Latest news with #developedcountries
Washington Post
24-07-2025
- General
- Washington Post
The US fertility rate reached a new low in 2024, CDC data shows
NEW YORK — The fertility rate in the U.S. dropped to an all-time low in 2024 with less than 1.6 kids per woman, new federal data released Thursday shows. The U.S. was once among only a few developed countries with a rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace itself — about 2.1 kids per woman. But it has been sliding in America for close to two decades as more women are waiting longer to have children or never taking that step at all.
Medical News Today
26-06-2025
- Health
- Medical News Today
Instant coffee tied to almost sevenfold higher risk of vision problems, study finds
About 200 million people around the world are living with the vision loss condition age-related macular degeneration (AMD).Of the two types of AMD, most people have dry research shows there are several risk factors for AMD, including nonmodifiable factors such as genetics, and modifiable ones like eating a healthy diet. A new study has found that a combination of genetics and drinking instant coffee may increase a person's risk of developing dry AMD. Researchers estimate that about 200 million people around the world are living with age-related macular degeneration (AMD) — an eye condition impacting a person's central vision, causing blurriness or other vision the two types of AMD, most people have dry AMD, where damage to the eye's macula — an area located in the back of the retina — happens naturally with age. Wet AMD occurs when abnormal blood vessels grow in the back of the eye, harming the are several risk factors for AMD. Some of these risk factors are not changeable, such as age and genetics. Others are modifiable risk factors, such as smoking, weight, exercise levels, and following a healthy diet that is high in antioxidants like lutein and zeaxanthin, minerals like zinc, vitamins C and E, and omega-3 fatty acids could help lower the risk for AMD.'AMD is a leading cause of vision loss among the elderly in developed countries,' Siwei Liu, MD, a researcher in the Department of Ophthalmology for Shiyan Taihe Hospital at Hubei University of Medicine in China, told Medical News Today.'As there is currently no cure, identifying new modifiable factors is crucial for slowing disease progression, preserving vision, and improving patients' quality of life,' Liu is the lead author of a new study published in the journal Food Science & Nutrition, which has found that a combination of genetics and drinking instant coffee may increase a person's risk of developing dry AMD. How are coffee and genetics linked to macular degeneration?For this study, researchers first obtained coffee consumption data for more than 500,000 participants from the UK Biobank genome-wide association studies (GWAS) summary statistics. Scientists broke participants into decaffeinated, ground, and instant coffee consumption groups. Scientists also obtained both dry and wet AMD data for adults 50 and over from the Finngen GWAS dataset.'Coffee is one of the most widely consumed beverages worldwide and is rich in polyphenols and antioxidants that may offer neuroprotective effects,' Liu explained.'At the same time, growing evidence shows that genetics influence dietary preferences. Studying the genetic predisposition to coffee consumption and its relationship with AMD risk may help reveal potential causal links between diet and eye diseases,' the study author coffee may increase dry AMD risk sevenfoldResearchers used the collected data and a variety of methods to determine their study's findings, including mendelian randomization and linkage disequilibrium score regression (LDSC) to evaluate any genetic correlations. At the study's conclusion, researchers identified an overlap between a person's genetic disposition towards drinking instant coffee and their risk for dry AMD. Additionally, within this genetic correlation, scientists found that drinking instant coffee, compared to other types of coffee consumption, increased dry AMD risk by about sevenfold. 'This genetic overlap suggests that there may be shared biological pathways or metabolic mechanisms connecting the preference for instant coffee with the risk of developing dry AMD,' Liu said. 'It provides new insight into AMD pathogenesis and offers a potential direction for personalized prevention strategies, such as gene-informed lifestyle interventions.'Researchers stated they did not find any association between coffee consumption and wet AMD risk. For the next steps in this research, Liu said she and her team plan to validate the association in independent populations and conduct functional studies to explore whether the metabolic pathways linked to instant coffee consumption are directly involved in AMD pathophysiology. 'We also aim to perform longitudinal cohort analyses to clarify the causal relationship between coffee intake and AMD progression,' Liu added. Too soon to make assumptions about instant coffeeMNT had the opportunity to speak with David I. Geffen, OD, FAAO, director of optometric and refractive services at the Gordon Schanzlin New Vision in La Jolla, CA, about this study. 'This study finds an interesting association with instant coffee and AMD,' Geffen, who was not involved in the research, commented. 'With our population living longer, AMD is one of the leading disabilities in the senior population. Any change in lifestyle to minimize this risk is well worth exploring.' 'With the large increase in AMD seen in [the United States] it is important to continue with vital research in this area,' he added. 'The costs associated with caring and treating AMD patients it is worthwhile to find ways to minimize the risk associated with this disease.'Geffen said that while he found this research interesting, he would need to see a more direct association before he would tell patients not to drink instant coffee. He explained that:'Questions like how much instant were being consumed by those individuals with AMD. Also, is social economic class associated with this? Is there some lifestyle associated with the risk in these individuals? This is way too early to make large assumptions about instant coffee drinking.' More evidence on the health risks of processed foodsMNT also spoke with Benjamin Bert, MD, a board-certified ophthalmologist at MemorialCare Orange Coast Medical Center in Fountain Valley, CA, about this research, who shared that it fascinated him in two different ways. 'First the study demonstrates one of the future directions of medicine that we have been hearing about: directing care based off of someone's specific DNA risk profile,' Bert, who was not involved in the research, explained. 'In this study they found that people have a higher risk of dry AMD with certain genetic markers and consumption of instant coffee.''Which brings the second fascinating part of the study, food as medicine,' he continued.'More and more we are realizing how our food and drink choices can impact our overall health. This study once again points to the dangers of highly processed foods, like dehydrated instant coffee, compared to its more natural form of brewed coffee, which had no added risks.' – Benjamin Bert, MD'With additional research, it would be beneficial to know other foods that could be risks for these patients,' Bert added. 'Is instant coffee the only food risk? Does the conclusion of this study apply to all highly processed foods?'
Forbes
17-06-2025
- Business
- Forbes
Defying Categories: Money, Media And More
Sometimes accessibility means solving a specific problem with a specific solution (a running prosthetic, for example). But some require changes to systems and process. How can startups geared toward disabled innovation get connected to capital, and not just in developed countries? What's the best way to support disabled U.S. veterans with the often unique services they deserve? Can disabled people become more involved in product and service design? And how can journalists learn how to cover disability issues with respect and nuance? The below members of the Accessibility 100 defy categorization, but their impact remains undeniable. Courtesy of Diego Mariscal Disabled entrepreneurs face particular challenges getting funding. "Incubators don't have materials in braille and don't have sign language interpreters," says Diego Mariscal, CEO of 2Gether-International, which has helped 700 disabled founders raise $80 million in funds. "We've had a number of investors tell our entrepreneurs, 'Hey, you should not disclose that you have a disability, because it's going to harm you in your process of fundraising money.'" Mariscal, who has cerebral palsy, sits on the SEC's Small Business Advisory Committee, where he advocates for programs that support disabled entrepreneurs similar to those for women and underrepresented minorities. 2Gether plans to soon launch one of the first global venture funds for disabled founders. "We have to be resilient, creative, tenacious as a way of surviving a world that is not built to fit our needs," Mariscal says. "Bill Gates and other famous entrepreneurs, they've publicly disclosed that they have a disability. But that tends to happen after they become rich and famous." Some veterans' more visible injuries (amputations and paralysis, to name two) require more typical accessibility solutions—yet their emotional wounds, leading to horrifyingly high suicide rates, are more hidden and in need of unique pathways to recovery. America's Warrior Partnership helps veterans with all types of disabilities readjust to the lives they left, often by coordinating with local nonprofits to fill the gaps in Veterans Administration services and reconnect veterans with their communities. The organization says it has worked with 7,000 disabled veterans over the last six years none of them has taken their lives by suicide. 'It's more than ramps,' says Sherman Gillums, a member of the organization's advisory board. 'It's how you make people feel like they've begun the journey of getting back into society.' Courtesy of Bernard Chiira In Africa, support for disability-focused organizations is a wildly varied patchwork. Their founders rely on Bernard Chiira and his Assistive Technologies for Disabilities Trust (AT4D) for instruction, funding and advocacy. AT4D, and the accelerator project that launched it, have led the acceleration and education of startup founders in assistive tech for six years, distributing more than $500,000 to 74 startups, providing online training for founders, beginning a series of 80 university innovation competitions, and now spinning up a $10 million fund for early-stage African innovators. AT4D has funded companies to create electric wheelchairs from recycled components; embed cameras, navigation and haptic tech in headphones; and produce hearing aids with solar-powered recharging cases. The hearing aids have been distributed to 40,000 people, mostly children via UNICEF. "Africa is now building many new cities in Kenya," Chiira says. "We are hoping that the technologies we are nurturing will power these future cities." They're called 'inspiration porn'—media profiles of disabled people that reek of woe and the underlying notion: 'if this poor, tragedy-burdened person can survive adversity, you can too!' (Complete with elegiac music in the background.) The Disability Culture Lab strives to change such narratives from pitiable to dignified by advising journalists on portraying disabled mindsets, pitching pieces involving disability issues, hiring disabled journalists to tell stories more authentically, and connecting journalists to experts. 'So much coverage is pity, inspiration and sad stories, and bad storytelling leads to bad policy,' says Galblum Haigh, the Disability Culture Lab's founder and executive director. 'Our lives are like everyone's—messy, joyful, and we don't fit in a box. Our stories are just as diverse and complex as the American experience.' Two other organizations, the Disabled Journalists Association and Arizona State's National Center on Disability and Journalism, also work on improving media coverage of disabled people and issues. In the Accessibility space, you don't just need a good ideayou have to convince skeptical (even ignorant) investors to give it a chance. Enter Regina Kline, the Founder and Managing Partner of Enable Ventures, a venture fund that aims to marry disability impact with competitive financial returns. 'In a moment in which there are some real existential questions about the systems that govern the lives of people with disabilities, there's capital at the table and a rampant curve of new innovations,' says Kline, a former civil rights lawyer turned venture capitalist. Perhaps most significant of Enable's investments has been in Be My Eyes, the software inside the Ray-Ban Meta glasses that allows blind and low-vision people to navigate terrain from city streets to hiking trails (itself a member of the Accessibility 100). Other investments include companies that are involved in live captioning and others assisting disabled people in securing government benefits, and bionic limb sleeves that can provide targeted electrical stimulation to impaired muscles. The goal, Kline says, is to 'find the best ideas in the world, layer in an institutional approach to investing, and make sure they can scale to serve millions of people and reach broader markets.' Dozens of countries have assistive technology organizations that pursue devices and software for residents with disabilities. But these groups had no worldwide voice until the Global Alliance of Assistive Technology Organizations was created in 2019. Representing more than 20,000 members, GAATO is now an international source of research and discussion worldwide, helping the World Health Organization and UNICEF with major research on needs and opportunities, including a recent WHO report involving 330,000 families in 32 countries. "Sooner or later, everyone needs assistive technology," says Evert Jan Hoogerwerf, GAATO secretary general. Three priorities now: helping countries in crisis, including Ukraine; determining how to best distribute assistive tech; and urging countries to improve access to digital advances. As GAATO president Luc de Witte says: "This collective is working on really global issues, and on the other hand, supporting professionals and new organizations to establish themselves, to strengthen themselves." Courtesy of Sandy Lacey Inventors have ideas. People with disabilities have first-hand expertise. And investors have money. The Howe Innovation Center, at the Perkins School for the Blind outside Boston, connects those three groups so they can collaborate on designing products and services that truly serve the disabled community, and then make them actually exist. The organization maintains a database of 2,500 startups—young and scrappy companies, not the behemoths—to create a bustling ecosystem. One example being worked on now is to create the first at-home pregnancy test for the blind so they don't have to ask another person to read it; another became a robotic hand that deaf and blind people put their fingers on to communicate with the world. 'What we want to do is to source 100 innovation challenges to the disability community where they vote, and then we make that available to every MBA program, any AI-for-good class, any social enterprise class, or just straight-up tech-entrepreneurship class,' says Sandy Lacey, Howe's executive director. 'They can look at that list and say, 'How might I be able to solve this problem?' rather than widgets in search of a market.' How do you test products that claim to make a wheelchair or prosthetic user's home more navigable? Rather than evaluate technology solely in a lab, you build your own model home and test the products under real-life conditions with actual wheelchair users doing everyday tasks, from reaching into kitchen cabinets to using bathtubs. That's the philosophy of the Kite Research Institute in Toronto, where hundreds of 'next-new-thing!' products of all types and uses are put through the ringer by the people they're actually designed for (as well as more than 200 scientists and graduate students) to see if they work effectively and safely. They test the friction on bottoms of walkers just as one would shoes and even tires, check wall-mounted grab bars that might fail under conditions like twisting falls, and assess new airtight plastic to make food easier to unwrap with one hand. When something hits the market, chances are good it's been through the Kite Research Institutes protocols. When Asuncion—currently Head of Accessibility Engineering Evangelism at LinkedIn—co-founded Global Accessibility Awareness Day with web developer Joe Devon in 2012, it could have become just another enter-cause-here day. But the third Thursday in May now catalyzes companies worldwide to hold seminars, trainings, contests and more to confront challenges in digital accessibility—effects of which extend well beyond that date. Asuncion, who is blind, himself has become one of the most impactful faces of the accessibility movement. '[Without] what he and Joe built, would companies large and small hold events and everything every year, to educate and propagate the importance of accessibility? I don't know,' says Fred Moltz, Chief Accessibility Officer at Verizon. 'These are folks who aren't like, 'Forget blind people,' it's just that they don't know, and GAAD helps them know.' LinkedIn also stands out for leveraging its massive employment data warehouse for studies on disabled workforces, which have evidenced promotion lags and other patterns for people with disabilities. Courtesy of Victor Calise When Walmart hired Calise as 'Director, Global Accessibility Center of Excellence and Belonging,' they hired an accessibility force with a reputation even larger than his title. From 2012 to 2000 he served as the commissioner of New York City Mayor's Office for People with Disabilities under three administrations, spearheading efforts that improved the city's subways and buses, building codes, website, parks, emergency response and countless other aspects of city life for the disabled. (Thanks to Calise, New York is the only city in the U.S. where rideshare companies like Uber must provide accessible vehicles.) 'I've always started with no—people always told me no,' says Calise, a former sled hockey Paralympian. 'So I had to find how they'd say yes.' He has brought that mindset to Walmart, whose website now has a dedicated section for accessibility-related items ranging from mobility aids to sports equipment. All stores have a dedicated time period for sensorially sensitive shoppers to enjoy no music and lowered lights. If your government wants its civic project financed by the World Bank—as communities around the world do to the tune of $117.5 billion a year—it must report on whether and how it will address accessibility. And when that plan is filed, Charlotte Vuyiswa McClain-Nhlapo, the World Bank's Global Disability Advisor, sees it through. On one African field visit, a school proudly showed off bathrooms and ramps it said were accessible to people in wheelchairs—but bathroom doors opened inward into the stalls, and the pretty tiled ramps were steep and slippery from rain, had no grab bars, and ended in sand. "I've seen too many accessibility features that are in fact not accessible," says Porrero, a former civil rights lawyer and a wheelchair user herself. "We often hear the clients say, 'But there are no children with disabilities, so why would we build a school that's accessible?' Well, you're not seeing children with disabilities because your school is not accessible. It becomes a bit of a vicious cycle."
