Tuesday, August 5, 2025

Polaris of Enlightenment

Nuclear war would wipe out the Swedes

Published 29 September 2024
– By Editorial Staff
Sweden would be very badly affected by a nuclear war.
4 minute read

A study by a group of American researchers shows that Sweden would be one of the countries hardest hit by a nuclear war between the US and Russia. According to a simulation of such a scenario, 99% of Swedes would not survive, not because of the bombing itself, but mainly because of the global mass starvation that would follow.

In the study, published in Nature Food, the researchers assume that the nuclear war in question would be directed at cities, causing firestorms that would in turn produce huge amounts of soot in the upper atmosphere, blocking sunlight and cooling the planet. They conclude that a week of such warfare would reduce crop yields by 90%, even four years after the war had ended.

– Even countries far away from conflict regions are put at risk by nuclear conflict, says Lili Xia, co-author of the study.

In the researchers’ “nightmare scenario”, more than five billion people worldwide could starve to death after a nuclear war between the United States and Russia – but even a smaller nuclear conflict, for example between Pakistan and India, is estimated to destroy global food production and lead to up to 2.5 billion deaths. According to the study, food shortages would cause far more deaths than nuclear weapons themselves.

– The data tells us one thing: We need to prevent a nuclear war from ever happening, says climate scientist and study co-author Alan Robock.

The war in Ukraine and the escalation over Taiwan have raised global fears of a nuclear conflict, and scientists say the whole world would be severely affected by such a scenario.

They also point out that wars, conflicts and coronavirus policies have already disrupted and negatively affected global food production, with almost 200 million more people facing food shortages than before and countries such as India and Malaysia restricting food exports. The fear of global conflict itself could also very likely lead to further export restrictions or bans and more countries choosing to keep all food for themselves.

– The psychological impact could be greater than the real damage, says food scientist William Chen, who believes that to cope with global instability, countries need to start focusing on more food sources, such as mushroom farms, large-scale indoor farming – and microalgae and insects.

– These do not require much space. They can be grown in your kitchen or underground and are less affected by an environment exposed to nuclear war, he argues.

‘Would cause unprecedented climate change’

It is estimated that there are between 12,000 and 13,000 nuclear weapons in existence today. According to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, Russia has 5,977 nuclear weapons and the US 5,428. China is thought to have around 350 nuclear weapons, France 290, the UK 225, Pakistan 165 and India around 160. Israel and North Korea also have nuclear weapons – 90 and 20 respectively, according to the Peace Research Institute’s own count.

– A full-scale nuclear war would cause climate change unprecedented in human history… In a US-Russian nuclear war, more people would starve to death in India and Pakistan alone than in the countries actually fighting the war, says Mr Robock.

The immediate effects of nuclear war have been widely recognised since the US dropped the ‘Little Boy’ bomb on Hiroshima in 1945. It killed an estimated 140 000 people in five months and destroyed two-thirds of the city’s buildings.

But it was only in the late 1980s that the long-term effects began to be studied in earnest, and in the worst-case scenario it is believed that radioactive dust and smoke would block out much of the sun’s light, causing temperatures to plummet and much of the world’s crops to simply die off – the same fate that is estimated could befall billions of people around the world.

In the worst-case scenario, a nuclear war between the US and Russia would cause the Earth’s surface temperature to drop by as much as 16 degrees Celsius – a huge impact on almost all life. The researchers behind the study also note that, in addition to starvation and disruption of social functions, large parts of the water system would become radioactive and unsafe to drink.

It is also estimated that the fires caused by the bombs release 100 to 1000 times the energy of the bombs themselves. When the huge amount of smoke is blown into the stratosphere, it cannot be dispersed because it does not rain there, and it stays there for years.

‘Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution’

Since the end of the Cold War, the number of nuclear weapons has decreased, but the number of countries possessing nuclear weapons has increased. China is also estimated to be planning to quadruple its arsenal to over 1,000 nuclear weapons by the end of the decade.

“All nuclear-armed states are expanding or modernising their arsenals, and most are also intensifying their nuclear rhetoric and the role of nuclear weapons in their military strategies”, writes the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.

– When nuclear weapons exist, they can be used, and the world has come close to nuclear war several times. Banning nuclear weapons is the only long-term solution, says Robock, adding that the nine nuclear-armed countries need to listen to science and the rest of the world.

Seth Baum, executive director of the US think-tank Global Catastrophic Risk Institute, calls the climate models ‘excellent’, but says there are many factors and uncertainties in exactly how humanity would respond to a global catastrophe of this magnitude, making the estimated death toll in the various scenarios difficult to assess

Martin Goliath, a nuclear weapons researcher at the Swedish Defence Research Agency, calls the study ‘interesting’ but says that the amount of soot formation is uncertain and that several of the scenarios are unlikely.

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Women’s pelvises becoming narrower

Published yesterday 16:23
– By Editorial Staff
Midwives and cesarean sections may have played a role in evolutionary change, researchers suggest.
3 minute read

Over the past century, women’s pelvises have shrunk, according to a study that examined women in three different countries. Researchers see possible explanations in evolutionary development, where increased use of midwives and cesarean sections may have played a role.

In the study, researchers examined a total of 8,866 women in Australia, Poland and Mexico between 1880 and 1980. Researchers from the University of Łódź in Poland and the University of Adelaide in Australia looked at women’s bodies and how these have changed during that time period.

During this century-long period, they found that women’s pelvises in all three countries had shrunk by an average of 4.5 centimeters. At the same time, women’s height had increased by an average of 10 centimeters. Shoulder width had not changed noticeably.

The study is still a so-called preprint, which means it has not yet been reviewed by other researchers, but it nevertheless generates great interest.

The dataset is fantastic, says researcher Lia Betti at University College London to The New Scientist.

More difficult deliveries

With narrower pelvises, vaginal deliveries can become more complicated, while it can also reduce women’s risk of pelvic floor problems after delivery. In all three countries, approximately 40 percent of all births are assisted, meaning cesarean sections, forceps or vacuum extraction are used during deliveries.

The researchers believe that a reduced pelvis may partly be an evolutionary development since pelvic width is hereditary. Previously, birth canals that were too narrow could be life-threatening for both mother and child. But today, many difficult deliveries are resolved surgically or in other ways. In this way, genetic variants are passed on that previously could have led to fatal complications for mother and child. It is also more advantageous for humans to have smaller pelvises to more easily walk on two legs, but at the same time it becomes a dilemma since humans give birth to children with very large heads compared to other species.

Researcher Philipp Mitteroecker at the University of Vienna in Austria has studied women’s pelvises in a 2024 study, which also points out that narrower pelvises for women have more advantages than just being able to walk more easily on two legs. If the pelvis is wider, the load becomes greater and the pressure on the pelvic floor increases. The risk of urinary incontinence and what is called prolapse therefore becomes greater.

The unique midwife

Mitteroecker also points to the development of midwives, that is, the unique aspect that women for hundreds of thousands of years have received help from others during delivery. This may also have contributed to weakening the natural evolutionary pressure to give women wider pelvises.

C-section is, in a way, an extreme form of that, Mitteroecker tells The New Scientist.

At the same time, Betti is skeptical that assisted deliveries and especially cesarean sections – as well as heredity and evolution – alone can explain the increasing narrowing of women’s pelvises. She points out that humans have also become significantly taller during the same period. But this increased height is probably largely due to better nutrition – not genetic changes.

When nutrition is scarce, our developing bodies tend to allocate more nutrients to certain organs, including the brain, at the expense of others. But now we have ample nutrition, so our bodies may have reallocated nutrients. So we end up with different body proportions, she says.

Researchers: Gut bacteria may protect against PFAS

Published yesterday 9:20
– By Editorial Staff
2 minute read

Certain gut bacteria can absorb PFAS substances, according to new research from Cambridge University. An increase in these bacteria could contribute to better protection against the harmful effects of so-called forever chemicals.

In the study, which was published in Nature Microbiology, researchers identified a family of bacterial species that can absorb various PFAS molecules. These bacteria are naturally found in the human gut flora.

The researchers then added nine of these human bacteria to mice to “humanize” their microbiome and fed them food containing PFAS substances. They could then observe that the bacteria accumulated the chemicals, which were subsequently excreted in feces.

Furthermore, the researchers discovered that when the mice were exposed to increasing levels of PFAS, the bacteria worked harder and removed a consistent proportion of the toxic substances. Within minutes of exposure, the bacteria absorbed between 25 and 74 percent of PFAS.

“Slow poison”

PFAS are now found virtually everywhere – in everyday products, drinking water, food, and even in human blood. They are extremely difficult to break down, which has earned them the nickname “forever chemicals,” and can cause damage to both the environment and human health.

We’re all being exposed to PFAS through our water and food – these chemicals are so widespread that they’re in all of us., says researcher Dr Anna Lindell at Cambridge University, first author of the study, in a press release and continues:

PFAS were once considered safe, but it’s now clear that they’re not. It’s taken a long time for PFAS to become noticed because at low levels they’re not acutely toxic. But they’re like a slow poison.

Opens possibilities

The study’s results are promising and show for the first time that gut bacteria can help remove PFAS from the body. However, it has not yet been tested on humans, the researchers emphasize.

The goal is now to develop probiotic supplements that increase the amount of these beneficial bacteria in the gut and thereby protect against PFAS effects. The researchers point out that despite the documented health risks, very little is still being done to actively remove PFAS from the body.

The reality is that PFAS are already in the environment and in our bodies, and we need to try and mitigate their impact on our health now. We haven’t found a way to destroy PFAS, but our findings open the possibility of developing ways to get them out of our bodies where they do the most harm, says Dr Indra Roux, co-author of the study.

Researchers’ new IVF method: Children born with DNA from three people

Published 20 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
Archive image.
2 minute read

Eight children are reported to have been born in the United Kingdom with DNA from a mother and a father – and an additional person. The method has been justified as preventing the risk of inheriting life-threatening genetic diseases from parents.

The intervention technique is described in British media as groundbreaking and became possible after the UK changed legislation in the area in 2015. The UK’s fertility authority granted the first license in 2017 to a clinic at Newcastle University, where doctors were the very first to use the technique that reportedly aims to help women with mitochondrial diseases give birth to healthy children through artificial insemination.

Four boys and four girls, including a pair of identical twins, have been born through the method technically called mitochondrial donation therapy. The children currently show no signs of the mitochondrial diseases they risked inheriting. Another pregnancy is still ongoing.

Third person’s genes are passed on

As parents, all we ever wanted was to give our child a healthy start in life. After years of uncertainty this treatment gave us hope – and then it gave us our baby … we’re overwhelmed with gratitude. Science gave us a chance“, says the mother of one of the girls according to the British liberal newspaper The Guardian.

The mitochondria affected by the treatment constitute 0.02 percent of human total DNA, which is why the researchers behind the technique do not fully embrace the description of the technique as giving rise to “three parents”. At the same time, mitochondria have their own genetic code and girls born with the help of this technique – and who carry the healthy third person’s/donor’s mitochondria – will pass on these genes to their potential children as well.

Study: Fluoride in drinking water may impact children’s cognitive ability

Published 6 July 2025
– By Editorial Staff
According to the study, higher fluoride levels in pregnant women were linked to impaired cognitive abilities in their children at the ages of five and ten.
2 minute read

A study from Karolinska Institutet links fluoride in drinking water to impaired cognition in children. In particular, the researchers saw a negative impact on children’s verbal abilities.

In Sweden, fluoride is found naturally in low levels in drinking water, while in several countries, such as the United States, Canada and Australia, it is added to municipal water to prevent tooth decay. It is also used in toothpaste to protect teeth against decay.

Researchers at the Karolinska Institutet have investigated how early exposure to fluoride affects children’s cognitive abilities. The study involved 500 mothers and their children in rural Bangladesh, where fluoride is naturally present in drinking water at levels comparable to Sweden. The researchers measured fluoride levels in the mothers during pregnancy and later in the children via urine samples. The children’s cognitive abilities were then tested by psychologists at ages five and ten.


The article was originally published in The Nordic Times on March 23, 2025.


The study, published in Environmental Health Perspectives, found that higher fluoride levels in pregnant women were linked to impaired cognitive abilities in their children at ages five and ten. The impact was most evident on children’s verbal comprehension and their ability to interpret and process sensory input. In contrast, the researchers found no statistically significant link between fluoride levels in the urine of five-year-olds and their cognition.

–  This could be due to the shorter exposure, but also because the measurements are not as reliable in younger children due to greater variations in how fluoride is absorbed and accumulated in the body, especially in the skeleton, says Maria Kippler, associate professor at the Institute of Environmental Medicine at Karolinska Institutet, in a press release.

Even low levels can have negative effects

The fluoride levels that were linked to poorer cognitive development were below the WHO and EU limits for drinking water. However, the researchers point out that toothpaste is rarely a significant source of exposure, as it is not intended to be swallowed, but emphasize the importance of children learning to spit it out.

Our results support the hypothesis that even relatively low levels of fluoride can have negative effects on children’s early development, says Kippler.

However, the researchers emphasize that this is an observational study and therefore no firm conclusions can be drawn about cause and effect. It is therefore important to assess the overall results of several similar studies.

– Further research is important to inform the assessment of appropriate fluoride limits. Even small changes in cognition at the population level can have large consequences for public health, says Kippler.

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