Before hitting the track to compete in an officially sanctioned race, some elite Paralympic sprinters must do something most runners would find incredibly unsettling: remove their legs and swap them out with ones that make them shorter.

It’s not easy to do pregnancy tests on whales. You can’t just ask a wild ocean animal that’s the size of a school bus to pee on a little stick. For decades, the only way scientists could count pregnant females was by sight and best guesses based on visual characteristics. For the last several years, researchers have relied on hormone tests of blubber collected via darts, but the results were often inconclusive (not negative or positive), and researchers couldn’t confidently say if the animal was pregnant or just ovulating.

More Americans are having trouble falling and staying asleep, and smartphones and technology are probably to blame, researchers report.

Their analysis of data from nearly 165 000 adults nationwide showed that the number who reported difficulty falling asleep at least once a week was up 1.4% between 2013 and 2017, and those who had trouble staying asleep rose 2.7%.

Those percentages may appear small, but it means that as many as five million more adults have sleep problems, according to study leader Zlatan Krizan, a professor of psychology at Iowa State University (ISU), in Ames, Iowa.

“How long we sleep is important, but how well we sleep and how we feel about our sleep is important in its own right,” Krizan said in a university news release. “Sleep health is a multidimensional phenomenon, so examining all the aspects of sleep is crucial for future research.”

The study was published online recently in the journal Sleep Health.

Technology likely a factor

Krizan and his team could not say what’s contributing to the increase in sleep problems, but technology is likely a factor, according to lead author Garrett Hisler. He’s a former ISU graduate student who is now a postdoctoral associate at the University of Pittsburgh.

“We know from our previous research there is a correlation between smartphone use and insufficient sleep among teens,” Hisler said in the news release.

“If we’re on our phone before bed or we’re receiving alerts in the middle of the night, that can make it harder to fall asleep and stay asleep throughout the night,” he explained.

Too little sleep and poor sleep can increase the risk of heart disease, and sleep quality affects overall well-being, the researchers noted.

Krizan said, “We know that how well people sleep is generally very reflective of people’s health and may be an indicator of other conditions. If we want a full picture of the population’s health, it’s important to measure and track these changes in sleep trends over time.”

^{Image credit: iStock}

Sepsis kills more than twice as many people worldwide as once believed, and children in poor regions account for an excessive number of such deaths, researchers say.

Sepsis is an out-of-control immune response to infection that harms organs. People who survive sepsis can have lifelong disabilities.

In 2017, there were 48.9 million cases of sepsis and 11 million sepsis deaths worldwide – that’s one in five deaths that year.

“We are alarmed to find sepsis deaths are much higher than previously estimated, especially as the condition is both preventable and treatable,” said senior author Dr Mohsen Naghavi, a professor of health metrics sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

More prevalent in females

Low- and middle-income countries had 85% of the cases, with the most in sub-Saharan Africa, the South Pacific islands near Australia, and South, East and Southeast Asia, the study found.

Sepsis was more prevalent among females than males, and more than 40% of cases occurred in children under age 5, the researchers reported.

From 1990 to 2017, the number of cases fell from 60 million to about 49 million (down 19%), and sepsis deaths fell from nearly 16 million to 11 million (a 30% decrease).

Lower respiratory infection was the most common underlying cause of sepsis-related death in both 1990 and 2017, according to the report published in The Lancet journal.

Naghavi called for renewed focus on sepsis prevention among newborns and on tackling antimicrobial resistance, a key driver of the condition.

Leading killer in hospitals

Lead study author Dr Kristina Rudd said the study highlights the need for basic public health strategies. She’s an assistant professor of critical care medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

“Vaccines, making sure everyone has access to a toilet and clean drinking water, adequate nutrition for children and maternal health care would address a lot of these cases,” she said in a University of Pittsburgh news release.

Rudd pointed out that the issue hits close to home: Sepsis remains the leading killer of hospital patients in the United States.

“Everyone can reduce their odds of developing it by getting the flu shot, and the pneumonia vaccine when appropriate,” she said. “Beyond that, we need to do a better job preventing hospital-acquired infections and chronic diseases, like diabetes, that make people more susceptible to infections.”

^{Image credit: iStock}

The dangers of “distracted driving” are well-known, but texting while walking may also be a road hazard, a new research review finds.

Pedestrians who are busy texting are less likely to look both ways before crossing the street and have caused a growing number of “close calls” with cars, the review found. And while chatting on a cellphone or listening to music can be distracting, neither was as bad as texting.

Much of the evidence comes from simulation studies – where researchers observe people during virtual street crossings that pose no real danger. And it’s not clear how often distracted walking factors into traffic crashes, the Canadian researchers said.

“Controlled experiments do not necessarily reflect the real world,” said Alex Epstein, director of transportation safety at the non-profit National Safety Council. He wasn’t part of the study, but reviewed the findings.

Pedestrian deaths on the rise

On the other hand, Epstein said, “it just stands to reason” that if pedestrians are distracted by their phones, that could compromise their safety.

“You need all of your faculties available to navigate the roads,” he said.

The study, published in the journal Injury Prevention, comes at a time when pedestrian deaths are on the rise. In 2018, an estimated 6 283 pedestrians died in traffic crashes on US roads, according to the US National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA).

The reasons for the rise are unclear, Epstein said, but several factors are thought to be behind it: higher speed limits in many areas of the country; impaired driving, and distracted driving.

The dangers of distracted driving – whether from using cellphones, fiddling with the car’s navigation system, or talking with passengers – are well-documented. Texting is considered the most worrisome distraction, according to the NHTSA. Sending or reading a text takes a driver’s eyes off the road for about five seconds, the agency says.

Because of that, texting while driving is now against the law in most US states, according to the Governors Highway Safety Association. Many also prohibit drivers from using hand-held cellphones.

Pedestrians’ skills dulled

Much less is known about whether distracted pedestrians contribute to traffic crashes. For the new review, researchers led by Sarah Simmons at the University of Calgary were able to find 14 simulation studies.

Overall, those studies found, texting or browsing on a smartphone compromised people’s virtual street-crossing skills. They were less likely to look both ways before crossing, and the distraction increased their risk of being “hit” or having a close call with a virtual vehicle.

In general, texting and browsing dulled pedestrians’ skills more than talking on a cellphone or listening to music.

The Calgary team also found eight studies in which researchers observed pedestrians in the real world. Again, pedestrians who were busy with their phones were less likely to look around before or during street crossings.

“It’s a mirror of the general issue of distraction,” Epstein said. “We’re more interested in our screens than in the reality around us.”

Getting priorities straight

Steve Marshall directs the Injury Prevention Research Center at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

“Undoubtedly, pedestrians are more distracted these days, and so are drivers,” said Marshall, who was not involved in the study.

For pedestrians, the message is simple: “Please prioritise your safety over your device,” Marshall said.

However, he stressed, “traffic safety is a communal responsibility”. And the United States has a long way to go in making its streets safer for pedestrians, cyclists and vehicle passengers alike, Marshall said.

He pointed to Oslo, Norway, as an example of what’s possible. The city – which is the size of Washington, D.C. – recently reported that no pedestrian or cyclist was killed on its roads in 2019.

Time to react

Credit was given to several steps that Oslo has taken to boost traffic safety – including lower speed limits, replacing nearly all on-street parking with bike lanes and sidewalks, and closing major downtown streets to cars.

“The US needs to create roads that are designed for the collective safety,” Marshall said. Yet as it stands, he noted, many communities lack even basic sidewalks.

Marshall also pointed to the “No. 1 priority” for drivers: slow down.

“Slowing down gives you more time to react, and it can make the difference between injuring someone and killing someone,” he said.

^{Image credit: iStock}

Only those who are well can travel, and they will be quarantined on their return, it is understood.

A man and a woman in their 80s were taken off the Diamond Princess in Japan after contracting Covid-19.

The actress tells Victoria Derbyshire her next film, The Secret Garden, could possibly be her last.

People who vape have potentially cancer-causing changes in their DNA similar to those found in cigarette smokers, according to a new study.

These chemical alterations – called epigenetic changes – can cause genes to malfunction. They are found in nearly all types of cancer, as well as other serious diseases, the researchers noted.

“That doesn’t mean that these people are going to develop cancer,” said study leader Ahmad Besaratinia, an associate professor of preventive medicine at the University of Southern California’s Keck School of Medicine in Los Angeles.

“But what we are seeing is that the same changes in chemical tags detectable in tumours from cancer patients are also found in people who vape or smoke, presumably due to exposure to cancer-causing chemicals present in cigarette smoke and, generally at much lower levels, in electronic cigarettes’ vapour,” he said in a school news release.

Specific chemical tags

Besaratinia and his colleagues said their findings add to a growing list of health issues linked to e-cigarettes.

The study included 45 people who either vaped only, smoked cigarettes only, or did not vape or smoke (control group).

Blood samples were tested for changes in two specific chemical tags attached to DNA that are important for proper gene activity and/or function. Changes in levels of these chemical tags occur at various ages and in diseases such as cancer.

Compared to the control group, vapers and smokers both had significant reductions in both chemical tags. The authors said this is the first study to show that these changes can be detected in vapers’ blood, just as in smokers.

Immediate public policy implications

Many people consider vaping safer than smoking, and more than 25% of US high school students use e-cigarettes, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Researchers now plan to identify all the genes affected by these chemical changes in vapers, compared to smokers. Besaratinia said the study could have immediate public policy implications.

“The epidemic of teen vaping and the recent outbreak of vaping-related severe lung injury and deaths in the US underscore the importance of generating scientific evidence on which future regulations for electronic cigarette manufacturing, marketing, and distribution can be based,” he said.

The study was published online recently in the journal Epigenetics.

^{Image credit: unsplash.com}