Satellite imagery, carbon dioxide measurements, and computer models all help scientists understand how climate and carbon dynamics are changing in the world’s forests. But the technology powering these high-tech data only stretches back about thirty years, limiting our picture of long-term change.

The NHS is considering what it can do to stop anti-vaccination messages spreading, Simon Stevens says.

Kelly Clarkson’s daughter Megan died aged two after repeatedly being diagnosed with little more than a cough.

Injecting cement into broken vertebrae to stabilise an osteoporosis-related spinal fracture does little to reduce pain and disability, a new report says.

Two surgeries are used for these types of fractures: vertebroplasty, in which medical grade cement is injected into broken vertebrae to fuse the fragments together; and balloon kyphoplasty, where a balloon is inserted into a compressed area of spine to lift it and allow cement to be inserted before the balloon removal.

Comparison trials

But vertebroplasty provided no clearly significant benefit in pain control over placebo procedures in five randomised placebo-controlled trials, according to the report by an American Society for Bone and Mineral Research global task force of bone health experts.

It also said there is a lack of placebo-controlled trials for balloon kyphoplasty, and a small number of comparison trials found that kyphoplasty provided no more benefits than vertebroplasty.

The report was published in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research.

Each year, about 750 000 Americans suffer compression fractures in their spine caused by osteoporosis. These fractures result in acute and chronic back pain, impaired mobility and disability.

The two types of surgery are aggressively marketed as “noninvasive” ways to get immediate relief from pain and as a way to avoid potential opioid addiction caused by narcotic painkillers.

The report’s message “for doctors and their patients suffering from painful spinal fractures is that procedures to stabilise spinal fractures should not be a first choice for treatment,” said report lead author Dr Peter Ebeling. He’s head of the Department of Medicine at Monash University in Australia.

No significant benefit

“While patients who had these surgeries may have had a short-term reduction in pain, we found that there was no significant benefit over the long term in improving pain, back-related disability and quality of life when compared with those who did not have the procedures,” Ebeling said in a journal news release.

But one back pain specialist noted there may still be a place for the procedures.

If a patient can’t move because of pain from a spinal fracture, bone cement might not be so bad, Dr Joshua Hirsch, from Massachusetts General Hospital, told the New York Times.

“You have a choice,” Hirsch told the newspaper. “Opiates and lying in bed with diminished activity, or a procedure that can mobilise patients and improve them.”

About 300 000 US patients underwent the procedures between 2006 and 2014, according to Medicare data. Of those, 73% had the more expensive balloon cement injection procedure.

Need for prevention

As the US population ages, the number of people having the procedures is expected to rise, but this “report makes it clear that these procedures are not a magic bullet,” said Dr Bart Clarke, president of the American Society for Bone and Mineral Health.

“Until now, doctors have been left to sift through the data on their own to determine whether these procedures can benefit their patients. This report coalesces all that information concisely and provides recommendations to guide them,” said Clarke, co-author of an accompanying editorial in the journal.

The task force report also emphasised the need for prevention. Patients who have had a first fracture of the hip or spine likely have osteoporosis and are likely to experience a second fracture. About 25% of older patients who have a hip fracture will have a second fracture within one year, as will around 20% of older patients who have a vertebral fracture.

But research shows that treatment rates for hip fracture patients are low and decreasing.

“Overall, prevention is critical and we need to get these high-risk patients on anti-osteoporosis drugs that have proven to reduce future fractures by as much as 70%,” Clarke said.

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A team led by Ludwig-Maximilians-Universitaet (LMU) in Munich paleontologist Adriana López-Arbarello has identified three hitherto unknown fossil fish species in the Swiss Alps, which provide new insights into the diversification of the genus Eosemionotus.

Pregnant women who get a flu shot protect not only themselves, but also their developing baby, health officials report.

When a mom-to-be gets the flu, she can be so sick she needs to be admitted to a hospital’s intensive care unit. And new research finds her baby then runs the risk of being born preterm, underweight and with a low “Apgar score” – a gauge of an infant’s overall health.

“The findings support the importance of pregnant women receiving the influenza vaccine, and of prompt treatment with antiviral medications for pregnant women suspected of having influenza,” said lead researcher Kim Newsome. She’s a health scientist at the National Center on Birth Defects and Developmental Disabilities at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Everyone aged 6 months and older should get a flu shot every year, the CDC recommends. That guideline is especially important for pregnant women, the very young, the very old and anybody with a chronic illness. These people are at a high risk for complications of the flu, according to the CDC.

Flu can range from mild to severe, but it’s especially risky for pregnant women. During pregnancy, women undergo changes to their immune system, heart and lungs that make them more prone to severe illness from flu throughout their pregnancy and in the two weeks following delivery, the agency warns.

Pandemic levels

For their research, Newsome and her colleagues studied 2009 data on 490 pregnant women with flu and nearly 1 500 pregnant women who did not get the flu that year.

In 2009, the H1N1 flu was at pandemic levels. About 60 million Americans came down with flu, as many as 400 000 were hospitalised, and up to 18 000 died, the CDC reported.

Last year, when the more virulent H3N2 virus was predominant, millions more got sick, nearly 1 million were hospitalised, and as many as 80 000 died, according to the CDC.

In 2009, pregnant women who were admitted to an intensive care unit for flu were more likely to deliver preterm infants, low birth weight infants and infants with low Apgar scores, compared with women who didn’t come down with influenza.

Women with the flu who weren’t hospitalised or were hospitalised but not admitted to the intensive care unit didn’t have significantly higher risks for any of the complications studied, the researchers said.

The report was published in January in the journal Birth Defects Research.

No-brainer

Dr Rahul Gupta is chief medical and health officer at the March of Dimes. “The rate of flu vaccination of women of childbearing age, and especially those in the first trimester [of pregnancy], is unacceptably low,” he said.

Although the vaccine isn’t 100% effective in preventing flu, people who are vaccinated and get the flu get a much milder case, Gupta noted.

“Getting the flu vaccine early in pregnancy is one of the most important things you can do for yourself as an expecting mom,” he said.

Gupta thinks that the anti-vaccine movement has created doubts about the safety of the flu vaccine during pregnancy.

“Despite the false data about vaccines’ link with autism, some are understandably cautious and may falsely believe that the vaccine can be harmful,” he said.

But getting sick with flu early in pregnancy makes it twice as likely to have a baby with birth defects of the brain, spine or heart, Gupta said.

Women who aren’t sure they should get a flu shot should have a discussion with a medical professional, he advised.

“Having a discussion with a health care provider is critical,” Gupta said. “That’s where you can get your questions answered and your doubts cleared.”

Getting vaccinated is one more thing you can do – like taking vitamins, eating right, exercising, and not drinking or smoking – to ensure the health of your baby, he explained.

“Here’s another proactive step you can take to protect your baby,” Gupta said of a flu shot. “To me, it’s really a no-brainer.

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Fish provide a vital source of protein for over half the world’s population, with over 56 million people employed by or subsisting on fisheries. But climate change is beginning to disrupt the complex, interconnected systems that underpin this major source of food.