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Chicago Tribune
4 days ago
- Climate
- Chicago Tribune
Smoky air from Canadian wildfires envelops Chicago for 3rd day. What does this mean for summer?
Tiny, airborne smoke particles blowing in from Canadian wildfires resisted dispersal from a steady, light rain across the Chicago area Wednesday, concentrating even more Thursday to reach levels unhealthy for the general public. The smoke pushed northeast Illinois into its third day in a row of bad air quality Friday and the state into its first two air pollution action days of the year. Chicago's air quality was ranked the worst in the United States on Thursday, according to Swiss air quality technology company IQAir. At one point during the day, The Washington Post reported, the city had the second-worst air quality among the world's major cities. 'Whatever pollutants were in the air (Wednesday), because of the rain, got suppressed and deposited on the ground. But the wildfires are still happening in the north,' said Ashish Sharma, a professor of atmospheric sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, whose research focuses on climate and air quality modeling. 'It is sending smoke continuously. Rain would have offset the past smoke, but it won't offset the new smoke.' Before the summer even officially begins, Chicagoans have already encountered their fair share of nasty particles in the air. In May, a rare dust storm enveloped the city in agricultural sediment. This week, hazy skies are reminiscent of the intense Canadian wildfires of 2023, which made Chicago the second-most-polluted major city in the country that year. The smoke reaching the Midwest now mostly originates from fires that have been raging northwest of the provincial capital of Winnipeg in Manitoba since mid-May. Some may be wondering — will it be a summer of days spent indoors? Will the current stretch end or will the smoke stay in the area for weeks? 'It's hard to tell,' said Zac Adelman, executive director of the Lake Michigan Air Directors Consortium, an air quality research nonprofit. 'And it's hard to forecast what's gonna happen, you know? I don't want to catastrophize and say this is going to lead into a summer where we're not going to be able to go outside.' On Thursday and Friday, at least, that was the recommendation. The Illinois Environmental Protection Agency urged residents in Cook, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, Grundy, Lake, McHenry and Will counties to limit their time outdoors. By midafternoon Thursday, particulate matter levels in the Chicago area had reached an index of 165 on a scale of 500, which is considered unhealthy for the general public. Friday is expected to be similarly bad, and the EPA extended its air quality alert through the end of the day Friday. Levels between 200 and 300 are 'very unhealthy,' and anything between 300 and 500 is 'hazardous.' Wednesday levels remained solidly between 101 and 150, meaning air quality was unhealthy only for sensitive groups. As climate change intensifies, concerns grow about air quality events that disrupt daily life becoming the norm. Dust storms are mostly linked to farming practices that leave soil uncovered and ready to be blown away. However, when it comes to wildfire smoke, scientists say climate change from human activities is making conditions like drought more common, thus increasing the size, frequency and severity of wildfires. 'What we are seeing is that wildfire season is getting prolonged. It's starting early, and it might end late,' Sharma said. 'So that's of big concern for us. Especially if and when the weather pattern starts stagnating, then we will be trapped with a lot of smoke, especially in the Midwest and Chicago, and the Great Lakes region. That might deteriorate the air quality further.' Wind patterns also add a layer of unpredictability to the reach of bad air from intensifying, longer-lasting wildfires. For instance, in summer 2023, a weather system moving counterclockwise pushed air from wildfires across Quebec and Ontario in eastern Canada toward the Great Lakes. A total of 37 million acres were lost to the fires that year. Last summer, fires in British Columbia and Alberta did not blow particulate matter into the Midwest because jet streams carried that smoke eastward and northward, Sharma said. It was also a less intense wildfire season, with just under 13 million acres burning. In 2025, 6.5 million acres have burned as of Thursday, according to the Canadian Interagency Forest Fire Centre. 'The bottom line is, it depends on the wind flow and the patterns and where the fire started, and so on,' Sharma said. 'It's not that if wildfires are happening a lot, we will be impacted — it depends. Maybe a smaller wildfire in comparison to historical (ones) might be a lot worse for us. Or a large fire, if the plume is not in our direction, might be a lot worse at some other location.' The air directors consortium uses satellite imagery to understand air pollution at all levels of the atmosphere in the Great Lakes region. Most summer days, Adelman said, they can see smoke overhead. 'The real challenge is, how do you predict when it's going to get to the surface?' he said. 'Because there's somewhere in North America that's burning at all times, and it's loading the upper atmosphere with smoke and particles.' Forest fires produce fine particulate matter, but direct human sources like vehicle exhaust and industry emissions also release these particles — known as PM2.5 for being 2.5 micrometers or smaller, about 30 times smaller than the width of a strand of human hair. So baseline levels of pollution can be tamped down by regulations on tailpipe emissions, power plants and factories, and more. Earlier this year, however, President Donald Trump's administration announced it was launching a set of deregulatory actions that included a 'reconsideration' of a decision under former President Joe Biden last year that had tightened annual air quality standards for PM2.5 from 12 to 9 micrograms per cubic meter of air. In February, the Illinois EPA found that the Chicago metropolitan area hadn't met the Biden-era federal air quality standards from 2021 to 2023, the most recent three years of data. Stricter truck pollution rule would prevent 500 deaths a year in Chicago region, study showsPeople most vulnerable to experiencing health effects from PM2.5 pollution levels like Thursday's include those with respiratory or cardiovascular disorders, children, teens and seniors, as well as adults who are active outdoors. People of lower socioeconomic status who live in heavily industrialized zones already burdened by localized pollution are also more vulnerable to adverse health outcomes during widespread events. Symptoms to look out for include wheezing, coughing, a fast heartbeat, fatigue, chest pain and shortness of breath, according to the Illinois Department of Public Health. Initially, PM2.5 may cause burning eyes and a runny nose. But once in the deepest portions of the lungs, it can cross into the bloodstream, messing with blood chemistry and causing heart stoppages. Fine particulate matter has also been linked to premature births, diabetes and even dementia, according to scientists. On action days — which the Illinois EPA calls when air quality is at least unhealthy for sensitive groups for two or more consecutive days — officials also urge residents to limit their contributions to pollution levels. Activities to avoid include driving, idling cars, using gasoline-powered equipment like lawnmowers or leaf blowers outdoors, and smoking, frying or broiling food, burning candles or incense, and using a gas stove indoors. Health officials also recommend conserving energy, using environmentally friendly household and cleaning products, and running a portable air purifier or a central air conditioning system with the fresh air intake closed or set on recirculate. Those who can't avoid outdoor activities can wear an N95 or N100 mask to protect their lungs. The city's Office for Emergency Management and Communications is urging Chicagoans without access to properly ventilated or safe indoor conditions to use public libraries, senior centers, Chicago Park District facilities and the Chicago Cultural Center during hours of operation, or the six community service centers that will be open on Friday from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. These are the Englewood Center at 1140 W. 79th St., the Garfield Center at 10 S. Kedzie Ave., the King Center at 4314 S. Cottage Grove, the North Area Center at 845 W. Wilson Ave., the South Chicago Center at 8650 S. Commercial Ave., and the Trina Davila Center at 4312 W. North Ave. Air quality forecasts are available at Residents can subscribe for free to receive alerts through the website.
Medscape
7 days ago
- Health
- Medscape
Walnuts Up Insulin Response, Cut Gut Permeability in Obesity
Walnut consumption modified the fecal microbiota and metabolome, improved insulin response and reduced gut permeability in adults with obesity, a small study showed. 'Less than 10% of adults are meeting their fiber needs each day, and walnuts are a source of dietary fiber, which helps nourish the gut microbiota,' study coauthor Hannah Hoscher, PhD, associate professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, told Medscape Medical News . Hoscher and her colleagues previously conducted a study on the effects of walnut consumption on the human intestinal microbiota 'and found interesting results,' she said. Among 18 healthy men and women with a mean age of 53 years, 'walnuts enriched intestinal microorganisms, including Roseburia that provide important gut-health promoting attributes, like short-chain fatty acid production. We also saw lower proinflammatory secondary bile acid concentrations in individuals that ate walnuts.' The current study, presented at NUTRITION 2025 in Orlando, Florida, found similar benefits among 30 adults with obesity but without diabetes or gastrointestinal disease. Walnut Halves, Walnut Oil, Corn Oil — Compared The researchers aimed to determine the impact of walnut consumption on the gut microbiome, serum and fecal bile acid profiles, systemic inflammation, and oral glucose tolerance to a mixed-meal challenge. Participants were enrolled in a randomized, controlled, crossover, complete feeding trial with three 3-week conditions, each identical except for walnut halves (WH), walnut oil (WO), or corn oil (CO) in the diet. A 3-week washout separated each condition. 'This was a fully controlled dietary feeding intervention,' Hoscher said. 'We provided their breakfast, lunch, snacks and dinners — all of their foods and beverages during the three dietary intervention periods that lasted for 3 weeks each. Their base diet consisted of typical American foods that you would find in a grocery store in central Illinois.' Fecal samples were collected on days 18-20. On day 20, participants underwent a 6-hour mixed-meal tolerance test (75 g glucose + treatment) with a fasting blood draw followed by blood sampling every 30 minutes. The fecal microbiome and microbiota were assessed using metagenomic and amplicon sequencing, respectively. Fecal microbial metabolites were quantified using gas chromatography-mass spectrometry. Blood glucose, insulin, and inflammatory biomarkers (interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-alpha, C-reactive protein, and lipopolysaccharide-binding protein) were quantified. Fecal and circulating bile acids were measured via liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry. Gut permeability was assessed by quantifying 24-hour urinary excretion of orally ingested sucralose and erythritol on day 21. Linear mixed-effects models and repeated measures ANOVA were used for the statistical analysis. The team found that Roseburia spp were greatest following WH (3.9%) vs WO (1.6) and CO (1.9); Lachnospiraceae UCG-001 and UCG-004 were also greatest with WH vs WO and CO. WH fecal isobutyrate concentrations (5.41 µmol/g) were lower than WO (7.17 µmol/g) and CO (7.77). Similarly, fecal isovalerate concentrations were lowest with WH (7.84 µmol/g) vs WO (10.3µmol/g) and CO (11.6 µmol/g). In contrast, indoles were highest in WH (36.8 µmol/g) vs WO (6.78 µmol/g) and CO (8.67µmol/g). No differences in glucose concentrations were seen among groups. The 2-hour area under the curve (AUC) for insulin was lower with WH (469 µIU/mL/min) and WO (494) vs CO (604 µIU/mL/min). The 4-hour AUC for glycolithocholic acid was lower with WH vs WO and CO. Furthermore, sucralose recovery was lowest following WH (10.5) vs WO (14.3) and CO (14.6). 'Our current efforts are focused on understanding connections between plasma bile acids and glycemic control (ie, blood glucose and insulin concentrations),' Hoscher said. 'We are also interested in studying individualized or personalized responses, since people had different magnitudes of responses.' In addition, she said, 'as the gut microbiome is one of the factors that can underpin the physiological response to the diet, we are interested in determining if there are microbial signatures that are predictive of glycemic control.' Because the research is still in the early stages, at this point, Hoscher simply encourages people to eat a variety of fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes and nuts to meet their daily fiber recommendations and support their gut microbiome. This study was funded by a USDA NIFA grant. No competing interests were reported.
NZ Herald
25-05-2025
- General
- NZ Herald
81 years after he died in World War II, a young aviator goes home
'The thought of watching his casket go in where my mom and her parents are … it's going to be something,' Kelly's niece, Diane Christie, said. 'We're all going to be a big pile of mush. 'For somebody that none of us knew,' she said. The wreckage was found in 2017 by a Project Recover team, which used the family's extensive research to zero in on the site. In 2023, elite Navy divers descended in a pressurised diving bell and over several weeks recovered Kelly's remains with those of three other members of the B-24's 11-man crew. The plane was in 225 feet of water, said Lieutenant Commander Ted Kinney, the Navy's officer in charge. The men wore dive suits heated with hot water, and breathed air that was a mixture of oxygen and helium. He said he participated in one of the dives and found a piece of a human skull as he went through the wreckage. 'It was the first piece of osseous material that we discovered,' he said. 'So we knew we were on the right spot, and we knew that we were going to be able to find people and bring them home,' he said in a telephone interview Tuesday. 'It was incredibly humbling,' he said. Kelly was the plane's bombardier. The divers recovered a ring that said 'bombardier' on it, and experts are certain it was Kelly's. Also recovered were his dog tags and the dog tags of two other crewmen. 'I'm just feeling a lot of gratitude right now,' said Scott Althaus, Kelly's first cousin once removed and a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He headed the family's quest to learn the details of Kelly's fate and did months of research on the project. 'I'm sure I will be flooded with emotions,' he said of the burial in a recent telephone interview. 'How can it be that our family is living what should be an impossible story? What made it possible was many people along the way stopping and remembering.' Another niece, Kathy Borst, said: 'I can't even begin to believe that it's truly happening.' 'Only four sets out of 11 of the remains were found,' she said in a recent telephone interview. 'What were the odds that we were going to be one of them?' Advertise with NZME. The project also produced 'hard moments,' she said. During a Government briefing about the identification, one expert showed the family an image of a crack in Kelly's skull where his head had struck a part of the plane as it crashed. 'I start visualising, 'Oh, this is what happened when my uncle died,'' she said. 'It was very, very, very painful.' 'I'm really glad my mom was not alive' she said. (Borst's mother was Kelly's sister.) 'I don't think that would have made this a worthwhile thing for her.' Now they can rest together, she said: 'They couldn't be reconnected ever in life, but they could be lying in the same ground.' Kelly's remains arrived Friday at the San Jose Mineta International Airport from the DPAA's laboratory in Hawaii, where they were officially identified via DNA in November. The plane was greeted by relatives, an honour guard and a water salute from airport fire equipment. He is to be buried in St Michael's cemetery in Livermore, about 40 miles east of San Francisco, after a religious service at St Michael's Catholic Church. It's the same church where a requiem Mass was said for him after he was declared dead in 1944, according to his family and an old newspaper report. Kelly's B-24 was nicknamed 'Heaven Can Wait'. (The name probably came from the title of a 1943 movie starring the actor Don Ameche.) Painted on the nose was a racy image of a woman with angel's wings. On March 11, 1944, the plane was shot down during a bombing mission off the north coast of the island of New Guinea, just north of Australia. A crewman on another plane saw 'Heaven Can Wait' catch fire. Three men jumped or fell out. The tail section broke off. The bomber plunged into water and sank near a remote bay off the Bismarck Sea in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. There were no survivors. The 11 men on board were declared killed in action, and their bodies were ruled unrecoverable. Four months earlier, Kelly and three of his buddies had attended a Thanksgiving dinner for 23 people at his parents' home on South L St in Livermore. On a lighthearted guest register the four signed in as crewmen on a 'Big Ass Bird'. After that Thanksgiving, Kelly's family never saw him again, his relatives said. But two weeks after his death, they got a letter addressed 'Dearest Mom, Dad & Betty'. He had written it two days before his final mission. He talked about sleeping late, getting cigarettes and ice cream, and watching movies at his base. There was no word about combat. 'Give my love to everyone & please be happy & take care of yourselves,' he wrote. 'All my love always, your loving son, Tom.' Kelly's two nieces and nephew, Tom Borst, said they knew little about him while growing up. Christie said they knew only that he hadn't come home from the war. She knew that their mother, his sister, hated the song 'I'll be home for Christmas,' because Kelly had hoped to be home by Christmas 1944. When they visited their grandparents' house, 'we'd go into his bedroom', she said. 'It was a little bit of a shrine. And we all remember it … I can see it vividly. It was always a little bit dark.' Kathy Borst said she remembered visiting the cemetery 'most Memorial Days of my childhood'. She said she was too young to know why. In one of his final letters home, Kelly told his family: 'I don't want you to feel sorry for me. I'm just telling you to appreciate what you have … The men fighting here for everyone, they're doing it for your freedom.'
Yahoo
15-05-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
Grad student discovers clawed creature tangled near WA lake. It's a new species
A graduate student came across a reddish-brown creature with claws that was tangled up in fishing line at a Washington lake — and it turned out to be a new species. Its scientific name is Pacifastacus okanaganensis, but it's known commonly as the Okanagan crayfish. A crayfish is a kind of crustacean, like a crab or lobster. The new species identification was shared in a May 8 study in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. The graduate student, Eric Larson, has since graduated and is now an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He's the lead author of the study, which also documents another new crayfish species in Oregon. A method called genome skimming was used in identifying the new species. The Okanagan crayfish is found in north central Washington and south central British Columbia, Canada, researchers said. It's 'olive brown to brick red,' with a shell, claws and a pair of tubercles that extend from its head, among other features, according to researchers. Its name comes 'from an Okanagan-Salish language place name' and acknowledges its distribution 'throughout the Okanagan and Thompson plateaus and Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, as well as Okanogan County, Washington,' researchers said. Thousands of new species are found each year. Here are three of our most recent eye-catching stories. →'Large' creature with black eyes found at mine and discovered as new species →'Cryptic' creatures seen 'sunning themselves' in Canada. They're a new species →4-foot-long island predator found 'enveloping' an attacker. It's a new species Want to read more? Check out our stories here. Multiple specimens were analyzed as part of the study. Larson, who's been researching crayfish and similar creatures for years, including when he was a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle more than a decade ago, recalls that first Okanagan crayfish he came across — the one tangled in fishing line. Larson was in the middle of his doctoral studies, and a colleague from Japan, Nisikawa Usio — also an author on the study — shared that he'd come across an unusual crayfish 'up the mountain from Spokane, Washington,' Larson told McClatchy News in a phone interview. Usio encouraged Larson to take a look. Larson did just that. He liked to hike and camp, and in his free time, he'd 'drive over the mountains and look for this animal,' he said. He found it on the bank of a lake in the Okanogan-Omak area of Washington. When he saw it, he knew it was what he was looking for. To Larson, crayfish are fascinating, but 'I think people can misjudge their diversity,' he said. There are hundreds of species globally, and they differ 'in their habitat associations, how they interact with their food web (and) how abundant they might be,' Larson said. That means they're not interchangeable and moving them around can have ripple effects, he said. Identifying the new species is meaningful, he said, including because 'we can't really manage or conserve these animals if we don't know they exist.' The research team included Usio, plus Cathryn L. Abbott, Scott R. Gilmore, Caren C. Helbing, Mark Louie D. Lopez, Hugh Macintosh, Liane M. Stenhouse and Bronwyn W. Williams. Black-eyed mountain creature found under debris in Vietnam. It's a new species Endangered seal gained 100 pounds in 'remarkable recovery.' See him waddle home Baby baboon is first born at California zoo since 2019. See Defari snuggle mom
Miami Herald
15-05-2025
- Science
- Miami Herald
Grad student discovers clawed creature tangled near WA lake. It's a new species
A graduate student came across a reddish-brown creature with claws that was tangled up in fishing line at a Washington lake — and it turned out to be a new species. Its scientific name is Pacifastacus okanaganensis, but it's known commonly as the Okanagan crayfish. A crayfish is a kind of crustacean, like a crab or lobster. The new species identification was shared in a May 8 study in the peer-reviewed journal Zootaxa. The graduate student, Eric Larson, has since graduated and is now an associate professor in the Department of Natural Resources and Environmental Sciences at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He's the lead author of the study, which also documents another new crayfish species in Oregon. A method called genome skimming was used in identifying the new species. The Okanagan crayfish is found in north central Washington and south central British Columbia, Canada, researchers said. It's 'olive brown to brick red,' with a shell, claws and a pair of tubercles that extend from its head, among other features, according to researchers. Its name comes 'from an Okanagan-Salish language place name' and acknowledges its distribution 'throughout the Okanagan and Thompson plateaus and Okanagan Lake, British Columbia, as well as Okanogan County, Washington,' researchers said. Multiple specimens were analyzed as part of the study. Larson, who's been researching crayfish and similar creatures for years, including when he was a graduate student at the University of Washington in Seattle more than a decade ago, recalls that first Okanagan crayfish he came across — the one tangled in fishing line. Larson was in the middle of his doctoral studies, and a colleague from Japan, Nisikawa Usio — also an author on the study — shared that he'd come across an unusual crayfish 'up the mountain from Spokane, Washington,' Larson told McClatchy News in a phone interview. Usio encouraged Larson to take a look. Larson did just that. He liked to hike and camp, and in his free time, he'd 'drive over the mountains and look for this animal,' he said. He found it on the bank of a lake in the Okanogan-Omak area of Washington. When he saw it, he knew it was what he was looking for. To Larson, crayfish are fascinating, but 'I think people can misjudge their diversity,' he said. There are hundreds of species globally, and they differ 'in their habitat associations, how they interact with their food web (and) how abundant they might be,' Larson said. That means they're not interchangeable and moving them around can have ripple effects, he said. Identifying the new species is meaningful, he said, including because 'we can't really manage or conserve these animals if we don't know they exist.' The research team included Usio, plus Cathryn L. Abbott, Scott R. Gilmore, Caren C. Helbing, Mark Louie D. Lopez, Hugh Macintosh, Liane M. Stenhouse and Bronwyn W. Williams.
