Latest news with #scientificresearch
Zawya
a day ago
- Business
- Zawya
Ambassador Yin Chengwu attended Liberia Technology Summit 2025
On July 21, Ambassador Yin Chengwu attended the Liberia Technology Summit 2025 and delivered a speech. The event was also attended by Hon. Haja Mamaka Bility, Acting Minister of States, Hon. Augustine K. Ngafuan, Minister of Finance and Development Planning, Hon. Sekou M. Kromah, Minister of Post and Telecommunications. Representatives from relevant UN agencies and diplomatic missions in Liberia. Yin highlighted the outcomes of the Ministerial Meeting of Coordinators on the Implementation of the Follow-up Actions of the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation and China's achievements in science and technology. He pointed out that China will establish a global scientific research fund and increase science and technology assistance to developing countries, making technological progress benefits all humanity. He expressed China is willing to strengthen scientific and technological innovation cooperation with Liberia, so as to make it a new engine of China-Liberia strategic partnership. Distributed by APO Group on behalf of Embassy of the People's Republic of China in the Republic of Liberia.
Daily Mail
a day ago
- Health
- Daily Mail
Experts reveal exactly how long you need to give up alcohol to see health benefits
Nearly half of Americans pledged they were going to drink less alcohol in 2025. Alcohol has many negative effects on our health, including short-term impacts such as headaches, anxiety and dehydration, to long-term effects like cancer. The World Health Organization warns that no level of alcohol consumption is safe for health and it is one of the leading preventable causes of death in the US, behind tobacco. Currently, alcohol guidelines in the US are no more than one daily drink or 7 weekly drinks for women and no more than two daily drinks or 14 weekly drinks for men. But abstaining from alcohol - even for a few days - can bring various physical and mental health benefits. If you are thinking about taking time off alcohol, you'll find many quick wins and long-term gains for your health. How long will you have to wait to feel the benefits? Experts have compiled a timeline – based on scientific research – that shows what you might feel in the first days, weeks, months and years after going sober. Some benefits start immediately, so every day without alcohol is a win for your health. After one day Alcohol takes around 24 hours to completely leave your body, so you may start noticing improvements after just one day. Alcohol makes you need to urinate more often, causing dehydration. But your body can absorb a glass of water almost immediately, so once alcohol is out of your system, alcohol dehydration is reduced, improving digestion, brain function and energy levels. Alcohol also reduces the liver's ability to regulate blood sugar. Once alcohol leaves the system, blood sugar begins to normalize. If you are a daily drinker you may feel a bit worse to start with while your body adjusts to not having alcohol in its system all the time. You may initially notice disrupted sleep, mood changes, sweating or tremors. Most symptoms usually resolve in about a week without alcohol. After one week Even though alcohol can make you feel sleepy at first, it disrupts your sleep cycle. By the end of an alcohol-free week, you may notice you are more energetic in the mornings as a result of getting better quality sleep. As the body's filter, the liver does much of the heavy lifting in processing alcohol and can be easily damaged even with moderate drinking. The liver is important for cleaning blood, processing nutrients and producing bile that helps with digestion. But it can also regenerate quickly. If you have only mild damage in the liver, seven days may be enough to reduce liver fat and heal mild scarring and tissue damage. Even small amounts of alcohol can impair brain functioning. So quitting can help improve brain health within a few days in light to moderate drinkers and within a month even for very heavy dependent drinkers. After one month Alcohol can make managing mood harder and worsen symptoms of anxiety and depression. After a few weeks, most people start to feel better. Even very heavy drinkers report better mood after one to two months. As your sleep and mood improve you may also notice more energy and greater wellbeing. After a month of abstinence regular drinkers also report feeling more confident about making changes to how they drink. You may lose weight and body fat. Alcohol can trigger hunger reward systems, making us overeat or choose less healthy foods when drinking. Even your skin will thank you. Alcohol can make you look older through dehydration and inflammation, which can be reversed when you quit. Alcohol irritates the gut and disrupts normal stomach functioning, causing bloating, indigestion, heartburn and diarrhea. These symptoms usually start to resolve within four weeks. One month of abstinence, insulin resistance – which can lead to high blood sugar – significantly reduces by 25 percent. Blood pressure also reduces (by six percent) and cancer-related growth factors declines, lowering your risk of cancer. After six months The liver starts to repair within weeks. For moderate drinkers, damage to your liver could be fully reversed by six months. At this point, even heavy drinkers may notice they're better at fighting infections and feel healthier overall. After one year or more Alcohol contributes to or causes a large number of chronic diseases, including heart disease, stroke, type 2 diabetes, and seven different types of cancer, as well as mental health issues. All of these risks can be reduced by quitting or cutting back on alcohol. Alcohol increases blood pressure. High blood pressure (hypertension) is the top risk factor for death in the world. A small 2mmHg increase in blood pressure above the normal range (120mmHG) increases death from stroke by 10 percent and from coronary artery disease by seven percent. Cutting back on alcohol to less than two drinks a day can reduce blood pressure significantly, reducing risk of stroke and heart disease. Reducing blood pressure also reduces risk of kidney disease, eye problems and even erectile dysfunction. With sustained abstinence, your risk of getting any type of cancer drops. One study looked at cancer risk for more than 4 million adults over three to seven years and found the risk of alcohol-related cancer dropped by 4 percent, even for light drinkers who quit. Reducing from heavy to moderate drinking reduced alcohol-related cancer risk by nine percent. This article is adapted from The Conversation, a nonprofit news organization dedicated to sharing the knowledge of experts. It was written by Nicole Lee, an adjunct professor at the National Drug Research Institute at Curtin University, and Katinka van de Ven, an alcohol and other drug specialist at the University of New South Wales Sydney. The Conversation Privacy Policy One screening tool used widely by medical professionals is the AUDIT (Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Tests). Developed in collaboration with the World Health Organisation, the 10-question test is considered to be the gold standard in helping to determine if someone has alcohol abuse problems. The test has been reproduced here with permission from the WHO. To complete it, answer each question and note down the corresponding score. YOUR SCORE: 0-7: You are within the sensible drinking range and have a low risk of alcohol-related problems. Over 8: Indicate harmful or hazardous drinking. 8-15: Medium level of risk. Drinking at your current level puts you at risk of developing problems with your health and life in general, such as work and relationships. Consider cutting down (see below for tips). 16-19: Higher risk of complications from alcohol. Cutting back on your own may be difficult at this level, as you may be dependent, so you may need professional help from your GP and/or a counsellor. 20 and over: Possible dependence. Your drinking is already causing you problems, and you could very well be dependent. You should definitely consider stopping gradually or at least reduce your drinking. You should seek professional help to ascertain the level of your dependence and the safest way to withdraw from alcohol. Severe dependence may need medically assisted withdrawal, or detox, in a hospital or a specialist clinic. This is due to the likelihood of severe alcohol withdrawal symptoms in the first 48 hours needing specialist treatment.
WIRED
2 days ago
- Business
- WIRED
EPA Employees Still in the Dark as Agency Dismantles Scientific Research Office
Jul 21, 2025 5:26 PM As the EPA moves to shut down the Office of Research and Development, leadership is unable to answer questions as basic as when it will close and how many will lose their jobs. Photograph: Tierney L. Cross/Getty Images Employees of the crucial scientific research arm of the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) have been left with more questions than answers as the agency moves to officially wind down the office following months of back-and-forth. On Friday evening, the EPA issued a press release announcing a reduction in force at the Office of Research and Development (ORD), citing the move as part of a larger effort to save a purported $748.8 million. On Monday, some employees at ORD, the largest office in the agency, began receiving emails detailing that they had been assigned new positions within the EPA. 'Please note, this is not an offer, but a notice of reassignment,' says a letter sent to an employee and viewed by WIRED states; the employee had previously applied to positions within the agency, as ORD employees were instructed to do in May. 'There is no action you need to take the reassignment, and there is no option to decline.' On a call with ORD administrators and staff held Monday afternoon, audio of which was obtained by WIRED, leadership—including ORD acting administrator Maureen Gwinn—was unable to answer basic questions from employees, including a timeline for when the agency planned to permanently end ORD, how many employees would be transferred to other offices, and how many would lose their jobs. Employees at ORD who spoke with WIRED say that Friday's public-facing email was the first concrete news they had heard about their organization's future. One worker told WIRED that employees often learned more from news outlets, including WIRED, 'than we do from our management.' "We wish we had more information for you," Gwinn told staff on the call. "I'll speak for myself, I wish we weren't at this point today." An EPA spokesperson, who declined to give their name, wrote in response to a series of questions from WIRED that the agency is currently offering its third voluntary resignation period, known as a DRP, which ends on July 25. 'The RIF process entails a number of specific procedures in accordance with OPM regulations,' they said. 'The next step in this process is to issue intent to RIF notices to individual employees.' That number 'won't be clear,' they said, until after the DRP process was over. 'This is not an elimination of science and research,' the spokesperson wrote. 'We are confident EPA has the resources needed to accomplish the agency's core mission of protecting human health and the environment, fulfill all statutory obligations, and make the best-informed decisions based on the gold standard of science.' At the start of the year, ORD was composed of between one and two thousand scientists at labs spread across the country as well as in Washington, DC. The branch's work provides much of the science that underpins the policy formed in the agency, from research on chemicals' impacts on human health and the environment to air quality and climate change to planning for emergencies and responding to contaminations in air, soil, and water. The office contains many groups and initiatives that are crucial to protecting the environment and human health, including a team that studies human health risks from chemicals. Several EPA scientists stressed to WIRED that ORD's current structure, which allows research to happen independent of the policy-making that occurs in other parts of the agency, is crucial to producing quality work. One told WIRED that they worked in a scientific role in an EPA policy office under the first Trump administration. There, they felt that their job was to 'try and mine the science to support a policy decision that had already been made.' The structure at ORD, they said, provides a layer of insulation between decision-makers and the scientific process. ORD was heavily singled out in Project 2025's Mandate for Leadership document, the policy blueprint that has closely anticipated the Trump administration's moves in office. It described the branch as 'precautionary, bloated, unaccountable, closed, outcome-driven, hostile to public and legislative input, and inclined to pursue political rather than purely scientific goals.' The plan did not, however, propose doing away with the organization. But in March, documents presented to the White House by agency leadership proposed dissolving ORD, resulting in backlash from Democrats in Congress. In early May, the EPA announced it would be reorganizing its structure, which administrator Lee Zeldin wrote in a Newsweek op-ed would 'improve' the agency by 'integrating scientific staff directly into our program offices." The agency said that it would create a new Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions (OASES), which would sit under the Office of the Administrator. Putting much of ORD's scientific work in policy offices, the scientist who previously worked in a policy office told WIRED, means that 'we're going to end up seeing science that has been unduly interested by policy interests. I don't think that's going to result in policy decisions that are empirically supportable.' Following May's reorganization announcement, ORD employees were encouraged to apply for jobs within other parts of the agency. Multiple workers who spoke with WIRED say that the job postings for these new positions were barebones, with few descriptions of what the work would actually entail. One job posting seen by WIRED labels the posting simply as 'Interdisciplinary Scientific & Engineering Positions,' with no information about the topic area, team, or scientific expertise required. The EPA's reorganization efforts were temporarily stalled by lawsuits. Earlier this month, the Supreme Court paused a preliminary injunction blocking further mass reductions in force at 17 federal agencies, including the EPA. There was one bright spot on Monday's call: ORD leadership told employees that all of the ORD-affiliated labs would be kept open, a piece of news that ran contrary to some previous reports. Still, workers say that it's becoming increasingly difficult to do science at EPA. More than 325 ORD workers—around a fifth of ORD's ranks—had taken voluntary retirements since the start of the year, according to the EPA spokesperson. A scientist told WIRED that while they usually would have had a small team helping with their field work, they've been left to handle everything alone, including 'washing dishes and labeling bottles.' Cumbersome new financial approval processes, they said, have also resulted in chemicals that they ordered being delayed for months and expensive equipment sitting without any repairs. Since taking office, Zeldin has made it clear that he intends to relax environmental regulations, especially around business: Last week, he authored an op-ed in Fox News advertising how the agency would essentially erase the Clean Air Act permitting process for power plants and data centers in order to 'make America the AI capital of the world.' ORD scientists fear that the dissolution of their office will only make this pro-business mission easier. 'If you're going to end up rolling back air quality regulations—and we know, conclusively at this point, that ozone pollution is causing premature mortality and chronic effects—if you roll back the rules, you're going to see excess cases of death and illness,' one scientist tells WIRED. 'My guess is that [EPA leadership] don't want to know the answer to the question of how bad it is going to be.'
CBS News
5 days ago
- Business
- CBS News
EPA shutters its scientific research arm, with hundreds of scientists expected to be impacted
The Environmental Protection Agency announced Friday afternoon that it is eliminating its scientific division, known as the Office of Research and Development. The move to shutter the ORD comes one day after the agency said it was undergoing a reorganization involving several other EPA divisions. ORD conducts critical research to "safeguard human health and ecosystems from environmental pollutants," according to its website. More than 1,500 employees, including scientists and researchers, are dispersed across the country at 11 different locations, but the bulk are based at the EPA's headquarters in Washington, D.C., and at a large scientific facility in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. Eliminating the office will bring $748.8 million in savings, according to a news release from the agency. The EPA had 16,155 employees back in January 2025, but following voluntary retirements, dismissals, and other reduction in force (RIF) actions, it is now down to 12,488 employees, the agency said in its release Friday, a reduction of about 22% of its staff. The staffing cuts include 3,201 employees who took the Trump administration's so-called "Fork in the Road" deferred resignation program, as well as those who took early retirement. "Under President Trump's leadership, EPA has taken a close look at our operations to ensure the agency is better equipped than ever to deliver on our core mission of protecting human health and the environment while Powering the Great American Comeback," EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said in a statement Friday. "This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars." It was anticipated that ORD would be impacted, according to earlier documents that outlined the agency's RIF plans. Back in March, the documents indicated that somewhere between 50% to 75% of ORD employees would not be retained, the majority of them leading scientists in their field of research. A source inside ORD told CBS News Friday that employees found out about the reduction in force via the press release that was sent out to the public, and has not received any formal communication from the agency about what will happen next. "A friend texted me the press release," the source told CBS News, "that is how I found out." According to the source, most employees are anxiously checking their email, waiting to see if they'll be reassigned to another program office, or impacted by the reduction. Some ORD employees have already received notification that they have been reassigned, while most wait to learn their fate. In May, ORD employees were told they would be contacted by other programs inside the agency to discuss potential, lateral moves. But according to the source, it now appears that impacted individuals won't get much of a choice: either take the reassignment if one is offered, or leave the agency. "I don't think I can stay in the U.S.," one source told CBS News, "there are no jobs here." Because of cuts to the federal workforce and cuts to scientific research, there are very few scientific positions available in the U.S., and some are now contemplating work abroad. "Today's cuts dismantle one of the world's most respected environmental health research organizations," said Jennifer Orme-Zavaleta, former EPA principal deputy assistant administrator for science, in a statement. "EPA's science office has long been recognized internationally for advancing public health protections through rigorous science. Reducing its workforce under the guise of cost savings is both misleading and dangerous. This does not save taxpayers money; it simply shifts costs to hospitals, families and communities left to bear the health and economic consequences of increased pollution and weakened oversight. The people of this country are not well served by these actions. They are left more vulnerable." The ORD's research touches on a range of issues from PFAS, often referred to as "forever chemicals," to water-bourne diseases, soot in the air, and environmental factors that contribute to childhood asthma, Orme-Zavaleta said. It is made up of six major research program offices, per its website, that include Air, Climate, and Energy, Chemical Safety for Sustainability, Health and Environmental Risk Assessment, Homeland Security, Safe and Sustainable Water Resources and Sustainable and Healthy Communities. It also includes four major research labs including the Center for Computational Toxicology and Exposure (CCTE), the Center for Environmental Measurement and Modeling (CEMM), the Center for Environmental Solutions and Emergency Response (CESER) and the Center for Public Health and Environmental Assessment (CPHEA).
Washington Post
5 days ago
- Politics
- Washington Post
EPA eliminates its scientific research arm
The Environmental Protection Agency said on Friday it was dismantling its scientific research branch, expanding the Trump administration's efforts to shrink the agency. The move to eliminate the Office of Research and Development, which will prompt the exodus of hundreds of chemists and scientists tasked conducting independent research on a range of environmental hazards, is part of a push to cut 23 percent of the agency's staff. Its work, which often underpinned stricter federal regulations, came under criticism from the chemical manufacturers and other industries. In January, according to an EPA press release, the agency had 16,155 employees, and more than 3,700 employees have left the agency since then due to layoffs, separations and retirements, the agency said. The reductions will save taxpayers $748.8 million, the statement added. 'This reduction in force will ensure we can better fulfill that mission while being responsible stewards of your hard-earned tax dollars,' EPA Administrator Lee Zeldin said. The announcement follows months of speculation that the agency planned to abolish the research division, though the agency denied the accusations. The office, which conducts independent research to assess impacts of human health and the environment, had about 1,155 employees at the beginning of Trump's tenure. The agency did not confirm how many staffers would be cut. An EPA spokeswoman in an email that the agency's next step was to send 'reduction in force' notices notices to individual employees, adding that the staff cuts won't affect the agency's ability to ensure the health and safety of Americans. 'EPA has the resources needed to accomplish the agency's core mission of protecting human health and the environment, fulfill all statutory obligations, and support President Trump's agenda,' the spokeswoman said in an email. However union officials said the agency is destroying one of the world's leading office of environmental scientists, which could leave the nation vulnerable to potential threats. 'Without the Office of Research and Development, our nation's air, water and land will turn more toxic and our people more sick with preventable disease,' said Nicole Cantello, a legislative and political coordinator in the American Federation of Government Employees (AFGE) Council 238, a nationwide union that represents over 8,000 EPA employees. Staffers from the division were notified about the RIF through the public press release, according to Kyla Bennett, director of science policy at Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility. Staff were then notified about an all-staff meeting scheduled for Monday. Bennett said the manner in which the RIF was communicated was 'cruel and short-sighted.' 'Trump's EPA clearly doesn't care about scientific research or protecting human health and the environment any more than they care for the scientists who have dedicated their lives to serving the American people,' she said. EPA said it would create a new office focused on scientific research, named the Office of Applied Science and Environmental Solutions. Earlier this year Trump officials placed the entire staff of the Office of Environmental Justice and External Civil Rights on administrative leave, but later reinstated dozens of employees across the country. On Friday, the EPA said it had laid off 280 staffers working on diversity, equity and inclusion and environment justices, and transferred 195 employees to other offices.
