Study: No Significant Benefits From Vitamin D On Depression

Boston Globe: Vitamin D Won’t Reduce Risk Of Depression, New MGH Study Finds 
Think vitamin D improves your mood? As of this week, science doesn’t support that. According to the study from Massachusetts General Hospital released Tuesday, vitamin D, also known as the sunshine supplement, does not protect against depression in middle-age or older adults. This was one of the first studies large enough to show whether vitamin D supplementation could prevent depression in the general adult population. (Bowker, 8/5)

CIDRAP: NIH Awards $19 Million For New Gonorrhea Diagnostic Test
The National Institutes of Health (NIH) today awarded $19 million for a new diagnostic test that can detect gonorrhea in under 30 minutes—and determine if the infection is susceptible to a single-dose antibiotic. The test is made by Visby Medical, Inc. The award is part of the NIH's Antimicrobial Resistance Diagnostic Challenge, which aims to improve diagnostics for the more than 2.8 million antibiotic-resistant infections in the United States each year. Those infections kill more than 35,000 people annually, the NIH said in a news release. (8/5)

AP: Lack Of Study And Oversight Raises Concerns About Tear Gas
On June 2, Justin LaFrancois attended a protest against police violence and racism in downtown Charlotte, North Carolina, where he planned to livestream the event for his alternative newspaper’s website. Shortly into the march, police, who reported that water bottles and rocks were being thrown at them, unleashed a volley of tear gas on the entire crowd, including those who were marching peacefully. The protesters tried to run. But hemmed in by tall buildings and desperate for an escape route, they tugged at the closed gate of a parking garage, pulling it up just high enough so they could slip inside to escape the pepper balls and exploding flashbangs. (Selsky, 8/6)

In climate news —

The New York Times: How Hot Is Too Hot? 
It’s not the heat, it’s the humidity. Your body avoids overheating by taking advantage of a bit of physics: When water evaporates from a surface, it leaves the surface cooler. When your body gets too hot, it pumps water onto your skin and lets it evaporate, carrying away heat. This effect can actually lower the temperature of your skin to below the air temperature. This allows humans to survive in places where the air temperature is as high as human body temperature — as long as we keep drinking water to produce more sweat. (Munroe, 8/4)

The Hill: US Could Avoid 4.5M Early Deaths By Fighting Climate Change, Study Finds 
The U.S. stands to avoid 4.5 million premature deaths if it works to keep global temperatures from rising by more than 2 degree Celsius, according to new research from Duke University. The same study found working to limit climate change could prevent about 3.5 million hospitalizations and emergency room visits and approximately 300 million lost workdays in America. (Beitsch, 8/5)

Also, how people are dealing with the economy —

The Washington Post: Rising Grocery Prices Are Particularly Painful For The Unemployed 
The cost of groceries has been rising at the fastest pace in decades since the coronavirus pandemic seized the U.S. economy, leading to sticker shock for basic staples such as beef and eggs and forcing struggling households to rethink how to put enough food on the table. Long-standing supply chains for everyday grocery items have been upended as the pandemic sickened scores of workers, forced factory closures and punctured the carefully calibrated networks that brought food from farms to store shelves. Even while some of the sharpest price hikes have eased somewhat, the overall effects are being felt most acutely by the nearly 30 million Americans who saw their $600 enhanced unemployment benefit expire last Friday — exacerbating concerns that the recession’s long tail could worsen food insecurity for years to come. (Siegel, 8/4)

San Francisco Chronicle: SF Prepares For Surge In CalFresh Food Assistance Applications 
San Francisco is preparing for a surge in food assistance applications after increased federal unemployment benefits of $600 per week ended and the coronavirus pandemic worsens. The city has already received more than 25,000 applications for the state’s CalFresh program since the coronavirus was declared a public health emergency in March, said Shireen McSpadden, executive director of San Francisco’s Department of Disability and Aging Services. (DiFeliciantonio, 8/4)

KQED: First The Pandemic Hit, Then The Recession – Now Debt Collectors Are Calling 
Thousands of Californians are struggling to pay their bills during one of the nation's worst health crises, which has wiped out millions of jobs and left many businesses hobbling. But despite their financial hardships, many are being asked to pay their debts or have their wages garnished in the middle of a global pandemic. Richard Gonzales works as a mechanical engineer in San Jose. Before the pandemic hit, he was using the extra money he made to pay for continuing education classes. But since May, he's been furloughed. (Bandlamudi, 8/4)

The New York Times: Can A Physically Taxing Job Be Bad For Our Brains? 
Regular exercise helps to bulk up our brains and improve thinking skills, numerous studies show. But physically demanding jobs, even if they are being carried out in an office, might have a different and opposite effect, according to a provocative new study of almost 100 older people and their brains and work histories. It finds that men and women who considered their work to be physically draining tended to have smaller memory centers in their brains and lower scores on memory tests than other people whose jobs felt less physically taxing. The study does not prove that physical demands at work shrunk people’s brains. But it does raise interesting questions about whether being physically active on the job might somehow have different effects on our brains than being active at the gym or out on the trails. (Reynolds, 8/5)