of issues from environmental impact to increasing irrelevance, and should never have happened. I don't know what led Biden to make this decision, but corruption almost certainly played a role.
On Monday, the U.S. government gave final approval for the Willow project, a massive operation that will allow ConocoPhillips to drill for oil on public land in Alaska. If Willow produces as much oil over thirty years as expected, the consumption of that oil would release the equivalent of 277 million tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. That’s about 4 percent of U.S. annual emissions, from one project, at a time when emissions need to fall rapidly for the country to achieve its goal of net-zero emissions by 2050. By approving Willow, U.S. President Joe Biden broke a campaign promise that there would be “no new drilling, period” on federal lands.
No one project will make or break U.S. climate ambitions, and Willow’s story is politically and legally nuanced. Even as the Bureau of Land Management gave Willow the green light, the Department of the Interior said it would restrict future drilling in other parts of Alaska. Alaskan legislators suggested they may challenge those “legally dubious” restrictions on future oil extraction, while environmental groups are preparing lawsuits to try […]
PAUL HOCKENOS , Berlin-based writer - Yale Environment 360
Stephan:
The invasion of Ukraine by Putin's Russia is a crime against humanity of epic proportions. But there is something good that will come out of this disaster. Embargoing Russian oil and gas, is compelling Europe to develop an alternative multinational energy system that is not carbon energy based. This is a planetary big deal because, as this story reports, "The effort may have displaced Europe’s climate aspirations by a fraction, with 17 of Europe’s resuscitated coal plants belching out 16 million tons of carbon dioxide in 2022. But thanks to a record rollout of renewable energy sources combined with conservation measures, the continent’s emissions footprint actually positioned the EU to remain within reach of its goal to slash emissions by at least 55 percent in seven years’ time. In a year when planetary emissions edged upward, Europe is now on track to comfortably outpace its pledge to generate 40 percent of its total energy from renewable sources by 2030."
A wind turbine under construction in Jacobsdorf, Germany, in January. Credit: Patrick Pleul / PICTURE-ALLIANCE / DPA / AP
When a cold snap hit northern Europe last November, ordinary citizens and industry leaders alike feared the onset of an agonizing winter of deprivation, spiraling energy prices, unheated buildings, and work stoppages. After all, embargoes in place as a result of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had severely curtailed oil and gas deliveries to many countries and upended supply chains that much of Europe had come to rely on.
Germany — whose industrial economy depended heavily on Russian fuel — scurried to revive its mothballed coal-fired power plants, construct liquefied natural gas terminals, and secure new gas supplies from across the world. Painful though it was to European environmentalists, efforts to slash emissions took a back seat to making it through the winter by any means necessary.
But defying the grimmest of projections, Europe made it through the temperate winter with remarkably few casualties — and even with a few big wins to its credit. The effort may […]
2.4k Will Carless and Doug Livingston, - USA Today
Stephan:
There are more and more of the kind of incidents described in this report. As a society we are not dealing properly with MAGAt world's violence, and it is damaging the quality of life in America.
Dozens of people demonstrate at the “Rock-n-Roll Humanist Drag Queen Story Hour” on Saturday at Wadsworth Memorial Park.
Amid the national showdown over drag performances and transgender rights, a storytelling event in a city park in northern Ohio became the latest flashpoint, fueled by demonstrators who waved swastika flags and shouted “Seig heil” before a melee that led to two arrests.
Hundreds of protesters, including armed white supremacists, members of several extremist groups and LGBTQ community supporters descended on Wadsworth, Ohio, a small town outside Akron, for a drag queen storytelling show that had been moved from a private venue.
White supremacist protestors shouted “Heil Hitler” and made Nazi salutes outside the event while pro-LGBTQ counterprotesters chanted, confronted the far-right agitators and wielded rainbow-colored parasols as a sort of shield for attendees.
Toward the end of the four-hour event, two people charged with misdemeanor disorderly conduct were arrested after a series of melees involving pepper spray, the violent use of a flag pole as a weapon and a protester who unnerved witnesses who said he pointed a gun at a crowd. (Police said […]
So powerful is the culture war in the U.S. that this Oregon-Idaho border issue is an extreme example of the Red Blue Great Schism Trend. I think this may be where we are headed, a realignment of state borders. That is not secession. I don't think the culture war is going to dissipate, and it is going to result in borders changes because we are two worlds now. What the people of the Red states don't seem to understand, however, is that the Blue states underwrite their wellbeing. Red states take out more from the treasury than they deposit, and the difference is largely made up by the fact that the Blue states take out less than they deposit.
Greater Idaho Movement sign seen at Wheeler County Trading Co., in Mitchell, Oregon. Credit: Kyung Lah/CNN
Matt McCaw cringes if you say the word “secessionist” around him.
A native of eastern Oregon, McCaw is a mild-mannered, former high school math teacher who fosters children to help his community.
“We don’t think of ourselves as a secessionist movement. We see ourselves as a self-determination movement,” McCaw said of the Greater Idaho Movement, which seeks to move the Idaho state line west to include more than half of Oregon.
What would have previously been brushed off as a fringe proposition to add the predominantly Republican region of eastern Oregon into conservative Idaho has lunged forward in the Idaho state legislature. There have been plenty of other attempts across the country to break off pieces of states to try to join more politically analogous ones, but this one has advanced the furthest. The measure passed the state House last month and advanced to the state Senate, where it sits in committee, with the session expected to wrap by the end […]
