Science

Antarctica just shed a 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg — here's where it may float

Dave Mosher — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 11:32:00 -0400

A 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg has calved off Antarctica, into the Southern Ocean.
The block of ice is roughly the area of Delaware and the volume of Lake Michigan.
Scientists aren't sure where it will go, but Business Insider mapped all known iceberg paths from 1999-2016 to see where it may float.

Antarctica has birthed one of the largest icebergs ever recorded, scientists announced Wednesday morning.

A crack in an Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf calved the colossal new iceberg, which is roughly the area of Delaware state and the volume of Lake Michigan.

Researchers first noticed the rift in Antarctica's ice in 2010, but it had been growing rapidly since 2016. The iceberg calved between July 10 and July 12, researchers said.

"The iceberg weighs more than a trillion tonnes," Adrian Luckman and Martin O'Leary, two glaciologists at Swansea University, wrote in a July 12 blog post for the MIDAS Project, which has been monitoring the ice.

"The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever."

Luckman and O'Leary said the iceberg will probably be named "A68," and that it's one of the largest ever recorded — possibly the third-largest iceberg since satellite measurements began, according The Antarctic Report. However, Luckman said its enormous size makes its fate tough to predict.

"It may remain in one piece but is more likely to break into fragments," he said. "Some of the ice may remain in the area for decades, while parts of the iceberg may drift north into warmer waters."

Where the iceberg may go

Although the iceberg's path is uncertain, Anna Hogg, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds, previously said that "ocean currents could drag it north, even as far as the Falkland Islands."

Those islands lie more than 1,000 miles away from the Larsen C ice shelf in Antarctica.

To see which paths the iceberg will be most likely to take, Business Insider reached out to David G. Long of Brigham Young University, who works on a data project that tracks all recorded icebergs. The database goes back to 1978 with some gaps, Long wrote in an email, but is continuous from 1999 to today.

Business Insider compiled the data from June 1999 through April 2016 to show all the paths of known Antarctic icebergs in one image:

As the illustration shows, many icebergs that break off the Antarctic Peninsula drift north and east of that location.

Few are large enough to stay intact until they reach the warmer waters of the Falkland Islands, but many reach the South Georgia and South Sandwich Islands, which lie farther east.

Wherever iceberg A68 wanders, warmer ocean waters north of Antarctica will eventually melt it away.

Thankfully, this won't contribute much to rising waters, since the ice "was already floating before it calved away," Luckman said, and thus "has no immediate impact on sea level."

To learn more about Antarctica's gigantic iceberg, read our full story about its calving.

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NOW WATCH: A 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica, and scientists say it's one of the largest ever recorded

The 12 most frightening roads in the world

Melia Robinson — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 11:30:00 -0400

Some road trips are not for the faint of heart.

We scoured the internet for the most frightening roads around the world, featuring hairpin turns, crashing waves, and bandits hidden just around the bend.

From Brazil's Death Road to Russia's Road of Bones, these 12 thruways will have you gripping your seatbelt for dear life.

Alaska's nightmarish Dalton Highway stretches some 400 miles through remote forests, tundras, and over the Yukon River. It concludes at the Arctic Ocean.

Source: National Geographic

The mostly gravel road, constructed as a service road for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, contains signs warning of steep grades and avalanches. No thanks.

Source: National Geographic

The 108-mile Prithvi Highway offers breathtaking views of the Himalayas and some of Nepal's biggest religious sites — but not without risk.

Source: BBC

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

A 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica, and scientists say it's one of the largest ever recorded

Emma Fierberg and Dave Mosher — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 11:02:45 -0400

One of the largest icebergs ever recorded has broken free of Antarctica. A crack in an Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf is responsible for calving the colossal new iceberg, which is roughly the area of Delaware state and the volume of Lake Michigan.

Researchers noticed the distinctive rift in Antarctica's ice in 2010, which has grown rapidly since 2016. The iceberg calved between July 10 and July 12, researchers said.

"Breaking news! The iceberg has fully detached from Larsen C - more details to follow soon," Martin O'Leary a glaciologist at Swansea University, wrote in a tweet early Wednesday morning for Project MIDAS.

A NASA Earth-observing satellite called MODIS was among the first to photograph the colossal ice block freed of Antarctica's grasp. It appears the iceberg has largely stayed intact.

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Even if every country on the planet cuts emissions, the climate would still be screwed

Leanna Garfield — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 10:50:00 -0400

A planet devastated by climate change may seem like a distant future. But Earth is already experiencing the effects of rising global temperatures today.

Worldwide, the mean rate of sea level rise increased 50% in the last two decades. In 2017, temperatures have already reached their highest levels in history in some areas, from California to Vietnam. The past three years were the hottest on record.

These changes are caused by increasing levels of carbon dioxide and methane in the Earth's atmosphere, a product of human activity. And as New York Magazine's David Wallace-Wells recently noted, no single emissions reduction program we have today is enough to prevent climate disaster — not even the Paris agreement.

Even if every signatory country in the accord meets its current pledge for reducing emissions — including the US, though Trump has pledged to pull the country out of the agreement — the world is still projected to warm over 2 degrees Celsius by 2050. The Paris agreement points out this reality in a section titled, "Notes with concern."

Two degrees may not seem like much, but the rise would have substantial impacts. Scientists say that places that supply the world's food, including Southern Europe and much of the Middle East, Australia, Africa, South America, and China, would be in permanent, extreme drought by 2080. Flooding would become a serious issue near the coasts, where a third of the world's major cities are located, since sea levels are projected to rise by at least 10 feet by the end of the century.

Experts also warn that if the Arctic ice continues to melt, ancient diseases trapped in glaciers could get released. Plus, the world would face the extinction of many animal species and rising human mortality.

The planet has already warmed nearly 1 degree Celsius, and James Hansen, a renowned climate scientist at Columbia University, suggested in a recent paper that keeping global warming below 1.5 degrees is nearly impossible. Hansen suggested that hitting the goal would require negative emissions levels, which would mean capturing carbon and taking it out of the atmosphere.

To make matters worse, our best protection against the effects of rising carbon dioxide levels comes from so-called "carbon sinks" — patches of land and ocean that absorb large chunks of the carbon dioxide we pump into the atmosphere. But now those sinks may be at capacity, prompting the Earth to continue cooking even as emissions get curbed.

In a recent open letter, six prominent scientists and diplomats, including former UN climate chief Christiana Figueres and physicist Stefan Rahmstorf, wrote that the world has approximately three years before the worst effects of climate change take hold.

Published June 28, the letter urges governments, businesses, scientists, and citizens to address the world's greenhouse-gas emissions now. If emissions can be permanently lowered by 2020, they wrote, global temperatures will likely avoid reaching that irreversible threshold.

In the letter, the scientists propose six goals to hit by 2020:

Increase renewable energy to 30% of electricity use.
Draft plans for cities and states to ditch fossil fuel energy by 2050, with funding of $300 billion annually.
Ensure 15% of all new vehicles sold are electric.
Cut net emissions from deforestation.
Publish plan for halving emissions from deforestation well before 2050.
Encourage the financial sector to issue more "green bonds" toward climate-mitigation efforts.

But those aims are at odds with the priorities of the Trump administration, which has signaled that climate change mitigation is not on its agenda. Because of that conflict, the authors call for US cities and businesses to fight emissions and meet the Paris accord goals without the help of the federal government.

"We stand at the doorway of being able to bend the emissions curve downwards by 2020, as science demands, in protection of the UN sustainable development goals, and in particular the eradication of extreme poverty," Figueres said in a press release.

"This monumental challenge coincides with an unprecedented openness to self-challenge on the part of sub-national governments inside the US, governments at all levels outside the US, and of the private sector in general. The opportunity given to us over the next three years is unique in history."

Wallace-Wells emphasized in his recent New York Magazine piece that an enormous effort from the world's governments and citizens is crucial for staving off the worst effects of climate change. Whether the world will succeed in addressing emissions in a serious way, however, remains to be seen.

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NOW WATCH: 'I'll ask it one more time': Kellyanne Conway won't say whether Trump thinks climate change is a hoax

There's a 'looming healthcare crisis for the millennial generation' — and it's just getting started

Lydia Ramsey — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 10:50:00 -0400

People who decide to start their families later are contributing to a "looming healthcare crisis for the millennial generation."

That's according to Claire Tomkins, founder and CEO of the startup Future Family told Business Insider.

In the US, women are waiting longer to have children — a trend that's been increasing happening since the 1970s.

In 2014, the average age of first birth in the US was 26.3, up from 24.9 in 2000, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2015, for the first time women in their 30s were having more babies than younger moms.

As the millennial generation (currently between the ages of 19 and 36) has these babies later in life, challenges can pop up. As women age, their fertility steadily declines, making it more difficult to conceive or have a healthy pregnancy — which could lead to more families turning to costly treatments.

How trying to have a baby can get expensive fast

Fertility treatment can be incredibly expensive. Some services fall outside the scope of health insurance, and the cost of one cycle of in-vitro fertilization is on average $23,474 in the US — and it often takes more than one cycle to work. For Tomkins, it cost about $100,000 to start a family.

As a way to increase the chances of having a baby when they're ready, many women consider about freezing their eggs. Dr. Lynn Westphal, a professor of reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Stanford and medical adviser to Future Family, who got involved with egg freezing almost 20 years ago to help preserve fertility for women undergoing chemotherapy, told Business Insider in June that she's seen interest in the procedure change "dramatically" in the last few years, especially among women who are doing it electively.

Some companies have started offering the service as a benefit to women who might be considering the process, even though they have no health issues that would make it medically necessary.

An industry has popped up in recent years to fund these treatments. Future Family's approach, for instance, is to provide testing, concierge care, and financing options for families. Others offer monthly payments for egg-freezing and IVF packages that have money-back guarantees.

But there are no guarantees that the procedures will pay off. Even if women have their eggs frozen — a process that costs around $50,000 — there's a chance they might not need them. And even if they do use them, it's not a fool-proof insurance policy.

"People talk about 'egg banking' as though it’s insurance," Hilda Bastian, chief editor at PubMed wrote in a November 2016 blog post. "I think both 'banking' and “insurance' are misleading ways to look at this. This language gives an impression of more security than freezing eggs can deliver. And it doesn’t convey the health and emotional risks."

DON'T MISS: A startup that raised $200 million wants you to think about fertility long before you want to start a family

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How to get people to like you, according to psychologists

Erin Brodwin — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 09:54:00 -0400

Making friends as an adult is hard.

There are so many things to consider — from where to meet new people in the first place to how you spend time together. And what happens if you really like them but aren't sure whether they're keen on you?

Several recent psychological studies suggest there are a few simple ways to make yourself more likable — something that can come in handy for everything from friendships to job interviews. Here are a few of our favorites.

Reveal, don't conceal

It's tempting to shy away from probing questions because you don't want to overshare or reveal too much personal information.

As it turns out, people might actually see you in a more positive light if you share that information than if you withhold it, according to a study from Harvard Business School. The researchers looked at how revealing versus concealing information affected two scenarios: potential dates and potential employers.

Study participants were split into two groups — half were prospects for dates, and the rest could choose whether or not to date these individuals. The dating prospects then got split again — half were "revealers" who admitted to engaging in some unsavory behavior, like fantasizing about doing something terrible. The other half were "hiders" who did not volunteer this information.

When the volunteers were given the chance to pick who they'd rather date, 79% of them chose the revealer.

The researchers replicated the experiment in a job interview scenario and came to similar conclusions. For this experiment, the participants had to respond to the question, “Have you ever done drugs?” They could say yes, no, or choose not to answer. Then potential employers got their pick of the candidates. Overall, the employers were more interested in hiring the people who'd answered 'yes' than the people who'd chosen not to answer or said 'no.'

Other research backs up this idea. A large review of multiple studies from the American Psychological Association found that people who engage in what they called "intimate disclosures" tend to be liked more than those who disclose less about themselves. The same study also found that people tend to share more personal information with people whom they initially like. And people tend like others as a result of sharing personal information with them as well.

Share something personal

Along the same lines, disclosing something about yourself that you don't share with most people can increase intimacy.

A 1997 study by State University of New York psychologist Arthur Aron — the subject of a viral New York Times article called "Questions that can make you fall in love with a stranger" — is a classic example of this. Aron essentially showed that two people who were willing to feel more connected to each other could do so, even within a short time.

For his study, Aron separated two groups of people, then paired people up within their groups and had them chat with one another for 45 minutes. While the first group of pairs spent the 45 minutes engaging in small talk, the second group got a list of questions that gradually grew more intimate.

Unsurprisingly, the pairs who asked the probing questions felt closer and more connected after the 45 minutes were up. Six months later, two of the participants (a tiny fraction of the original study group) even found themselves in love.

Compliment them — but not too much

The words you use to describe others can mean a lot. Some research suggests that people subconsciously associate the words you use to describe other people with your own personality, a phenomenon known in psychology as spontaneous trait transference. This applies whether the words you use are kind or cruel, so choose wisely.

Although compliments are generally good, be careful how you use them. Some studies have found that when it comes to winning people over, lavishing them with positive comments pales in comparison to giving negative feedback first and positive feedback later.

University of Minnesota researchers tried this out in a 1965 experiment. They had 80 female college students work in pairs on a task, and facilitated a situation in which those students would "overhear" their partners talking about them. (In reality, experimenters had told the partners what to say.)

In the first of the study's four scenarios, the comments were uniformly positive; in the second, the comments were all negative; in the third, the comments changed from positive to negative; and in the fourth, the comments shifted from negative to positive. Overall, the students liked their partners best when their comments shifted from negative to positive, suggesting that people like to feel as though they've persuaded you in some way.

Bottom line: If you want people to like you, don't be afraid to share things about yourself. And be complimentary, but don't overdo it.

DON'T MISS: Psychologists say one behavior is the 'kiss of death' for a relationship

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NOW WATCH: 5 ways to change your body language to make people like you

Skin peeling from sunburn is actually your body’s way of protecting you from cancer

Emma Fierberg and Samantha Lee — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 09:18:21 -0400

When your skin turns red from too much sun exposure, you know you're in for a painful ride. Sunburn can be prevented by applying sunscreen regularly. However, if you fall asleep before re-applying, you may end up with a dangerous burn. The UV rays from the sun can mutate your DNA, causing skin cancer. To prevent skin cancer, your skin should start to peel. It may take a few days, but once your skin peels, the dead, damaged cells leave your body and your body begins to repair itself.

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A Harvard psychologist says this is the first thing you should do when you wake up

Kevin Reilly and Chris Weller — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 09:13:19 -0400

Harvard psychologist Amy Cuddy has developed a method for starting your mornings out right. It's surprisingly simple.

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Astronauts in space have recorded a breathtaking new video of Earth's aurora

Dave Mosher — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 09:11:00 -0400

Auroras are one of the most beautiful and bewildering natural spectacles on Earth. But the view is even better from above.

The faint green glow of auroras is caused by high-energy particles from the sun plowing through Earth's atmosphere. Bands of the aurora dance, bob, and weave as the flow of solar particles fluctuates and interacts with our planet's magnetic field.

Typically only people who live in the darkest reaches of the world (far north or south) get to enjoy such light shows.

If you're an astronaut flying around the planet, however, you get a view of auroras that is simply unmatched — like this one, recorded on June 25:

The clip captures the Aurora Australis, or southern lights, as seen from the International Space Station, which orbits about 250 miles above Earth. (The Aurora Borealis, or northern lights, occurs in the northern hemisphere.)

A member of the orbiting laboratory's Expedition 52 crew recorded the video, according to NASA.

"The International Space Station was flying from south of Australia to the southern Pacific Ocean," when it captured the footage, NASA explained in a description.

The video is actually time-lapse imagery, since it takes the space station about 90 minutes to complete one orbit. (About half of that time is spent in darkness.)

Watch the full video below.

DON'T MISS: A NASA rocket blasted colorful clouds into space — here's what they looked like

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A 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica, and scientists say it's one of the largest ever recorded

Dave Mosher — Wed, 12 Jul 2017 06:13:31 -0400

Antarctica has shed an iceberg that's big enough to fill Lake Michigan.
It weighs about 1 trillion metric tons.
It may be the third-largest iceberg recorded since satellites began taking photos of Earth.
Human activity most likely isn't responsible for this event, but carbon emissions are driving other changes to Antarctic ice.

The image is a bit fuzzy, but to scientists it's unmistakable: One of the largest icebergs ever recorded has broken free of Antarctica.

A crack in an Antarctica's Larsen C ice shelf is responsible for calving the colossal new iceberg, which has roughly the area of Delaware state and the volume of Lake Michigan.

Researchers noticed the distinctive rift in Antarctica's ice in 2010, and it had grown rapidly since 2016. The iceberg calved as early as Monday, researchers said.

A NASA Earth-observing satellite called Modis was among the first to photograph the colossal ice block freed of Antarctica's grasp.

Based on the image above, and another created by Adrian Luckman, also a glaciologist at Swansea University and a Project Midas member, it appears the iceberg has largely stayed intact.

That size could make it the third-largest iceberg recorded since satellite measurements began, according to a tweet last Thursday by The Antarctic Report.

In a Wednesday blog post, Luckman and O'Leary said it was "one of the biggest ever recorded" at a weight of roughly 1 trillion metric tons, or 1.1 trillion tons, and said its name would most likely be dubbed A68.

"The calving of this iceberg leaves the Larsen C Ice Shelf reduced in area by more than 12%, and the landscape of the Antarctic Peninsula changed forever," they said.

How big the new iceberg is, and where it's going

The ice block's area is roughly comparable to the US state of Delaware. But CryoSat — Europe's ice-monitoring satellite — recently took the most precise measurements to date of its thickness, allowing scientists to gauge its volume.

Days before the iceberg broke free, Noel Gourmelen, a glaciologist at the University of Edinburgh, and his colleagues estimated that it would be about 620 feet (190 meters) thick and harbor some 277 cubic miles (1,155 cubic kilometers) of frozen water.

That's big enough to fill more than 460 million Olympic-size swimming pools with ice, or nearly all of Lake Michigan — one of the largest freshwater reservoirs in the world.

Gourmelen and the European Space Agency on July 5 released this 3D animation that shows the iceberg's dimensions:

And here's Lake Michigan for a size comparison:

Scientists previously said they weren't sure what would happen after the iceberg's breakaway, since such large calvings are rarely seen.

"It could, in fact, even calve in pieces or break up shortly after. Whole or in pieces, ocean currents could drag it north, even as far as the Falkland Islands," Anna Hogg, a glaciologist at the University of Leeds, said in a July 5 press release by the ESA.

Those islands lie more than 1,000 miles away from Larsen C in Antarctica.

This illustration of hundreds of icebergs' paths, from 1999 through 2010, shows how that drift might play out before it melts.

An ice block thousands of years in the making

The Larsen C ice shelf is one of the largest such shelves in Antarctica.

According to a tweet from Project Midas, "most of the ice that calves off fell as snow on the ice shelf in the past few hundred years, but there's an inner core that's a bit older."

Project Midas announced in early June that satellite images showed the rift had split, turned north, and begun moving toward the Southern Ocean.

Luckman, who has closely monitored the ice shelf with his colleagues at Project Midas, previously released an animation of the rift's rapid growth (below).

It shows how the rift "jumped" as it sliced through bands of weak ice and slowed when it met stronger, thicker ice. The ocean is shown in emerald green (top right), the Larsen C ice shelf is the light blue patch, and the glacier behind it is depicted in white.

The final frame shows an image of the rift's tip breaking in multiple directions — a sign of imminent calving of the iceberg.

A close-up from the ESA's Copernicus satellite more clearly showed the chaos of the crack's tip on Thursday:

Are humans behind this?

The iceberg won't noticeably raise sea levels, since it was already floating in the ocean as part of Larsen C and displacing water. But Luckman and O'Leary previously said that once Larsen C lost its iceberg, the rest of the shelf "will be less stable than it was prior to the rift."

Put another way: There's a very slim chance that new iceberg could cause the entire Larsen C ice shelf, and an ancient glacier behind it, to slowly disintegrate and fall into the sea.

The chaos wouldn't be unprecedented. In 2002, a neighboring ice shelf called Larsen B collapsed and broke up in the Southern Ocean. This animation captures that event unfolding from January 31 through April 13, 2002:

Some scientists think that if and when Larsen C and its accompanying glacial ice eventually collapse, sea levels may rise by up to 4 inches.

But experts on Antarctic ice say that such a loss is exceedingly unlikely and would be due mostly to natural processes.

"Large calving events such as this are normal processes of a healthy ice sheet, ones that have occurred for decades, centuries, millennia — on cycles that are much longer than a human or satellite lifetime," Helen Amanda Fricker, a glaciologist who studies Antarctic ice for the Scripps Institution of Oceanography, wrote in The Guardian last month. "What looks like an enormous loss is just ordinary housekeeping for this part of Antarctica."

But Fricker warned that we shouldn't be complacent about climate change, which is being driven mostly by human activity.

"Antarctic ice shelves overall are seeing accelerated thinning, and the ice sheet is losing mass in key sectors of Antarctica," she said. "Continuing losses might soon lead to an irreversible decline."

DON'T MISS: 25 photos that prove we're all stowaways on a tiny, fragile spaceship we call Earth

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NOW WATCH: A 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg has broken off Antarctica, and scientists say it's one of the largest ever recorded

RANKED: The 10 worst US senators for the environment

Madeleine Sheehan Perkins — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 18:00:00 -0400

In perhaps a reflection of the passionate environmental debate happening across the country, EPA administrator Scott Pruitt plans to pit "red" teams against "blue" teams to debate climate change.

President Donald Trump has pledged to withdraw the US from the Paris agreement, a move which led mayors, governors, leading academics, and some of the biggest businesses in the US to start a movement to remain by the Paris Agreement pledges even if the country won't.

With so much disagreement about environmental policy in the air, many people are turning to their representatives on the issue.

We dug into the League of Conservation Voters' annual scorecard to rank US senators based on their environmental legacies, according to the nonprofit political action organization's "lifetime score" of lawmakers' voting records. The most recent scorecard is from 2016, so new senators who were elected in November weren't included.

Here are the 15 worst senators for the environment, based on their lifetime score from the scorecard:

DON'T MISS: How Pittsburgh embraced a radical environmental movement popping up in conservative towns across America

Theranos is considering renting out its headquarters

Lydia Ramsey — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 17:53:29 -0400

Theranos is considering renting out all or part of its headquarters in Palo Alto, California.

According to a listing by real estate company CBRE, there are four spaces available for lease in the 116,000 square foot facility.

"Theranos continues to focus on effectively managing our resources as we progress towards the commercialization of the miniLab platform. Accordingly, the Company has retained CBRE to explore subleasing options for all or portions of our Palo Alto facility," the company said in a statement. "Manufacturing will continue to be located in the Newark, CA facility."

If Theranos were able to sublease the entire Palo Alto location, the employees located there would likely move to the Newark facility, a Theranos spokeswoman told Business Insider. In January, Theranos laid off 41% of its staff, with 220 remaining.

The building, located in Stanford Research Park was completed in September 2014.

Business Insider first spotted the listing in a tweet from Wall Street Journal reporter John Carreyrou, whose investigation into the company starting in October 2015 placed the company under scrutiny, particularly around the accuracy of its blood test. Eventually, one of the company's lab-testing locations was shut down, and its founder — Elizabeth Holmes — was originally barred for two years from running a clinical lab, later settling with CMS, the government agency responsible for regulating blood-testing labs by agreeing to not own or operate a clinical lab within the next two years.

Until October 2016, Theranos's business model was based around the idea that it ran blood tests using proprietary technology that requires only a small amount of blood. Since then, the company has pivoted to focus solely on the company's miniLab technology.

The news of the possible sublease comes after a series of settlements between Theranos and investors, as well as the state of Arizona.

On April 17, Theranos said that it had settled up with Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, the government agency responsible for regulating blood-testing labs. As part of the settlement, Theranos has to pay $30,000, and the company won't be able to own or operate a clinical lab within the next two years. In return, the CMS is no longer revoking Theranos's CLIA certification, which is needed to run a blood-testing lab.
On April 18, Theranos agreed to pay Arizona $4.65 million to refund anyone who paid to take one of Theranos's blood tests, and will also pay $225,000 to cover civil penalties and attorneys' fees.
And on May 1, Theranos settled two lawsuits with Partner Fund Management, a hedge fund that invested $96.1 million in the company.
The Wall Street Journal reported that Theranos is also close to reaching a settlement with Walgreens. In November, Walgreens filed a $140 million lawsuit against Theranos, accusing Theranos of a breach of contract. Walgreens ended its relationship with Theranos in June 2016. It had operated Theranos Wellness Centers, where people could go have their blood tested in the company's stores.

DON'T MISS: We just got a better idea of how much cash Theranos has left in the bank

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Not getting enough sleep could increase your risk of dementia

Kevin Loria — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:46:00 -0400

Not getting enough sleep doesn't feel good — and could have some scary long-term consequences.

Insufficient or poor-quality sleep has been shown to wreck short term memory, cause weight gain, and increase the risk of diseases ranging from depression to cancer. And according to several newly published studies, there are a number of connections between disrupted sleep and the presence of biological signs and risk factors of Alzheimer's disease.

People with Alzheimer's generally have observable tangles of tau proteins, inflammation in the brain, damaged brain cells, and higher concentrations of beta-amyloid proteins, which make up a plaque associated with the disease.

And these biomarkers are more prevalent in people who regularly sleep poorly. Plus, new research suggests that disrupting sleep during certain parts of the night can quickly raise levels of Alzheimer's-related proteins in the brain and spinal fluid.

How poor sleep changes your brain

Scientists behind a recent study published in the journal Neurology analyzed 101 late-middle-aged adults (the average age was just under 63), and collected spinal fluid samples from each participant. The participants all had some increased risk for Alzheimer's due to their family history and genetic factors, but all were cognitively healthy.

Researchers found that age differences within the group didn't seem to affect levels of Alzheimer's biomarkers. However, the people who reported not sleeping well, having sleep problems, or feeling sleepy during the day had more biomarkers of Alzheimer's disease in their cerebrospinal fluid.

Another study published July 10 in the journal Brain involved 17 healthy volunteers (men and women between 35 and 65 years of age). That's a small sample, but enough to show a biological effect. Researchers had the participants sleep while wearing headphones and monitored their brain activity.

In one sleep session, the volunteers rested normally through the night. But in another session, a tone would wake them and prevent them from entering a slow-wave sleep stage. The morning after each session, researchers collected cerebrospinal fluid using a spinal tap.

After the night with disrupted sleep, the researchers found people had higher levels of beta-amyloid proteins, the proteins that clump together and form the plaque found in Alzheimer's-afflicted brains, in the volunteers' spinal fluid. A week after those disrupted nights, researchers found higher levels of Tau, the tangled proteins also associated with Alzheimer's, in the volunteers' spinal fluid as well. (Tau generally takes longer to show up.)

The cleansing effect of sleep

The researchers behind the study that disrupted volunteers' sleep suggested there may be a nasty cycle at work in the relationship between bad sleep and increased Alzheimer's risk. If disrupted nights cause Alzheimer's biomarker levels to spike, they said, that could further worsen sleep, which could then cause more buildup.

One of the functions of sleep is to wash neurotoxins from the brain, including beta-amyloid proteins, which other research has shown can worsen sleep.

"Because brain cells release amyloid beta during activity, we think if the brain cells can't rest the way they’re supposed to and get that deep sleep, they produce a relative excess of amyloid," Dr. Yo-El Ju of Washington University, an author of that study, told Reuters.

In the study that analyzed poor sleepers, however, it's impossible to say whether poor sleep caused the increase in Alzheimer's markers or whether the fact that these individuals' brains were changing is what caused them to have poor sleep. Both are likely true — not getting enough sleep could increase Alzheimer's risk (as the second study shows), and the factors that lead to Alzheimer's also seem to make it hard to sleep.

Regardless of the mechanisms and levels of risk, the authors of both studies write that improving sleep should be considered a priority. In a commentary published alongside the Neurology study, two doctors — Adam Spira of Johns Hopkins University and Yo-El Ju of Washington University — emphasized the potential benefits of facilitating better sleep.

"Effective interventions are available to treat causes of poor sleep, so identifying and treating sleep disturbances in preclinical [Alzheimer's disease] may be a critical strategy to prevent or delay impending cognitive decline," they wrote.

These results should not be interpreted as a reason to stress about a few bad nights, however.

"I don’t think people should worry about Alzheimer's disease after one bad night," Ju told Reuters." I do think chronic sleep disruption increases the risk of Alzheimer’s disease."

That should be some serious motivation to try to get more sleep.

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NOW WATCH: A sleep doctor reveals why melatonin isn't a sustainable, or safer, sleep aid

Google's DeepMind AI just taught itself to walk

David Anderson — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:16:01 -0400

Google's artificial intelligence company, DeepMind, has developed an AI that has managed to learn how to walk, run, jump, and climb without any prior guidance. The result is as impressive as it is goofy.

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Fears of a 'utility death spiral' could be slowly killing solar power

Leanna Garfield — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 14:04:00 -0400

The growth of rooftop solar power has skyrocketed in recent years. Globally, there are now approximately 305 gigawatts of solar power capacity, up from about 100 gigawatts in 2012.

But solar's proliferation is slowing, partly due to a well-funded lobbying campaign by conventional utility giants. According to a recent New York Times report, several large US utility companies have been working with state politicians nationwide to reverse economic incentives for homeowners to install solar panels.

The utility companies say that rules letting homeowners sell excess power back to the grid — a process known as net metering — are unfair to those who do not want or can't afford their own solar installations. They also argue that renewable energy could be hurting traditional sources, including oil, coal, and natural gas.

Some energy writers have coined this competition from renewables as a "utility death spiral."

Five investor-owned utility companies in Indiana — some of the largest financial contributors to the state's elected officials — have contributed at least $3 million to mostly Republican candidates over the past four elections, according to campaign finance filings. In 2016, the utility industry also gave over $21 million to ballot initiative to ban third-party sales or leasing of solar panels.

Almost every state is now reviewing its solar energy policies, and some, like Hawaii, Nevada, and Arizona have already started to phase out net metering.

In many locations, utility companies bundle distribution costs for electricity, and charge a uniform per-kWh rate for solar power. When this pricing model combines with net metering, solar customers receive a subsidy partially paid by other non-solar customers in their state.

Edison Electric Institute (EEI), an industry organization comprised of the country’s largest investor-owned electric companies, is pushing to buy back solar at lower rates. That means the cost would become higher for homeowners who choose to buy solar power.

"We believe it is important to balance the needs of all customers," EEI spokesperson Jeff Ostermayer told Business Insider. "A fair system means paying private solar customers the same, competitive price we pay for other solar energy, instead of above-market rates that result in higher costs for all customers."

In spite of all this, the solar industry continues to grow (albeit slower than in the past decade). In 2016, the amount of new solar power installed worldwide increased by about 50%, reaching 76 gigawatts. China and US spearheaded the surge in solar — both countries nearly doubled the amount of solar photovoltaic panels they added in 2015. But in 2017, that growth is projected to hit just 2%, this year's Bloomberg New Energy Finance Outlook said.

"While it is true that some utilities perceive rooftop solar as a threat to their business model, rooftop solar is, in fact, thriving in many new markets and is projected to grow dramatically across the country in the years ahead. Most states have strong policies in place that support the adoption of solar, because consumers are demanding access to this form of energy," Abigail Ross Hopper, president and CEO of the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA), told Business Insider.

According to SEIA, the cost of installing solar panels has declined more than 70% since 2010, making it a more attractive as an alternative energy source to homeowners.

David Pomerantz, executive director of the Energy and Policy Institute, a renewable energy advocacy group, believes that the new lobby campaign by utility companies could continue to hurt the growth of solar, especially in the US.

"Utilities are trying to block rooftop solar because it presents an existential threat to their monopoly business model," he said.

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NOW WATCH: A 45-year-long study discovered trends in successful hyper-intelligent children

How smartphone light affects your brain and body

Kevin Loria and Skye Gould — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 13:50:00 -0400

The designers of our smartphones, tablets, and laptop screens have been able to create incredibly powerful lights. These screens glow bright enough to be seen during a sunny day. At night, they're so strong that they've been compared to a "little window" that daylight can peer through.

That's why looking at your phone at night is a terrible idea.

Our bodies naturally follow a cycle that allows us to stay awake and alert during the day and helps us get essential rest at night. But when we look at these screens as we're getting ready to sleep, our brains get confused. Bright light can make the brain think it's time to stop producing melatonin, a hormone that gives your body "time to sleep" cues.

By disrupting melatonin production, smartphone light can disrupt your sleep cycle, almost like an artificially induced jet lag. That makes it harder to fall and stay asleep — which could lead to serious health problems.

To combat this problem, app designers have created programs like f.lux and Apple's Night Shift mode, which adjust the light tones emitted by screens at certain times of day to remove bright blue light from the display. Many users say the orange tint these apps give feels less harsh on the eyes. But while some research indicates that dimmer light may improve sleep, more study is needed on the topic.

Even if such changes do prove to be helpful, experts say that many other things we do with our phones are also not conducive to sleep. If you're trying to get ready for bed and a late night work email pops up, that might wreck your sleep even more than shutting down your melatonin production.

If you can bring yourself to do it, your best bet is to steer clear of screens before you fall asleep. At the very least, try to keep them out of your bed.

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NOW WATCH: How to fix all of your sleep problems with science

Drinking more coffee is associated with a longer life, according to new research

Kevin Loria — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 12:12:00 -0400

There's something truly magical about a cup of coffee. A steaming cup in the morning can help you face the day, a sweating glass of iced coffee will perk you up in the afternoon heat, and a warm mug after dinner helps settle your meal.

Yet people frequently try to limit their coffee consumption for health reasons, fearing negative effects.

Two major studies published July 10 in the journal Annals of Internal Medicine, however, should help assuage those fears.

The studies involved more than 700,000 people and found that the more coffee individuals consumed, the less likely they were to die an early death from a number of diseases including cancer, diabetes, and heart disease.

And for those who don't want to consume more caffeine, don't worry — decaf seems to offer the same health benefits.

More coffee, lower risk of death

For the larger of the two new studies, researchers analyzed data from a nutrition study that tracked more than 520,000 people from 10 European countries for an average of 16.4 years. The more coffee those participants consumed, the lower their risk of death, researchers found.

The top 25% of coffee drinkers in the study had three or more cups a day. Among that group, men were 12% less likely to die early than comparable people who avoided coffee completely. And women who consumed a lot of coffee were 7% less likely to die early.

In addition to lower general risk of early death, researchers found reduced risk of death from diseases of the digestive system and circulatory system. For men, coffee consumption was also associated with a lower risk of suicide.

The second study followed the diet and health habits of 185,855 Americans for just over 16 years and found similar reductions in risk of death — in this case from heart disease, cancer, respiratory disease, stroke, diabetes, and kidney disease. Compared to people who didn't drink coffee at all, people who drank two to three cups per day were 18% less likely to die early. People who drank one cup a day were 12% less likely to die than those who abstained.

This second study was particularly noteworthy because it focused on American populations of different ethnicities, including black, white, Latino, Japanese, and Hawaiian-Americans. Most previous studies on the effects of coffee on longevity have focused on people of European descent.

Causation versus correlation

These studies are observational, meaning they can't establish cause and effect — no one can say based on this data that drinking more coffee will definitely extend your life. The researchers tried to control for factors like diet, obesity, and smoking status, but it's still possible that people who consume coffee are already healthier in some way they didn't control for.

However, this isn't the first research to indicate that coffee may improve your health. In both studies, authors noted that previous research has found coffee consumption to be associated with improvements in liver function, blood sugar levels, and inflammation.

Since decaf coffee was also associated with improved longevity, it's probably not the caffeine that's responsible for these benefits, even if that's the reason most of us drink coffee. In an editorial published alongside the studies, a group of researchers speculated that the benefits of coffee may come from other compounds that are extracted when the beverage is prepared, especially antioxidant polyphenols. (Caffeine may still have some benefits, though.)

Even if we don't know whether coffee causes this increased longevity, these new findings suggest that people shouldn't feel guilty about their coffee consumption. Drinking unlimited amounts of caffeinated coffee could eventually put you at risk, but up until about five cups per day, the researchers say you don't need to worry.

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NOW WATCH: The keys to making the best homemade cold brew

How to feel happier, according to neuroscientists and psychologists

Erin Brodwin, Jessica Orwig and Dina Spector — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 11:00:00 -0400

Feeling a little blue lately? A handful of recent research suggests you're not alone.

Thankfully, there may be something — or several things — you can do about it.

Researchers have known for decades that certain activities make us feel better, and they're just beginning to understand what happens in the brain to boost our mood.

A study published in the journal Nature on July 11 found that when people were given the option of spending money on themselves or another person, those who spent it on someone else had more activity in a brain area linked to the subjective feeling of happiness.

Scroll down to learn why, and to discover 24 other ways to feel happier.

Focus on others instead of yourself.

We've all been there. It's been a bad day and you feel the urge to buy your favorite comfort food or snag a new pair of shoes. However, studies suggest you’ll feel happier if you spend that money on someone else.

The new study in Nature suggests that people feel happier after doing something generous because activity in the brain regions involved in helping others seems to override the activity in the regions linked with personal reward.

A 2008 experiment supports these findings — for that study, volunteers were split into two groups and either splurged on themselves or another person. Those who got something for others were shown to be happier than those who bought something for themselves.

Donating your time can have the same effect. In a recent review of 40 studies done over the last 20 years, researchers found that volunteering was one of the most successful ways to boost psychological health. Volunteering was found to be linked with a reduced risk of depression, a higher amount of overall satisfaction, and even a reduced risk of death from of a physical illness as a consequence of mental distress.

Write down how you're feeling and what you're grateful for.

Keeping tabs on the things you feel lucky to have in your life is a great way to boost your mood.

In a recent study from psychologists at UC Davis, researchers had 3 groups of volunteers keep weekly journals focused on a single topic. One group wrote about events that happened that week, the second group wrote about hassles they experienced, and the last group wrote about things they were grateful for.

Ten weeks later, those in the gratitude-journal group reported feeling more optimistic and more satisfied with their lives than those in the other groups. They also reported fewer physical symptoms of discomfort, from runny noses to headaches.

Even just recording your feelings is a great way to clarify your thoughts, solve problems more efficiently, relieve stress, and more.

A team of psychologists recently studied brain scans of volunteers who wrote about an emotional experience for 20 minutes a day for four sessions. They compared the scans to those of volunteers who wrote down a neutral experience for the same amount of time. The brain scans of the first group showed neural activity in a part of the brain responsible for dampening strong emotional feelings, suggesting that the act of recording their experience calmed them. This same activity was absent in the volunteers who recorded a neutral experience.

Go on a hike or gaze at the stars.

Awe is a powerful (even awesome, you might say) human emotion. A handful of recent studies have found a link between experiencing a sense of awe — like the feeling you get when looking at a starry sky or across a wide open valley — with decreased stressed and higher levels of satisfaction.

People who've recently had an awe-inspiring experience are also more likely to say they feel more curious about the world around them and to act more generously toward others.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

One of Trump's best-sounding proposals to control drug pricing is a dud

Linette Lopez — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 10:18:07 -0400

Last month we got a glimpse at what's inside the Trump administration's draft executive order to control drug pricing, and overall it was a pretty big win for drug companies.

They would be in line to get more power to charge monopoly prices overseas and be allowed to give even fewer discounts to hospitals with poor patients.

Plus, the administration is promising to roll back regulations that pharma has complained about.

All of that sounds great for pharma, so reporters over at ProPublica and The New York Times focused on the one provision that didn't: the idea that drug companies should reimburse healthcare plans for drugs that don't work on patients.

Again, it sounds good for consumers, but as Charles Ornstein at ProPublica and Katie Thomas at The Times pointed out, other countries (specifically Italy) have tried this before. It's called "outcome based" contracting, and it's a dud.

Italian researchers, in fact, called these reimbursements "trifling."

Here's why: Since drug companies already set the prices for drugs and also set what constitutes a good outcome, usually they're prepared for potential reimbursements. Plus, by negotiating these contracts, more insurers are willing to ease restrictions on a company's drug that were put in place because of cost, so these actually get expensive drugs to patients more than they would under our current system.

From ProPublica:

"Dr. Peter B. Bach, director of the Center for Health Policy and Outcomes at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center in New York, is skeptical ...

"The arrangements, he said, carried 'bells and whistles' that made them look good in theory. 'But as long as you control all the contract terms, it can be a lot of optics but no substance,' he said.

"Bach and others say the pharmaceutical industry is using this approach to justify seeking major changes to federal regulations that could benefit them even more — including rolling back a requirement that Medicaid programs for the poor get the lowest drug prices, and another that bars companies from giving kickbacks to health providers. The industry says the changes are needed to allow more flexibility in the type of deals they can offer."

In other words, this is kind of a head fake. Don't take your eyes off the prize — just plain old lowering prices.

For more, head to ProPublica>>

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NOW WATCH: Scientists overlooked a major problem with going to Mars — and they fear it could be a suicide mission

Here's why humidity makes you feel hotter

Kevin Reilly — Tue, 11 Jul 2017 09:04:00 -0400

Ever wondered why weather forecasters give you a "feels like" temperature? Humidity can change how hot you actually feel. Your body uses sweat to cool itself off. However, on humid days, your body doesn't efficiently rid itself of sweat and heat, creating a higher risk of heat stroke.

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Science

Antarctica just shed a 1.1-trillion-ton iceberg — here's where it may float

Where the iceberg may go

The 12 most frightening roads in the world

Alaska's nightmarish Dalton Highway stretches some 400 miles through remote forests, tundras, and over the Yukon River. It concludes at the Arctic Ocean.

The mostly gravel road, constructed as a service road for the Trans-Alaska Pipeline, contains signs warning of steep grades and avalanches. No thanks.

The 108-mile Prithvi Highway offers breathtaking views of the Himalayas and some of Nepal's biggest religious sites — but not without risk.

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An ice block thousands of years in the making

Are humans behind this?

RANKED: The 10 worst US senators for the environment

1. Sen. David Perdue, Republican from Georgia: 0%

1. Sen. Joni Ernst, Republican from Iowa: 0%

1. Sen. Ben Sasse, Republican from Nebraska: 0%

Theranos is considering renting out its headquarters

Not getting enough sleep could increase your risk of dementia

How poor sleep changes your brain

The cleansing effect of sleep

Google's DeepMind AI just taught itself to walk

Fears of a 'utility death spiral' could be slowly killing solar power

How smartphone light affects your brain and body

Drinking more coffee is associated with a longer life, according to new research

More coffee, lower risk of death

Causation versus correlation

How to feel happier, according to neuroscientists and psychologists

Focus on others instead of yourself.

Write down how you're feeling and what you're grateful for.

Go on a hike or gaze at the stars.

One of Trump's best-sounding proposals to control drug pricing is a dud

Here's why humidity makes you feel hotter