Innholdsfortegnelse for June 23 - 30, 2023 i Newsweek International

2011 “Our current way of living is selfish and unsustainable. We are gobbling up the last resources. We are cutting down the rainforest. We are polluting the water. We are polluting the air. We are killing plants and animals, destroying the ozone layer, burning the world through our addiction to fossil fuels, and leaving a devastated planet for future generations. In other words, humanity is doomed,” wrote Newsweek. While we are now focusing more on clean energy incentives, the recent air-quality alerts along the East Coast due to Canadian wildfires, are a reminder that we have a long way to go. 1974 “Under a blazing sun, the Presidents of the United States and Egypt stood in the back of an open limousine, waving to frenzied crowds and beaming with delight,”…

Saad Bhamla ASSISTANT PROFESSOR, BIOMOLECULAR ENGINEERING, GEORGIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY HIGH-TECH SOLUTIONS TO THE WORLD’S BIGGEST health challenges typically share one critical impediment to mass adoption: cost. Medical innovation is expensive, which means lower-income individuals and poorer countries often can’t afford to access it. Enter Saad Bhamla and his team of researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology’s Bhamla Lab, all champions of “frugal science”—where the focus is on using simple concepts to develop low-cost technology that improves global health. Consider, for example, their novel method for effectively delivering COVID-19 and other vaccines without some of the current costly requirements, such as ultra-low temperature storage. Inspired by the simple functionality of an electronic barbecue lighter, Bhamla and team created a low-cost handheld electroporation system, dubbed the “ePatch,” which uses short electric…

Mary Lou Jepsen FOUNDER, OPENWATER MARY LOU JEPSEN SEEMS TO HAVE lived many lives. In her twenties, she created the first hologram video system, played in a band, hung out with Lou Reed and Andy Warhol and began a doctoral degree at Brown University. Then she was overtaken by a mysterious illness that not only left her physically bedridden and wheelchair-bound, but also rendered her unable to do the high-level math she needed to do to complete her degree. Even simple arithmetic eluded her. “I was utterly defeated,” she says. “I went home to die.” Her professors chipped in to cover the cost of an MRI. Her doctors found a brain tumor that was inhibiting her pituitary gland. After they removed the tumor and part of the gland, her mental…

ONE OF THE MOST COMPELLING VILLAINS TO COME OUT OF THE WALKING Dead was Jeffrey Dean Morgan’s Negan, and now he’s back in The Walking Dead: Dead City (June 18 on AMC). “Since we’ve last seen him, he’s not doing great.” The story picks up two years after the original series, where Negan and Maggie (played by Lauren Cohan) came to a truce after Negan killed Maggie’s husband. “Some of the old Negan is back; he’s a showman and not afraid of violence.” The new series explores why Negan is so violent. “What was most important to me was that he wasn’t one note [in Dead City]; it would have been easy to be that same guy. How can we show other sides? A villain that’s interesting is [one] you…

DISRUPTORS Jeeshan Chowdhury FOUNDER and CEO, JOURNEY COLAB IF YOU ARE SUFFERING—IF YOU live with depression, anxiety, addiction or other mental health issues—there really is hope. Psychiatry has many effective tools, from medication and talk therapy to a range of behavioral treatments that have helped millions of people. Doctors wish they had more tools. The last major new class of drugs—antidepressants like Prozac, Lexapro and Zoloft—came in the 1980s. But maybe there are other answers—much older ones, discovered by Indigenous people of what is now the Southwest, Mexico and parts of South America. Five thousand years ago, according to archeological evidence, some of them began to use psychedelics—compounds like mescaline, found in many types of cactus, and psilocybin, from certain mushrooms. Dr. Jeeshan Chowdhury is working to give these old…

“MY GOAL AT LIONESS IS TO CONTINUE TO BRING REPRESENTATION FOR ALL WALKS OF LIFE IN BOTH SEX RESEARCH AND PRODUCTS.” Anna Lee CO-FOUNDER/HEAD of ENGINEERING, LIONESS GROWING UP IN A CONSERVATIVE, RELIGIOUS KOREAN family who moved from Seoul to Los Angeles, Anna Lee never talked about sex. “I was afraid and ashamed of my body well into my mid-twenties, always wondering: Am I normal?” she says. When she started to ask questions, she found copious information on male sexual function and how it relates to conditions like cardiovascular disease and overall well-being. There was little research available on female sexual health—even though, she says, “Orgasms are a canary in a coal mine for health conditions.” Lee’s curiosity led her to an entirely new career path. In 2015, she quit…

EACH YEAR MILLIONS OF Americans take important steps to better their health by making appointments with dermatologists, eye doctors and plastic surgeons. Searching for a new provider can feel daunting, whether for preventative medicine, managing chronic illness, starting life-saving treatments or planning restorative care. It’s also vitally important that we recognize the exceptional talent in the field of medicine. That’s why Statista and Newsweek are proud to partner to award the leading dermatologists, eye doctors and plastic surgeons in the United States. In total, 150 cosmetic dermatologists and 175 medical dermatologists were awarded—some in both specialties. Additionally, the best 200 ophthalmologists and 200 optometrists are included. Finally, the top plastic surgeons are recognized in five major categories: breast augmentation, liposuction, facelift, rhinoplasty, and eyelid surgery. Some surgeons may receive awards…

Narjust Florez THORACIC ONCOLOGIST, DANA-FARBER BRIGHAM CANCER CENTER; FOUNDER, FLOREZ LAB ONE PATIENT CHANGED THE COURSE of thoracic oncologist Narjust Florez’s career: a 43-year-old nonsmoker, an active runner, wife and mother who she’d just diagnosed with lung cancer. The patient’s response? “Please don’t tell my family.” More women die of lung cancer than any other cancer, including, since 2018, a growing number of young women. Many delay seeking treatment because of the stigma associated with lung cancer, including the idea that people brought the illness upon themselves—the same reason Florez’s patient felt she couldn’t tell her loved ones about her diagnosis. Now, Florez is on a mission to change the way the world sees lung cancer and to improve screening processes so patients don’t wait for treatment. She started the…

Eddie Chang NEUROSURGEON, UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA SAN FRANCISCO IN HIS LATER YEARS, THE PHYSICIST STEPHEN HAWK-ing, partially paralyzed by ALS, was unable to speak and could communicate only by typing out sentences letter by letter, using facial movements, into a voice synthesizer. A response to one reporter’s question—“I hope my experience helps other people”—took the scientist five minutes to formulate. Eddie Chang envisions a world in which everyone can converse easily and freely with the people around them, even if their paralysis is so severe that they cannot produce vocal sounds. To this end, Chang developed a “speech neuroprosthesis” that turns electrical signals of the brain into words on a computer screen and, ultimately, into oral language. The key to Chang’s invention was his discovery of electrical patterns that the…