Author: Truth & Hammer

Air pollution may be damaging every organ and virtually every cell in the human body, according to a comprehensive new global review.  The research shows head-to-toe harm, from heart and lung disease to diabetes and dementia, and from liver problems and bladder cancer to brittle bones and damaged skin. Fertility, foetuses and children are also affected by toxic air, the review found.  The systemic damage is the result of pollutants causing inflammation that then floods through the body and ultrafine particles being carried around the body by the bloodstream.  Air pollution is a “public health emergency”, according to the World Health Organization, with more than 90% of the global population enduring toxic outdoor air. New analysis indicates 8.8m early deaths each year – double earlier estimates – making air pollution a bigger killer than tobacco smoking.  But the impact of different pollutants on many ailments remains to be established, suggesting well-known heart and lung damage is only “the tip of the iceberg”.

“Air pollution can harm acutely, as well as chronically, potentially affecting every organ in the body,” conclude the scientists from the Forum of International Respiratory Societies in the two review papers, published in the journal Chest. “Ultrafine particles pass through the [lungs], are readily picked up by cells, and carried via the bloodstream to expose virtually all cells in the body.”  Prof Dean Schraufnagel, at the University of Illinois at Chicago and who led the reviews, said: “I wouldn’t be surprised if almost every organ was affected. If something is missing [from the review] it is probably because there was no research yet.”  The review represents “very strong science”, said Dr Maria Neira, WHO director of public and environmental health: “It adds to the very heavy evidence we have already. There are more than 70,000 scientific papers to demonstrate that air pollution is affecting our health.”

She said she expected even more impacts of air pollution to be shown by future research: “Issues like Parkinson’s or autism, for which there is some evidence but maybe not the very strong linkages, that evidence is coming now.”

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Aerospace firm Hermeus has won funding to develop supersonic commercial planes that will fly more than five times the speed of sound within 10 years.

The company was set up by alumni from Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos-backed aerospace company Blue Origin – which is planning to fly passengers to the moon.

Hermeus says its planes would travel at speeds of more than 3,000mph with a range of 4,600 miles, and will be powered mostly by existing technology.

They will be built using mostly titanium and Hermeus looks to have a functional demo version ready in the next five years.

The firm hopes the planes would be able to fly passengers from New York to London in less than two hours – quicker than the Concorde flight time of three hours and 15 minutes.

Hermeus co-founder and CEO AJ Piplica said: “We’ve set out on a journey to revolutionize the global transportation infrastructure, bringing it from the equivalent of dial-up into the broadband era, by radically increasing the speed of travel over long distances.” The company received funding from Khosla Ventures, although the exact amount has not yet been publicly disclosed. “Hermeus is developing an aircraft that not only improves the aviation experience with very reduced flight times, but also has the potential to have great societal and economic impact,” said Vinod Khosla, founder of Khosla Ventures.

All four Hermeus founders worked together at Generation Orbit, where AJ Piplica served as CEO and Glenn Case, Mike Smayda, and Skyler Shuford served as technical directors. While there, they led the development of the X-60A, a hypersonic rocket-plane and the Air Force’s newest X-Plane.  The company also had an experienced Board of Advisors which includes Rob Meyerson – the former president of Blue Origin.

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Previous research found if we had a pet as a child we are more likely to like animals and own a pet in adulthood.

But it was unclear if genetic differences between families contribute to this association.

Lead author Professor Tove Fall, of Uppsala University, said: ‘We were surprised to see that a person’s genetic make-up appears to be a significant influence in whether they own a dog.

‘As such, these findings have major implications in several different fields related to understanding dog-human interaction throughout history and in modern times.

‘Although dogs and other pets are common household members across the globe, little is known how they impact our daily life and health.

‘Perhaps some people have a higher innate propensity to care for a pet than others.’

Researchers studied the heritability of dog ownership using information from 35,035 twin pairs from the Swedish Twin Registry.

It compared the genetic make-up of twins to determine whether dog ownership has a heritable component.

Identical twins share their entire genome while non-identical twins on average share only half of the genetic variation.

They used this to determine that how much the twins agree can be used as a gauge for if it is a genetic preference.

Their findings supported the view that genetics indeed plays a major role in the choice of owning a dog.

‘The relationship between humans and dogs is the longest of all the domestic animals.

‘Yet the origin and history of perhaps our most iconic companion animal remains an enigma, and a topic of much ongoing scientific debate.

Decades of archaeological and more recent genetic investigations across the world have so far failed to resolve the fundamental questions of where, when and why wolves formed the transformational partnership with humans that finally resulted in the first domestic dog.

‘Over the subsequent millennia this ‘special relationship’ developed apace throughout most cultures of the world and is as strong and complex today as it has ever been.

‘Dogs have long been important as an extension to the human ‘toolkit’, assisting with various tasks such as hunting, herding, and protection, as well as for more social activities such as ritual and companionship.

‘The diverse roles that dogs fulfilled most likely introduced a range of selective advantages to those human groups with domesticated dogs.’

Co-author Dr Carri Westgarth, of the University of Liverpool, added: ‘These findings are important as they suggest that supposed health benefits of owning a dog reported in some studies may be partly explained by different genetics of the people studied.’

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