A mysterious and deadly kidney disease has been plaguing workers in the sugar fields of Central America. In the past 20 years, about 20,000 workers have died of the disease, and the crisis has been growing worse.
At first the epidemic was thought to be caused by chemicals such as pesticides, but the disease only affected workers in coastal areas — those working at higher altitude in hills were largely unaffected.
A study found that hard work in the hot climate of the lowlands left workers dehydrated, putting such a heavy strain on their kidneys that it fatally damaged them.
“When it’s extremely hot, the risk for kidney damage really begins to become evident,” Richard Johnson of the University of Colorado, Denver, said.
Similar epidemics of kidney disease were also found in farm workers in other hot climates, in Sri Lanka, Egypt and Andhra Pradesh in India. As global temperatures rise and heat waves become more intense, so the new type of kidney disease is increasing, according to the study published in the Clinical Journal of the American Society of Nephrology.
Another impact of global warming is more cases of kidney stones. This painful condition results from salts crystallizing in the kidneys, often caused by dehydration. In the US, about 50 percent more cases of kidney stones occur in the warm climate of southern regions than northern states.
The number of cases has been rising since temperatures began to warm noticeably in the late 1970s, especially in the summer. As the climate warms further, the high-risk zone for kidney stones is expected to expand northwards, with more new cases predicted.
Through the noise of rushing papers and whirring belts at a print factory in Kyoto, two creators watch their photo essay come to life in broadsheet form — part of an effort to win new audiences in the age of artificial intelligence (AI). Despite the decline of the publishing industry, self-publication and handmade “zine” magazines are growing in popularity in Japan, reflecting the nation’s enduring love of paper in the digital era. While speaking to Agence France-Presse at the plant, his hands black with ink, one of the creators, Kazuma Obara, said: “I think [paper] is a medium that engages all five
‘ABSURD MISTAKE’: The election commission said that there had been a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations ran short of ballot papers South Korean riot police yesterday cleared protesters from a Seoul polling station after a 35-hour blockade sparked by a shortage of ballot papers during local elections earlier this week. Wednesday’s election was the first nationwide vote since South Korean President Lee Jae-myung took office following the ouster of Yoon Suk-yeol over his short-lived martial law declaration. Lee’s ruling Democratic Party swept most races, but failed to flip the crucial Seoul mayoral seat. The South Korean National Election Commission apologized, blaming a failure to anticipate turnout after 14 polling stations in Seoul ran short of ballot papers. Some polling stations stayed open until 10pm to
Australian researchers have trained lab-grown brain cells on a silicon computer chip to play the 1990s shooter game Doom and said they are just scratching the surface of what the neurons could be capable of doing. It is the science-fiction work of biotech boffins at Cortical Labs, who researched and developed the technology that harnesses the workings of the brain’s networking system. Each so-called “biological computer” contains about 200,000 living human brain cells, grown from stem cells that were harvested from blood donations. Having mastered the simple computer game Pong, where a paddle is moved up and down to send a ball
France experienced its hottest spring on record, the French weather service said on Tuesday, after an exceptional early heat wave that also broke highs for the season in England and Wales. Meteo-France said the average nationwide temperature over March to May was 13.8°C — about 1.7°C above the norm, and surpassing records set in 2011 and 2020. “The warmest spring since records began in 1900,” it said in a bulletin. All three months were warmer than average, but the onset of an “unprecedented heatwave” late last month pushed the mercury to highs typically seen at the height of the summer. “Our country had never
RSS