Kategori: News in English

Cases of mouth cancer have reached a record high in England and Scotland, a new report shows. Last year, there were more than 10,000 new cases.

Mouth cancer has increased by 38% in the past decade and by 133% compared with 20 years ago. Last year, more than 3,500 people in the UK lost their lives to mouth cancer.

The increase in mouth cancer cases cannot be attributed solely to there being more people, meaning that more cases occur. While the UK population has indeed grown over the past two decades, the rise in mouth cancer cases has outpaced this growth significantly. The so-called “age-standardised incidence rates”, which account for population changes, have also shown an upward trend meaning that this effect is very real.

Several factors are probably behind this increase in mouth cancer cases. Changing lifestyle habits, particularly those related to known risk factors, play a significant role.

Tobacco use, including smoking and chewing tobacco, remains a primary cause, with around two-thirds of cases directly linked to smoking. Excessive alcohol consumption is another major contributor, responsible for about one-third of all mouth cancers.

The combined effects of heavy drinking and smoking can increase the risk by a staggering 30 times.

Additionally, the human papillomavirus (HPV) has emerged as an increasingly important risk factor, particularly for oropharyngeal cancers, a type of mouth cancer affecting the throat. Oral HPV is thought to mainly spread through oral sex.

Read more:
Oral sex is now the leading risk factor for throat cancer

How to spot it

Mouth cancer can be effectively treated if caught early enough. Common symptoms include persistent mouth ulcers that don’t heal within three weeks, unexplained lumps in the mouth or neck area, white or red patches in the mouth or throat, and difficulty swallowing or persistent hoarseness.

Regular dental check-ups and self-examinations can aid in early detection. However, awareness remains a challenge. Only 20% of adults knowing the signs and symptoms to look for – although some good news from the State of Mouth Cancer UK Report 2024 was that nearly 80% of UK adults know that it is possible to get cancer in or around the mouth.

Most people have heard of cancer affecting parts of the body such as the lungs or breasts. However, cancer can also appear in the mouth, where it can occur in areas like the lips, tongue, cheeks, tonsils and throat, which are included in the report. Sometimes it’s called head and neck cancer.

Mouth ulcers that don’t heal within three weeks should be seen by a doctor.
Zay Nyi Nyi / Alamy Stock Photo

While mouth cancer can affect people of any age, it predominantly strikes older adults. About 85% of new cases occur in people over 50. But recent reports have also shown an increasing number of cases at younger ages, emphasising that the disease can occur at any stage of life. I’ve certainly looked after very young patients with this.

Treatment options for mouth cancer have evolved over the years, typically involving a combination of surgery, radiotherapy and chemotherapy.

The specific treatment plan depends on factors such as the cancer’s stage, location and the patient’s overall health. Surgery often remains the primary treatment for early-stage mouth cancer, often followed by radiotherapy to reduce the risk of recurrence.

For more advanced cases, a combination of treatments may be necessary, including chemotherapy and targeted therapies. Sometimes a combination of chemotherapy and radiotherapy means that people with mouth cancers can avoid surgery altogether.

Other recent developments include immunotherapy drugs, which help increase survival rates too. However, the prognosis for mouth cancer varies depending on the stage at diagnosis and the effectiveness of treatment. There’s no doubt that early detection significantly improves survival rates.

Emerging treatments offer hope for improved outcomes in mouth cancer cases. Targeted therapies are also showing promise in clinical trials and are increasingly being incorporated into treatment regimens. Often, these newer treatments aim to enhance the body’s immune response against cancer cells or target specific molecular pathways involved in cancer growth.

Overall, improving education, increasing access to NHS dentistry and tackling late diagnosis are some of the key challenges in confronting mouth cancer. The report also calls for a government-funded mouth cancer campaign.

As research continues, the focus remains on early detection, prevention and raising public awareness about mouth cancer, which can help decrease heavy drinking and smoking – both major risk factors.

Healthcare professionals, including dentists and GPs, play a crucial role in identifying potential cases and educating patients about risk factors and symptoms. With continued efforts in research, prevention and treatment, there is hope for improving outcomes and reducing the impact of this increasingly prevalent form of cancer. Läs mer…

A virologist named Beata Halassy recently made headlines after publishing a report of successfully treating her own breast cancer by self-administering an experimental treatment.

Having previously undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy, Halassy informed her doctors that she wanted to treat her tumour by injecting it with viruses known to attack cancerous cells. This sort of approach is called oncolytic virotherapy (OVT). OVT has not yet been approved for the treatment of breast cancer, but it is being studied as an experimental approach.

Halassy is a success story of self-experimentation in medicine. She joins other examples, like Barry Marshall, who won the 2005 Noble prize in medicine following his work ingesting the Helicobacter bacterium to prove its role in gastritis and peptic ulcers. This work is estimated to have saved millions of lives.

Yet, self-experimentation is often viewed with suspicion. Concerns about self-experimentation are growing because it is no longer solely the domain of professional scientists. The availability of biotechnologies, and the prevalence of open-source science has led to the development of “bio-hacking” communities engaging in various forms of self-experimentation.

Does self-experimentation raise ethical concerns? To answer this question, it is useful to return to first principles of research ethics.

Barry Marshall won the Nobel prize for his self-experiment with Helicobacter bacteria.
Australian Associated Press / Alamy Stock Photo

Autonomy

The informed consent process is a crucial protection in medical research. Researchers have to employ rigorous methods to ensure that individuals make a voluntary choice to participate in trials, and that they understand the risks and benefits of the experimental intervention (and alternatives).

Clearly, some self-experimenters can make informed choices to self-administer unproven interventions. Halassy’s report makes clear that she gave informed consent. And her expertise in virology enabled her to develop a clear scientific rationale for her approach. Still, there can be unknown serious side-effects with experimental treatments, so a second set of eyes is desirable.

Also, not all self-experimenters will be as well informed. There is a legitimate concern that unregulated forms of self-experimentation may not involve this important safeguard when members of the public experiment on themselves.

Reasonable risk to the participant

Informed consent is not the only important safeguard in research ethics. It is often claimed that even consenting adults should only be exposed to “reasonable risks” in research.

Ethicists often debate how to understand reasonable risk. But it is widely agreed that reasonable risks must be minimised to those that are necessary. However, it is more complex to work out what counts as reasonable, when someone has a serious illness and is undertaking experimental treatment that might (or might not) benefit them.

Where an individual stands to benefit from receiving an experimental intervention, “proportionality” partly relates to how the experimental intervention compares to other therapies that doctors might use as the “standard of care”.

This is a relevant question in Halassy’s case. Notably, Halassy had already undergone a mastectomy and chemotherapy over the course of her treatment. What’s more, the measles virus and the vesicular stomatitis virus she used in her experimental OVT had a good safety record.

In contrast, where the participant does not stand to benefit from receiving the intervention, it is sometimes claimed that it can only be proportionate to expose the participant to minimal risk. Others have argued that greater risks could sometimes be proportionate if the benefits of the research are sufficient.

One problem here is that self-experimentation often involves only one participant. That might mean that it is hard to generalise (or that it might even be misleading). But as Barry Marshall’s case shows, self-experimentation involving just one person can sometimes generate incredibly useful findings.

However, we also have to consider potential harms.

Harm to others

In Hollywood, the self-experiments of rogue scientists often go devastatingly wrong – think Jeff Goldblum’s portrayal of an eccentric scientist in The Fly. Sci-fi stories like these are often wildly implausible. But this should not blind us to the possibility of more credible harmful effects.

One concern is that other patients might be tempted to follow in Halassy’s footsteps and attempt an unconventional therapy, perhaps before using other standard therapies. To forestall this, it is crucial to be clear about the limited generalisability of her case, and to ensure that patients understand the tried and tested benefits of existing therapies.

A different concern is that adverse publicity from very risky experiments might make it more difficult to conduct important research. At least eight early self-experimenters died from their research, including the 29-year-old doctor William Stark who died from scurvy in the 18th century after severely restricting his diet.

There are other concerns to consider in self-experimentation more broadly. Self-experimenters can now easily access powerful technologies like Crispr-Cas9 gene-editing tools.

In 2017, a biohacker named Josiah Zayner injected himself with a DIY Crispr–Cas9 gene therapy aiming to enhance muscle growth.

Crispr-Cas9 has the power to significantly benefit society, but it could also cause significant harm if misused through misunderstanding or malice. The worry about self-experimentation here is not just about the direct harm that misuse might cause. Cases of misuse might also undermine societal acceptance of the regulated efforts to safely develop this important technology.

It can be ethical for scientists to experiment on themselves. Such studies should at least sometimes be permitted, and certainly should be published so that others can learn from them. But it is a mistake to assume that self-experimentation only ever affects the individual involved. Halassy embarked on her self-experiment without any ethical oversight. Things ended well for her, but that won’t always be the case. Läs mer…

An Islamic scholar in Gaza has issued a legal ruling – or fatwa – denouncing the October 7 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas. Salman al-Dayah’s fatwa condemned Hamas’s actions for violating Islamic principles governing jihad, because they resulted in harm to Israeli and Gazan civilians.

The term “jihad” is applied to the religious struggle for self-improvement, as well as armed combat. In times of war, jihad principles strictly prohibit harm to civilians, including women and children.

BBC reports describe Dayah as one of the region’s most respected religious authorities, with ties to the Salafi movement in Gaza. Salafism is a type of Islam that seeks to emulate the practices of the Prophet Mohammed and his followers. Dayah appears to be a pacifist from the Salafism’s “quietist” tradition, which shuns political activism.

Nevertheless, Dayah has a history of intervening in politics. In 2007, he issued a fatwa against the kidnapping of British BBC journalist Alan Johnston by Hamas breakaway group the Army of Islam. He later chaired the religious mediation committee that secured Johnston’s release.

More recently, in May 2024, Dayah signed an open letter calling for resistance against the Israeli destruction of Palestinian universities. Reports suggest he still resides in northern Gaza, despite the destruction and forced evacuation of many civilians by Israeli forces.

This fatwa is significant for at least three reasons. First, the ruling suggests divided opinion about Hamas’s actions among Gaza’s population of 2.2 million. Second, the fatwa represents the latest attempt by prominent Islamic scholars to develop a form of counter-terrorism rooted in religious teaching. And third, the condemnation of the October 7 attacks opens up debates on whether criticism of Hamas – proscribed by the US and UK governments as a terrorist organisation – risks undermining efforts to secure justice and prosperity for all Palestinians.

Within the 5.2 million population of Gaza and the West Bank, over 99% of Muslims identify as Sunni. Sunnis are Islam’s largest denomination, making up between 84% and 87% of the global Muslim population.

Less than 1% of Muslims in Gaza and the West Bank identify as Shia, the second-largest denomination, making up around 10% to 13% of all Muslims globally. These demographics are important: despite the overwhelming majority of Palestinians being Sunni, Hamas receives financial and military support from Iran, a Shia-majority country. Iran is home to around one-third of the world’s Shia Muslims.

As a Salafi, Dayah is part of the larger Sunni tradition. One explanation for his fatwa might be that he is attempting to reaffirm Sunnism or Salafism within Gaza, by dividing its citizens on their support for Hamas and its ties to Shia-ruled Iran.

Data published by the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research (CPSR) thinktank provides clues to the existence of such divides. It’s a complex and surprising picture, but one statistic leaps out: when asked in September 2024 whether Hamas had committed the October 7 atrocities against Israelis shown by international media, including the murder of women and children, 89% of those living in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank responded that it had not. Only 8% said it did.

Despite this belief – and while some aspects of support for Hamas remain strong among the people of Gaza – positive attitudes are declining. The same survey showed that while in March 2024, 71% thought Hamas’s decision to launch its October 7 offensive had been “correct”, by September this had fallen to 39%. That month, 80% reported at least one family member having been killed or injured during the war, while 85% reported moving “from one shelter to another” between two and six times.

According to the most recent UN figures, 1.9 million of Gaza’s 2.2 million are now displaced. Some have been forced to move several times.
EPA-EFE/Mohammed Saber

Asked who will emerge victorious, 28% of Gazans said Hamas, 25% thought Israel, and 45% replied “none of them”. The number of people who want Hamas to continue to govern Gaza fell from 46% in June 2024 to 36% in September, while 37% of Gazans believe the group actually will control Gaza after the war.

There have been anecdotal reports of civilians in Gaza who “despise” Hamas but are too afraid to speak out. In July 2024, the BBC reported widespread public dissatisfaction with Hamas.

The challenges of criticising Hamas

Dayah’s fatwa builds on previous attempts by leading Islamic scholars to develop approaches to countering terrorism that are rooted in Islamic teaching.

In 2010, Muhammad Tahir-ul-Qadri – a prominent Pakistani scholar and religious leader – published a 600-page Fatwa on Terrorism and Suicide Bombings. Qadri’s book is an unequivocal attack on violence and terrorism. Like Dayah, Qadri points to the strict prohibition against the wartime killing of women and children, and the destruction of places of worship and other buildings.

Condemnation of Hamas was also issued by the Global Imams Council, which holds Hamas “directly responsible for the deaths and suffering of all innocent lives lost since October 7”.

There are obvious sensitivities here. On the one hand, UK politicians from all parties had no hesitation in describing Hamas as “terrorists” in the aftermath of October 7. On the other, the BBC has maintained its strict policy of avoiding the term.

Some view Hamas’s control of Gaza as a byproduct of Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territory. UN secretary general António Guterres attracted criticism after stating that the attacks by Hamas “did not happen in a vaccuum”, and that “the Palestinian people have been subjected to 56 years of suffocating occupation”. Some criticise those who condemn the atrocities of Hamas while saying nothing about the lack of proportionality of Israel’s response.

But regardless of where western sympathies lie, the fatwa and the attitudes of Gazans as revealed by the research data are a reminder that Muslim attitudes and opinions do not form one monolithic block. There are clearly differences of opinion among Gazans and other Palestinians across the region.

The Islamic concept of a worldwide community – or “ummah”’ – is important for millions of people. But notions that Muslims everywhere think and act as one are not supported by the evidence. Such stereotypes are likely to reinforce damaging tropes capable of fuelling prejudices across the Middle East and elsewhere.

The Conversation refers to Hamas as a militant Islamist organisation and notes its designation as a terrorist organisation by the UK and US governments. Läs mer…

The G20 Leaders’ Summit takes place on November 18 and 19, in Rio de Janeiro, with the presence of leaders of the member countries, plus the African Union and the European Union. The Russian president, Vladimir Putin, will not attend. Putin faces arrest if he travels abroad on a warrant accusing him of war crimes in Ukraine, issued by the International Criminal Court, and will be represented by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

In a simple metaphor, Brazil’s role in the leadership of the G20 can be summarised as “drying ice”. This is not the result of mistakes made by Brazilian diplomacy under the current government. Any country with the same status that Brazil enjoys in the international system would suffer the same limitations in an era in which great powers, who possess economic and military power, prioritise their interests. The country is considered a middle power, with a certain regional influence, but no presence on a global scale.

We’re not just in the world of America First. China First, Russia First, EU First: each looking after itself instead of trying to establish a minimum of coordination between them on issues such as global warming, trade and international security. It’s not easy for middle powers to be able to talk big with the rest of the world.

Even so, regional powers can influence specific elements of relations between countries and, therefore, of the global order. Compared to India’s presidency of the G20 the previous year, Brazil has made notable progress on social issues, having put the Global Alliance Against Hunger and Poverty on the agenda, which is in line with Agenda 2030 of the Sustainable Development Goals 1 (poverty eradication) and 2 (zero hunger and sustainable agriculture).

Under Brazilian leadership, the debate on combating climate change has also gained even more priority, with an emphasis on optimising funds for this global challenge, including the idea to be presented in Rio de Janeiro of forming a fund to combat the spread of disinformation in the sector.

These points contrast with the lack of progress in the debates on the much-needed global governance reforms. Success requires dialogue with the Russians, the Americans, Chinese and Europeans.

With Trump back in the White House, Moscow at war with Ukraine and Beijing grappling with internal economic problems, only the EU – at least for as long as it isn’t captured by ultra-right-wing forces – tends to show the slightest willingness to join a global action agenda.

Nationalisms overshadow global alliance

That’s unless the interests of the major powers change even more as a result of Trump 2.0’s actions. For example, in an era of growing nationalism, what’s the point of supporting a global alliance to fight hunger and poverty if countries seek unilateral or bilateral solutions, partnering with regional allies or those with whom they have greater ideological affinity? China, whose economic dimension could fill the void left by the United States in multilateralism, is not interested in playing the role of articulating the provision of global public goods either.

The EU and other European political actors, notably the UK, will have to devote more resources to their own security. This is because Trump has already shown himself to be in favour of an understanding with Russia in the war against Ukraine and is seeking to reduce American commitments within the framework of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), thus putting pressure on Europeans to put more money into military spending.

Superficial legacy on climate

On the climate-environment issue, whatever Brazil’s legacy at the G20, the risk of superficiality is even greater. Again, this is because of the changes in sight in the configuration of the power game between the great powers and the interests of other members of the bloc. For example, it is certain that Trump will once again withdraw the United States from the Paris Agreement, which should nullify any effect of the energy transition partnership that Lula will sign with Joe Biden during the G20 meeting.

Furthermore, India – which has flirted with great power status due to its nuclear weapons and robust economic growth in recent years – is essentially dependent on fossil fuels and shows no sign of letting go of this. The same reasoning applies to other G20 regional powers such as Indonesia and Mexico.

So, barring a miracle, the Brazilian presidency of the G20 – touted as an instrument to demonstrate Brazil’s ability to play an active role in reshaping the global order in the 21st century – is likely to end with limited results, as other members of the bloc turn a deaf ear on President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s desire to lead the world in development.

Lula doesn’t even have the support of Brazil’s main historical partner in the G20, Argentina. Under right-wing leader Javier Milei, Buenos Aires rejects everything Brazil stands for. If we can’t even lead our neighbourhood, it’s chimerical to claim an active role in shaping the global order beyond specific issues. Läs mer…

Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Donald Trump’s pick to lead the Department of Health and Human Services in the new administration. The idea of Trump, a Republican, appointing Kennedy to his cabinet would have been surprising just a few months ago.

After all, Kennedy began his presidential run last year as a Democrat and is the scion of a Democratic dynasty. Nephew of former President John F. Kennedy and the son of former U.S. Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, Kennedy spent most of his career as a lawyer representing environmental groups that sued polluting corporations and municipalities.

Yet Kennedy, 70, has long held positions that put him at odds with the Democratic mainstream. He pushes public health misinformation around vaccines and HIV/AIDS, opposes U.S. military involvement in foreign wars, including in Ukraine, and claims that the CIA assassinated his uncle.

Kennedy’s ideologically mixed politics are hard to categorize in traditional left-right terms.

My political science research finds that Kennedy’s journey from left-aligned skepticism into Trumpism is part of a broader trend of contemporary left-to-right populist transformations happening across the United States.

Rise of the populist alternative media

Populism is a political story that presents the good “people” of a nation as in a struggle against its “elites,” who have corrupted democratic institutions to further their own selfish interests. It cuts across the ideological spectrum, often combining left-wing economic critiques with right-wing cultural ones.

Based on my research, I find that Kennedy uses a populist style of speech that matches the rhetoric of today’s online alternative media, also known as the “alternative influence network.”

‘Manosphere’ podcast host Joe Rogan got a personal shoutout as ‘mighty and powerful’ at Trump’s victory celebration on Nov. 6, 2024.
Cindy Ord/Getty Images

If populism cuts across the ideological spectrum, so does the alternative media.

This network of politically diverse independent podcasters, YouTube hosts and other creators connects with young, politically disaffected audiences by mixing politics with comedy and pop culture, and presenting themselves as embattled defenders of free thinking – in opposition to mainstream media and mainstream parties.

Top-rated shows include “Breaking Points,” “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” “The Joe Rogan Experience,” The Culture War with Tim Pool“ and ”This Past Weekend w/Theo Von.“

While many of these shows have been around since the 2010s, the network expanded throughout the Trump era. Their popularity skyrocketed during the COVID-19 pandemic, when public distrust in government, anger over pandemic restrictions and vaccine skepticism surged.

These shows hosted Kennedy frequently throughout his presidential run in 2023 and 2024. He was particularly focused on a class of male-dominated alternative shows sometimes called the ”manosphere.“

Kennedy finds his audience

I analyzed a set of Kennedy’s appearances for this story. Both Kennedy and alternative media hosts claim to care about ”the real issues” facing Americans such as war, corporate and political malfeasance and economic troubles. They condemn the “mainstream” for promoting frivolous “culture war” topics related to race and identity politics.

Kennedy and the alternative media hosts also combine left and right arguments in a typically populist way. They claim that corporations control the government and that liberals and corporations censor free speech.

For example, on a May 2024 episode of “Stay Free with Russell Brand,” Brand asserted that corrupt institutions are backed by the “deep state.” He asked Kennedy how he would fight these powerful interests.

“The major agencies of government have all been captured by the industries they’re supposed to regulate and act as sock puppets serving the mercantile interests of these big corporations,” responded Kennedy. “I have a particular ability to unravel that because I’ve litigated against so many of these agencies.”

My research found that Kennedy often bonded with his alternative media hosts over his perception that liberal media sources – allegedly controlled by the Democratic National Committee or the CIA – were censoring his campaign.

Like Kennedy, alternative media hosts often identify as former or disaffected Democrats. Many used to work at mainstream left news sites, where they say they experienced censorship.

‘This little island of free speech’

In a June 2023 episode of “The Joe Rogan Experience,” Rogan explained that he no longer identifies as a liberal because of the “orthodoxy it preaches” around issues like vaccines. He then cited YouTube’s removal of some of Kennedy’s vaccine-related videos for violating its COVID-19 misinformation policy.

Kennedy had just spent 90 minutes outlining his journey toward vaccine skepticism, which started with meeting a mother who believed vaccines caused her son’s autism.

“If a woman tells you something about her child, you should listen,” he said.

Kennedy also described being convinced by a set of studies that public health officials had ignored.

“Trust the experts is not a function of science, it’s a function of religion,” he said. “I’ve been litigating 40 years; there’s experts on both sides.”

Afterward, he thanked Rogan for maintaining “this little island of free speech in a desert of suppression and of critical thinking.”

Kennedy reiterated this point in the Aug. 23, 2024, speech that ended his presidential campaign. The “alternative media” had kept his ideas alive, he said, while the mainstream networks had shut him out despite his historically high third-party poll numbers of 15% to 20%.

“The DNC-allied mainstream media networks maintained a near-perfect embargo on interviews with me,” Kennedy said.

Speaking directly to the reporters in the room, he added, “Your institutions and media made themselves government mouthpieces and stenographers for the organs of power.”

Kennedy ended that speech by endorsing Trump for president, a move that reportedly prompted Trump to promise his former rival a role overseeing health policy in his administration.

The political power of alternative media shows is now impossible to ignore.
bsd studio via Getty Images Plus

Left-to-right pipeline

Trust in a range of U.S. institutions is at historical lows. Americans on both the right and the left are skeptical of power. As the 2024 election results showed, they crave radical change.

Alternative media hosts tapped into this desire, helping to push some disaffected listeners rightward. The same left-to-right pipeline landed Kennedy in Trump’s orbit.

Trump and his allies were adept at harnessing the power of the alternative media ecosystem. During the 2024 presidential campaign, Trump appeared on male-centric shows like “The Joe Rogan Experience,” and “This Past Weekend w/Theo Von,” and many media critics see this as a big factor in Trump’s success winning over young, male voters. Both Rogan and Von were personally thanked by name at Trump’s victory celebration.

Trump and his inner circle even form part of the alternative media themselves. Trump founded the alternative social media platform Truth Social and his adviser Steve Bannon hosts an influential podcast called the “War Room” on another MAGA alternative media platform, Rumble. Known for its fiery populist rhetoric, the “War Room” broadcasts live for an astonishing 22 hours a week.

Bannon, who was briefly jailed for contempt of Congress in mid-2024 and now faces trial in New York for financial fraud, used his show as a soapbox to promote Trump’s candidacy. He also praised Kennedy on the air, boosting the Democrat’s profile among his far-right listeners.

For Kennedy, aisle-crossing is part of the solution to partisan polarization.

“Step outside the culture war!” he tweeted in July 2024. “Step outside the politics of hating the other side!”

This story has been updated to reflect the outcome of the 2024 election and Kennedy’s likely nomination to Trump’s cabinet. It was originally published on Oct. 29, 2024. Läs mer…

An oracle erred badly. The most impressive results were turned in by a little-known company in Brazil. A nagging problem reemerged, and some media critics turned profane in their assessments.

So it went for pollsters in the 2024 presidential election. Their collective performance, while not stellar, was improved from that of four years earlier. Overall, polls signaled a close outcome in the race between former President Donald Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris.

That is what the election produced: a modest win for Trump.

With votes still being counted in California and a few other states more than a week after Election Day, Trump had received 50.1% of the popular vote to Harris’ 48.1%, a difference of 2 points. That margin was closer than Joe Biden’s win by 4.5 points over Trump in 2020. It was closer than Hillary Clinton’s popular vote victory in 2016, closer than Barack Obama’s wins in 2008 and 2012.

There were, moreover, no errors among national pollsters quite as dramatic as CNN’s estimate in 2020 that Biden led Trump by 12 points.

This time, CNN’s final national poll said the race was deadlocked – an outcome anticipated by six other pollsters, according to data compiled by RealClearPolitics.

The most striking discrepancy this year was the Marist College poll, conducted for NPR and PBS. It estimated Harris held a 4-point lead nationally at campaign’s end.

‘Oracle’ of Iowa’s big miss

In any event, a sense lingered among critics that the Trump-Harris election had resulted in yet another polling embarrassment, another entry in the catalog of survey failures in presidential elections, which is the topic of my latest book, “Lost in a Gallup.”

Comedian Jon Stewart gave harsh voice to such sentiments, saying of pollsters on his late-night program on election night, “I don’t ever want to fucking hear from you again. Ever. … You don’t know shit about shit, and I don’t care for you.”

Comedian Jon Stewart doesn’t like pollsters and had some blistering comments about them on election night.
Screenshot, YouTube

Megyn Kelly, a former Fox News host, also denounced pollsters, declaring on her podcast the day after the election: “Polling is a lie. They don’t know anything.”

Two factors seemed to encourage such derision – a widely discussed survey of Iowa voters released the weekend before the election and Trump’s sweep of the seven states where the outcome turned.

The Iowa poll injected shock and surprise into the campaign’s endgame, reporting that Harris had taken a 3-point lead in the state over Trump. The result was likened to a “bombshell” and its implications seemed clear: If Harris had opened a lead in a state with Iowa’s partisan profile, her prospects of winning elsewhere seemed strong, especially in the Great Lakes swing states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania.

The survey was conducted for the Des Moines Register by J. Ann Selzer, a veteran Iowa-based pollster with an outstanding reputation in opinion research. In a commentary in The New York Times in mid-September, Republican pollster Kristen Soltis Anderson declared Selzer “the oracle of Iowa.” Rachel Maddow of MSNBC praised Selzer’s polls before the election for their “uncanny predictive accuracy.” Ratings released in June by data guru Nate Silver gave Selzer’s polls an A-plus grade.

But this time, Selzer’s poll missed dramatically.

Trump carried Iowa by 13 points, meaning the poll was off by 16 points – a stunning divergence for an accomplished pollster.

“Even the mighty have been humbled” by Trump’s victory, the Times of London said of Selzer’s polling failure.

Selzer said afterward she will “be reviewing data from multiple sources with hopes of learning why that (discrepancy) happened.”

It is possible, other pollsters suggested, that Selzer’s reliance on telephone-based surveying contributed to the polling failure. “Phone polling alone … isn’t going to reach low-propensity voters or politically disengaged nonwhite men,” Tom Lubbock and James Johnson wrote in a commentary for The Wall Street Journal.

These days, few pollsters rely exclusively on the phone to conduct election surveys; many of them have opted for hybrid approaches that combine, for example, phone, text and online sampling techniques.

Surprise sweep of swing states

Trump’s sweep of the seven vigorously contested swing states surely contributed to perceptions that polls had misfired again.

According to RealClearPolitics, Harris held slender, end-of-campaign polling leads in Michigan and Wisconsin, while Trump was narrowly ahead in Arizona, Georgia, Pennsylvania, North Carolina and Nevada.

Trump won them all, an outcome no pollster anticipated – except for AtlasIntel of Sao Paulo, Brazil, a firm “about which little is known,” as The New Republic noted.

AtlasIntel estimated Trump was ahead in all seven swing states by margins that hewed closely to the voting outcomes. In none of the swing states did AtlasIntel’s polling deviate from the final vote tally by more than 1.3 points, an impressive performance.

AtlasIntel did not respond to email requests I sent requesting information about its background and polling technique. The company describes itself as “a leading innovator in online polling” and says it uses “a proprietary methodology,” without revealing much about it.

Its founder and chief executive is Andrei Roman, who earned a doctorate in government at Harvard University. Roman took to X, formerly Twitter, in the election’s aftermath to post a chart that touted AtlasIntel as “the most accurate pollster of the US Presidential Election.”

It was a burst of pollster braggadocio reminiscent of a kind that has emerged periodically since the 1940s. That was when polling pioneer George Gallup placed two-page advertising spreads in the journalism trade publication “Editor & Publisher” to assert the accuracy of his polls in presidential elections.

Underestimating Trump’s support again

A significant question facing pollsters this year – their great known unknown – was whether modifications made to sampling techniques would allow them to avoid underestimating Trump’s support, as they had in 2016 and 2020.

Misjudging Trump’s backing is a nagging problem for pollsters. The results of the 2024 election indicate that the shortcoming persists. By margins ranging from 0.9 points to 2.7 points, polls overall understated Trump’s support in the seven swing states, for example.

Some polls misjudged Trump’s backing by even greater margins. CNN, for example, underestimated Trump’s vote by 4.3 points in North Carolina, by more than 6 points in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as Arizona.

Results that misfire in the same direction suggest that adjustments to sampling methodologies were inadequate or ineffective for pollsters in seeking to reach Trump backers of all stripes. Läs mer…

When the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at American colleges and universities just over a year ago, many predicted U.S. campuses would become much less diverse. But in part due to students who decide not to disclose their race or ethnicity, coupled with universities’ selective use of statistics, it is not clear how much the decision has affected diversity on campus.

As higher education institutions begin reporting the racial makeup of the class of 2028 – the first to be affected by the 2023 decision – the data is hard to interpret, confusing and inconclusive.

As a sociologist who has studied how institutions of higher education collect and report data on race and ethnicity, I have identified some factors that contribute to this lack of clarity.

Students don’t identify with choices given

Some students may not select a racial or ethnic category because they don’t believe any of the categories really fit. For example, before multiracial students could select “one or more,” an option that became widely available in 2010, they were more likely to decline to identify their race or ethnicity. Some even boycotted checkboxes entirely.

Other students don’t view their race as important: 67% of the students who choose “race and ethnicity unknown” are white. Of these students, 33% say race and ethnicity are not a relevant part of their identity, a researcher found in 2008.

The number of students who don’t respond to questions about race or ethnicity – and are listed in the “race unknown” category – is increasing. At Harvard University, for example, the percentage of “race-unknown” undergrad students doubled from 2023 to 2024.

As the number of “race unknown” students grows, it not only becomes harder to determine a student body’s ethnic and racial diversity but also the impact of the ban on race-conscious admissions.

Some students may not view race as an important part of their identity.
John Giustina/The Image Bank via Getty Images

Fearing discrimination, students don’t disclose race

Some students believe their race or ethnicity will harm their chances of admission.

This is particularly true at many selective institutions, which have higher nonresponse rates than less selective institutions, about 4% compared with 1% to 2%.

My research shows that students are even more likely to pass on identifying race or ethnicity at selective law schools, where race and ethnicity could be used among a variety of criteria for admissions before the Supreme Court ruled against that practice. An average of 8% of students at those schools chose not to identify, compared with 4% at less selective law schools.

‘We’re very diverse’: University decisions distort statistics

What a university chooses to report will also affect the student body demographic data the public sees. Harvard, for example, does not report its proportion of white students.

Some institutions use statistics strategically to appear more diverse than they are. These strategies include counting multiracial students multiple times – once for each race selected – or including international students as a separate category in demographic pie charts. The greater the number of different-colored slices on the chart, the more demographically “diverse” an institution appears to be.

Impact of Supreme Court ruling: Clearer picture coming soon

While universities may not all report their student demographics the same way in their own materials, they all have to report it the same way to the federal government – namely, to its Integrated Post Secondary Education Data System, better known as IPEDS. The next IPEDS report on characteristics for the 2024 enrollment class is expected to be released in spring 2025. Once that data is available, a better picture of how the Supreme Court’s decision has affected diversity in college enrollment should emerge.

That clearer picture might not last long. In 2027, the federal government will require colleges and universities to make changes to how they report student race and ethnicity. Among the changes is the addition of a Middle Eastern and North African category. Under the current standard, Middle Eastern and North African students are counted as white. As a result, white enrollment at some colleges and universities will appear to decline after 2027.

The new standards will also change the way universities treat Hispanic or Latino ethnicity on enrollment forms. Today, if students self-identify as Hispanic and white, they will be categorized as Hispanic. If students select Hispanic and white in 2027, they will be categorized as multiracial. The revised categories will muddy the impact of the Supreme Court’s decision. A drop in the number of Hispanic students reported could be due to the court’s ruling. Or it may result from the new way students will be counted.

Until universities and colleges adjust to the new guidelines about collecting and reporting race – and as long as students decline to provide their racial identities – the full effect of banning consideration of race in college admissions will remain a cloudy picture at best. Läs mer…

Knee injuries are common in athletes, accounting for 41% of all athletic injuries. But knee injuries aren’t limited to competitive athletes. In our everyday lives, an accident or a quick movement in the wrong direction can injure the knee and require medical treatment. A quarter of the adult population worldwide experiences knee pain each year

As a physical therapist and board-certified orthopedic specialist, I help patients of all ages with knee injuries and degenerative conditions.

Your knees have a huge impact on your mobility and overall quality of life, so it’s important to prevent knee problems whenever possible and address pain in these joints with appropriate treatments.

Healthy knees

The knee joint bones consist of the femur, tibia and patella. As in all healthy joints, smooth cartilage covers the surfaces of the bones, forming the joints and allowing for controlled movement.

A healthy knee.
Inna Kharlamova/iStock/Getty Images Plus via Getty Images

Muscles, ligaments and tendons further support the knee joint. The anterior cruciate ligament, commonly known as the ACL, and posterior cruciate ligament, or PCL, provide internal stability to the knee. In addition, two tough pieces of fibrocartilage, called menisci, lie inside the joint, providing further stability and shock absorption.

All these structures work together to enable the knee to move smoothly and painlessly throughout everyday movement, whether bending to pick up the family cat or going for a run.

Causes of knee pain

Two major causes of knee pain are acute injury and osteoarthritis.

Ligaments such as the ACL and PCL can be stressed and torn when a shear force occurs between the femur and tibia. ACL injuries often occur when athletes land awkwardly on the knee or quickly pivot on a planted foot. Depending on the severity of the injury, these patients may undergo physical therapy, or they may require surgery for repair or replacement.

PCL injuries are less common. They occur when the tibia experiences a posterior or backward force. This type of injury is common in car accidents when the knee hits the dashboard, or when patients fall forward when walking up stairs.

The menisci can also experience degeneration and tearing from shear and rotary forces, especially during weight-bearing activities. These types of injuries often require rehabilitation through physical therapy or surgery.

Knee pain can also result from injury or overuse of the muscles and tendons surrounding the knee, including the quadriceps, hamstrings and patella tendon.

Both injuries to and overuse of the knee can lead to degenerative changes in the joint surfaces, known as osteoarthritis. Osteoarthritis is a progressive disease that can lead to pain, swelling and stiffness. This disease affects the knees of over 300 million people worldwide, most often those 50 years of age and up. American adults have a 40% chance of developing osteoarthritis that affects their daily lives, with the knee being the most commonly affected joint.

Age is also a factor in knee pain. The structure and function of your joints change as you age. Cartilage starts to break down, your body produces less synovial fluid to lubricate your joints, and muscle strength and flexibility decrease. This can lead to painful, restricted movement in the joint.

Risk factors

There are some risk factors for knee osteoarthritis that you cannot control, such as genetics, age, sex and your history of prior injuries.

Fortunately, there are several risk factors you can control that can predispose you to knee pain and osteoarthritis specifically. The first is excessive weight. Based on studies between 2017 and 2020, nearly 42% of all adult Americans are obese. This obesity is a significant risk factor for diabetes and osteoarthritis and can also play a role in other knee injuries.

A lack of physical activity is another risk, with 1 in 5 U.S. adults reporting that they’re inactive outside of work duties. This can result in less muscular support for the knee and more pressure on the joint itself.

An inflammatory diet also adds to the risk of knee pain from osteoarthritis. Research shows that the average American diet, often high in sugar and fat and low in fiber, can lead to changes to the gut microbiome that contribute to osteoarthritis pain and inflammation.

Preventing knee pain

Increasing physical activity is one of the key elements to preventing knee pain. Often physical therapy intervention for patients with knee osteoarthritis focuses on strengthening the knee to decrease pain and support the joint during movement.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recommends that adults spend at least 150 to 300 minutes per week on moderate-intensity, or 75 to 150 minutes per week on vigorous-intensity aerobic physical activity. These guidelines do not change for adults who already have osteoarthritis, although their exercise may require less weight-bearing activities, such as swimming, biking or walking.

The agency also recommends that all adults do some form of resistance training at least two or more days a week. Adults with knee osteoarthritis particularly benefit from quadriceps-strengthening exercises, such as straight leg raises.

Treatments for knee pain

Conservative treatment of knee pain includes anti-inflammatory and pain medications and physical therapy.

Medical treatment for knee osteoarthritis may include cortisone injections to decrease inflammation or hyaluronic acid injections, which help lubricate the joint. The relief from these interventions is often temporary, as they do not stop the progression of the disease. But they can delay the need for surgery by one to three years on average, depending on the number of injections.

Physical therapy is generally a longer-lasting treatment option for knee pain. Physical therapy treatment leads to more sustained pain reduction and functional improvements when compared with cortisone injections treatment and some meniscal repairs.

Patients with osteoarthritis often benefit from total knee replacement, a surgery with a high success rate and lasting results.

Surgical interventions for knee pain include the repair, replacement or removal of the ACL, PCL, menisci or cartilage. When more conservative approaches fail, patients with osteoarthritis may benefit from a partial or total knee replacement to allow more pain-free movement. In these procedures, one or both sides of the knee joint are replaced by either plastic or metal components. Afterward, patients attend physical therapy to aid in the return of range of motion.

Although there are risks with any surgery, most patients who undergo knee replacement benefit from decreased pain and increased function, with 90% of all replacements lasting more than 15 years. But not all patients are candidates for such surgeries, as a successful outcome depends on the patient’s overall health and well-being.

New treatments on the horizon

New developments for knee osteoarthritis are focused on less invasive therapies. Recently, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved a new implant that acts as a shock absorber. This requires a much simpler procedure than a total knee replacement.

Other promising interventions include knee embolization, a procedure in which tiny particles are injected into the arteries near the knee to decrease blood flow to the area and reduce inflammation near the joint. Researchers are also looking into injectable solutions derived from human bodies, such as plasma-rich protein and fat cells, to decrease inflammation and pain from osteoarthritis. Human stem cells and their growth factors also show potential in treating knee osteoarthritis by potentially improving muscle atrophy and repairing cartilage.

Further research is needed on these novel interventions. However, any intervention that holds promise to stop or delay osteoarthritis is certainly encouraging for the millions of people afflicted with this disease. Läs mer…

Flooding from hurricanes Helene and Milton inflicted billions of dollars in damage across the Southeast in September and October 2024, pushing buildings off their foundations and undercutting roads and bridges. It also caused dozens of electric vehicles and other battery-powered objects, such as scooters and golf carts, to catch fire.

According to one tally, 11 electric cars and 48 lithium-ion batteries caught fire after exposure to salty floodwater from Helene. In some cases, these fires spread to homes.

When a lithium-ion battery pack bursts into flames, it releases toxic fumes, burns violently and is extremely hard to put out. Frequently, firefighters’ only option is to let it burn out by itself.

Particularly when these batteries are soaked in saltwater, they can become “ticking time bombs,” in the words of Florida State Fire Marshall Jimmy Patronis. That’s because the fire doesn’t always occur immediately when the battery is flooded. According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, about 36 EVs flooded by Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022 caught fire, including several that were being towed after the storm on flatbed trailers.

Many consumers are unaware of this risk, and lithium-ion batteries are widely used in EVs and hybrid cars, e-bikes and scooters, electric lawnmowers and cordless power tools.

I’m a mechanical engineer and am working to help solve battery safety issues for our increasingly electrified society. Here’s what all owners should know about water and the risk of battery fires:

Emergency responders handle EVs that were immersed in saltwater during Hurricane Ian in Florida in 2022, including some that ignited.

The threat of saltwater

The trigger for lithium-ion battery fires is a process called thermal runaway – a cascading sequence of heat-releasing reactions inside the battery cell.

Under normal operating conditions, the probability of a lithium-ion cell going into thermal runaway is less than 1 in 10 million. But it increases sharply if the cell is subjected to electrical, thermal or mechanical stress, such as short-circuiting, overheating or puncture.

Saltwater is a particular problem for batteries because salt dissolved in water is conductive, which means that electric current readily flows through it. Pure water is not very conductive, but the electrical conductivity of seawater can be more than a thousand times higher than that of fresh water.

All EV battery pack enclosures use gaskets to seal off their internal space from the elements outside. Typically, they have waterproof ratings of IP66 or IP67. While these ratings are high, they do not guarantee that a battery will be watertight when it is immersed for a long period of time – say, over 30 minutes.

Battery packs also have various ports to equalize pressure inside the battery and move electrical power in and out. These can be potential pathways for water to leak into the pack enclosure. Inadequate seal ratings and manufacturing defects can also enable water to find its way into the battery pack if it is immersed.

How water leads to fire

All batteries have two terminals: One is marked positive (+), and the other is marked negative (-). When the terminals are connected to a device that uses electricity to do work, such as a light bulb, chemical reactions occur inside the battery that cause electrons to flow from the negative to the positive terminal. This creates an electric current and releases the energy stored in the battery.

Electrons flow between a battery’s terminals because the chemical reactions inside the battery create different electrical potentials between the two terminals. This difference is also known as voltage. When saltwater comes into contact with metal battery terminals with different electrical potentials, the battery can short-circuit, inducing rapid corrosion and electric arcing, and generating excessive current and heat. The more conductive the liquid is that penetrates the battery pack, the higher the shorting current and rate of corrosion.

Rapid corrosion reactions within the battery pack produce hydrogen and oxygen, corroding away materials from metallic terminals on the positive side of the battery and depositing them onto the negative side. Even after the water drains away, these deposited materials can form solid shorting bridges that remain inside the battery pack, causing a delayed thermal runaway. A fire can start days after the battery is flooded.

Most electric vehicles and plug-in hybrid cars use arrays of lithium-ion batteries like these.
DOE

Even a battery pack that is fully discharged isn’t necessarily safe during flooding. A lithium-ion cell, even at 0% state of charge, still has about a three-volt potential difference between its positive and negative terminals, so some current can flow between them. For a battery string with many cells in a series – a typical configuration in electric cars – residual voltage can still be high enough to drive these reactions.

Many scientists, including me and my colleagues, are working to understand the exact sequence of events that can occur in a battery pack after it is exposed to saltwater and lead to thermal runaway. We also are looking for ways to help reduce fire risks from flooded battery packs.

These could include finding better ways to seal the battery packs; using alternative, more corrosion-resistant materials for the battery terminals; and applying waterproof coatings to exposed terminals inside the battery pack.

What EV owners should know

Electric cars are still very safe to drive and own in most circumstances. However, during extreme situations like hurricanes and flooding, it is very important to keep EV battery packs from becoming submerged in water, particularly saltwater. The same is true for other products that contain lithium-ion batteries.

For EVs, this means evacuating cars out of the affected zone or parking them on high ground before flooding occurs. Smaller objects, like e-bikes and power tools, can be moved to upper floors of buildings or stored on high shelves.

If you own an EV that has been submerged in water for hours to days, particularly in saltwater, public safety experts recommend treating it as a fire hazard and placing it on open ground away from other valuable property. Do not attempt to charge or operate it. Contact the manufacturer for an inspection to assess battery damage.

Often, a flooded electric vehicle will need to be towed away for further inspection. However, since thermal runaway can occur well after submersion, the car should not be moved until it has been professionally assessed. Läs mer…

Millions of people in the U.S. and around the world suffer from urinary tract infections every year. Some groups are especially prone to chronic UTIs, including women, older adults and some veterans.

These infections are typically treated with antibiotics, but overusing these drugs can make the microbes they target become resistant and reduce the medicines’ effectiveness.

To solve this problem of chronic UTIs and antibiotic resistance, we combined our expertise in microbiology and engineering to create a living material that houses a specific strain of beneficial E. coli. Our research shows that the “good” bacteria released from this biomaterial can compete with “bad” bacteria for nutrients and win, dramatically reducing the number of disease-causing microbes.

With further development, we believe this technique could help manage recurring UTIs that do not respond to antibiotics.

Bringing bacteria to the bladder

For the microbes living in people, nutrients are limited their presence varies between different parts of the body. Bacteria have to compete with other microbes and the host to acquire essential nutrients. By taking up available nutrients, beneficial bacteria can stop or slow the growth of harmful bacteria. When harmful bacteria are starved of important nutrients, they aren’t able to reach high enough numbers to cause disease.

Delivering beneficial bacteria to the bladder to prevent UTIs in challenging, though. For one, these helpful bacteria can naturally colonize only in people who are unable to fully empty their bladder, a condition called urinary retention. Even among these patients, how long these bacteria can colonize their bladders varies widely.

Current methods to deliver bacteria to the bladder are invasive and require repeated catheter insertion. Even when bacteria are successfully released into the bladder, urine will flush out these microbes because they cannot stick to the bladder wall.

This microscopy image shows the bladder of a mouse (blue) covered with E. coli (pink) and the white blood cells (yellow) attacking them.
Valerie O’Brien, Matthew Joens, Scott J. Hultgren, James A.J. Fitzpatrick, Washington University, St. Louis/NIH via Flickr, CC BY-NC

Biomaterials to treat UTIs

Since beneficial bacteria cannot attach to and survive in the bladder for long, we developed a biomaterial that could slowly release bacteria in the bladder over time.

Our biomaterial is composed of living E. coli embedded in a matrix structure made of gel. It resembles a piece of jelly about 500 times smaller than a drop of water and can release bacteria for up to two weeks in the bladder. By delivering the bacteria via biomaterial, we overcome the need for the bacteria to attach to the bladder to persist in the organ.

We tested our biomaterial by placing it in human urine in petri dishes and exposing it to bacterial pathogens that cause UTIs. Our results showed that when mixed in a 50:50 ratio, the E. coli outcompeted the UTI-causing bacteria by increasing to around 85% of the total population. When we added more E. coli than UTI-causing bacteria, which is what we envision for future development and testing, the proportion of E. coli increased to over 99% of the population, essentially wiping out the UTI-causing bacteria. Moreoever, the biomaterial continued releasing E. coli for up to two weeks in human urine.

Our findings suggest that E.coli could stick around and survive in the bladder for extended periods of time and successfully decrease the growth of many types of bacteria that cause UTIs.

UTIs can be painful.
Images we create and what actually happens are always beautiful when we have imagination/iStock via Getty Images Plus

Improving biomaterials

Our findings show that E. coli can not only control harmful bacteria it’s closely related to but also a broad range of disease-causing bacteria in humans and animals. This means scientists might not need to identify different types of beneficial bacteria to control each pathogen – and there are many – that can cause a UTI.

Our team is currently evaluating how effectively our biomaterial can cure UTIs in mice. We are also working to identify the specific nutrients that beneficial and harmful bacteria compete over and what factors may help beneficial bacteria win. We could add these nutrients to our biomaterial to be released or withheld.

This research is still at an early stage, and clinical uses are not in development yet, so if it does reach patients it will be well in the future. We hope that our technology could be refined and applied to control other bacterial infections and some cancers caused by bacteria. Läs mer…