Spotting Baby Critters In Your Neighborhood?

DEM Hosting Virtual Educational Program on May 6 on Young Wildlife and How to Respond

Spring has sprung, and for many wildlife species in Rhode Island, that means it's time to raise their young. 

In May and June, sightings of deer fawns, fox kits, songbird chicks, bunnies, and baby squirrels become more common and generate concerned calls from the public to the Department of Environmental Management's (DEM) Division of Fish and Wildlife.

Often, young animals that appear abandoned or in danger are perfectly fine, and merely need to be left alone and given space. 

However, there are some instances where animals do need additional help from humans and potential veterinary attention.

A virtual program set for Thursday, May 6 from 4:30 p.m. to 5:30 p.m. will provide participants with the knowledge to determine when an intervention is necessary to help young wildlife, as well as best practices to maintain human and wildlife safety and health. DEM Wildlife Outreach staff will be joined by staff from the Wildlife Rehabilitators Association of Rhode Island (WRARI) to share information and answer questions.

Michael Douglas wishes he had had the chance

Few young adult men have gotten the HPV vaccine

Michigan Medicine - University of Michigan

The COVID-19 vaccine isn't having any trouble attracting suitors (until lately).

But there's another, older model that's been mostly ignored by the young men of America: the HPV vaccine.

Using data from the 2010-2018 National Health Interview Surveys, Michigan Medicine researchers found that just 16% of men who were 18 to 21 years old had received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine at any age. In comparison, 42% of women in the same age bracket had gotten at least one shot of the vaccine.

The CDC's Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices recommends two doses of the vaccine at 11 or 12 years old, but Americans can still benefit from the HPV vaccine if they receive it later, as long as they get three doses by age 26.

In the U-M study, however -- even among those who were vaccinated after turning 18 -- less than a third of men received all three vaccine doses, and about half of women did.

"Eighteen- to 21-year-olds are at this age where they're making health care decisions on their own for the first time," says Michelle M. Chen, M.D., a clinical lecturer in the Department of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery and the first author of the study. 

"They're in a period of a lot of transition, but young adult men especially, who are less likely to have a primary care doctor, are often not getting health education about things like cancer prevention vaccines."

The HPV vaccine was designed to prevent reproductive warts and cancers caused by the most common sexually transmitted infection in the United States. The FDA approved the vaccine for women in 2006 and expanded it to men in 2009.

Preventing cervical cancer was the primary focus at that time, so girls and women were more likely to hear about it from their pediatricians or OBGYNs. Yet oropharyngeal cancer, which occurs in the throat, tonsils, and back of the tongue, has now surpassed cervical cancer as the leading cancer caused by HPV -- and 80% of those diagnosed with it are men.

"I don't think that a lot of people, both providers and patients, are aware that this vaccine is actually a cancer-prevention vaccine for men as well as women," Chen says. "But HPV-associated oropharyngeal cancer can impact anyone -- and there's no good screening for it, which makes vaccination even more important."

Chen believes a dual-prong approach is necessary to up the HPV vaccination rate for those who are male, with renewed pushes from pediatricians to target kids and outreach from university health services and fraternity houses for the young adult population who may have missed getting the vaccine when they were younger. Pharmacists as well as urgent care and emergency room providers could also be helpful allies.

Why India's COVID crisis can affect YOU

Spread of new variants, pharma supply chain disruption and more: four reasons it will derail the world economy

Uma S Kambhampati, University of Reading

India is the fifth largest economy in the world.
 Deepak Choudhary/Unsplash

The second wave of the pandemic has struck India with a devastating impact. 

With over 300,000 new cases and 3,000 deaths across the country each day at present, the total number of deaths has just passed the 200,000 mark – that’s about one in 16 of all COVID deaths across the world. 

It is also evident that the India statistics are significant underestimates.

The virulence of the second wave in India seems to be related to a confluence of factors: government complacency, driven by poor data collection and being in denial about the reality of the data; a new variant with a hockey-stick shaped growth curve; and some very large and unregulated religious and political events.

It is clear that there is now a humanitarian crisis of significant proportions. India is a country of 1.4 billion people and makes up a sixth of the world’s population. Here are some ways in which it is also going to affect the world economy:

QAnon hasn't gone away

It's alive and kicking in states across the country

Sophie Bjork-James, Vanderbilt University

QAnon demonstrators protest during a rally to reopen California and
against stay-at-home directives on May 1, 2020, in San Diego. 
Photo by Sandy Huffaker/AFP via Getty Images

By this point, almost everyone has heard of QAnon, the conspiracy spawned by an anonymous online poster of enigmatic prophecies. 

Starting with an initial promise in 2017 that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be imminently arrested, a broad group of interpreters divined a conspiracy that saw President Donald Trump’s Democratic opponents as a global cabal of Satanic pedophiles.

Perhaps the greatest success of the conspiracy is its ability to create a shared alternate reality, a reality that can dismiss everything from a decisive election to a deadly pandemic. The QAnon universe lives on – now largely through involvement in local, not national, Republican politics.

Moving on from contesting the election, the movement’s new focus is vaccines. The influence of QAnon on pandemic denialism is significant, though the spread of Q in local politics is a source of conflict in many states.

Sign of a mad dog: he'll bite on anything

 

Joltin' Joe

 

New infrastructure approach could save millions

Build it, but make sure you fix it

University of Georgia

Morry Gash/AP

Current national strategies for bridge maintenance favor replacement over maintenance. 

A fairly simple depreciation formula is used, resulting in overly conservative assessments of a bridge's long-term health. 

In a study published in the American Society of Civil Engineers' Journal of Performance of Constructed Facilities, researchers from UGA's College of Engineering propose a new model for the first time. 

This new approach considers the interaction of 60 to 80 bridge components in predicting long-term bridge performance and focuses on maintenance instead of replacement.

Espresso, latte or decaf?

Genetic code drives your desire for coffee

University of South Australia

Whether you hanker for a hard hit of caffeine or favour the frothiness of a milky cappuccino, your regular coffee order could be telling you more about your cardio health than you think.

In a world first study of 390,435 people, University of South Australia researchers found causal genetic evidence that cardio health -- as reflected in blood pressure and heart rate -- influences coffee consumption.

Conducted in partnership with the SAHMRI, the team found that people with high blood pressure, angina, and arrythmia were more likely to drink less coffee, decaffeinated coffee or avoid coffee altogether compared to those without such symptoms, and that this was based on genetics.

Lead researcher and Director of UniSA's Australian Centre for Precision Health, Professor Elina Hyppönen says it's a positive finding that shows our genetics actively regulate the amount of coffee we drink and protect us from consuming too much.

What We Can Learn From The (Inaccurate) Census

Rhode Island keeps both its House seats

By Terry H. Schwadron, DCReport Opinion Editor

Rhode Island's census efforts paid off, saving the seats of
both of our Congressmen

Admittedly, I like data. For me, they are the evidence in the trial.

You get a much better idea of the baseball game in the box score than in the final score.

You get a better understanding of unemployment by looking at the original Bureau of Labor Statistics report than at the overall rate.

And you can move beyond emotion to the facts through sifting through trial evidence.

All of which brings us to the topline U.S. Census reports released Monday. Summaries show that the nation’s population growth has slowed over the last 10 years, and that a few Congressional seats will be shifted. As soon as state legislators can legally do so  more South and West states that have voted Republican in the past but are starting to show purple roots will be favored.

The Census should be a source of learning for us to understand more about who we are.

Besides apportioning power and proportion of federal funds, however, the Census should be a source of learning for us to understand more about who we are. The really interesting demographics that are yet to be released may show a much richer view of change than this topline.

And, like any compilation of records, the fundamental question of data collections like the Census is whether they represent good data – especially since pandemic, a series of natural disasters, immigration limits and border crossings and the growth of estimated population counts all have had a deleterious effect on the accuracy of the decennial count.

Do you think New York State is going to roll over with a loss of a Congressional seat over a reported difference of 89 people in its count during a year in which Census workers did not go house to house? (An assessment of undercounts and overcounts is due in December.)

Naturally, accuracy should matter, since the data inform what policies we adopt as a country. If we are an aging nation, need we tilt more resources toward eldercare, for example?

If we don’t have enough people to sustain economic growth, might we have a different, more liberal view of immigration, legal and not, for another?

 

How To Win The Fight To Expand Social Security

Beat the Billionaires Who Want to Ruin America’s Most Popular Government Program

By Nancy Altman and Eric Kingson

Out of sight from most Americans, powerful, organized and determined monied interests have waged a more than three-decade-long, billionaire-funded campaign to dismantle Social Security. That campaign has enjoyed some success. And it is with us still.

It is not hard to see the successes of that campaign. Many Americans have been persuaded that Social Security is unaffordable, in crisis and must, at the very least, be scaled back. 

But while the campaign has succeeded in undermining confidence in the future of Social Security, it has failed to scale back Social Security’s modest, but vital benefits, or, worse, radically transform Social Security, ending it as we know it. 

The good news is that over the last few years, the movement to expand, not cut, Social Security has been growing.

This is the time for our elected leaders to expand Social Security, as the overwhelming majority of Americans who elected them want.

It is no accident that so many in the news media and political elite have bought the lies. The campaign is backed by hundreds of millions of dollars and a cottage industry of academics who have built their careers on criticizing Social Security. Together, those forces brought a veneer of respectability to claims that Social Security is unaffordable, in crisis, and spawning competition and conflict between generations.

Trudy Lieberman, a noted media critic and former New York University journalism professor, has observed that most media outlets have been reporting “only one side of this story using ‘facts’ that are misleading or flat-out wrong while ignoring others.”

The machinations of the anti-Social Security campaign largely explain why media elites and both political parties lost an understanding of the conceptual underpinnings that have led to Social Security’s popularity. Indeed, Social Security is often described as a problem rather than the solution that it is.

Gotta respect Norm

For more cartoons by Tom Tomorrow, CLICK HERE.

 

Make gazillions in profits and pay no taxes

 

Wrong question: Is the cure worse than the disease?

Forget the debate over public health versus jobs – the same people suffer the most either way

Alicia R. Riley, University of California, San Francisco; Ellicott C. Matthay, University of California, San Francisco, and Kate Duchowny, University of California, San Francisco

Throughout the pandemic, millions of Americans wondered: “Is the cure worse than the disease?”

The question implies a trade-off between “the cure,” in the form of economic shutdowns, and “the disease,” COVID-19. This debate dominated headlines in the first months of the pandemic. More than a year later, it continues to be a partisan lighting rod.

But our research shows that mortality during the pandemic in America has never fit the narrative that pits economic shutdowns against COVID-19.

We three are a research team of social epidemiologists who study the various ways social policies and conditions influence health. 

Our latest research in the American Journal of Public Health estimates how many excess deaths are likely to result from job losses at the start of the pandemic. We found that those at greatest risk of dying of pandemic-related unemployment are also those more likely to die from COVID-19.

This double burden of both coronavirus and job loss reflects the fact that most state and national pandemic policies have ignored those for whom neither mass shutdowns nor reopening provide relief. 

Rather, these policies cater to those who already possess the most advantages. The “cure-versus-disease” debate fails to acknowledge this combined suffering.

Spring forest flowers likely key to bumblebee survival

Save the flowers, save the bees 

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, News Bureau

For more than a decade, ecologists have been warning of a downward trend in bumble bee populations across North America, with habitat destruction a primary culprit in those losses. 

While efforts to preserve wild bees in the Midwest often focus on restoring native flowers to prairies, a new Illinois-based study finds evidence of a steady decline in the availability of springtime flowers in wooded landscapes.

The scarcity of early season flowers in forests -- a primary food source for bumble bees at this time of year -- likely endangers the queen bees' ability to start their nesting season and survive until other floral resources become available, researchers say. They report their findings in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Treasurer Magaziner Releases Progress Report on Rhode Island School Construction

160 Schools Already Approved for Repair or Replacement, Creating 21,000 Jobs    

General Treasurer and School Construction Task Force Co-Chair Seth Magaziner joined East Providence Mayor Roberto L. Da Silva, Superintendent Kathryn Crowley, Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council President Michael Sabitoni and community members to release Moving Forward: A Progress Report on Rhode Island School Construction, that outlines the progress of the statewide school construction program developed by the Task Force co-chaired by Magaziner in 2017. 

In total the report outlines the repair or replacement of over 160 schools, creating more than 21,000 jobs, with additional projects still pending approval.  

“Every child deserves to go to school in buildings that are warm, safe, dry, and equipped for 21st century learning,” said Treasurer Seth Magaziner, a former public school teacher. “ A short three years into the implementation of the statewide School Construction program, over $1 billion has been allocated to modernize or replace 163 school buildings with more to come.”