U.S. Surgeon General calls for action regarding the ongoing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation”

National trends for social connection in the United States, 2003-2020. Social networks are getting smaller, and levels of social participation are declining distinct from whether individuals report that they are lonely. For example, objective measures of social exposure obtained from 2003-2020 find that social isolation, measured by the average time spent alone, increased from 2003 (285-minutes/day, 142.5-hours/month) to 2019 (309-minutes/day, 154.5-hours/month) and continued to increase in 2020 (333-minutes/day, 166.5-hours/month). This represents an increase of 24 hours per month spent alone. At the same time, social participation across several types of relationships has steadily declined. For instance, the amount of time respondents engaged with friends socially in-person decreased from 2003 (60-minutes/day, 30-hours/month) to 2020 (20-minutes/day, 10-hours/month). This represents a decrease of 20 hours per month spent engaging with friends. This decline is starkest for young people ages 15 to 24. For this age group, time spent in-person with friends has reduced by nearly 70 percent over almost two decades, from roughly 150 minutes per day in 2003 to 40 minutes per day in 2020. The COVID-19 pandemic accelerated trends in declining social participation. The number of close friendships has also declined over several decades. Among people not reporting loneliness or social isolation, nearly 90% have three or more confidants. Yet, almost half of Americans (49 percent) in 2021 reported having three or fewer close friends — only about a quarter (27 percent) reported the same in 1990. Social connection continued to decline during the COVID-19 pandemic, with one study finding a 16 percent decrease in network size from June 2019 to June 2020 among participants. Graphic: Office of the U.S. Surgeon General

May 6, 2023

U.S. Surgeon General calls for action regarding the ongoing “epidemic of loneliness and isolation”

By Emma Egan 2 May 2023 (ABC News) – The U.S. Surgeon General released an advisory on Tuesday calling attention to the public health crisis of loneliness, isolation, and lack of connection in the United States. The report cites recent research showing that approximately half of U.S. adults experienced loneliness daily, even before the onset […]

Lake Tulare in California on 1 February 2023 and 30 April 2023, as seen from the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA’s Landsat 8 satellite, and the Operational Land Imager-2 (OLI-2) on the Landsat 9 satellite. In the spring of 2023, the long-dried basin of Lake Tulare rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. Photo: NASA

May 6, 2023

Tulare Lake flooding due to snowpack melt seen from space – “The state has both too much water and not enough”

By Jess Thomson 5 May 2023 (Newsweek) – The long-dried basin of Lake Tulare in California has rapidly refilled in the wake of intense rainfall and snowmelt. The speed and scale of the southern San Joaquin Valley lake’s return can be seen in images taken from space by the Operational Land Imager (OLI) on NASA‘s Landsat […]

Mass killings in the United States by day of year, 2006-2023. 2023 data as of April 29. The year 2023 saw more mass killings than any other year except 2009 since data collection started in 2006. A mass killing is defined as an incident in which four or more victims, not counting the assailant, are killed. Data: The AP/USA TODAY/Northeastern University mass killings database. Graphic: AP

April 30, 2023

Frequent shootings in 2023 put US mass killings on a record pace – “Nobody should be shocked. I visit my daughter in a cemetery. Outrage doesn’t begin to describe how I feel.”

By Stefanie Dazio and Larry Fenn 21 April 2023 LOS ANGELES (AP) – The U.S. is setting a record pace for mass killings in 2023, replaying the horror on a loop roughly once a week so far this year. The carnage has taken 88 lives in 17 mass killings over 111 days. Each time, the […]

Monthly U.S. poverty rates by race/ethnicity, 2020-2022. Graphic: Center on Poverty and Social Policy

April 19, 2023

Poverty is the 4th greatest cause of U.S. deaths – “Poverty silently killed 10 times as many people as all the homicides in 2019. And yet, homicide, firearms, and suicide get vastly more attention.”

By David Danelski 17 April 2023 (UCR) – Poverty has long been linked to shorter lives. But just how many deaths in the United States are associated with poverty? The number has been elusive – until now. A University of California, Riverside, (UCR) paper published Monday, 17 April 2023, in the Journal of the American […]

A seagull walks over seaweed that washed ashore on 16 March 2023 in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. A huge mass of sargassum seaweed formed in the Atlantic Ocean and headed for the Florida coastlines and shores throughout the Gulf of Mexico. The sargassum, a naturally occurring type of macroalgae, spans more than 5,000 miles. Photo: Joe Raedle / Getty Images

April 18, 2023

Video: Sargassum seaweed hits Florida Keys beaches

By Richard Burkard 17 April 2023 (Knewz) – It sounds like a B-grade movie title: The approach of the 10-million pound blob. Yet it’s real, and it’s forcing swimmers and owners of beachfront property in Florida to take action. Knewz noted in late March that a giant mass of sargassum seaweed was spotted from space. It […]

Map showing the physical imprint and consequences of extreme summer heat across the Pacific Northwest in 2021. The June-August (JJA) 2021 seasonally averaged temperature anomalies (t2m) over North America calculated from the 1951-1980 mean of ERA5 Reanalysis, with the Pacific Northwest region (PNW; 42–53 °N, 124–115 °W, dark blue box) highlighted. The year 2021 (dashed black line) is shown relative to the distribution (black line) and probability density (red line) curves of JJA t2m values over the period 1950–2021 for the PNW region. White exes indicate the locations of all tree-ring chronology predictors used in the subsequent JJA t2m reconstruction. Graphic: Heeter, et al., 2023 / npj Climate and Atmospheric Science

April 16, 2023

The summer of 2021 was the Pacific Northwest’s hottest in a millennium – “The tree scorch was shocking. The average summer temperatures were extraordinarily away from the norm.”

By Sid Perkins 14 April 2023 (Science News) – A two-week-long heat wave in the Pacific Northwest in 2021 helped make that summer a record breaker for the region (SN: 7/7/21). Now, tree ring data from the area’s forests reveal that the summer of 2021 was also the region’s hottest of the last millennium. The average temperature […]

Physiological response curves may shift as soil microbiomes respond to drought. In the short term (minutes to days), physiological acclimation may help to sustain function, such as soil carbon decomposition. Over weeks to decades, community shifts and evolution could alter response curves to maintain functioning under dry conditions. Broken lines indicate potential variation in the breadth of the shifted response curves. Graphic: Evans, et al., 2022 / Functional Ecology

April 16, 2023

Droughts destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land: study – If more carbon-releasing microbes survive than carbon-sequestering microbes, we could end up with carbon-depleted soils

By Mark Waghorn 12 April 2023 (SWNS) – Droughts are destroying Earth’s biggest carbon sink on land, according to new research. Soil stores more greenhouse gas than plants and the atmosphere combined – thanks to the microbes that live in it. Moisture plays a key role in the process. Lack of rainfall is disrupting this […]

Numbered tags are seen underneath the wings of this California Condor photographed north of the Grand Canyon in Arizona. There are 116 birds currently living in the wild north of the canyon along the Arizona Strip and in southwestern Utah. Photo: Jim Shane / Utah Division of Wildlife Resources

April 16, 2023

Avian flu is killing endangered California condors at alarming rate

By Dinah Voyles Pulver 12 April 2023 (USA TODAY) – The avian influenza stalking wild and domestic bird flocks across the country has killed at least six endangered California condors since March and is suspected of killing another dozen. The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service said Wednesday it’s now attributing all condor deaths in the […]

A strain of Candida auris cultured in a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention laboratory. The CDC reports that the fungus is causing infections in healthcare facilities.Photo: Shawn Lockhart / Associated Press

April 16, 2023

This rapidly spreading deadly fungus is a warning about climate change

By Arjun V.K. Sharma 12 April 2023 (Los Angeles Times) – Last month, the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change charted global temperatures to be 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels and on a destructive trajectory to surpass 1.5 degrees Celsius of warming by the early 2030s. This intersects surprisingly with another piece of news: the […]

Average age at death in U.S. counties, 2020. Data: CDC Death Records. The U.S. is experiencing the greatest gap in life expectancy across regions in the last 40 years. Americans born in certain areas of Mississippi and Florida may die 20 years younger than their peers born in parts of Colorado and California. Graphic: Jeremy Ney / American Inequality

April 15, 2023

Americans are dying younger, and where you live makes a big difference – Americans born in Mississippi and Florida may die 20 years younger than their peers born in Colorado and California

By Jeremy Ney 12 April 2023 (TIME) – The average U.S. life expectancy has hit its worst decline in 100 years and America’s standing is dismal among peer nations. But the average obscures a more complex story. The United States is facing the greatest divide in life expectancy across regions in the last 40 years. Research from American […]

Desdemona Despair

Category: North America