Get your daily dose

Rhode Islanders invited to join ‘Homegrown National Park’ effort in Rhode Island

URI insect experts say home gardeners can help stem insect slide

Kristen Curry 

Steven Alm and Casey Johnson in the University of Rhode Island Bee Lab would like you to think small. Alm and Johnson are working at scale, reminding us of the importance of, as E.O. Wilson said, “the little things that run the world.”

Though tiny, the issues they are examining are anything but trivial, bellwethers for larger issues and crises in our natural environment.

A professor at URI and keeper of its historic Insect Collection (which dates to the late 1800s), Alm is concerned about the insect loss he’s witnessed in the course of his career, never mind the species that now only exist in pinned specimen form, no longer in the wild.

“We’re in trouble with the insects,” he says. Birds, fish and other members of the food chain need insects — and their numbers are dwindling.

They will be sharing their expertise at a symposium on Transforming the Landscape sponsored by the Audubon Society this April.

Natural Ingredient Found in Coffee Could Keep Your Muscles Young

Another reason why coffee is good for you

By NATIONAL UNIVERSITY OF SINGAPORE, YONG LOO LIN SCHOOL OF MEDICINE 

A groundbreaking study found that trigonelline, found in coffee and fenugreek, boosts muscle health in aging by improving NAD+ levels and mitochondrial function, offering new strategies for healthy aging and disease prevention.

A research consortium led by Nestlé Research in Switzerland and the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) made a recent discovery that the natural molecule trigonelline present in coffee, fenugreek, and also in the human body, can help to improve muscle health and function.

In an international collaboration among the University of Southampton, University of Melbourne, University of Tehran, University of South Alabama, University of Toyama, and University of Copenhagen, the work builds on a previous collaborative study that described novel mechanisms of human sarcopenia.

Sarcopenia is a condition where cellular changes that happen during aging gradually weaken the muscles in the body and lead to accelerated loss of muscle mass, strength and reduced physical independence.

Tesla, Ford, Netflix, and T-Mobile are among scores of profitable U.S. firms that pay their top executives more than they pay in federal taxes.

Make a jillion dollars and pay no taxes

By Sarah Anderson, William Rice, Zachary Tashman | March 13, 2024

In his State of the Union address, President Biden called out “massive executive pay” and vowed to “make big corporations and the very wealthy finally pay their share” of taxes.

Corporate tax dodging and CEO pay have gotten so out of control that many major U.S. companies are paying their top executives more than they’re paying Uncle Sam.

Tesla is perhaps the most dramatic example. Over the period 2018-2022, the electric car maker raked in $4.4 billion in profits but paid no federal income taxes. Meanwhile, Tesla CEO Elon Musk became one of the world’s richest men.

When it comes to fleecing taxpayers while overpaying executives, Tesla is hardly alone. A new report we co-authored for the Institute for Policy Studies and Americans for Tax Fairness analyzes executive pay data for some of the country’s most notorious corporate tax dodgers.

What did we find? In addition to Tesla, 34 other large and profitable U.S. firms — including household names like Ford, Netflix, and T-Mobile — paid less in federal income taxes between 2018 and 2022 than they paid their top five executives.

Another 29 profitable corporations paid their top executives more than they paid Uncle Sam in at least two of the five years of the study period.

One company on our list stands out for the infamous role its executives played in the 2008 financial crisis: American International Group. Back then, the insurance giant ignited a firestorm by pocketing a $180 billion taxpayer bailout and then announcing plans to hand out $165 million in bonuses to the very same executives responsible for pushing the company — and the nation — to the brink of collapse.

Today, AIG is playing the same greedy game of overpaying its top brass and sticking taxpayers with the bill. Between 2018 and 2022, the company paid its top five executives more than it paid in federal income taxes, despite collecting $17.7 billion in U.S. profits. In 2022, CEO Peter Zaffino alone made $75 million.

Lavish executive compensation packages and skimpy corporate tax payments are not unrelated. Executives have a huge personal incentive to hire armies of lobbyists to push for corporate tax cuts because the windfalls from these cuts often wind up in their own pockets.

The 2017 Republican tax law slashed the corporate tax rate from 35 percent to 21 percent and failed to close loopholes that whittle down IRS bills even further. Many large, profitable corporations ended up paying no federal taxes at all.

We're awake, thank you very much

The end of anti-woke politics?

By Jim Hightower 

Well, well, well — look who’s waking up and raring to go: Mr. and Ms. Woke!

We so-called “woke” people have been the target of far-right politicos and front groups that are frantically trying to ban us and our ideas from America’s political discourse. 

In the past few years, such thuggish gubernatorial demagogues as Ron DeSantis have perverted the power of Big Government to attack teachers, librarians, public agencies, and even beer. Beer!

Why? Because such people and organizations make educational efforts to reduce bigotry, hatred, and exclusiveness in our society. “That’s woke,” screech the ultra-rightists, demanding that any talk about racism, sexism, gender discrimination, or other ugly realities in America must be suppressed.

Like the witch hunters of old, today’s pious puritans of ideological conformity have demonized such basic values as diversity and equity, calling them “toxic.” 

Old and confused

The right priorities

Breathe, don't vent: Turning down the heat is key to managing anger

Study finds increasing physiological arousal fuels the fire of rage

Ohio State University

Venting about a source of anger might feel good in the moment, but it's not effective at reducing the rage, new research suggests.

Instead, techniques often used to address stress -- deep breathing, mindfulness, meditation, yoga or even counting to 10 -- have been shown to be more effective at decreasing anger and aggression.

Researchers analyzed over 150 studies involving more than 10,000 participants and found that what really works to reduce anger is lowering physiological arousal -- in other words, turning down the heat. Activities that increased arousal overall had no effect on anger, and some activities made it worse -- particularly jogging.

Is culinary school worth it?

Not if you run up a lot of debt

Ellen T. Meiser, University of Hawaii at Hilo

America’s culinary schools are feeling the heat.

When chef Gordon Ramsay appeared on an episode of the YouTube series “Last Meal” in January 2024, he described U.S. culinary schools as “depressing” places that “sandbag” students with tens of thousands of dollars in student loan debt before releasing them into a low-wage industry.

He added that graduates are pressured to select jobs that will put them in the best position to pay off their loans, rather than ones that will give them opportunities to learn and grow as chefs. 

Ramsay singled out the Culinary Institute of America, one of the most prestigious cooking schools in the country, as it sets students at its New York campus back US$52,090 per academic year.

Then, at the end of February, The New York Times published a compilation of interviews from 30 chefs around the U.S. They chimed in on a range of topics, but they were pretty much in lockstep when it came to culinary degrees:

“People ask me, ‘What’s a good culinary school to go to?’” chef Justin Pioche said. “And I always tell them: Don’t go.”

Chef Robynne Maii added, “I always sing the praises of culinary school, but in community colleges only. All the for-profit schools need to go away. They’re completely unnecessary and they’re predatory.”

These sentiments are not unique to culinary schools.

Trade, technical and for-profit schools are routinely criticized for their lopsided cost-to-benefit ratio, with scholars such as Tressie McMillan Cottom and A.J. Angulo arguing that many of them have predatory financial processes baked into their business models. 

There has been a similar critique – often tinged with political undercurrents – over graduate degrees in the humanities, arts and social sciences, described by the Wall Street Journal as “elite master’s degrees that don’t pay off.”

Yet thousands of aspiring chefs continue to enroll in expensive culinary schools, rather than learn on the job while being paid. And in the research for my book on notions of success in the culinary industry, I found that many graduates from these institutions actually feel their experiences were worth the price of admission.

What might explain this paradox?

COVID-19 Virus Can Stay in the Body More Than a Year After Infection

Some diseases just won't go away

By UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA - SAN FRANCISCO 

By Lalo Alcaraz

The COVID-19 virus can persist in the blood and tissue of patients for more than a year after the acute phase of the illness has ended, according to new research from UC San Francisco that offers potential clues to why some people develop long COVID.

The scientists found pieces of SARS-CoV-2, referred to as COVID antigens, lingering in the blood up to 14 months after infection and for more than two years in tissue samples from people who had COVID.

“These two studies provide some of the strongest evidence so far that COVID antigens can persist in some people, even though we think they have normal immune responses,” said Michael Peluso, MD, an infectious disease researcher in the UCSF School of Medicine, who led both studies.

Will Big Pharma Continue to Fleece Taxpayers?

They'll sure as hell try

By Philip Mattera, director of the Corporate Research Project for the Dirt Diggers Digest

Tensions are mounting between the Biden Administration, which wants to implement legislation passed in 2022 allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, and the pharmaceutical industry, which would like to nullify the law and maintain the highly profitable status quo.

Big Pharma has little support from the American public, which pays much more for its meds than residents of other countries. The industry is ultimately counting on being rescued by the business-friendly majority on the Supreme Court.

Being able to dictate prices to Medicare is not the only way drugmakers fleece government agencies and the public. In Violation Tracker we document more than 150 major cases of drug price cheating by large producers.

Some of these cases are old-fashioned price-fixing, in which supposedly competing producers conspire to set prices. 

Guess.

Whatever he touches dies

How much stress is too much?

Stress can make you sick

Lawson R. Wulsin, University of Cincinnati

Toxic stress increases the risks for obesity, diabetes,
depression and other illnesses. 
Klaus Vedfelt/Digital Vision via Getty Images

COVID-19 taught most people that the line between tolerable and toxic stress – defined as persistent demands that lead to disease – varies widely. But some people will age faster and die younger from toxic stressors than others.

So how much stress is too much, and what can you do about it?

I’m a psychiatrist specializing in psychosomatic medicine, which is the study and treatment of people who have physical and mental illnesses. My research is focused on people who have psychological conditions and medical illnesses as well as those whose stress exacerbates their health issues.

I’ve spent my career studying mind-body questions and training physicians to treat mental illness in primary care settings. My forthcoming book is titled “Toxic Stress: How Stress is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It.”

A 2023 study of stress and aging over the life span – one of the first studies to confirm this piece of common wisdom – found that four measures of stress all speed up the pace of biological aging in midlife. It also found that persistent high stress ages people in a comparable way to the effects of smoking and low socioeconomic status, two well-established risk factors for accelerated aging.

Extensive Research Reveals 32 Health Risks Linked to Ultra-Processed Foods

Let's count the ways crap food can kill you

By BMJ 

Consistent evidence shows that higher exposure to ultra-processed foods is associated with an increased risk of 32 damaging health outcomes including cancer, major heart and lung conditions, mental health disorders, and early death.

The findings, published recently by The BMJ, show that diets high in ultra-processed food may be harmful to many body systems and underscore the need for urgent measures that target and aim to reduce dietary exposure to these products and better understand the mechanisms linking them to poor health.

Ultra-processed foods, including packaged baked goods and snacks, fizzy drinks, sugary cereals, and ready-to-eat or heat products, undergo multiple industrial processes and often contain colors, emulsifiers, flavors, and other additives. These products also tend to be high in added sugar, fat, and/or salt, but are low in vitamins and fiber.

They can account for up to 58% of total daily energy intake in some high-income countries, and have rapidly increased in many low and middle-income nations in recent decades.