Rural News
In rural health, location matters
Daily Yonder | Posted on June 11, 2018When it comes to your health, place matters. If you live in a rural county, the bottom-line truth is that you’re less apt to be healthy than if you lived in a more urban one. A couple of recent reports shed some light on both the issues and potential solutions. According to the 2018 County Health Rankings, published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in partnership with the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, rural counties continue to lag behind more urbanized ones in factors that play a critical role in a community’s overall health. These include child poverty, low-birthweight babies and teen birth rate. But rural communities have within their DNA the resources to rise to these challenges. In another report, titled “Exploring Strategies to Improve Health and Equity in Rural Communities,” researchers at the University of Chicago’s NORC Walsh Center write that while much of the research exploring rural health issues in the U.S. focuses on disparities – increased health risks “related to geographic, socioeconomic, environmental and other factors” – seldom is attention paid to the strengths and assets within these communities that can be, and often are, deployed to improve health.
US high-tide flooding twice what it was 30 years ago
ABC News | Posted on June 11, 2018A new report finds that high-tide flooding is happening across the United States at twice the rate it was just 30 years ago and predicts records for such flooding will continue to be broken for decades as sea levels rise. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday that high-tide flooding, sometimes called sunny-day or "nuisance flooding," tied or set records last year in more than a quarter of the 98 places the agency monitors around the country. The report found Sabine Pass, Texas, had 23 days of high-tide flooding last year. The area is part of Port Arthur, where most houses now stand on stilts after the community was hit repeatedly by destructive hurricanes. Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Boston had 22 each. Cities in other parts of the country experienced fewer tidal floods, but many of those cities still saw records set.
What Unites and Divides Urban, Suburban and Rural Communities
Pew Charitable Trust | Posted on June 11, 2018Amid widening gaps in politics and demographics, Americans in urban, suburban and rural areas share many aspects of community life. Large demographic shifts are reshaping America. The country is growing in numbers, it’s becoming more racially and ethnically diverse and the population is aging. But according to a new analysis by Pew Research Center, these trends are playing out differently across community types. Urban areas are at the leading edge of racial and ethnic change, with nonwhites now a clear majority of the population in urban counties while solid majorities in suburban and rural areas are white. Urban and suburban counties are gaining population due to an influx of immigrants in both types of counties, as well as domestic migration into suburban areas. In contrast, rural counties have made only minimal gains since 2000 as the number of people leaving for urban or suburban areas has outpaced the number moving in. And while the population is graying in all three types of communities, this is happening more rapidly in the suburbs than in urban and rural counties.
Even in prosperous times, rural Wisconsin economy faces an uphill climb
Wisconsin State Journal | Posted on June 11, 2018By many standards, Wisconsin’s overall economic condition has never been better. Its core unemployment rate is the nation’s eighth-lowest; it ranks fifth among the states in the percentage of adults who are part of the labor force; it ranks 11th in the per capita growth of its gross domestic product since 2010; and it ranks 19th among the states in the percentage growth of total business establishments in this decade. Those are statewide snapshots from a mix of sources, but there is really no such thing as a “statewide” economy. Depending on where you stand in Wisconsin, you might see a thriving tech-based economy in Madison, manufacturing vibrancy in the Fox Valley or a struggling small-town economy in many villages and cities.The survival challenge for rural Wisconsin, which includes many municipalities of 5,000 or fewer people, is one of the state’s most vexing issues.Unless current trends reverse, rural Wisconsin will be much older in 2025 than it is today or than it was 10 years ago. In northern Wisconsin, it is projected that people 60 and older will make up at least 30 percent of about two dozen counties. In some counties, the 60-and-over share could be as much as 50 percent.
Canada and EU produce plastic charter at G7
Plastic News | Posted on June 11, 2018Ocean litter, recycling and more environmentally sustainable uses of plastics in general get significant attention in the Ocean Plastics Charter adopted June 9 by five of the G7 member nations. The non-binding charter, signed by Canada, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom and the European Union, suggests those governments want to see significant improvements in how plastic is used and how plastic waste is managed.It includes a commitment to recycle and reuse at least 55 percent of plastics packaging by 2030, and recover all plastics by 2040, and as expected, calls for “significantly reducing” unnecessary uses of single-use plastics.The document includes 23 specific points in five broad categories, and also suggests stronger government roles in supporting markets for recycled plastics, including increasing recycled content by at least 50 percent in plastic products by 2030.
Human encouragement might influence how dogs solve problems
Science Daily | Posted on June 9, 2018Human encouragement might influence how dogs solve problems, according to a new Oregon State University study.
You talking to me? Scientists try to unravel the mystery of 'animal conversations'
Science Daily | Posted on June 9, 2018An international team of academics undertook a large-scale review of research into turn-taking behavior in animal communication, analyzing hundreds of animal studies.
Dog Germs Diversify, May Threaten Humans with Flu Pandemics
Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News | Posted on June 9, 2018If you lie with dogs, you might get fleas—or worse, an influenza virus that is completely unfamiliar to your immune defenses. The risk appears to be rising, says an international team of scientists that has been studying how influenza viruses jump from species to species. In a new study, these scientists present evidence that influenza virus can jump from pigs into canines, and that influenza is becoming increasingly diverse in canines. The scientists, who are affiliated with the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai, the National Institutes of Health, and Guangxi University, warn that mammals remain under-recognized sources of influenza virus diversity, including pigs that were the source of the 2009 pandemic and bats and bovines that harbor highly divergent viral lineages. Dogs, too, may serve as influenza reservoirs, as the scientists discovered after sequencing the complete genomes of 16 influenza A viruses (IAVs) obtained from canines in southern China.
Rich buyers are pushing rural hospitals to a controversial practice
The Atlantic | Posted on June 9, 2018Beau Gertz faced a crowd of worried locals at the town senior center, hoping to sell them on his vision for their long-beloved—but now bankrupt—hospital. In worn blue jeans and an untucked shirt, the bearded entrepreneur from Denver pledged at a town-hall meeting in March to revive the Surprise Valley Community Hospital—a place many in the audience counted on to set their broken bones, stitch up cattle-tagging cuts, and tend to aging loved ones. Gertz said that if they voted on Tuesday to let him buy their tiny public hospital, he would retain such vital services. Better still, he said, he’d like to open a “wellness center” to attract well-heeled outsiders—one that would offer telehealth, addiction treatment, physical therapy, genetic testing, intravenous vitamin infusions, and even massages. Cedarville’s failing hospital, now at least $4 million in debt, would not just bounce back but thrive, he said. Gertz, 34, a former weightlifter who runs clinical-lab and nutraceutical companies, unveiled his plan to pay for it: He’d use the 26-bed hospital to bill insurers for lab tests regardless of where patients lived. Through telemedicine technology, doctors working for Surprise Valley could order tests for people who’d never set foot there.
Decapitated Snake Head Nearly Kills Man
National Geographic | Posted on June 8, 2018A Texas man was doing yard work when he spotted a four-foot rattlesnake. He beheaded the snake with a shovel—but when he went to dispose of it, the severed head bit him. The man received a massive dose of the snake’s venom. He became seriously ill and had to be air-lifted to a hospital, where he required a large number of doses of antivenom. A week later he remains in stable condition. The snake was reported to be a Western diamondback rattlesnake.This story is perhaps not as uncommon as it may seem, because snakes—like many other reptiles—retain their reflexes even hours after death. The bite reflex is extremely strong in venomous snakes, because their instinct is to deliver one extremely quick bite, move away, and wait for their venom to work. Unfortunately for the Texan, this bite reflex can be triggered hours after the snake dies.