million

21May

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

HEALTH & WELLNESS

2.4 Million US Seniors Get Enough To Eat While Meals On Wheels Volunteers Help Staving Off Loneliness

More than 2.4 million older adults are supported each year by Meals on Wheels, a program through which seniors and people with disabilities receive healthy and tasty meals for free from a network of volunteers. These efforts are usually organized through local senior centers and other community organizations across the U.S. that encourage the people who receive meals to make voluntary donations to cover at least part of the cost if that’s within their means. CC BY-NC-ND Services like this nonprofit meal delivery program, for which eligibility begins at age 60, are becoming more important than ever before. About 5.3 million people 60 and up, 7.3% of all Americans in that age group, experienced food insecurity in 2018 – meaning that their households couldn’t acquire adequate food bec...

Using Big Data To Unlock Genetic Secrets Scientists Are On A Path To Sequencing 1 Million Human Genomes

15Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

SCIENCE

Using Big Data To Unlock Genetic Secrets Scientists Are On A Path To Sequencing 1 Million Human Genomes

The first draft of the human genome was published 20 years ago in 2001, took nearly three years and cost between US$500 million and $1 billion. A complete human genome, seen here in pairs of chromosomes, offers a wealth of information, but it is hard connect genetics to traits or disease. HYanWong/Wikimedia Comons The Human Genome Project has allowed scientists to read, almost end to end, the 3 billion pairs of DNA bases – or “letters” – that biologically define a human being. That project has allowed a new generation of researchers like me, currently a postdoctoral fellow at the National Cancer Institute, to identify novel targets for cancer treatments, engineer mice with human immune systems and even build a webpage where anyone can navigate the entire human genome with the same ease w...

Research Suggests – Here’s Why It’s A Public Health Problem That Nearly 60 Million Americans Don’t Drink Their Tap Water

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

Research Suggests – Here’s Why It’s A Public Health Problem That Nearly 60 Million Americans Don’t Drink Their Tap Water

Imagine seeing a news report about lead contamination in drinking water in a community that looks like yours. It might make you think twice about whether to drink your tap water or serve it to your kids – especially if you also have experienced tap water problems in the past. In a new study, my colleagues Anisha Patel, Francesca Weaks and I estimate that approximately 61.4 million people in the U.S. did not drink their tap water as of 2017-2018. Our research, which was released in preprint format on April 8, 2021, and has not yet been peer reviewed, found that this number has grown sharply in the past several years. Other research has shown that about 2 million Americans don’t have access to clean water. Taking that into account, our findings suggest that about 59 million people have tap...

9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

9.8 Million Americans Have Been Pushed Further Into Food Insecurity Due To The Pandemic Recession

The COVID-19 pandemic has imposed hardship on millions of vulnerable Americans through unemployment and reduced work hours. And this has increased food insecurity across the nation. CC BY-ND There is no official figure yet for how many more families are struggling to provide regular meals around the table – the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s next annual report on food insecurity, defined as a lack of access to sufficient food due to limited financial resources, won’t be out until the fall. But for me as an academic who has long tracked food insecurity trends, working out the increase in the number of people affected and projecting what will happen next is important. By understanding this, experts can work out whether what is occurring during the pandemic is likely to follow – or brea...

Behind Donations Of $50 Million Or More To Colleges And Universities, Alumni Gratitude And Support For Causes

4Apr

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EDUCATION, Journalism

Behind Donations Of $50 Million Or More To Colleges And Universities, Alumni Gratitude And Support For Causes

The top motive people cite for their donations of US$50 million or more to colleges or universities was a desire to repay a university for what they or a loved one had gotten out of attending, according to a study we published last year. The second two most common reasons were an effort to simply do what they believe is the right thing and a wish to support a particular cause or political agenda. We found this out when we researched the motives of 30 of these higher education megadonors, through random sampling, from 2010 to 2018 and reviewing about 1,700 publicly available documents and news items that discussed their gifts, including some that quoted the donors themselves. Many donors mentioned more than one motive when they explained why they gave so much money to a school. Why it ma...

How Is The Problem Of 18 million US Children At Risk Of Hunger Being Addressed And What More Can Be Done?

4Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

How Is The Problem Of 18 million US Children At Risk Of Hunger Being Addressed And What More Can Be Done?

The economic crisis brought about by the coronavirus pandemic has increased the number of Americans who can’t always get enough to eat, including children. The Conversation U.S. asked four experts to explain how common child hunger is and what’s being done to address it. 1. How big a problem is child hunger in the US? Heather Eicher-Miller, associate professor of nutrition science at Purdue University: Hunger has two very different meanings. It can describe that uncomfortable feeling you get after not eating in a while. It’s also a long-term physical state. Heather Eicher-Miller. Purdue University, CC BY-SA People who experience long-term hunger aren’t just uncomfortable. They can feel weakness or pain and run an elevated risk of illnesses, including asthma, iron-deficiency anemia and poor...

32 Million Americans With Diverse Political Opinions And National Origins Make-Up ‘The Latino Vote’

9Nov

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

POLITICS

32 Million Americans With Diverse Political Opinions And National Origins Make-Up ‘The Latino Vote’

Pundits are expressing surprise that so many Latinos voted for Donald Trump. But pollsters who specialize in the Latino vote knew for months before the election that Latino support for Biden was soft, with many Latinos – especially in Florida – undecided. In Florida 57% of Latinos ultimately supported Biden, compared to roughly 70% nationwide. These numbers are reliable because they come from exit polls designed to capture Latino political preferences. National exit polls have been mostly wrong about Latino voting patterns since they first began including Latinos in the 1980s. The 60.6 million Americans lumped together under the umbrella term “Latino” are a racially, ethnically and geographically diverse group, as my research on Latino identity shows. And they have equally diverse polit...

The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years – and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

ENVIRONMENT, VIDEO REELS

The Arctic hasn’t been this warm for 3 million years – and that foreshadows big changes for the rest of the planet

Every year, sea ice cover in the Arctic Ocean shrinks to a low point in mid-September. This year it measures just 1.44 million square miles (3.74 million square kilometers) – the second-lowest value in the 42 years since satellites began taking measurements. The ice today covers only 50% of the area it covered 40 years ago in late summer. This year’s minimum ice extent is the lowest in the 42-year-old satellite record except for 2012, reinforcing a long-term downward trend in Arctic ice cover. Each of the past four decades averages successively less summer sea ice. NSIDC As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change has shown, carbon dioxide levels in the atmosphere are higher than at any time in human history. The last time that atmospheric CO2 concentrations reached today’s level – ab...

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

TECHNOLOGY

IBM: 120 million workers need retraining as robots displace jobs

Employers are now emphasising soft skills training, which take more time to develop, says IBM More than 120 million workers globally will need retraining in the next three years due to artificial intelligence’s impact on jobs, according to an IBM survey. That’s a top concern for many employers who say talent shortage is one of the greatest threats to their organizations today. And the training required these days is longer than it used to be -- workers need 36 days of training to close a skills gap versus three days in 2014, IBM notes in the survey. Soft Skills Some skills take longer to develop because they are either more behavioral in nature like teamwork and communication or highly technical, such as data science capabilities. "Reskilling for technical skil...

3Apr

By THEIRL1ADMIN01No Comments

IN OTHER NEWS

U.S. Citizen Pleads Guilty for Leading $2 Million Counterfeit Currency Operation in Uganda

A United States national who is also the son in law of an ex-African dictator, was found guilty for his role in an international currency operation headquartered in the Republic of Uganda. The sentencing is scheduled for this summer and the American is currently facing 45 years behind bars, a fine of $1 million or both. Son of Missionaries Guilty for an International Criminal Operation 31-year-old Ryan Andrew Gustafson is an American citizen, son of missionaries and married to the granddaughter of Idi Amin, dictator of Uganda from 1971 to 1979. Gustafson is also known to law enforcement by several other aliases such as WillyClock and Jack Farrel. The initial counterfeit currency operation began in Uganda, where Gustafson manufactured and distributed false Federal Reserve Notes. For...