James' World 2

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Many traits that are expected of scientists—dispassion, detachment, prodigious attention to detail, putting caveats on everything, and always burying the lede—are less helpful in day-to-day life. The contrast between scientific and everyday conversation, for example, is one reason that so much scientific com­­munication fails to hit the mark with broader audiences. (One ob­server put it bluntly: “Scienti­­fic writing is all too often … bad writing.”) One aspect of science, however, is a good model for our behavior, especially in times like these, when so many people seem to be sure that they are right and their opponents are wrong. It is the ability to say, “Wait—hold on. I might have been wrong.”

Not all scientists live up to this ideal, of course. But history offers admirable examples of scientists admitting they were wrong and changing their views in the face of new evidence and arguments. My favorite comes from the history of plate tectonics.

In the early 20th century German geophysicist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener proposed the theory of continental drift, suggesting that continents were not fixed on Earth’s surface but had mi­­grated widely during the planet’s history. Wegener was not a crank: he was a prominent scientist who had made important contributions to meteorology and polar re­­search. The idea that the now separate continents had once been somehow connected was supported by extensive evidence from stratigraphy and paleontology—evidence that had already inspired other theories of continental mobility. His proposal did not get ignored: it was discussed throughout Eur­ope, North America, South Africa and Australia in the 1920s and early 1930s. But a majority of scientists rejected it, particularly in the U.S., where geologists objected to the form of the theory and geophysicists clung to a model of Earth that seemed to be incompatible with moving continents.

In the late 1950s and 1960s the debate was reopened as new evidence flooded in, especially from the ocean floor. By the mid-1960s some leading scientists—including Patrick M. S. Blackett of Imperial College London, Harry Hammond Hess of Princeton University, John Tuzo Wilson of the University of Toronto and Edward Bullard of the University of Cambridge—endorsed the idea of continental motions. Between 1967 and 1968 this revival began to coalesce as the theory of plate tectonics.

Not, however, at what was then known as the Lamont Geological Laboratory, part of Columbia University. Under the direction of geophysicist Maurice Ewing, Lamont was one of the world’s most respected centers of marine geophysical research in the 1950s and 1960s. With financial and logistical support from the U.S. Navy, Lamont researchers amassed prodigious amounts of data on the heat flow, seis­micity, bathymetry and structure of the seafloor. But Lamont under Ewing was a bastion of resistance to the new theory.

It’s not clear why Ewing so strongly opposed continental drift. It may be that having trained in electrical engineering, physics and math, he never really warmed to geological questions. The evidence suggests that Ewing never engaged with Wegener’s work. In a grant proposal written in 1947, Ewing even confused “Wegener” with “Wagner,” referring to the “Wagner hypothesis of continental drift.”

And Ewing was not alone at Lamont in his ignorance of de­­bates in geology. One scientist recalled that in 1965 he personally “was only vaguely aware of the hy­­pothesis” [of continental drift] and that colleagues at Lamont who were familiar with it were mostly “skeptical and dis­missive.” Ewing was also known to be auto­cratic; one oceanographer called him the “oceanographic equivalent of General Patton.” It wasn’t an environment that en­­couraged dissent.

One scientist who did change his mind was Xavier Le Pichon. In the spring of 1966 Le Pichon had just defended his Ph.D. thesis, which denied the possibility of regional crustal mobility. After seeing some key data at Lamont—data that had been presented at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union just that week—he went home and asked his wife to pour him a drink, saying, “The conclusions of my thesis are wrong.”

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Scott Brundage

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Last year, a 28-year-old E.R. nurse named Tristin Smith took her own life. Her father found a note among her effects, titled Letter to My Abuser. “Ever since I was young, I expressed interest in healthcare,” she wrote. “I gave my heart, my body, and my mind to you.” But as “unnecessary” support staff was cut, the quality of care plummeted. Requests for more resources were met with online training sessions telling nurses “to just smile more and be friendlier to patients.” Instead of receiving the “support we deserve, we get a pizza party and free pens for the ‘healthcare heroes.’” Her disillusionment deepened: “You use and exploit us to line your pockets, using the common citizen’s money for overpriced healthcare.” For me, as an emergency physician, Tristin’s words ring with startling clarity. I know firsthand the challenges of constantly doing more with less. I recognize the surreal disorientation of having real needs met with empty gestures, like free pens or a hospital potato. I have felt that the systems in which I work no longer value me, or the patients whom I treat. But the most astute aspect of Tristin’s letter is the culprit she points to for these problems: an obscenely expensive health care system that values profit above all else, to the detriment of patients and providers alike.

We in the medical profession are all, to varying degrees, like Tristin. A survey of over 12,000 physicians released last month by the American Medical Association found that 48 percent of them had at least one symptom of burnout. Another survey last month found that nearly two-thirds of physicians would not recommend a career in medicine to their children. It’s not just physicians, of course: Health care providers of all kinds are burned out and considering leaving their jobs. “That’s a disaster for a system that is already struggling to fill critical roles,” said L. Casey Chosewood, an official at the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health, NIOSH.

This is a massive problem not only for our health care system but for every single person in America who depends on it. Burnout is associated with medical errors and malpractice litigation; hospital-acquired infections; and anxiety, depression, and suicidality among providers. Physicians with burnout are twice as likely to leave their jobs and five times more likely to quit medicine entirely, at an annual cost as high as $6 billion. For nurses, the annual cost of turnover related to burnout is estimated at $9 billion.

The pandemic clearly made burnout worse, for obvious reasons. But things aren’t improving, even though the acute crisis of Covid has passed. Why not?

There was a time when remedies for burnout in health care emphasized resilience and individual action. In 2021, at the height of the delta variant of Covid, I assessed my own level of burnout using a standard metric, the Maslach Burnout Inventory. No surprise: I was suffering from significant burnout. The MBI offered unhelpful suggestions like “step up self-care practices” and “attend presentations, meetings, and workshops on burnout.”

Fortunately, this attitude seems to be evolving. Last year, the U.S. surgeon general published a report that called for “systems-oriented, organizational-level solutions” over “individual-level support.” In November, NIOSH launched a new campaign to address burnout called Impact Wellbeing. Chosewood, whose office will coordinate the effort, acknowledged that resilience training was like a “Band-Aid on a gaping wound.” Instead, the campaign promises to help hospital leaders “address the systemic factors at the root of staff burnout.”

Directing attention toward the health care system itself is progress. But what are the systemic factors at the root of burnout? According to the National Academy of Medicine, they include excessive workload, longer working hours, inadequate staffing, insufficient time with patients, and high administrative task burden. I can attest that all of these contribute to burnout. However, these factors are only symptoms of a larger, more central problem.

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As I watched my parents’ generation reach their 80s, I was struck by the dramatic dif­fer­ences among them. A handful suffered from dementia, but many others remained cognitively sharp—even if their knees and hips didn’t quite keep up with the speed of their thoughts.

That observation runs counter to prejudices about aging, which were high­lighted early in the 2024 presidential race between elderly candidates, but these biases permeate society in general. “The belief about old people is that they’re all kind of the same, they’re doddering, and that aging is this steady downward slope,” says psychologist Laura Car­sten­sen, founding director of the Stanford Center on Longevity. That view, she says, is a great misunderstanding.

Instead, research highlights the very differences I noticed. In our 40s, most people are cognitively similar. Divergences in cognition appear around age 60. By 80 “it’s quite dramatically splayed out,” says physician John Rowe, a professor of health policy and aging at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Yes, there will be a group diminished by dementia and cognitive decline, but in general the 80-somethings “include the wisest people on the planet,” Carstensen says.

Focusing on only those with poor brain health misses more than half the population. Rowe led research showing that in the six years after turning 75, about half of people showed little to no change in their physical, biological, hormonal and cognitive functioning, whereas the other half changed quite a lot. A longer-term study followed more than 2,000 individuals with an average age of 77 for up to 16 years. It showed that the three quarters who did not develop dementia showed little to no cognitive decline.

Some of this is related to genetics. Studies of successful aging have shown that genes account for 30 to 50 percent of physical and cognitive changes. But factors like a healthy way of life and good self-­esteem are also consequential. So to an extent, Rowe says, “this is really good news because it means that you are, in fact, in control of your old age.”

Research has also busted the myth that there is no upside to aging past 70 or so. “We have found very clearly that there are things that improve with age,” Rowe says. The ability to resolve conflicts strengthens, for instance. Aging is also associated with more positive overall emotional well-being, which means older adults are more emotionally stable than younger adults, as well as better at regulating desires.

The normal aging process does bring changes to the brain, says Denise Park, a neuroscientist at the University of Texas at Dallas. There is some shrinkage in the frontal lobes and some damage to neurons and their connections. Cognitive processing slows down. Yet that slowdown is usually on the order of milliseconds and doesn’t always make a meaningful difference in daily life. And to compensate, older people activate more of the brain for tasks such as reading. “Older adults will often forge additional pathways” for particular activities, Park says. “Those pathways may not be as efficient as the pathways that younger adults use, but they nonetheless work.”

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Jay Bendt

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Since mindfulness is something you can practice at home for free, it often sounds like the perfect tonic for stress and mental health issues.

Mindfulness is a type of Buddhist-based meditation in which you focus on being aware of what you’re sensing, thinking, and feeling in the present moment.

The first recorded evidence for this, found in India, is over 1,500 years old. The Dharmatrāta Meditation Scripture, written by a community of Buddhists, describes various practices and includes reports of symptoms of depression and anxiety that can occur after meditation.

It also details cognitive anomalies associated with episodes of psychosis, dissociation, and depersonalization (when people feel the world is “unreal”).

In the past eight years, there has been a surge of scientific research in this area. These studies show that adverse effects are not rare.

A 2022 study, using a sample of 953 people in the US who meditated regularly, showed that over 10 percent of participants experienced adverse effects which had a significant negative impact on their everyday life and lasted for at least one month.

According to a review of over 40 years of research that was published in 2020, the most common adverse effects are anxiety and depression. These are followed by psychotic or delusional symptoms, dissociation or depersonalization, and fear or terror.

Research also found that adverse effects can happen to people without previous mental health problems, to those who have only had a moderate exposure to meditation and they can lead to long-lasting symptoms.

The western world has also had evidence about these adverse effects for a long time.

In 1976, Arnold Lazarus, a key figure in the cognitive-behavioural science movement, said that meditation, when used indiscriminately, could induce “serious psychiatric problems such as depression, agitation, and even schizophrenic decompensation”.

There is evidence that mindfulness can benefit people’s wellbeing. The problem is that mindfulness coaches, videos, apps, and books rarely warn people about the potential adverse effects.

Professor of management and ordained Buddhist teacher Ronald Purser wrote in his 2023 book McMindfulness that mindfulness has become a kind of “capitalist spirituality”.

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CLIMATEWIRE | Wind and solar generated more power than coal through the first seven months of the year, federal data shows, in a first for renewable resources.

The milestone had been long expected due to a steady stream of coal plant retirements and the rapid growth of wind and solar. Last year, wind and solar outpaced coal through May, before the fossil fuel eventually overtook the pair when power demand surged in the summer.

But the most recent statistics showed why wind and solar are on track in 2024 to exceed coal generation for an entire calendar year — with the renewable resources maintaining their lead through the heat of July. Coal generation usually declines in the spring months, due to falling power demand and seasonal plant maintenance, and picks up when electricity demand rises in the summer.

Renewables’ growth has been driven by a surge in solar production over the last year. The 118 terawatt-hours generated by utility-scale solar facilities through the end of July represented a 36 percent increase from the same time period last year, according to preliminary U.S. Energy Information Administration figures. Wind production was 275 TWh, up 8 percent over 2023 levels. Renewables’ combined production of 393 TWh outpaced coal generation of 388 TWh.

“I think it is an important milestone,” said Ric O’Connell, who leads GridLab, a clean electricity consulting firm. “I think you’re seeing a solar surge and a coal decline, and hence the lines are crossing.”

EIA previously reported that renewable generation eclipsed coal in 2020 and 2022 and then repeated the feat in 2023. But those figures notably included other resources, such as hydropower. Now, wind and solar are posed to overtake coal on their own. The pair accounted for 16 percent of U.S. power generation through July, slightly more than coal’s share of the power generation market.

The development comes at a time when the reliability of the electric grid is in the spotlight amid increasing power demand due to the growth of artificial intelligence, data centers, and more frequent and severe heat waves — which drive up air conditioning use. EIA statistics show electricity demand through the first seven months of the year was up 4 percent to 2,436 TWh through the end of July.

The growth in demand has been a boon for power generators. Nuclear generation was 459 TWh through July, a 3 percent increase helped by two new reactors in Georgia coming online within the last year. Hydro was up a slight 1 percent to 159 TWh. Gas has been particularly important for supplying additional demand, increasing 5 percent over 2023 levels to 987 TWh.

Mark Repsher, an analyst who tracks the power industry at PA Consulting Group, said the figures point to larger challenges facing the power grid. Additional power plants that can be turned on at the flip of a switch will be needed to meet demand, he said. The question is whether it will come from natural gas or zero-carbon resources, such as nuclear or geothermal.

“Renewables will continue to be a huge part of the industry, but I think there will be an inflection point where the incremental value of an additional megawatt-hour from renewables will be less than some other alternatives,” he said.

Others were less sure. The rapid growth of wind, solar, and batteries in Texas shows that renewables can be built quickly and stabilize the electric grid, said O’Connell. The state is “sailing through a crazy summer” thanks to record wind, solar, and battery output, he said.

Coal may yet hold off wind and solar with a strong five months to close 2024. But renewables are likely to overtake the former king of the power sector sooner rather than later.

The last coal plant built in the continental United States came online in 2013. American coal capacity then declined 38 percent over the following decade.

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It is considered the body’s most complex organ after the brain and contains over 2 million working parts. About 80% of all learning happens through vision.

So how can we keep our eyes in tip-top condition? And what should we never do if we want them to stay as healthy as possible?

That’s what we — Raj Punjabi and Noah Michelson, the hosts of HuffPost’s “Am I Doing It Wrong?” podcast — asked Dr. Amanda Redfern, an ophthalmologist and assistant professor at Oregon Health & Science University’s Casey Eye Institute, when she recently dropped by our studio.

″[Sleeping with contact lenses in your eyes] is bad. It’s real bad. Don’t do it,” Redfern told us, adding that this even applies to naps. “It’s like a game of Russian roulette.”

That’s because you can get a corneal ulcer, which is an infection on part of the eye that a contact covers.

“It’s not going to happen every time, but when it happens, it’s terrible,” Redfern said. “It can be so bad you could, in really terrible cases, lose your eyeball.”

In less severe situations, Redfern said you could end up with a scar on your cornea.

“If that scar is in the center of your vision, that could affect your vision permanently, unless you get a corneal transplant,” she said.

Redfern also warned us not to engage in any activity that could cause lenses to become compromised or contaminated, including swimming in a pool or lake while wearing contacts or even showering with them.

“The problem with contact lenses is that it will sandwich bacteria between the lens and your cornea, and you can get infected and then have all the complications we talked about,” she said. “In general, we frown upon anything where your eye is going to expose to something nonsterile.”

That includes using tap water to rinse or store lenses.

When asked what she would suggest if someone were on vacation and forgot to bring contact lens solution, pushing them to choose between sleeping while wearing contacts or using tap water to store them, Redfern refused to pick either choice.

“Both of those are awful options,” she said. “I’d rather you [throw the contacts out] and just walk around a little bit blurry for the weekend.”

One thing Redfern does want us to do to keep our eyes healthy? Use eye protection more regularly.

“I always wear eye protection if I’m doing a house project where I’m hammering, sawing — anything where something can fly at my eye,” she said. “Always wear eye protection, because I actually spend half my time seeing hospital consults, and the trauma that you see is just crazy.”

If you end up getting something lodged in your eye, don’t try to remove it yourself. Instead, tape a paper cup over your eye and immediately see a medical professional.

“Pulling it out in an uncontrolled fashion [could cause] the inner contents of the eye to come out with it,” Redfern said.

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