A cancer diagnosis no longer means what it used to. Just a few decades ago, the survival rate beyond five years was less than 50%. Now, nearly 70% of those who get cancer survive that long. Why? Because, chemotherapy (化疗) and radiation (放疗) , once the only heavy hitters of cancer treatment, are being paired with or replaced by a slate of new drugs and treatments.

For example, the first medication for what was previously considered an “undruggable” lung cancer mutation was recently approved in the United States, Canada, Europe and the U. K.

An even bigger newsmaker has been the promise of a treatment called immunotherapy (免疫疗法) , as researchers around the world have discovered ways to harness the body’s own immune system to battle cancer cells.

Also driving hope is a focus on prevention. Decades of research and public education have led to greater awareness of how lifestyle changes can reduce our risk of developing cancer. According to an article from the journal Pharmaceutical Research , 90% to 95% of cancers can be attributed to environment and lifestyle, rather than to genetic factors.

Here are some of the advances scientists are making against cancer.

PREVENTION

Cervical cancer was once one of the most common women’s cancers. In recent decades, Pap test screening led to a decline. But a preventive tool in use for more than a decade— a vaccine against the human papilloma virus (HPV) , which is responsible for more than 95% of cervical cancer cases-has been a game changer. Here’s how:

Since 2006, when the vaccine was introduced in North America, HPV infections have dropped more than 80% among teen girls and young women in the United States.

A study published in 2021 found that in England, where the immunization program was introduced in 2008, cervical cancer has been almost completely eliminated in women born since 1995 (those who were vaccinated at ages 12 or 13) .

An 11-year Swedish study of 1. 7 million women published in 2020 indicated that women vaccinated before age 17 were 90% less likely to get cervical cancer.

In March 2022, Australia announced that it was on track to become the first country to eliminate the cancer.

The World Health Organization’s goal is for 90% of girls to be vaccinated globally by 2030, eventually eliminating cervical cancer entirely.

Building a country is never easy. It takes hard work from generation to generation. But how about destroying it? A new report from The Guardian said long time of climate change can do that. The report said Tuvalu will be the first country to be completely lost due to climate change.

Tuvalu is a Pacific island nation with nine islands and 12,000 people. It has long been at risk from rising sea levels. Now, 40 percent of the area in its capital is underwater at high tide. By the end of the century, it is believed that all the islands will be underwater, reported Reuters. So many people in Tuvalu have often moved around the country and even to other countries.

To help with the problem, the country plans to build its country in the metaverse. The digital country will recreate the same landscape and keep its cultural and historical records. No matter where they live in the real world, the people in this country will have their identity and “live” in its online communities. The government hopes to manage and serve them in cyberspace.

This news made many people in Tuvalu excited. But Li Zuxi, director of the metaverse lab of Qingbo Intelligent Technology, said it may not be the best solution.

“Though the digital nation belongs to Tuvalu, it’s still built on a metaverse platform,” said Li. “Now, the metaverse is not mature, which may bring some problems.” He gave us an example. If people from other countries enter the space of the digital country but just show their names, how do people know if they do or do not truly belong to that country?

Li added that instead of trying our best to build digital nations, it's better to pay attention to save the real world now.

At the Port of Los Angeles, a long gray ship is doing its part to fight against climate change. On the ship, which belongs to Captura, a Los Angeles-based company, is a system of pipes, pumps, and containers that pumps seawater and removes CO₂, which can be used to make plastics and fuels or buried. Then the treated seawater is returned to the ocean, where it absorbs more CO₂ from the atmosphere, in an effort to battle the rise of the greenhouse gas.

Capturing (捕获) CO₂ from the ocean should be easier and cheaper than a seemingly more direct approach: capturing it directly from the air. Direct air capture, which relies on fans to sweep air past chemicals that can absorb CO₂, currently costs between $600 to $1000 per ton of CO₂ removed, largely because atmospheric CO₂ only makes up less than 0.05% of the air by volume. Earth’s oceans, in contrast, hold the gas at a concentration nearly 150 times higher, and absorb roughly 30% of all emitted (排放) CO₂ each year.

Besides, ocean capture is developing faster than other ocean CO₂ removal approaches. That’s partly because the systems can usually be attached to desalination (脱盐) plants, wastewater treatment equipment, and other large water-processing systems.

However, one challenge for the approach is determining exactly how much CO₂ the treated water absorbs and at what rate. Still, the absorption rates will vary based on where the water is released and how easily it mixes with surrounding water. That makes site selection a really important part of this process.

Even if the technology takes off, it will have to be promoted widely to make a difference in offsetting global emissions. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, by 2050 engineered carbon removal efforts will need to remove some 5 billion tons of CO₂ every year to limit the global temperature increase to 1.5°C. At present, the ocean capture companies are removing only thousands of tons.