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Latest Heart News THURSDAY, June 2, 2022 (American Heart Association News) Gender buy generic levitra online canada gaps in blood pressure, physical activity and smoking have widened among young adults in the United States, new research finds, suggesting that prevention approaches should be carefully tailored to help people achieve ideal lifelong cardiovascular health. Overall heart health stayed about the same among more than 10,000 people ages 20 to 39 from 2007 to 2018, and women had better overall scores than men, according to the study, published Thursday in the Journal of the American Heart Association. But when researchers buy generic levitra online canada looked at individual risk factors, notable trends emerged. The percentage of young men with normal blood pressure declined, from 54% in 2007 to 47% in 2018, but remained steady at about 80% among young women.
Optimal physical activity â at least three days a week with buy generic levitra online canada moderate to vigorous activity â declined among the women, from 57% to 49%. But it stayed the same among the men, with about half getting enough exercise. Not smoking became more common among young women, increasing from 64% to 71%, but stayed the same in the men, at about half. Yet for both the men and women, risk buy generic levitra online canada factors were persistently suboptimal, the researchers said.
For example, only about a third reported having a healthy body mass index and eating a healthy diet as of 2018. "Cardiovascular disease retains the dubious distinction of being the leading killer in the U.S., and over buy generic levitra online canada the last two decades, in the world," said the study's senior author, Dr. Pradeep Natarajan, director of preventive cardiology at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. "(Risk) factors earlier in life magnify future risk for cardiovascular disease." The researchers found even wider gaps for some risk factors among the young adults when they pooled the decade's worth of data based on race.
For example, 84% of Hispanic women but only 53% buy generic levitra online canada of Hispanic men in the study had normal blood pressure. For physical activity, 65% of Black women had attained ideal levels compared to 50% of Black men. But among buy generic levitra online canada white people, ideal physical activity was slightly more common in men. "Identifying these issues earlier in life and then addressing them earlier in life will have substantial gains later on," Natarajan said.
"But risk identification earlier in life is really not at the forefront of clinical medicine." Current models to predict buy generic levitra online canada cardiac risk tend to work best for people ages 40 through 70, he added, and research is lacking among adults under 40. Dr. Carissa Baker-Smith, director of pediatric preventive cardiology at Nemours Children's Health in Wilmington, Delaware, said recommendations for checking cardiac risk factors in children and young adults are not well followed in clinical practice. "Current guidelines recommend that cholesterol levels be checked between ages 9 and 11, and again between ages 17 to 21," if the child has no known family history of high cholesterol and early heart disease, and earlier if there is a known family history, said Baker-Smith, who was not involved in buy generic levitra online canada the study.
"Screening for (cardiovascular disease) risk factors is not something that is universally carried out in young adults and adolescents. I believe that one challenge is general providers may not fully understand how to interpret or manage the results." Experts say more research is needed to better understand what causes differences in cardiac risk factors â for example, whether people have primary care physicians and how often they see them, as well as the impact of quality of care, socioeconomic status, and other social determinants of health buy generic levitra online canada. "I think understanding what the drivers were behind those differences would lead to better intervention strategies," Baker-Smith said, adding that it would also be useful for a study to track individuals over time to better understand how risk factors earlier in life affect heart health later. That was a limitation of the current study, which looked back at existing nationwide survey data.
Another limitation noted by the researchers is that the gender and race classifications did not include non-binary genders or details on buy generic levitra online canada race and ethnicity. The study's lead author, Dr. So Mi Cho, hopes the findings raise awareness among clinicians and the public buy generic levitra online canada about the importance of "primordial" prevention â that is, preventing the development of risk factors rather than addressing them once they are detected. QUESTION In the U.S., 1 in every 4 deaths is caused by heart disease.
See Answer "The motivation behind this study was to emphasize the earlier on the better," said Cho, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts. "When you can know it earlier on, buy generic levitra online canada the more efficient and effective prevention approaches would be, rather than letting it deteriorate for a long time and finding it out much later in life." American Heart Association News covers heart and brain health. Not all views expressed in this story reflect the official position of the American Heart Association. Copyright is owned or buy generic levitra online canada held by the American Heart Association, Inc., and all rights are reserved.
If you have questions or comments about this story, please email [email protected]. By Karen Schmidt, American Heart Association News By American Heart Association News buy generic levitra online canada HealthDay Reporter Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved. From Healthy Heart Resources Featured Centers Health Solutions From Our SponsorsLatest Cancer News By Amy Norton HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, June 2, 2022 (HealthDay News) The United States spends far more on cancer care than other wealthy nations, but it's not seeing a return on that investment in terms of lives saved, a new study shows.
Compared with the average high-income country, researchers buy generic levitra online canada found the U.S. Spends twice as much on cancer care -- more than $200 billion a year. Yet the buy generic levitra online canada nation's cancer death rates remain just about average. Experts said the findings -- published May 27 in the journal JAMA Health Forum -- are not entirely surprising.
It's well known that the U.S. Pays much buy generic levitra online canada more for cancer drugs, for example, so the heavy spending on cancer treatment was expected. "But it was disappointing to see that despite that, our outcomes aren't at the top of the pack," said senior researcher Dr. Cary Gross, a professor buy generic levitra online canada at Yale School of Medicine.
Why is all that spending not reaping bigger rewards?. Gross said those high drug prices buy generic levitra online canada are likely a big factor. If the U.S. Is paying more for the same treatments, that could go a long way in explaining why its cancer death rates are no lower than many other countries'.
When it comes to approving new drugs, Gross said, "most other countries are a buy generic levitra online canada little more dubious than we are." The U.S. Tends to approve more new cancer treatments more quickly than other countries -- often without evidence they improve patients' long-term survival. Unlike the U.S., other countries consider costs when making decisions on new drug approvals, and buy generic levitra online canada also negotiate prices of those drugs. In contrast, new cancer drugs typically have a higher starting price in the U.S., and that price tag usually grows over time, Gross and his colleagues point out.
That happens, in large part, because Medicare, which provides health insurance to older Americans, has no power to negotiate drug prices. Beyond that, Gross said, Americans with cancer buy generic levitra online canada tend to receive more aggressive treatment -- sometimes getting chemotherapy in the last months of life, when it does not make a difference in survival. Dr. William Dahut, chief scientific officer for the American Cancer Society, made similar buy generic levitra online canada points.
Cancer drugs cost more in the U.S., he said, and a large portion of spending goes toward patients with incurable cancers. Lengthening people's lives and giving palliative care -- treatment to manage pain and otherwise improve quality of life -- buy generic levitra online canada are important goals, Dahut stressed. But those expenditures do not prevent deaths. For the study, Gross and his team looked at cancer care spending and cancer death rates in 22 high-income countries for the year 2020.
Overall, the U.S buy generic levitra online canada. Spent twice as much per capita, compared with the average for all countries studied -- nearly $600 per person, versus $300. Yet cancer buy generic levitra online canada death rates in the U.S. Were only slightly lower than the median, or midpoint, for all countries studied -- about 86 deaths per 100,000 people, versus 91 per 100,000.
Even that small difference went away once researchers factored in smoking. It's less buy generic levitra online canada common in the U.S. Than in many other countries, which helps protect more Americans from getting certain cancers in the first place. Overall, nine countries had lower "smoking-adjusted" cancer death rates than the U.S., despite spending less on cancer buy generic levitra online canada care.
Australia, Finland, Iceland, Japan, Korea, Luxembourg, Norway, Spain and Switzerland. For his part, Dahut saw a positive in those smoking-related figures. "Smoking cessation buy generic levitra online canada has been critical to lowering cancer mortality in the U.S.," he said. While that's true, Gross said more needs to be done on the prevention front -- including addressing the nation's high obesity rate, and improving Americans' diet quality and physical activity levels.
SLIDESHOW Skin Cancer Symptoms, Types, Images See Slideshow Both Dahut and Gross said disparities could be playing buy generic levitra online canada a role in the U.S. Cancer death rates, too. Studies show that Black Americans and Hispanic Americans have lower buy generic levitra online canada screening rates for certain cancers, and even after a cancer is detected may face delays in treatment. "Care is much more expensive when the cancer is more advanced," Dahut said.
Gross also pointed to the larger picture. While the buy generic levitra online canada U.S. Spends a lot on cancer care, it generally spends less than other wealthy countries on social programs that may help people live healthier. "We're willing to spend the money," he buy generic levitra online canada said.
"But I don't think we're investing wisely." More information The American Cancer Society has advice on lowering cancer risk. SOURCES. Cary Gross, MD, professor, medicine, Yale buy generic levitra online canada School of Medicine, New Haven, Conn.. William Dahut, MD, chief scientific officer, American Cancer Society, Atlanta.
JAMA Health Forum, May 27, 2022, online Copyright © 2021 HealthDay. All rights reserved. From Cancer Resources Featured Centers Health Solutions From Our Sponsors.
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Regular use of an antibacterial mouthwash does not prevent oropharyngeal gonococcal The double-blind Oral levitra sex pills Mouthwash use to Eradicate GonorrhoeA (OMEGA) trial randomised men who have sex with men to rinse and gargle at least once daily for 60âs with either an http://robertflannagan.com/?p=8 antibacterial mouthwash (Listerine. N=219) or a mouth lubricant levitra sex pills as control (Biotène. N=227) for a total of 12 weeks.1 2 Oropharyngeal swabs were collected 6-weekly and saliva 3-weekly. The number of incident cases of oropharyngeal gonorrhoea levitra sex pills was 15 (7%) in the Listerine group and 10 (4%) in the Biotène group.
At week 12, the adjusted risk difference in the cumulative incidence levitra sex pills of oropharyngeal gonorrhoea between the two groups was 3.1% (95% CI â1.4 to 7.7). While the large CI indicates the need for further data, these initial findings do not support a protective effect of Listerine against oropharyngeal gonorrhoea.Transient impact of erectile dysfunction treatment on HIV care in four African countriesInvestigators analysed data from the African Cohort Study, which prospectively collects information from 12 clinics across 5 HIV care programmes in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria.3 Parameters including HIV clinic visit adherence, virological suppression and food security were compared between the periods January 2019âMarch 2020 (prelevitra phase) and May 2020âFebruary 2021 (levitra phase). After adjusting for age, sex and HIV care programme, both attendance of scheduled clinic visits and food security were significantly reduced in the early levitra phase, but not after 7 levitra sex pills September 2020. There were no detrimental effects levitra sex pills on treatment adherence and virological suppression rates.
The findings provide reassurance, although they are not fully representative of the general HIV population across Africa. There remains a need to investigate the levitra sex pills impact of the erectile dysfunction treatment levitra on HIV care globally.Expedited partner therapy does not improve eradication of Chlamydia trachomatis before deliveryExpedited partner therapy (EPT) enables providers to prescribe treatment for partners of patients diagnosed with an STI, without the partner having to establish direct care.4 This cohort study evaluated a prenatal EPT programme in Dallas, Texas, a high Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) prevalence area. Investigators evaluated levitra sex pills the effect of EPT on rates of CT before delivery compared with the traditional partner referral, testing and treatment approach used the year before. The rate of was 15% (61 of 419) with EPT vs 13% (60 of 471) with the standard approach (OR 0.86.
95%âCI 0.58 to levitra sex pills 1.26). EPT on its own is unlikely to be enough to successfully eradicate CT before delivery.Homelessness and housing instability increase the risk of HIV and hepatitis C levitra sex pills levitra among people who inject drugsPeople who inject drugs (PWID) are at increased risk of HIV and hepatitis C levitra (HCV) and have high levels of homelessness and unstable housing.5 This systematic review and meta-analysis included studies published between 2017 and 2020 that estimated HIV or HCV incidence, or both, among community-recruited PWID. In the pooled estimates, recent homelessness or unstable housing (current or within 1âyear) increased the risk of acquiring HIV and HCV compared with stable housing, with an adjusted relative risk of 1.39 (95% CI http://carlfarrugia.com/sample-page/ 1.06 to 1.84. P=0.019) for levitra sex pills HIV and 1.64 (95% CI 1.43 to 1.89.
P<0.0001) for levitra sex pills HCV. Risk reduction for PWID must include interventions to support housing stability.Unrecognised oral and anal shedding of Treponema pallidum in MSM with early syphilisMouth, anus, urethra and semen samples were systematically collected in 200 men who have sex with men (MSM) (31% living with HIV) to investigate Treponema pallidum shedding from asymptomatic sites relative to lesion sites.6 Across all stages of early syphilis, comprising primary, secondary and early latent, 91%, 74% and 8%, respectively, had T. Pallidum at any site, and 20%, levitra sex pills 26% and 0% had detection at two or more sites, with the highest detection in the mouth (24%) and anus (23%). Oral and levitra sex pills anal shedding of T.
Pallidum was most frequent during secondary syphilis and often occurred in the absence of overt syphilis lesions, independently of HIV status. Studies are needed to demonstrate bacteria viability from asymptomatic shedding sites and whether its detection might improve syphilis control.Published in Sexually levitra sex pills Transmitted s - The Editorâs Choice. The combination of levitra sex pills dolutegravir/rilpivirine used in HIV and neuropsychiatric adverse effectsPooling data from 20 randomised trials with a minimum duration of 48 weeks, this meta-analysis investigated the risk of neurotoxicity (defined as the occurrence of depression, anxiety, insomnia, dizziness or suicidal behaviour) in adults treated with rilpivirine, dolutegravir or the combination dolutegravir/rilpivirine versus comparator regimens.7 Twelve trials were in treatment-naive and eight in treatment-experienced participants, totalling 10â998 individuals. Depression was the most common neuropsychiatric event, whereas suicidal behaviour was the least common.
The relative levitra sex pills risk (RR) of depression was not different with dolutegravir or rilpivirine versus comparator. In contrast, dolutegravir/rilpivirine showed levitra sex pills a synergistic effect on depression, with an RR of 2.82 (95% CI 1.12 to 7.10. P=0.03), although no study directly compared dolutegravir/rilpivirine with efavirenz. While further studies are needed, the occurrence of depression should be monitored during dolutegravir/rilpivirine therapy.IntroductionIt has long been understood that increased exposure to a specialty is associated with increased likelihood of applying to that specialty training programme.1 Medical students often have few timetabled sexual health and HIV clinics in their undergraduate training and have been found to lack accurate factual knowledge.2 In England, 2020, genitourinary medicine (GUM) saw only 0.58 applicants per training position, the lowest of all 43 ST3-level programmes listed by Health Education England and one of only four with a competition ratio <1.0.3 Many oversubscribed specialties such as psychiatry and obstetrics and gynaecology have dedicated associations levitra sex pills for medical students and/or pre-specialty trainees interested in these fields.The Student and Trainee Association for Sexual Health and HIV (STASHH) was founded in spring 2021 by Dr Hannah Church, Eleanor Cochrane and Dr Eleanor Crook with support from the BASHH.
Regular use of an antibacterial mouthwash does not prevent oropharyngeal gonococcal The double-blind Oral Mouthwash use to Eradicate GonorrhoeA (OMEGA) trial randomised men who have sex with men to rinse and gargle at least once daily for 60âs with either an antibacterial mouthwash (Listerine buy generic levitra online canada. N=219) or a mouth lubricant buy generic levitra online canada as control (Biotène. N=227) for a total of 12 weeks.1 2 Oropharyngeal swabs were collected 6-weekly and saliva 3-weekly.
The number of incident cases of oropharyngeal gonorrhoea was 15 (7%) in the Listerine buy generic levitra online canada group and 10 (4%) in the Biotène group. At week 12, the adjusted risk difference in the cumulative incidence of oropharyngeal gonorrhoea between the buy generic levitra online canada two groups was 3.1% (95% CI â1.4 to 7.7). While the large CI indicates the need for further data, these initial findings do not support a protective effect of Listerine against oropharyngeal gonorrhoea.Transient impact of erectile dysfunction treatment on HIV care in four African countriesInvestigators analysed data from the African Cohort Study, which prospectively collects information from 12 clinics across 5 HIV care programmes in Tanzania, Uganda, Kenya and Nigeria.3 Parameters including HIV clinic visit adherence, virological suppression and food security were compared between the periods January 2019âMarch 2020 (prelevitra phase) and May 2020âFebruary 2021 (levitra phase).
After adjusting for age, sex and HIV care programme, both attendance of scheduled clinic visits and food security were significantly reduced in the buy generic levitra online canada early levitra phase, but not after 7 September 2020. There were no buy generic levitra online canada detrimental effects on treatment adherence and virological suppression rates. The findings provide reassurance, although they are not fully representative of the general HIV population across Africa.
There remains a need to investigate the impact of the erectile dysfunction treatment levitra on HIV care globally.Expedited buy generic levitra online canada partner therapy does not improve eradication of Chlamydia trachomatis before deliveryExpedited partner therapy (EPT) enables providers to prescribe treatment for partners of patients diagnosed with an STI, without the partner having to establish direct care.4 This cohort study evaluated a prenatal EPT programme in Dallas, Texas, a high Chlamydia trachomatis (CT) prevalence area. Investigators evaluated the effect of EPT on rates of CT before delivery compared with the traditional partner buy generic levitra online canada referral, testing and treatment approach used the year before. The rate of was 15% (61 of 419) with EPT vs 13% (60 of 471) with the standard approach (OR 0.86.
95%âCI 0.58 to 1.26) buy generic levitra online canada. EPT on its own is unlikely to be enough to successfully eradicate CT before delivery.Homelessness and housing instability increase the risk of HIV and hepatitis C levitra among people who inject drugsPeople who inject drugs (PWID) are at increased risk of HIV and hepatitis C levitra (HCV) and have high levels of homelessness and unstable housing.5 This systematic review and meta-analysis included studies published between 2017 and 2020 that estimated HIV or HCV buy generic levitra online canada incidence, or both, among community-recruited PWID. In the pooled estimates, recent homelessness or unstable housing (current or within 1âyear) increased the risk of acquiring HIV and HCV compared with stable housing, with an adjusted relative risk of 1.39 (95% CI 1.06 to 1.84.
P=0.019) for HIV and 1.64 (95% CI buy generic levitra online canada 1.43 to 1.89. P<0.0001) for HCV buy generic levitra online canada. Risk reduction for PWID must include interventions to support housing stability.Unrecognised oral and anal shedding of Treponema pallidum in MSM with early syphilisMouth, anus, urethra and semen samples were systematically collected in 200 men who have sex with men (MSM) (31% living with HIV) to investigate Treponema pallidum shedding from asymptomatic sites relative to lesion sites.6 Across all stages of early syphilis, comprising primary, secondary and early latent, 91%, 74% and 8%, respectively, had T.
Pallidum at any site, and 20%, 26% buy generic levitra online canada and 0% had detection at two or more sites, with the highest detection in the mouth (24%) and anus (23%). Oral and anal shedding of T buy generic levitra online canada. Pallidum was most frequent during secondary syphilis and often occurred in the absence of overt syphilis lesions, independently of HIV status.
Studies are needed to demonstrate bacteria viability buy generic levitra online canada from asymptomatic shedding sites and whether its detection might improve syphilis control.Published in Sexually Transmitted s - The Editorâs Choice. The combination of dolutegravir/rilpivirine used in HIV and neuropsychiatric adverse effectsPooling data from 20 randomised trials with a minimum duration of 48 weeks, this meta-analysis investigated the risk of neurotoxicity (defined as buy generic levitra online canada the occurrence of depression, anxiety, insomnia, dizziness or suicidal behaviour) in adults treated with rilpivirine, dolutegravir or the combination dolutegravir/rilpivirine versus comparator regimens.7 Twelve trials were in treatment-naive and eight in treatment-experienced participants, totalling 10â998 individuals. Depression was the most common neuropsychiatric event, whereas suicidal behaviour was the least common.
The relative risk (RR) of depression was not different with dolutegravir buy generic levitra online canada or rilpivirine versus comparator. In contrast, dolutegravir/rilpivirine showed a synergistic effect on depression, with an RR of 2.82 (95% buy generic levitra online canada CI 1.12 to 7.10. P=0.03), although no study directly compared dolutegravir/rilpivirine with efavirenz.
While further studies are needed, the occurrence of depression should be monitored during dolutegravir/rilpivirine therapy.IntroductionIt has long been understood that increased exposure to a specialty is associated with increased likelihood of applying to that specialty training programme.1 Medical students often have few timetabled sexual health and HIV clinics in their undergraduate training and have been found to lack accurate factual knowledge.2 In England, 2020, genitourinary medicine (GUM) saw only 0.58 applicants per training position, the lowest of all 43 ST3-level programmes listed by Health Education England and one of only four with a competition ratio <1.0.3 Many oversubscribed specialties such as psychiatry and obstetrics and gynaecology have buy generic levitra online canada dedicated associations for medical students and/or pre-specialty trainees interested in these fields.The Student and Trainee Association for Sexual Health and HIV (STASHH) was founded in spring 2021 by Dr Hannah Church, Eleanor Cochrane and Dr Eleanor Crook with support from the BASHH. Its overarching aim is to â¦.
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According to the Centers for Disease levitra dosage 40mg Control and Prevention (CDC), 11.3 percent of adults aged 18 and over experienced regular feelings of worry, nervousness, or anxiety, and 4.5 percent of http://kcuei.com/cost-of-levitra-at-costco/ adults aged 18 and over experienced regular feelings of depression in 2020. According to the American Psychological Association, during the levitra rates of anxiety and depression rose significantly. By 2021 rates of anxiety were reported to range from 28 to 37 percent and depression ranged from 20 to 31 percent.âThese statistics mean there is a very good chance that every person in the country knows someone who is suffering from anxiety or depression,â said Kathy Dollard levitra dosage 40mg Psy.D., L.P., director of behavioral health, MyMichigan Health.
ÂSo, why is it that so many people are unaware of this suffering happening around them?. The levitra dosage 40mg answer is stigma. People donât talk about these struggles for fear of being judged.âStigma is the pervasive negative perception of people with mental health conditions.
The American Psychiatric Association identifies three different types of stigma. Public stigma, the levitra dosage 40mg negative attitudes others have concerning mental health disorders. Self-stigma, the negative attitude one has about their own mental health, which can show up as internalized shame.
And institutional stigma, government or organizational policies that limit opportunities for those with mental health conditions, either levitra dosage 40mg intentionally or unintentionally. Each of these types of stigma begins with the individual. The attitude a person holds toward mental health and mental illness is seen in their speech and behavior.
It often comes out unintentionally and is perceived by those around levitra dosage 40mg them. It either opens or closes the door on a conversation. When a person perceives negative judgement through the language that is used, tone of voice or body language, the door is closed, levitra dosage 40mg and it sends a message of shame to the person who is struggling.
âIt has long been known that when people feel ashamed about their mental health status or repeatedly hear messages that they should feel shame, itâs less likely theyâll seek the care they need,â said Dr. Dollard.According to the CDC, embarrassment is one of the many barriers that stop people from seeking treatment. In fact, only about 20 percent of adults with a levitra dosage 40mg mental health condition actually seek treatment.
ÂPeople seem to miss the reason for the shame. It seems to begin with a collective myth that levitra dosage 40mg many people hold. People seem to divide the world into two types of people.
Those with mental illness and those without. This categorical thinking sets people up to try to avoid putting themselves levitra dosage 40mg in the âillâ category, which is related to negative stereotypes,â explained Dr. Dollard.
ÂAs a result, levitra dosage 40mg they will deny symptoms and resist treatment. This myth also taints how people see others. When someone is seen as being in the âillâ category they become the âotherâ and are mysterious, inferior or different than those in the âwellâ category.â Dr.
Dollard continued, âThere are many ways people levitra dosage 40mg can all contribute to lessening the stigma surrounding mental health disorders. It begins by changing the thinking about mental health and mental illness. All people are humans, and all humans have levitra dosage 40mg struggles.
Some of these struggles interfere with functioning more than others. These can be diagnosed and may require professional treatment. Reducing the stigma levitra dosage 40mg requires open communication about mental health and struggles.
When a person is open and honest about their own mental health struggles it can help others feel comfortable opening up about what they might be going through.â MyMichigan Health recommends that in order to talk openly and accurately about mental health, education is key. This can be achieved by learning about mental health conditions and levitra dosage 40mg available treatments that can assist when speaking to friends and family.âBy using accurate mental health vocabulary, it sends a message of respect and dignity for the person. It communicates that the struggle is real and may require professional treatment.
Using slang terms is derogatory and shames the person,â said Dr. Dollard. ÂChanging stigma within society begins with each individual changing their thinking, and then being willing to talk openly about personal struggles.
Whatâs more, being willing to see each human being as a valuable person no matter how severe their struggle is just as important.âMyMichigan Health provides a Psychiatric Partial Hospitalization Program at MyMichigan Medical Center Alma and soon at MyMichigan Medical Center Midland for those who need a higher level of treatment than traditional outpatient. Those interested in more information about the PHP program may call (989) 466-3253. Those interested in more information on MidMichiganâs comprehensive behavioral health programs may visit www.mymichigan.org/mentalhealth..
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 11.3 percent of adults aged 18 and over experienced regular feelings of worry, nervousness, or anxiety, and 4.5 percent of adults aged 18 and over experienced regular feelings buy generic levitra online canada of depression in 2020. According to the American Psychological Association, during the levitra rates of anxiety and depression rose significantly. By 2021 rates of anxiety were reported to buy generic levitra online canada range from 28 to 37 percent and depression ranged from 20 to 31 percent.âThese statistics mean there is a very good chance that every person in the country knows someone who is suffering from anxiety or depression,â said Kathy Dollard Psy.D., L.P., director of behavioral health, MyMichigan Health. ÂSo, why is it that so many people are unaware of this suffering happening around them?.
The answer is buy generic levitra online canada stigma. People donât talk about these struggles for fear of being judged.âStigma is the pervasive negative perception of people with mental health conditions. The American Psychiatric Association identifies three different types of stigma. Public stigma, the negative attitudes others buy generic levitra online canada have concerning mental health disorders.
Self-stigma, the negative attitude one has about their own mental health, which can show up as internalized shame. And institutional stigma, government or organizational policies that limit buy generic levitra online canada opportunities for those with mental health conditions, either intentionally or unintentionally. Each of these types of stigma begins with the individual. The attitude a person holds toward mental health and mental illness is seen in their speech and behavior.
It often comes out unintentionally buy generic levitra online canada and is perceived by those around them. It either opens or closes the door on a conversation. When a person perceives negative buy generic levitra online canada judgement through the language that is used, tone of voice or body language, the door is closed, and it sends a message of shame to the person who is struggling. âIt has long been known that when people feel ashamed about their mental health status or repeatedly hear messages that they should feel shame, itâs less likely theyâll seek the care they need,â said Dr.
Dollard.According to the CDC, embarrassment is one of the many barriers that stop people from seeking treatment. In fact, only buy generic levitra online canada about 20 percent of adults with a mental health condition actually seek treatment. ÂPeople seem to miss the reason for the shame. It seems to begin with a collective myth that many people buy generic levitra online canada hold.
People seem to divide the world into two types of people. Those with mental illness and those without. This categorical thinking sets people up to try to avoid buy generic levitra online canada putting themselves in the âillâ category, which is related to negative stereotypes,â explained Dr. Dollard.
ÂAs a result, they will deny buy generic levitra online canada symptoms and resist treatment. This myth also taints how people see others. When someone is seen as being in the âillâ category they become the âotherâ and are mysterious, inferior or different than those in the âwellâ category.â Dr. Dollard continued, âThere are many ways people can all contribute to lessening the stigma buy generic levitra online canada surrounding mental health disorders.
It begins by changing the thinking about mental health and mental illness. All people are humans, and all buy generic levitra online canada humans have struggles. Some of these struggles interfere with functioning more than others. These can be diagnosed and may require professional treatment.
Reducing the stigma requires open communication about mental health buy generic levitra online canada and struggles. When a person is open and honest about their own mental health struggles it can help others feel comfortable opening up about what they might be going through.â MyMichigan Health recommends that in order to talk openly and accurately about mental health, education is key. This can be achieved by learning about mental health conditions and available treatments that can assist when speaking to buy generic levitra online canada friends and family.âBy using accurate mental health vocabulary, it sends a message of respect and dignity for the person. It communicates that the struggle is real and may require professional treatment.
Using slang terms is derogatory and shames the person,â said Dr. Dollard. ÂChanging stigma within society begins with each individual changing their thinking, and then being willing to talk openly about personal struggles. Whatâs more, being willing to see each human being as a valuable person no matter how severe their struggle is just as important.âMyMichigan Health provides a Psychiatric Partial Hospitalization Program at MyMichigan Medical Center Alma and soon at MyMichigan Medical Center Midland for those who need a higher level of treatment than traditional outpatient.
Those interested in more information about the PHP program may call (989) 466-3253. Those interested in more information on MidMichiganâs comprehensive behavioral health programs may visit www.mymichigan.org/mentalhealth..
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Controlling animal movements levitra plus reviews with your how much does generic levitra cost thoughts alone. Monitoring a pupilâs attention in class with a headset that scans brain activity. And, of course, the much more familiar cochlear implants that help the deaf hear or deep-brain stimulators that assist people with Parkinsonâs disease to regain functional mobility.⨠This is neurotechânew, potentially revolutionary technology that promises to levitra plus reviews transform our lives. With all the global challenges of today, we need revolutionary technology to help the world cope.⨠Neurotech is our, frankly, mind-blowing attempt to connect human brains to machines, computers and mobile phones.
Although brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are the heart of neurotech, it is more broadly defined as technology able to collect, interpret, infer or modify information generated by any part of the nervous system. Why?. To develop therapies for mental illnesses and neurological diseases. Beyond health care, it could soon be used in education, gaming, entertainment, transportation and so much more.⨠But there are pitfalls.
There are no widely accepted regulations or guardrails yet when it comes to neurotechâs development or deployment. We need themâwe need them bad. We must have principles and policies around neurotech, technology safeguards, and national and international regulations. WHAT IS NEUROTECH, ANYWAY?.
There are different types of itâsome is invasive, some isnât. Invasive brain-computer interfaces involve placing microelectrodes or other kinds of neurotech materials directly onto the brain or even embedding them into the neural tissue. The idea is to directly sense or modulate neural activity. Such technology has already improved the quality of life and abilities of people with different illnesses or impairments, from epilepsy to Parkinsonâs Disease to chronic pain.
One day, we might implant such neurotech devices into paralyzed humans, allowing them to easily control phones, computers and prosthetic limbsâwith their thoughts alone. In 2017, Rodrigo Hübner Mendes, a paraplegic, used neurotech to drive a racecar with his mind. Recently, an invasive neurotech device accurately decoded imagined handwriting movements in real time, at a speed that matched typical typing. Researchers have also showed how invasive neurotech allows users with missing or damaged limbs to feel touch, heat and cold through their prostheses.
There is also noninvasive neurotech that can be used for similar applications. For example, researchers have developed wearables to infer a personâs intended speech or movement. Such technology could eventually enable a patient with language or movement difficultiesâsay, someone with locked-in syndromeâto communicate easier and more effectively. Noninvasive neurotech is also used for pain management.
Together with Boston Scientific, IBM researchers are applying machine learning, the internet of things, and neurotech to improve chronic pain therapy. All of this is already quite impressive, but there is also neurotech that really pushes the envelope. Not only it can sense or read neurodata but it can also modulateâinvasively and noninvasively. This research is still in early stages, but itâs advancing rapidly.
One astounding example is the work of Rafael Yuste, a neurobiologist at Columbia University. His team has recorded the neuron activity of a mouse that was performing an action, such as licking for a reward. Later the researchers reactivated these same neurons and got the mouse to perform the same action, even if the rodent did not intend to do it at that moment. Other neuroscientists have used similar technologies to transfer learned tasks between two rodents brain-to-brain and implant false memories into an animalâs mind.
Itâs remarkable. RISKS, ETHICS AND REGULATION Still, neurotech is at the very dawn of its technological journey. As it becomes more commonplace, we must consider the risks it might present, the ethics around it, and the necessary regulation. We have to anticipate and deal with the implications related to the development, deployment and use of this technology.
Any neurotech applications should consider potential consequences for the autonomy, privacy, responsibility, consent, integrity and dignity of a person. What if someone were to face employment discrimination because the algorithms that power a neurotech application used for hiring misinterpret his or her neurodata?. What if a criminal gets a hold of the previous or current neurodata of the secretary of defense and steals top secret information?. Ethical concerns increase when we are not just monitoring someoneâs neurodata but also interpreting it, decoding the personâs thoughtsâwith implications for accuracy and mental privacy.
One tricky aspect is that most of the neurodata generated by the nervous systems is unconscious. It means it is very possible to unknowingly or unintentionally provide neurotech with information that one otherwise wouldnât. So, in some applications of neurotech, the presumption of privacy within oneâs own mind may simply no longer be a certainty. As new, emerging technology, neurotech challenges corporations, researchers and individuals to reaffirm our commitment to responsible innovation.
Itâs essential to enforce guardrails so that they lead to beneficial long-term outcomesâon company, national and international levels. We need to ensure that researchers and manufacturers of neurotech as well as policymakers and consumers approach it responsibly and ethically. Letâs act now to avoid any future risks as neurotech maturesâfor the benefit of humanity.COSTA RICA Researchers embedded GPS devices in decoy sea turtle eggs to track poaching patterns. In their first field test, five of the 101 decoys (which had similar size, weight and texture to real eggs) traveled significantly, potentially reaching consumers.
LATVIA DNA harvested from a 700-year-old public toilet in Riga (as well as a 600-year-old cesspit in Jerusalem) will help researchers examine how human microbiomes have evolved over time. Microbial DNA from both sites matches some species common in modern hunter-gatherers and some in today's city dwellers. ANTARCTICA New analysis suggests a 50-million-year-old foot bone found on Seymour Island comes from a species of bird whose wingspan reached 6.4 meters across. The researchers also attributed part of a large jawbone with toothlike structures to the species.
MADAGASCAR In a Madagascar garden, researchers found several Voeltzkow's chameleonsâa rare species whose females can change from green to a vivid black, white and blue when excited. The short-lived species had not been documented for more than 100 years, and no females were previously recorded at all. INDONESIA New research shows that fluffy but venomous slow lorises frequently bite one another to settle territorial disputesâa rarity in venomous animals. AUSTRALIA An enormous, newfound coral reef off the continent's northern coast is taller than the Empire State Building, rising more than 500 meters above the seafloor.
Considered part of the Great Barrier Reef, it is the first detached reef structure discovered there in 120 years.In October 2019 the icebreaker RV Polarstern sat trapped in thick sea ice atop the central Arctic Oceanâthe only landmark in a vast expanse of nothingness. Another icebreaker, the Akademik Fedorov, approached it slowly, hauling a load of supplies and personnel. Scientists and crew lined the balconies of each ship, gripping the ice-crusted banisters as they peered across the void. They could see the smiling faces of their colleagues just feet awayâbut they were two time zones apart.
At the North Pole, 24 time zones collide at a single point, rendering them meaningless. Itâs simultaneously all of Earthâs time zones and none of them. There are no boundaries of any kind in this abyss, in part because there is no land and no people. The sun rises and sets just once per year, so âtime of dayâ is irrelevant as well.
Yet there rests the Polarstern, deliberately locked in ice for a year to measure all aspects of that ice, the ocean beneath it and the sky above. The ship is filled with 100 people from 20 countries, drifting at the mercy of the ice floe, farther from civilization than the International Space Station. Iâve been supporting communications for the mission remotely from landlocked Colorado, where time is stable. My world is a bewildering contrast to the alien one the shipâs scientists are living and working inâwhere time functions and feels different than anywhere else on the planet.
No Time Zones Since the expedition began last September, the Polarsternâs time zone has shifted more than a dozen times. When the Akademik Fedorov and Polarstern parked side by side, they were still hours apart. But with no other people within hundreds of miles in all directions and with no cues from the permanently dark sky, the very concept of a time âzoneâ seemed meaningless. At Earthâs other pole, time zones are quirky but rooted in utility.
In Antarctica there is land and dozens of research stations scattered across thousands of square miles. At most stations, permanent buildings house laboratories, living quarters and social spaces. Each mini civilization has adopted its own time zone that corresponds with the home territory that built each place. At the North Pole, itâs all ocean, visited only rarely by an occasional research vessel or a lonely supply ship that strayed from the Northwest Passage.
Sea captains choose their own time in the central Arctic. They may maintain the time zones of bordering countriesâor they may switch based on ship activities. Sitting here in my grounded office, it is baffling to think about a place where a single human can decide to create an entire time zone at any instant. Last fall the Polarstern captain pushed the time zone back one hour every week, for six weeks, to sync up with incoming Russian ships that follow Moscow time.
With each shift, the captain adjusted automatic clocks scattered around the ship. Researchers paused to watch the hands of analog clocks spin eerily backward. And every time the time changed, it jostled the delicate balance of clock-based communicationâbetween instruments deployed on the ice, between researchers onboard, and between them and their families and colleagues on faraway land. No Time If drifting without established time zones isnât alienating enough for people onboard, add the unsettling reality that there is no time of day either.
What we think of as a single day, flanked by sunrise and sunset, happens just once per year around the North Pole. So I canât help but wonder. Does a single day up North last for months?. Is a year just a day long?.
The Polarstern was engulfed by darkness in October after a three-week-long sunsetâjust as the other pole saw the first bits of a three-week sunrise after months of black. Once polar night takes over, there is only relentless darkness. Looking out from the ship's deck, a person sees a horizonless cavityâunless it is dotted by needles of light spouting from the headlamps of a couple of distant human beings at workâan otherworldly scene not unlike being on the moon. Inside the ship is just as bizarre.
How can 100 people function if there is no day, no night, no morning, no evening?. The voice of the German ship captain blasting over an intercom system is the sound of a wake-up call at 8 A.M.âwhenever â8 A.M.â happens to be. People file into the mess hall for meals, held at predetermined intervals. Scientists head out to the ice to check on equipment or meet in laboratories at equally rigid periods.
The ship operates like a windup toy, disconnected from the spinning of the planet, which normally dictates time. ÂTimeâ is just an operational ritual, intended to create the illusion of regularity. When scientistsâ fingers are warm enough, they may occasionally send a limited satellite text to their bustling worlds far away. Communication with friends and colleagues who are in dozens of time zones involves convoluted time conversionsâa reminder that the people on the ship are in suspended animation.
A fleeting text message is only a momentary connection to a distant existence. Weeks and months blur together. Thereâs no television, no news, no people passing by. Holidays come and go without festive displays in supermarkets or incessant holiday songs on car radios.
The very concept of âDecemberâ feels fabricated. Each repetition of the operational rituals between subsequent periods of sleep feels identical, like living the same âdayâ again and again. The only thing that truly reminds the team that time still ticks forward is data collection. Research instruments dot the frozen landscape around the ship, collecting measurements of the ice, the ocean, the skyâall on Coordinated Universal Time, which is based, ironically, on the position of the sun relative to Earth.
The science, however, progresses undisturbed. Data collection has followed its own time since the Polarstern shoved off last September, liberated from the mental whiplash the humans endure. For the people onboard, monitoring the ever progressing data gives them a sense of the forward arrow of time. Otherwise, that sense can only come with facial hair that growsâand with the smell of fresh bread.
When the odor wafts through the ship, it must be âSunday.â When scientists leave the Polarstern, they experience true timelessness. Some instruments are set up miles away on the ice, reachable only by helicopter. Itâs so dark during the flights that researchers looking out the window canât tell how far away the groundâor rather the ice floating on the oceanâis. The helicopter drops them on the surface and takes off again, the sound of whirring blades fading into the distance.
Then itâs true silence. All sense of time is irrelevant. Researchers may be huddled together, their headlamps creating a tiny pool of light in the blackness, like astronauts floating in space. Their head is heavily bundled from the cold, so all they hear is the beating of their own heart.
That rhythm becomes the only tangible measure to track the passing of time. A polar bear guard stands watch as the researchers work, trying to scan the horizon for danger. The polar bear, the animal that actually patrols the dark, frozen landscape, has no concept of time either. Maybe the bear feels only the pulse of Earth as it spins.
What Matters May Be Experience My first of only a few calls from Colorado to the ship involved weeks of planning and trying and failing to connect with a satellite dish up there that could be blown over or buried under snow at any moment. When I finally made a connection, I held my breath and listened to a faint ring, then a long, cold pause. The muffled, husky voice of a Russian radio attendant answered, âRV Polarstern, this is Igor.â A few weeks later I worked to organize a San Franciscoâbased press conference for the expedition. Our goal.
Connect journalists with ship-based researchers by phone in real time. Logistics meant connecting with colleagues in five time zones on land while trying to nail down the âtimeâ of a ship that could drift into another time zone at any instant. It felt like throwing darts blindfolded at a moving target. We pulled it off, and soon after I was on a plane home.
When the wheels hit the tarmac, I grabbed my phone to text my husband that I had landed safely. When I toggled off airplane mode, I saw the time jump from 8 P.M. To 9 P.M. In an instant.
Time is weird everywhere. Maybe time is defined not by numbers or zones or the spinning of Earthâbut by what we experience. When I entered my house, I was eagerly greeted by my dogs. I fed them their dinnerâtheir favorite âtimeâ of day.
Right about then, researchers on the ship were eating a bowl of warm oats before hitting the iceââtimeâ to check those instruments again.By centuryâs end, tens of millions of U.S. Coastal property owners will face a decision embodied in the popular exhortation, âMove it or lose it.â But thereâs an option for people who canât imagine a home without an ocean view. Itâs called âseasteading,â and it could be a 21st-century antidote to the nationâs disappearing shorelines. ÂFloating citiesâ could become climate havens for people whose lives and livelihoods are tethered to the sea or nearby coast, according to the San Francisco-based Seasteading Institute.
In many cases, floating colonies would be populated by people whose homes are rendered uninhabitable by rising seas and storm surges that chew away at the edge of the continent. Residents would live in modern homes built atop modular platforms that rise and fall with the tides. Some communities could be linked to the mainland by bridges and utility lines. Others could exist miles offshore as semiautonomous cities or even independent nations.
ÂNearly half the worldâs surface is unclaimed by any nation-state, and many coastal nations can legislate seasteads in their territorial waters,â says the Seasteading Institute, which has embraced floating cities with a near-religious fervor. A few would occupy converted cruise ships flying under independent flags. Others would look like condominium complexes built atop ocean freighters or barges. All will provide offshore refuge from traditional seaside communities where climate hazards are becoming a part of daily life.
As an added benefit, floating cities could enjoy a limitless supply of desalinated water, while homes and businesses would be powered by microgrids pulsing with wind and solar energy. Transportation would require little more than two feet or two wheels, and be entirely carbon-free. In deeper water, floating cities could rely on aquaculture, hydroponics and rooftop gardens. Other essentials could be delivered by barge or ship.
Itâs a tough sell, often punctuated by eye rolls. ÂThe thing I usually hear when I first talk about this is, âOh, you want to build âWaterworld,ââ said landscape architect and seasteading advocate Greg Delaune, referring to the 1995 postapocalyptic film starring Kevin Costner as a kind of Mad Max of the sea. ÂYou know, thatâs not really the image we want people to conjure up, but itâs often the first thing that comes to their minds. I get it,â added Delaune, who recently co-founded the Deep Blue Institute, a Louisiana-based organization dedicated to building marine-based resilient communities.
Delaune is convinced that southeast Louisianaâone of the fastest-sinking coastlines in the worldâcould be a U.S. Prototype for such a community, where floating structuresâhomes, businesses, parks and marinasâwould offer a more stable life than a sinking marsh. When hurricanes and storms threaten, as is increasingly common on the fast-warming Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, modular floating cities could be partly disassembled and moved into safe harbor or to calmer waters, proponents say. The details of how that would happen remain sketchy.
But ship-based communities already have the luxury of movement, and back-bay communities would garner some protection from the ocean shore. Futuristic as it sounds, seasteading is not new, and its adaptability to the United States is already being tested through other human-inhabited offshore infrastructure. The Dutch model Oil and gas platforms host hundreds of workers for months at a time. And as energy companies migrate into deeper water, floating platforms are becoming the norm.
For proof, cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Netherlands, a climate-threatened country whose fate is tied to the sea. ÂThe Dutch have been doing this for 400 to 500 years. Now theyâre selling their ideas around the world,â Delaune said. ÂI see no reason why we canât design and build sustainable, resilient sea-based communities right here, borrowing on some of the same marine-resilient infrastructure that made the United States a leader in these other offshore activities.â Experts say the origins of floating cities also lie in the Netherlands, where Dutch engineers have spent centuries adapting to life at the oceanâs doorstep.
Much of the western half of the country is below sea level, and Amsterdam, with a population of 1.1 million, is nearly 7 feet below the adjoining North Sea. The Dutch way of coastal adaptation, distilled in the phrase âliving with water,â has informed urban planning in waterfront cities around the world, notably its use of highly engineered infrastructure like dikes, dams and floodgates. The Army Corps of Engineers incorporated such approaches into the redesigned Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project built after Hurricane Katrina. Lesser known but gaining notoriety are the floating homes developed over the last two decades around Amsterdam, one of the lowest-lying cities in the world.
They include IJburg, a planned residential district east of Amsterdam where more than 120 floating homes will make up âWaterbuurt West,â a floating suburb on an inland bay called the IJ. When fully developed, IJburg will support 18,000 floating homes for 45,000 people. But what of the United States, where cities like Boston, New York, Miami, Houston and New Orleans are equally threatened by storm surges and rising seas?. Experts say itâs a slow process, in part because much of the coastal adaptation conversation has focused on shoreline protection, home elevations and coastal retreat.
ÂThe Dutch have this mentality that we can experiment. The U.S. Mentality is we canât change anything,â said Dale Morris, director of strategic partnerships at the Water Institute of the Gulf, a national nonprofit based in Baton Rouge, La., that provides research and technical support to communities preparing for sea-level rise and other climate change impacts. For eight years after Katrina, Morris worked for the Dutch government as a liaison to Louisiana and other coastal states facing challenges around water management, flood control and climate adaptation.
Morris is an advocate for floating cities in the United States, but he is also a realist. In an interview, he said floating cities are impeded by social, political, economic and cultural barriers. Among them are the long-standing American ideals of abundant land and natural resources, and the notion that people can spread out as cities become denser, dirtier and more expensive. That hasnât happened.
Today, 95 million Americans, nearly 30% of the U.S. Population, live in coastline counties, according to the Census Bureau, compared with roughly 80 million people in 2000. Coastal cities also experience some of the most disruptive and costly climate change impacts, as evidenced by the frequency of tropical storms like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Harvey, which hit two of the nationâs largest urban areas. Other hazards include peak rain events, or ârainbombs,â that quickly overwhelm urban infrastructure.
And while storm surge flooding from hurricanes is catastrophic and occasional, king tides and sunny-day flooding can occur daily and are equally damaging to low-lying cities, experts say. ÂThere are visionaries who are investing in these important ideas, and the technology that allows us to do innovative things is improving all the time,â Morris said. ÂBut the economic components of these ideas have to be addressed. Thereâs an iterative process between vision and reality.â But, Morris noted, âitâs also true that without inspiration or vision, there is no progress.â Big ideas, big failures Thatâs where advocates have their work cut out for them.
In the United States, much of the enthusiasm for floating cities is channeled through the Seasteading Institute, which was founded by Patri Friedman, an entrepreneur and grandson of the Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, also a libertarian. Friedman and colleague Joe Quirk, the instituteâs president, wrote the bible of floating cities, titled âSeasteading. How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians.â In it, they say âseasteaders are radically misunderstood by landlubbers.â Quirk did not make himself available for an interview, but in an email to E&E News, he said, âNot only is seasteading the quickest, cheapest solution to sea-level rise, we will increase the amount of life on the ocean with every seastead we build.â While not a developer, the institute is a portal for information and advocacy materials, including research papers, blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos explaining and extolling the virtues of floating human habitation. Its website also provides a list of âactiveâ seasteading projects.
Quick also co-created Blue Frontiers, a company that worked with French Polynesia in 2017 to establish a semiautonomous floating city off the Pacific island nation. With pilot costs estimated at between $30 million and $50 million, the project gained significant momentum before it was postponed indefinitely by the government for political reasons, according to the firm. Most floating cities are overseas, but the instituteâs list includes Delauneâs effortâcalled the âLouisiana Opportunity Zone Initiative,â or âBlue Tech Deltaââas well as several projects that remain under development or did not materialize. One in California called Ventive SeaTech aims âto build permanent ocean communities for the masses, using modular structures designed to make ocean living safe, comfortable and affordable.â Its primary product, the âfloathouse,â is shaped like a capsule with windows.
Itâs described as âa finished home, ready to move in, and is intended to be a year-round home for individuals or a familyâ by Ventive SeaTech. Another long-awaited project, conceived in 2011 by a California firm called Blueseed, would establish a floating city on a cruise ship parked in international waters about 12 miles offshore from San Francisco. Its developers describe it an âentrepreneurial incubatorâ and âthe Googleplex of the sea,â where international tech startups could collaborate on projects near Silicon Valley without obtaining visas to enter the United States. It raised several million dollars in seed money, including from the well-known tech financier Peter Thiel, but it has been mothballed for six years.
Where Blueseed stumbled early, another cruise ship city that was set to sail this month imploded days before leaving dry dock. The MS Satoshi, conceived as a Bitcoin-based technology hub anchored in the Gulf of Panama, was rerouted to a scrap yard in India after its owner, Ocean Builders, could not find an insurer to underwrite the floating city. In a statement, Ocean Builders said it had âhit the roadblock of having no insurance company willing to insure the MS Satoshi upon dropping anchor in the Gulf of Panama. The closest we came was a company toying with us with a million dollar premium for a maximum of $5 million in coverage, nothing close to the coverage we would need to be legally compliant.â The company said it will issue refunds for 100 cabins it auctioned last month for between $50,000 and $100,000 each.
For U.S.-based seasteaders like Delaune, the bridge to a floating city could be years, or even decades, away. But he is not discouraged. Since arriving in New Orleans, he has been canvassing the region for receptive audiences. He has found a few, including at the Tulane University School of Architecture, where a primary research effort is focused on implementing ideas that emerged a decade ago through the cityâs water management planning process called the âDutch Dialogues.â âI have my pitch deck, and Iâve been rolling it out down here over the last few months,â Delaune said.
ÂThe big spin is the dying wetlands east of New Orleans, the buffer areas, the barrier islands. People cannot live in these places anymore.â Delaune says the project could take years to materialize. But as Louisiana undergoes a multibillion-dollar restoration of its coastline, floating communities can be a part of the solution. ÂThese people donât want a Silicon Valley or NASA project to drop into their backyards,â he said.
ÂBut when your people are leaving and your economy is dying, there is no plan B except to move away.â Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.Editorâs Note. This blog was originally posted in December 2008 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 8âs historic mission. It has been lightly edited.
On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 was launched on one of the greatest journeys in the history of human exploration. Imagine if Columbus took only the Santa MarÃa, sans landing boats, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to the island of Hispaniola. Unable to go ashore, he circled it and recorded his observations in logbooks. Returning later with a three-ship flotilla to plant the flag would still be dramatic, but also a tad anticlimactic.
Itâs hard to believe Apollo 8âs voyage around the moon had originally been scheduled as a less audacious Earth-orbit mission to test the whole moonship âflotillaâ. The monstrous, still problem-prone Saturn 5 booster, along with the recently redesigned, and only once-flown-by-astronauts Apollo command ship, which was fashioned to carry a three-person crew to and from Earth and into moon orbit. For a landing, it was to fly in tandem with a lunar lander that would ferry two astronauts to and from the moonâs surface. In 1968 the command ship was ready but the lander was behind schedule.
Officials feared that if NASA were to wait for it to test the whole system in Earth orbit before heading moonward, then the goal set by Pres. John Kennedy of a landing there by the end of 1969 would be near impossible. Not only was the clock ticking, but also the CIA had informed the agency that it believed the Soviet Union was on the verge of launching cosmonauts on a moon mission. In August 1968 NASA's Apollo Spacecraft Program Office manager, George Low, proposed making Apollo 8 a mission to circumnavigate the moon some 234,000 miles away.
Working out the details in secret, the Apollo team realized they could do it and, while there, go into orbit. Orbiting made the stakes even higher. If a failure of the spacecraft's rocket engine left astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders stranded, NASA Administrator Jim Webb feared we would have âruined the moonâ for poets, lovers and everyone who would look at the orb and know there were three dead astronauts circling there. And, if the new navigational, communication or reentry components had failed, the crew could have been lost in space or have burned up in Earth's atmosphere on returning home.
Apollo 8 astronauts (left to right). Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr. And William A.
Anders arrive on the carrier U.S.S. Yorktown after splashing down to complete the mission. Credit. NASA That year, public enthusiasm for human spaceflight was as high as it ever would be but a failure might have dampened enthusiasm, thereby slowing or even stopping the U.S.
From fulfilling its attempt to fulfill Kennedy's goal. Apollo 8 realized many firsts, including the first time humans had set their eyes on the moon's farside as well as the fastest astronauts (or, for that matter, anybody) had ever traveledâaround 25,000 miles per hourâthrough space and into Earth's atmosphere during reentry. But what stands out for many is that it was also the first time most people back on Earth had seen their world as a sphere floating in the pitch-black void of space. The iconic Apollo 8 âEarthriseâ photo taken over the lunar horizon is credited with inspiring global environmental consciousness and the cultural viewpoint of our world as a unique and extremely fragile planet that must be preserved.
What started as a gamble became one of humanity's greatest moments in explorationâand a public relations coup for NASA. Not only that, but people needed a moment like this in a year like 1968âone shattered by antiwar and race protests and riots. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F. Kennedy.
As well as war, both hot and cold. Earth, photographed by William A. Anders as Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Credit.
NASA So, there it was, just what the doctor ordered. On Christmas Eve, pajama-clad kids who otherwise would be looking skyward for eight tiny reindeer were glued to their TV sets, along with an estimated half a billion people around the world, gaping at the moonâs stark, cratered surface hurtling by just 69 miles below and listening to awe-inspired astronauts who read âGenesisâ and sent yuletide greetings to âall of you on the good Earthââthe same good Earth they had been viewing in black and white as a fuzzy, cloud-veiled, gibbous globe, like they had never seen it before. Small wonder then that when Borman got back, someone had sent him a message. ÂThanks for saving 1968.â.
Controlling animal movements with your buy generic levitra online canada thoughts alone. Monitoring a pupilâs attention in class with a headset that scans brain activity. And, of course, the much more familiar cochlear implants that help the deaf hear or deep-brain stimulators that assist people with Parkinsonâs disease to regain functional mobility.⨠This is neurotechânew, potentially revolutionary technology that promises buy generic levitra online canada to transform our lives. With all the global challenges of today, we need revolutionary technology to help the world cope.⨠Neurotech is our, frankly, mind-blowing attempt to connect human brains to machines, computers and mobile phones. Although brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) are the heart of neurotech, it is more broadly defined as technology able to collect, interpret, infer or modify information generated by any part of the nervous system.
Why?. To develop therapies for mental illnesses and neurological diseases. Beyond health care, it could soon be used in education, gaming, entertainment, transportation and so much more.⨠But there are pitfalls. There are no widely accepted regulations or guardrails yet when it comes to neurotechâs development or deployment. We need themâwe need them bad.
We must have principles and policies around neurotech, technology safeguards, and national and international regulations. WHAT IS NEUROTECH, ANYWAY?. There are different types of itâsome is invasive, some isnât. Invasive brain-computer interfaces involve placing microelectrodes or other kinds of neurotech materials directly onto the brain or even embedding them into the neural tissue. The idea is to directly sense or modulate neural activity.
Such technology has already improved the quality of life and abilities of people with different illnesses or impairments, from epilepsy to Parkinsonâs Disease to chronic pain. One day, we might implant such neurotech devices into paralyzed humans, allowing them to easily control phones, computers and prosthetic limbsâwith their thoughts alone. In 2017, Rodrigo Hübner Mendes, a paraplegic, used neurotech to drive a racecar with his mind. Recently, an invasive neurotech device accurately decoded imagined handwriting movements in real time, at a speed that matched typical typing. Researchers have also showed how invasive neurotech allows users with missing or damaged limbs to feel touch, heat and cold through their prostheses.
There is also noninvasive neurotech that can be used for similar applications. For example, researchers have developed wearables to infer a personâs intended speech or movement. Such technology could eventually enable a patient with language or movement difficultiesâsay, someone with locked-in syndromeâto communicate easier and more effectively. Noninvasive neurotech is also used for pain management. Together with Boston Scientific, IBM researchers are applying machine learning, the internet of things, and neurotech to improve chronic pain therapy.
All of this is already quite impressive, but there is also neurotech that really pushes the envelope. Not only it can sense or read neurodata but it can also modulateâinvasively and noninvasively. This research is still in early stages, but itâs advancing rapidly. One astounding example is the work of Rafael Yuste, a neurobiologist at Columbia University. His team has recorded the neuron activity of a mouse that was performing an action, such as licking for a reward.
Later the researchers reactivated these same neurons and got the mouse to perform the same action, even if the rodent did not intend to do it at that moment. Other neuroscientists have used similar technologies to transfer learned tasks between two rodents brain-to-brain and implant false memories into an animalâs mind. Itâs remarkable. RISKS, ETHICS AND REGULATION Still, neurotech is at the very dawn of its technological journey. As it becomes more commonplace, we must consider the risks it might present, the ethics around it, and the necessary regulation.
We have to anticipate and deal with the implications related to the development, deployment and use of this technology. Any neurotech applications should consider potential consequences for the autonomy, privacy, responsibility, consent, integrity and dignity of a person. What if someone were to face employment discrimination because the algorithms that power a neurotech application used for hiring misinterpret his or her neurodata?. What if a criminal gets a hold of the previous or current neurodata of the secretary of defense and steals top secret information?. Ethical concerns increase when we are not just monitoring someoneâs neurodata but also interpreting it, decoding the personâs thoughtsâwith implications for accuracy and mental privacy.
One tricky aspect is that most of the neurodata generated by the nervous systems is unconscious. It means it is very possible to unknowingly or unintentionally provide neurotech with information that one otherwise wouldnât. So, in some applications of neurotech, the presumption of privacy within oneâs own mind may simply no longer be a certainty. As new, emerging technology, neurotech challenges corporations, researchers and individuals to reaffirm our commitment to responsible innovation. Itâs essential to enforce guardrails so that they lead to beneficial long-term outcomesâon company, national and international levels.
We need to ensure that researchers and manufacturers of neurotech as well as policymakers and consumers approach it responsibly and ethically. Letâs act now to avoid any future risks as neurotech maturesâfor the benefit of humanity.COSTA RICA Researchers embedded GPS devices in decoy sea turtle eggs to track poaching patterns. In their first field test, five of the 101 decoys (which had similar size, weight and texture to real eggs) traveled significantly, potentially reaching consumers. LATVIA DNA harvested from a 700-year-old public toilet in Riga (as well as a 600-year-old cesspit in Jerusalem) will help researchers examine how human microbiomes have evolved over time. Microbial DNA from both sites matches some species common in modern hunter-gatherers and some in today's city dwellers.
ANTARCTICA New analysis suggests a 50-million-year-old foot bone found on Seymour Island comes from a species of bird whose wingspan reached 6.4 meters across. The researchers also attributed part of a large jawbone with toothlike structures to the species. MADAGASCAR In a Madagascar garden, researchers found several Voeltzkow's chameleonsâa rare species whose females can change from green to a vivid black, white and blue when excited. The short-lived species had not been documented for more than 100 years, and no females were previously recorded at all. INDONESIA New research shows that fluffy but venomous slow lorises frequently bite one another to settle territorial disputesâa rarity in venomous animals.
AUSTRALIA An enormous, newfound coral reef off the continent's northern coast is taller than the Empire State Building, rising more than 500 meters above the seafloor. Considered part of the Great Barrier Reef, it is the first detached reef structure discovered there in 120 years.In October 2019 the icebreaker RV Polarstern sat trapped in thick sea ice atop the central Arctic Oceanâthe only landmark in a vast expanse of nothingness. Another icebreaker, the Akademik Fedorov, approached it slowly, hauling a load of supplies and personnel. Scientists and crew lined the balconies of each ship, gripping the ice-crusted banisters as they peered across the void. They could see the smiling faces of their colleagues just feet awayâbut they were two time zones apart.
At the North Pole, 24 time zones collide at a single point, rendering them meaningless. Itâs simultaneously all of Earthâs time zones and none of them. There are no boundaries of any kind in this abyss, in part because there is no land and no people. The sun rises and sets just once per year, so âtime of dayâ is irrelevant as well. Yet there rests the Polarstern, deliberately locked in ice for a year to measure all aspects of that ice, the ocean beneath it and the sky above.
The ship is filled with 100 people from 20 countries, drifting at the mercy of the ice floe, farther from civilization than the International Space Station. Iâve been supporting communications for the mission remotely from landlocked Colorado, where time is stable. My world is a bewildering contrast to the alien one the shipâs scientists are living and working inâwhere time functions and feels different than anywhere else on the planet. No Time Zones Since the expedition began last September, the Polarsternâs time zone has shifted more than a dozen times. When the Akademik Fedorov and Polarstern parked side by side, they were still hours apart.
But with no other people within hundreds of miles in all directions and with no cues from the permanently dark sky, the very concept of a time âzoneâ seemed meaningless. At Earthâs other pole, time zones are quirky but rooted in utility. In Antarctica there is land and dozens of research stations scattered across thousands of square miles. At most stations, permanent buildings house laboratories, living quarters and social spaces. Each mini civilization has adopted its own time zone that corresponds with the home territory that built each place.
At the North Pole, itâs all ocean, visited only rarely by an occasional research vessel or a lonely supply ship that strayed from the Northwest Passage. Sea captains choose their own time in the central Arctic. They may maintain the time zones of bordering countriesâor they may switch based on ship activities. Sitting here in my grounded office, it is baffling to think about a place where a single human can decide to create an entire time zone at any instant. Last fall the Polarstern captain pushed the time zone back one hour every week, for six weeks, to sync up with incoming Russian ships that follow Moscow time.
With each shift, the captain adjusted automatic clocks scattered around the ship. Researchers paused to watch the hands of analog clocks spin eerily backward. And every time the time changed, it jostled the delicate balance of clock-based communicationâbetween instruments deployed on the ice, between researchers onboard, and between them and their families and colleagues on faraway land. No Time If drifting without established time zones isnât alienating enough for people onboard, add the unsettling reality that there is no time of day either. What we think of as a single day, flanked by sunrise and sunset, happens just once per year around the North Pole.
So I canât help but wonder. Does a single day up North last for months?. Is a year just a day long?. The Polarstern was engulfed by darkness in October after a three-week-long sunsetâjust as the other pole saw the first bits of a three-week sunrise after months of black. Once polar night takes over, there is only relentless darkness.
Looking out from the ship's deck, a person sees a horizonless cavityâunless it is dotted by needles of light spouting from the headlamps of a couple of distant human beings at workâan otherworldly scene not unlike being on the moon. Inside the ship is just as bizarre. How can 100 people function if there is no day, no night, no morning, no evening?. The voice of the German ship captain blasting over an intercom system is the sound of a wake-up call at 8 A.M.âwhenever â8 A.M.â happens to be. People file into the mess hall for meals, held at predetermined intervals.
Scientists head out to the ice to check on equipment or meet in laboratories at equally rigid periods. The ship operates like a windup toy, disconnected from the spinning of the planet, which normally dictates time. ÂTimeâ is just an operational ritual, intended to create the illusion of regularity. When scientistsâ fingers are warm enough, they may occasionally send a limited satellite text to their bustling worlds far away. Communication with friends and colleagues who are in dozens of time zones involves convoluted time conversionsâa reminder that the people on the ship are in suspended animation.
A fleeting text message is only a momentary connection to a distant existence. Weeks and months blur together. Thereâs no television, no news, no people passing by. Holidays come and go without festive displays in supermarkets or incessant holiday songs on car radios. The very concept of âDecemberâ feels fabricated.
Each repetition of the operational rituals between subsequent periods of sleep feels identical, like living the same âdayâ again and again. The only thing that truly reminds the team that time still ticks forward is data collection. Research instruments dot the frozen landscape around the ship, collecting measurements of the ice, the ocean, the skyâall on Coordinated Universal Time, which is based, ironically, on the position of the sun relative to Earth. The science, however, progresses undisturbed. Data collection has followed its own time since the Polarstern shoved off last September, liberated from the mental whiplash the humans endure.
For the people onboard, monitoring the ever progressing data gives them a sense of the forward arrow of time. Otherwise, that sense can only come with facial hair that growsâand with the smell of fresh bread. When the odor wafts through the ship, it must be âSunday.â When scientists leave the Polarstern, they experience true timelessness. Some instruments are set up miles away on the ice, reachable only by helicopter. Itâs so dark during the flights that researchers looking out the window canât tell how far away the groundâor rather the ice floating on the oceanâis.
The helicopter drops them on the surface and takes off again, the sound of whirring blades fading into the distance. Then itâs true silence. All sense of time is irrelevant. Researchers may be huddled together, their headlamps creating a tiny pool of light in the blackness, like astronauts floating in space. Their head is heavily bundled from the cold, so all they hear is the beating of their own heart.
That rhythm becomes the only tangible measure to track the passing of time. A polar bear guard stands watch as the researchers work, trying to scan the horizon for danger. The polar bear, the animal that actually patrols the dark, frozen landscape, has no concept of time either. Maybe the bear feels only the pulse of Earth as it spins. What Matters May Be Experience My first of only a few calls from Colorado to the ship involved weeks of planning and trying and failing to connect with a satellite dish up there that could be blown over or buried under snow at any moment.
When I finally made a connection, I held my breath and listened to a faint ring, then a long, cold pause. The muffled, husky voice of a Russian radio attendant answered, âRV Polarstern, this is Igor.â A few weeks later I worked to organize a San Franciscoâbased press conference for the expedition. Our goal. Connect journalists with ship-based researchers by phone in real time. Logistics meant connecting with colleagues in five time zones on land while trying to nail down the âtimeâ of a ship that could drift into another time zone at any instant.
It felt like throwing darts blindfolded at a moving target. We pulled it off, and soon after I was on a plane home. When the wheels hit the tarmac, I grabbed my phone to text my husband that I had landed safely. When I toggled off airplane mode, I saw the time jump from 8 P.M. To 9 P.M.
In an instant. Time is weird everywhere. Maybe time is defined not by numbers or zones or the spinning of Earthâbut by what we experience. When I entered my house, I was eagerly greeted by my dogs. I fed them their dinnerâtheir favorite âtimeâ of day.
Right about then, researchers on the ship were eating a bowl of warm oats before hitting the iceââtimeâ to check those instruments again.By centuryâs end, tens of millions of U.S. Coastal property owners will face a decision embodied in the popular exhortation, âMove it or lose it.â But thereâs an option for people who canât imagine a home without an ocean view. Itâs called âseasteading,â and it could be a 21st-century antidote to the nationâs disappearing shorelines. ÂFloating citiesâ could become climate havens for people whose lives and livelihoods are tethered to the sea or nearby coast, according to the San Francisco-based Seasteading Institute. In many cases, floating colonies would be populated by people whose homes are rendered uninhabitable by rising seas and storm surges that chew away at the edge of the continent.
Residents would live in modern homes built atop modular platforms that rise and fall with the tides. Some communities could be linked to the mainland by bridges and utility lines. Others could exist miles offshore as semiautonomous cities or even independent nations. ÂNearly half the worldâs surface is unclaimed by any nation-state, and many coastal nations can legislate seasteads in their territorial waters,â says the Seasteading Institute, which has embraced floating cities with a near-religious fervor. A few would occupy converted cruise ships flying under independent flags.
Others would look like condominium complexes built atop ocean freighters or barges. All will provide offshore refuge from traditional seaside communities where climate hazards are becoming a part of daily life. As an added benefit, floating cities could enjoy a limitless supply of desalinated water, while homes and businesses would be powered by microgrids pulsing with wind and solar energy. Transportation would require little more than two feet or two wheels, and be entirely carbon-free. In deeper water, floating cities could rely on aquaculture, hydroponics and rooftop gardens.
Other essentials could be delivered by barge or ship. Itâs a tough sell, often punctuated by eye rolls. ÂThe thing I usually hear when I first talk about this is, âOh, you want to build âWaterworld,ââ said landscape architect and seasteading advocate Greg Delaune, referring to the 1995 postapocalyptic film starring Kevin Costner as a kind of Mad Max of the sea. ÂYou know, thatâs not really the image we want people to conjure up, but itâs often the first thing that comes to their minds. I get it,â added Delaune, who recently co-founded the Deep Blue Institute, a Louisiana-based organization dedicated to building marine-based resilient communities.
Delaune is convinced that southeast Louisianaâone of the fastest-sinking coastlines in the worldâcould be a U.S. Prototype for such a community, where floating structuresâhomes, businesses, parks and marinasâwould offer a more stable life than a sinking marsh. When hurricanes and storms threaten, as is increasingly common on the fast-warming Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico, modular floating cities could be partly disassembled and moved into safe harbor or to calmer waters, proponents say. The details of how that would happen remain sketchy. But ship-based communities already have the luxury of movement, and back-bay communities would garner some protection from the ocean shore.
Futuristic as it sounds, seasteading is not new, and its adaptability to the United States is already being tested through other human-inhabited offshore infrastructure. The Dutch model Oil and gas platforms host hundreds of workers for months at a time. And as energy companies migrate into deeper water, floating platforms are becoming the norm. For proof, cross the Atlantic Ocean to the Netherlands, a climate-threatened country whose fate is tied to the sea. ÂThe Dutch have been doing this for 400 to 500 years.
Now theyâre selling their ideas around the world,â Delaune said. ÂI see no reason why we canât design and build sustainable, resilient sea-based communities right here, borrowing on some of the same marine-resilient infrastructure that made the United States a leader in these other offshore activities.â Experts say the origins of floating cities also lie in the Netherlands, where Dutch engineers have spent centuries adapting to life at the oceanâs doorstep. Much of the western half of the country is below sea level, and Amsterdam, with a population of 1.1 million, is nearly 7 feet below the adjoining North Sea. The Dutch way of coastal adaptation, distilled in the phrase âliving with water,â has informed urban planning in waterfront cities around the world, notably its use of highly engineered infrastructure like dikes, dams and floodgates. The Army Corps of Engineers incorporated such approaches into the redesigned Southeast Louisiana Urban Flood Control Project built after Hurricane Katrina.
Lesser known but gaining notoriety are the floating homes developed over the last two decades around Amsterdam, one of the lowest-lying cities in the world. They include IJburg, a planned residential district east of Amsterdam where more than 120 floating homes will make up âWaterbuurt West,â a floating suburb on an inland bay called the IJ. When fully developed, IJburg will support 18,000 floating homes for 45,000 people. But what of the United States, where cities like Boston, New York, Miami, Houston and New Orleans are equally threatened by storm surges and rising seas?. Experts say itâs a slow process, in part because much of the coastal adaptation conversation has focused on shoreline protection, home elevations and coastal retreat.
ÂThe Dutch have this mentality that we can experiment. The U.S. Mentality is we canât change anything,â said Dale Morris, director of strategic partnerships at the Water Institute of the Gulf, a national nonprofit based in Baton Rouge, La., that provides research and technical support to communities preparing for sea-level rise and other climate change impacts. For eight years after Katrina, Morris worked for the Dutch government as a liaison to Louisiana and other coastal states facing challenges around water management, flood control and climate adaptation. Morris is an advocate for floating cities in the United States, but he is also a realist.
In an interview, he said floating cities are impeded by social, political, economic and cultural barriers. Among them are the long-standing American ideals of abundant land and natural resources, and the notion that people can spread out as cities become denser, dirtier and more expensive. That hasnât happened. Today, 95 million Americans, nearly 30% of the U.S. Population, live in coastline counties, according to the Census Bureau, compared with roughly 80 million people in 2000.
Coastal cities also experience some of the most disruptive and costly climate change impacts, as evidenced by the frequency of tropical storms like Superstorm Sandy and Hurricane Harvey, which hit two of the nationâs largest urban areas. Other hazards include peak rain events, or ârainbombs,â that quickly overwhelm urban infrastructure. And while storm surge flooding from hurricanes is catastrophic and occasional, king tides and sunny-day flooding can occur daily and are equally damaging to low-lying cities, experts say. ÂThere are visionaries who are investing in these important ideas, and the technology that allows us to do innovative things is improving all the time,â Morris said. ÂBut the economic components of these ideas have to be addressed.
Thereâs an iterative process between vision and reality.â But, Morris noted, âitâs also true that without inspiration or vision, there is no progress.â Big ideas, big failures Thatâs where advocates have their work cut out for them. In the United States, much of the enthusiasm for floating cities is channeled through the Seasteading Institute, which was founded by Patri Friedman, an entrepreneur and grandson of the Nobel Memorial Prize-winning economist Milton Friedman, also a libertarian. Friedman and colleague Joe Quirk, the instituteâs president, wrote the bible of floating cities, titled âSeasteading. How Floating Nations Will Restore the Environment, Enrich the Poor, Cure the Sick, and Liberate Humanity from Politicians.â In it, they say âseasteaders are radically misunderstood by landlubbers.â Quirk did not make himself available for an interview, but in an email to E&E News, he said, âNot only is seasteading the quickest, cheapest solution to sea-level rise, we will increase the amount of life on the ocean with every seastead we build.â While not a developer, the institute is a portal for information and advocacy materials, including research papers, blogs, podcasts and YouTube videos explaining and extolling the virtues of floating human habitation. Its website also provides a list of âactiveâ seasteading projects.
Quick also co-created Blue Frontiers, a company that worked with French Polynesia in 2017 to establish a semiautonomous floating city off the Pacific island nation. With pilot costs estimated at between $30 million and $50 million, the project gained significant momentum before it was postponed indefinitely by the government for political reasons, according to the firm. Most floating cities are overseas, but the instituteâs list includes Delauneâs effortâcalled the âLouisiana Opportunity Zone Initiative,â or âBlue Tech Deltaââas well as several projects that remain under development or did not materialize. One in California called Ventive SeaTech aims âto build permanent ocean communities for the masses, using modular structures designed to make ocean living safe, comfortable and affordable.â Its primary product, the âfloathouse,â is shaped like a capsule with windows. Itâs described as âa finished home, ready to move in, and is intended to be a year-round home for individuals or a familyâ by Ventive SeaTech.
Another long-awaited project, conceived in 2011 by a California firm called Blueseed, would establish a floating city on a cruise ship parked in international waters about 12 miles offshore from San Francisco. Its developers describe it an âentrepreneurial incubatorâ and âthe Googleplex of the sea,â where international tech startups could collaborate on projects near Silicon Valley without obtaining visas to enter the United States. It raised several million dollars in seed money, including from the well-known tech financier Peter Thiel, but it has been mothballed for six years. Where Blueseed stumbled early, another cruise ship city that was set to sail this month imploded days before leaving dry dock. The MS Satoshi, conceived as a Bitcoin-based technology hub anchored in the Gulf of Panama, was rerouted to a scrap yard in India after its owner, Ocean Builders, could not find an insurer to underwrite the floating city.
In a statement, Ocean Builders said it had âhit the roadblock of having no insurance company willing to insure the MS Satoshi upon dropping anchor in the Gulf of Panama. The closest we came was a company toying with us with a million dollar premium for a maximum of $5 million in coverage, nothing close to the coverage we would need to be legally compliant.â The company said it will issue refunds for 100 cabins it auctioned last month for between $50,000 and $100,000 each. For U.S.-based seasteaders like Delaune, the bridge to a floating city could be years, or even decades, away. But he is not discouraged. Since arriving in New Orleans, he has been canvassing the region for receptive audiences.
He has found a few, including at the Tulane University School of Architecture, where a primary research effort is focused on implementing ideas that emerged a decade ago through the cityâs water management planning process called the âDutch Dialogues.â âI have my pitch deck, and Iâve been rolling it out down here over the last few months,â Delaune said. ÂThe big spin is the dying wetlands east of New Orleans, the buffer areas, the barrier islands. People cannot live in these places anymore.â Delaune says the project could take years to materialize. But as Louisiana undergoes a multibillion-dollar restoration of its coastline, floating communities can be a part of the solution. ÂThese people donât want a Silicon Valley or NASA project to drop into their backyards,â he said.
ÂBut when your people are leaving and your economy is dying, there is no plan B except to move away.â Reprinted from Climatewire with permission from E&E News. E&E provides daily coverage of essential energy and environmental news at www.eenews.net.Editorâs Note. This blog was originally posted in December 2008 to commemorate the 40th anniversary of Apollo 8âs historic mission. It has been lightly edited. On December 21, 1968, Apollo 8 was launched on one of the greatest journeys in the history of human exploration.
Imagine if Columbus took only the Santa MarÃa, sans landing boats, 3,000 miles across the Atlantic to the island of Hispaniola. Unable to go ashore, he circled it and recorded his observations in logbooks. Returning later with a three-ship flotilla to plant the flag would still be dramatic, but also a tad anticlimactic. Itâs hard to believe Apollo 8âs voyage around the moon had originally been scheduled as a less audacious Earth-orbit mission to test the whole moonship âflotillaâ. The monstrous, still problem-prone Saturn 5 booster, along with the recently redesigned, and only once-flown-by-astronauts Apollo command ship, which was fashioned to carry a three-person crew to and from Earth and into moon orbit.
For a landing, it was to fly in tandem with a lunar lander that would ferry two astronauts to and from the moonâs surface. In 1968 the command ship was ready but the lander was behind schedule. Officials feared that if NASA were to wait for it to test the whole system in Earth orbit before heading moonward, then the goal set by Pres. John Kennedy of a landing there by the end of 1969 would be near impossible. Not only was the clock ticking, but also the CIA had informed the agency that it believed the Soviet Union was on the verge of launching cosmonauts on a moon mission.
In August 1968 NASA's Apollo Spacecraft Program Office manager, George Low, proposed making Apollo 8 a mission to circumnavigate the moon some 234,000 miles away. Working out the details in secret, the Apollo team realized they could do it and, while there, go into orbit. Orbiting made the stakes even higher. If a failure of the spacecraft's rocket engine left astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and Bill Anders stranded, NASA Administrator Jim Webb feared we would have âruined the moonâ for poets, lovers and everyone who would look at the orb and know there were three dead astronauts circling there. And, if the new navigational, communication or reentry components had failed, the crew could have been lost in space or have burned up in Earth's atmosphere on returning home.
Apollo 8 astronauts (left to right). Frank Borman, James A. Lovell Jr. And William A. Anders arrive on the carrier U.S.S.
Yorktown after splashing down to complete the mission. Credit. NASA That year, public enthusiasm for human spaceflight was as high as it ever would be but a failure might have dampened enthusiasm, thereby slowing or even stopping the U.S. From fulfilling its attempt to fulfill Kennedy's goal. Apollo 8 realized many firsts, including the first time humans had set their eyes on the moon's farside as well as the fastest astronauts (or, for that matter, anybody) had ever traveledâaround 25,000 miles per hourâthrough space and into Earth's atmosphere during reentry.
But what stands out for many is that it was also the first time most people back on Earth had seen their world as a sphere floating in the pitch-black void of space. The iconic Apollo 8 âEarthriseâ photo taken over the lunar horizon is credited with inspiring global environmental consciousness and the cultural viewpoint of our world as a unique and extremely fragile planet that must be preserved. What started as a gamble became one of humanity's greatest moments in explorationâand a public relations coup for NASA. Not only that, but people needed a moment like this in a year like 1968âone shattered by antiwar and race protests and riots. The assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr., and Robert F.
Kennedy. As well as war, both hot and cold. Earth, photographed by William A. Anders as Apollo 8 orbited the moon. Credit.
NASA So, there it was, just what the doctor ordered. On Christmas Eve, pajama-clad kids who otherwise would be looking skyward for eight tiny reindeer were glued to their TV sets, along with an estimated half a billion people around the world, gaping at the moonâs stark, cratered surface hurtling by just 69 miles below and listening to awe-inspired astronauts who read âGenesisâ and sent yuletide greetings to âall of you on the good Earthââthe same good Earth they had been viewing in black and white as a fuzzy, cloud-veiled, gibbous globe, like they had never seen it before. Small wonder then that when Borman got back, someone had sent him a message. ÂThanks for saving 1968.â.