Category Archives: Human Longevity

Watching frontline health care workers and other volunteers receive their first doses of the COVID-19 vaccine, there is reason to believe after months of uncertainty that this pandemic will indeed end. The challenge now, though, is to keep ourselves safe until enough of us have been inoculated and possess protective immunity.

It will not be easy. As we write this, more than 21 million Americans have been diagnosed with the coronavirus that causes COVID-19, and more than 365,000 have died. Across the nation, hospital intensive care units are at or even beyond capacity. In California, state officials have ordered thousands of additional body bags and refrigerated storage units to serve as portable morgues. San Diego County escaped the worst of the summer COVID-19 surge, but the current situation is not good. Case and mortality rates in the county continue to rise, each day seemingly worse than the last. Our hospitals and health systems are stressed to the breaking point.

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But we are fortunate that the countys hospitals have a long history of close cooperation and coordination and that they have worked through these difficult times to provide and process lab tests, review predictions for hospital needs and revamp in-patient processes to effectively meet ever-increasing patient loads and needs.

In addition to its strong Health & Human Services Agency, San Diego County enjoys abundant public health expertise at San Diego State University, University of California San Diego and other local institutions. Experts at these institutions have been involved from the beginning in helping predict and map viral spread and supporting county contact tracing efforts, and they have offered guidance and services to other institutions, such as local school systems. The pandemic has strengthened and deepened these inter-institutional partnerships and called on us to find new ways to prioritize the needs and health of those most vulnerable.

But more can be done, and more could be better coordinated, including nationwide public health efforts to provide messaging aimed at reducing transmission through early diagnosis, case investigation and contact tracing. We offer some suggestions on how.

Efforts must shift to prioritizing the rapid identification of cases among those who have symptoms or have known exposures, so they can be isolated and treated if positive. The focus needs to be on making sure that those who have positive tests are quickly informed and appropriate actions taken to prevent further spread of the disease, with contact tracing performed only for cases with a high risk of spread to multiple individuals. Finally, but no less importantly, we must reimagine the public health messages about facial coverings and distancing so that they resonate in a time when we are grappling with frustration and fatigue.

Public health professionals at UCSDs Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity Science and the SDSU School of Public Health urgently call for a convening of stakeholders to discuss how we can pool and reallocate resources at institutions across San Diego County to meet the current crisis. We must prioritize our needs based on the most acute stresses to systems, institutions and communities. We must come together with tangible offers of available capacity to test, trace and treat our families, friends and neighbors and new, innovative ideas for effective prevention strategies and public health messaging that connects us all.

We can do this. UC San Diego alone has the capacity to conduct at least 10,000 COVID-19 tests per day. It conducts routine testing of thousands of on-campus students and staff every week and, under contract from the county, has traced thousands of COVID-19 contacts. Similarly, SDSU, which has developed exceptional skills in community health worker-led contact tracing and testing through its Communities Fighting COVID! program, could expand it to meet near-term needs throughout the region. Immediate efforts should be directed to reaching positive cases within 24 hours. This may require shifting of staffing priorities to ensure prompt containment of COVID-19. Our local universities have deep knowledge about public health messaging and communication, which could be leveraged to create new connections to populations at greatest risk.

It is critical that we identify and consider possibilities now before we find ourselves overwhelmed. Lets bring our strengths to a virtual table so that we those of us with the most protections and those of us with the least outlast these dark times and reach a brighter future of immunity.

Anderson is dean of the Herbert Wertheim School of Public Health and Human Longevity at UC San Diego and lives in Del Mar. Madanat is a distinguished professor of public health and interim vice president for research and innovation at SDSU. She lives in Sabre Springs.

Continued here:
Commentary: Health experts and other San Diego leaders must unite to better coordinate pandemic response - The San Diego Union-Tribune

Editor:

Im writing in response to Rich Lowrys December 31 opinion piece on the climate crisis.

His premise is that climate change does not pose an existential threat to humanity and that its preposterous for President Elect Biden to make that claim. His reasoning requires that we equate existential threat with the threat of human extinction. Then he outlines what in fact are the existential threats of climate change as the reasons why humans wont go extinct. When sea level rises, we move inland. When temperatures continue to rise, we deploy more air conditioning. When droughts persist, use less water. Theres really nothing to worry about. Humancleverness will save the day.

He then shifts gears. There really isnt anything bad happening now. The world has been getting warmer for decades (currently 2 degrees F above the 1895 2015 average) with no adverse effects on human population or longevity. Here he dismisses all the unprecedented wild fires, hurricanes producing hundred year rain totals, and record droughts and floods by criticizing the President Elect for claiming that they are caused by climate change. We all know the difference between climate and weather and have heard the scientists insist that any given weather event cant be directly attributed to climate change. But I invite everyone to step back and look at the totality of weather related disastersover the past 5 years and draw your own conclusions.

Even Mr. Lowry concedesThere is no doubt thathuman activity contributesto climate change. So,what is Mr. Lowrys plan while the world puts 32.5 billion metric tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually (US share 5.1 billion) and the average global temperature rises 1/20 degree F per year? ...seek to understand better and prepare to address through adaptation and innovation should the worst come decades from now. And whats President Elect Biden proposing? According to Mr. Lowry to suspend all rational thought-especially the downsides of costly measures to crimp the US economy in the name ofsaving the planetMr. Lowry doesnt saywhat these costly measures are. Here are a few: encourage sustainable energy alternatives, revamp the electrical grid, require more energy efficient buildings, institute more sustainable agricultural practices, encourage the move to electric vehicles, make conventional vehicles more efficient, maybe start planting trees like mad. The list is endless. The article claims we are an innovative species.

Do we follow Mr. Lowrys advice and sit and contemplate our navels while digging up the Canadian wilderness to get at the tar sands, etc etc i.e. business as usual, or do we start doing what we know must be done and what President Elect Biden is proposing.

Jim DeFelice, Richmond Hill

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Link:
Letter to the editor: Lowry's take on climate wrong - Bryan County News

A recent study unveils a potential new connection between iron levels and longevity.

The study, which appeared in the journalNature Communications, pooled data from three large human genetic studies, "reaching an unprecedented sample of more than a million people," the lead study author and data analyst Paul Timmers, from the University of Edinburgh in the UK, tellsEat This, Not That!

"Using genetics, we found multiple lines of evidence indicating poor control of blood iron levels is causally linked to a shorter lifespan and fewer years lived in good health." (Related: The One Vitamin Doctors Are Urging Everyone to Take Right Now.)

After examining the DNA of individuals who lived long and healthy lives versus those who experienced age-related diseases and even death early in life, the researchers were able to pinpoint 10 regions of the genome that were related to three key measures of aging: lifespan, years lived free of disease (healthspan), and living to old age (longevity). Two such regions, LDLR and FOXO3, were explicitly found to influence the expression of genes that help the body metabolize iron, which is what led the researchers to hypothesize that iron levels could play a role in aging.

Senior study author Joris Deelen, PhD, who studies the biology of aging at the Max Planck Institute for Biology of Ageing in Germany explains that "genetic variation in these regions seems to be the most important for healthy iron metabolism. Genes influenced by genetic variation in the other eight regions are not directly linked to iron metabolism."

Essentially, those with high iron levels may have an increased risk of dying younger.

"It is well-known that a deficit in iron can cause poor health, but we showed, for the first time, that for most people a small reduction in blood ironfrom their current levelsis likely beneficial to their health," says Deelen. "Iron metabolism and healthy aging were not linked before."

The researchers discovered that genetic predisposition to higher iron levels is what's associated with a reduced lifespan, which is largely out of your control.

"We found that DNA variations, which elevate your iron levels in the blood (from birth), also increase your likelihood of getting age-related diseases and dying," says Timmers.

So, this doesn't mean you should never eat red meat or remove other iron-rich foods from your diet altogether, however, it may encourage you to become more conscious of what your iron levels are.

"People tend to lose their ability to regulate iron levels as they get older, so regularly checking your iron levels could be important to maintain optimal health into old age," says Timmers.

Of course, further research is needed because it isn't clear on what would be considered an optimal iron level in the blood. In fact, it could vary from person to person.

"Further clinical studies are needed to determine the precise mechanisms by which iron metabolism is linked to healthy aging," Deelen adds.

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Too Much of This Mineral May Shorten Your Life, Study Finds | Eat This Not That - Eat This, Not That

It is estimated the world will invest 94 trillion U.S. dollars in infrastructure globally in the next 20 years. With that level of investment, we should ask some important questions. What is the best approach we should use today to deliver these projects? How can we incorporate climate change, social equity, and sustainability into our project planning? What is the future of our engineering practice?

One thing 2020 has taught uswe cant solve problems as we did before. Todays infrastructure investment must include new thinking. Through innovation, every project, regardless of sector, needs the longevity to last several decades and incorporate forward-thinking innovations to solve future challenges today. We must start to apply green box thinking.

Rami Issa, AECOM

Cities, developers, architects, and engineers are increasingly looking for ways to move away from the concrete jungle and incorporate elements of nature into our everyday lives. This focus on more sustainable development is the same approach we should take when evaluating infrastructure.

Many of us are familiar with gray infrastructurethe more traditional, concrete, human-engineered solutions however, green infrastructure is a solution worth exploring and implementing alongside gray infrastructure. It refers to natural elements of our ecosystem, such as forests, reefs, and wetlands, which can serve many of the same gray infrastructure functions.

When you blend both green and gray infrastructure together, the result is a cohesive solution that helps address community resiliency future challenges. In many instances, incorporating green infrastructure into future infrastructure investments may boost eco-tourism and generate new revenues for local communities.

Green infrastructure can take many forms, from protected natural areas to green roofs in cities. The goal is to employ nature to provide natural benefits such as clean air or reliable flows of clean water. By blending conservation and restoration techniques with innovative engineering, green-gray infrastructure provides solutions enabling communities to mitigate natural disasters and adapt to a changing climate. However, the challenge is strategically combining the two.

To further advance the science and practice of green-gray infrastructure, the Green-Gray Infrastructure Community of Practice (GGI COP) was established. It will blend conservation and restoration of nature with human-made engineering approaches to fortify communities against climate effects.

AECOM co-founded the initiative with Conservation International, a global leader in environmental conservation and sustainable development. Conservation International plans to release a practical guide for GGI implementation, which will be a tool for engagement with local governments, clients, universities, and field staff to support project implementation.

Flooding resiliency is one area where green-gray infrastructure can help provide a solid solution. GGI COP estimates the number of people impacted by floods will double worldwide by 2030. While conventional engineering approaches of upsizing stormwater conveyance and storage systems may have near-future benefits, they do not incorporate future challenges such as climate change and social and economic shifts. These projects can be very costly to construct, and stop-gap solutions only kick the can down the road.

Flooding continues to be a challenge in North Texas, and tackling it head-on requires a new way of thinking. Collaboration and partnerships among many stakeholders in our North Texas community must deliver integrated infrastructure solutions that incorporate green and gray infrastructure together. These solutions should incorporate regional transportation, stormwater management, and environmental planning into regional infrastructure projects.

Now, how do we blend green and gray infrastructure solutions? We do it by adding purpose, beauty, value, equity, and resiliency through each project by transforming the way we perform integrated planning and design.

Integrated planning and design have the power to transform a community into the next level and incorporate restorative environments within urban density. A shift from reactive planning into a proactive planning approach will solve todays challenges and account for future challenges. This is the future of practice, no doubt.

Rami Issa is the DFW Water Business Line Leader at AECOM.

Read this article:
The New Face of Integrated Planning and Design - D Magazine

PLEASANT HOPE, Mo. A beef processing plant in the process of being built in Pleasant Hope, Missouri, is looking to hire job seekers to work in its 100,000 square foot facility.

Pam Johnson, the director of human resources, said she is working with Missouri Prime Beef Packers to figure out what kind of employees it wants working in its facility.

Here we focus on doing the right thing: for the employee, the animal, the consumer, Johnson says. We are going to take care of our team members. The owners and management team have fully embraced the show me culture, and they want to show current and potential team members that they will be taken care of. We are offering great pay and benefits as well as continued encouragement to improve and learn new skills. As people strive to grow, they will be rewarded.

The plant will have the capacity to process up to 500 cows per day, but director of operations Mike Schmeling said their focus is more on quality.

We are not a big plant that is solely focused on the number of head processed per hour, said Schmeling. We are flexible. We can respond to market changes, consumer demands, or other unexpected factors like COVID-19 as well as, if not better than, anyone in the industry.

Nick Paschkov, COO of Missouri Prime Beef Packers, hopes for the plant to positively impact the community.

The ownership has shown their commitment to the longevity and success of this plant by empowering us to use our experience to design a state-of-the-art beef processing plant that will be a model for future facilities, Paschkov states. This company emphasizes food and employee safety and product quality over volume production, and our design accounts for that.

The construction phase of the plant is underway to process both fed and non-fed beef cattle. Missouri Prime Beef said its searching for people who can supply cows and buy products along with those seeking employment.

Those interested can look at Missouri Prime Beefs website or call 417-462-6727.

Originally posted here:
Pleasant Hope facility looking to hire people to work in beef processing plant - KOLR - OzarksFirst.com

Hello! Im Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

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This is our first newsletter of 2021, and it has already been quite a year.

The events of this past week surpass any thoughts on movies at the moment. I feel I have likely said this before, but there is no one better at sorting through the cultural confusion of a moment like Wednesday than Times TV critic Lorraine Ali. As she wrote, Wednesdays violent attack cannot be seen as yet another preparatory stress test for democracy. It was the real thing. We, as a nation, are not immune to the crises in which we are so often intervening overseas, parachuting in to save the day and frequently mucking things up further by trying we should never again assume well be saved from the fate of nations that have fallen victim to tyrants by mere privilege alone.

Mary McNamara wrote about the weeks events as well. Ignorance, misunderstanding, claims of party divisions are no longer applicable the division is not about big government versus small, its about democratic government versus dictatorship. This is not about the grievances, real and imagined, of small-town America or the danger of elitist bubbles, real and imagined, of coastal cities. This is about people who believe America wont be great again until representative democracy is not just suppressed through racist voter restrictions and regional gerrymandering but completely destroyed.

And Carolina Miranda had these sharp thoughts on the Capitol building itself: The Capitol is indeed a symbol of democracy a troubled one, but an evolving one. One whose narratives are not yet fully written. That will be up to us.

There was nevertheless other news as well. Over the holidays, filmmaker Joan Micklin Silver died at age 85. Silver was the groundbreaking director of movies such as Hester Street, Between the Lines, Chilly Scenes of Winter and Crossing Delancey. In 1991, while speaking to an audience at the American Film Institute, she said, Be tenacious. Be strong. Be courageous. What can I say? Keep it up. You have to learn to take rejection. You have to learn to believe in yourself.

The first episode of The Envelope podcast of the new year features my conversation with Kemp Powers, who wrote the screen adaption of his own play One Night in Miami and co-wrote and co-directed the new Pixar animated film Soul. As Powers said of this rather remarkable moment of having two films out at the same time, That wasnt the plan. The world were living in has plans of its own.

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Directed by Kornl Mundrucz from a screenplay by Kata Weber, Pieces of a Woman is an exploration of one woman (Vanessa Kirby) working through the grief of losing a baby in childbirth. The movie starts with an extended single-take sequence of a home birth gone wrong depicted with startling momentum and gets more intense. Kirby won the prize for best actress when the film premiered at the Venice Film Festival, and the cast also includes Ellen Burstyn, Shia LaBeouf, Molly Parker and Sarah Snook. The film is streaming on Netflix.

If Burstyn were to be nominated for an Oscar, at 88 years old, she would become the oldest actor ever nominated by eight days. I really want that, I must say, she told Gary Goldstein for The Times. I think thats a badge of something. Of longevity, certainly!

Reviewing the film for The Times, Justin Chang wrote about the supporting characters orbiting Kirby. Arrestingly showy though they can be, these performances never threaten to eclipse or overwhelm Kirbys concentration. While this remarkable actor can unleash hell with the best of them, her most eloquent gestures here are her quietest, whether shes staring distractedly into the middle distance or deflecting her moms affectionate gesture, as if it were a slap in the face. Kirbys authority is commanding, even unassailable: At times Martha seems at odds with not only her loved ones but with the very movie shes in, firmly steering it away from the courtroom drama, or even the portrait of a relationships bitter end, that it seems on the verge of becoming. She keeps you off balance right through the dreamlike close, a final scene brave, misguided or both that suggests nothing is ever truly final.

In a review for rogerebert.com, Monica Castillo wrote, Kirby has to navigate her character through every parents waking nightmare, which she does impressively. As Martha, Kirby shifts from catatonic to chaotic, becoming just as destructive as her partner without feeling like a clich. Shes angry at Sean, her co-workers, her family especially her mom, Elizabeth (Ellen Burstyn), who talks about her loss as if it were a personal failure and chides Martha for not actively pressing charges against the midwife. Its a tension that leads to the best scene of the movie, a showdown between mother and daughter, both grieving and each with entirely different ideas on how to move forward. Its a moment so electric, it makes the marital drama feel like window dressing.

For Vanity Fair, Katie Rich wrote, Pieces of a Woman tends to tell instead of show, with Elizabeth admitting to Sean that she never liked him before weve really gotten a grasp on their relationship, or Sean escalating a fight into name-calling that feels out of character. It makes the excruciating childbirth sequence stand out all the more, as Benjamin Loebs camera swoops past Parkers worried eyes, LaBeoufs tightly coiled body language, or Kirbys throat letting out the guttural moans of a woman who thinks the labor is going to be the most painful part. That long, beautiful, heartbreaking scene finds bracing cinematic language for a process that is so often euphemized until the tragic conclusion, it is a remarkably realistic childbirth for a narrative film, in all its gross wonder. It is a relief when the scene ends, but also a bit of a shame, watching that lightning bolt recede into a more modest flicker.

Vanessa Kirby as Martha in Pieces of a Woman.

(Benjamin Loeb / Netflix)

Directed by Phyllida Lloyd from a screenplay by Malcolm Campbell and Clare Dunne, Herself tells the story of a woman (Dunne) in Dublin trying to rebuild her life for her and her daughters after leaving an abusive husband. Having premiered at last years Sundance Film Festival, it is streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

For The Times, Robert Abele wrote, Lloyd, directing her first film since telling a most opposite tale in The Iron Lady that of a powerful woman (Meryl Streeps Oscar-winning Margaret Thatcher) on the wane is very much in sync with the plucky empowerment saga Dunne wants to tell and embody. (Its collaborative synchronicity born from the pairs work together in theater.) Yet that silver-lining nature is also what keeps Herself from entirely distinguishing itself, too often leaving an admittedly powerful story about female fortitude to rely on schematics and clichs instead of the accumulated impact of its many well-played human details.

For the Washington Post, Ann Hornaday wrote, A colorful cast of friends and friends-of-friends helps to make Herself not just a celebration of one womans determination, but of community a portrait that feels like a lets-put-on-a-show fantasy grounded in the social principles of Ken Loach. Its a not always a convincing combination but, in Dunnes capable hands, its a fetching and absorbing one.

Clare Dunne, from left, Ruby Rose OHara and Molly McCann in the movie Herself.

(Pat Redmond / Amazon Studios)

Directed by Bryan Fogel, The Dissident is a documentary on Jamal Khashoggi, the Saudi Arabian journalist who was murdered in Turkey in 2018. Featuring interviews with Khashoggis fiance, Hatice Cengiz, and others, the film is something of a real-life international espionage thriller. The movie is available on video on demand.

Stuart Miller wrote about the movie for The Times, talking to Fogel about the path that took him from his Academy Award-winning debut documentary Icarus to this new film. The filmmaker said, Winning the Oscar, I felt an obligation to make more stories that would have an impact on society.

In a review for The Times, Robert Abele wrote, Some of Fogels techniques speak more to the slick state of advocacy docs these days than to what would most effectively tell the story, from the overworked score and editing to some regrettable computer animation that briefly feels like one has entered a video game simulation. Tyranny and its effects are no video game, but The Dissident overall retains the impact of its alarming narrative, never more so than when were reminded of how much support President Trump gave MBS despite his own intelligence agencies conclusion that the crown prince ordered the hit on Khashoggi. One can only hope the future wont see a preference for arms deals over principles of human decency.

Reviewing the movie for the New York Times, Devika Girish wrote, All of this material is so chilling and effective on its own that the movies emphatic music and computer-generated graphics which include a Twitter battle pictured as a showdown between 3-D flies and bees can feel like overkill. But these flourishes serve the films ultimate objective: to impress acutely upon us the injustice of a world where money and geopolitics supersede human rights.

Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, left, and journalist Jamal Khashoggi in the documentary The Dissident.

(Briarcliff Entertainment)

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Indie Focus: Grief and resilience in 'Pieces of a Woman' - Los Angeles Times