I’m sure there are photographers out there who have resorted to wiping their lens clean with their t-shirt. It’s not the most glamorous way to keep your gear clean. Luckily for you, there are some good deals on camera accessories this Amazon Prime Day and who can grumble at a lens cleaning kit costing less than $10?
You might be getting your gear ready for the full moon, known as the buck moon, that is rising tonight (July 10) or preparing for a night of astrophotography for the return of Saturn to the night sky. Either way, you may want to consider adding a lens cleaning kit to your gear to ensure your kit is always ready to grab and go.
And we think we’ve found a bargain set for you. For only $7.99, the Aispour camera lens cleaning gear comes with one bottle of camera lens cleaner, one air blower, a two-in-one lens cleaning pen and a retractable wool soft brush. If this isn’t enough, you also get five sensor cleaning swabs, 25 lens cleaning tissue papers, two microfiber cleaning cloths and eight cleaner wipes. Plus, a handy storage box to tidy it away neatly and keep everything together. Not bad for less than $10. Say goodbye to the days of quickly wiping your lens with your t-shirt.
We’ve also spotted some other cheap camera accessory deals to help you prepare for some celestial activity over the coming months, including the Perseid meteor shower happening in August.
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Nicole Scherzinger, mentor and judge on Netflix‘s new reality show Building the Band, is opening up about filming with Liam Payne before the singer’s tragic death last year.
The Pussycat Dolls singer was one of the creative brains behind One Direction during her time as a judge on the U.K. X-Factor, helping to put together the group that catapulted Payne and fellow band members Harry Styles, Zayn Malik, Louis Tomlinson and Niall Horan to global stardom in 2010.
Scherzinger spoke to Billboard about filming the Netflix contest — where 50 musicians form six bands without ever seeing each other — alongside host AJ McLean, Destiny’s Child star Kelly Rowland and Payne.
The British musician died aged 31 after falling from a balcony in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on Oct. 16 in 2024. In a story published Thursday, Scherzinger reflected on her time spent seeing Payne’s rise to fame on the X-Factor and how much he appeared to enjoy shooting Building the Band.
“I thought it was so beautiful to see the journey, to see Liam come full circle,” Scherzinger said. “Especially my relationship with him, having helped form the band One Direction and then see him have such wildly, phenomenal global success with One Direction and with his solo career … [to see him] mentor these bands, it was really beautiful.
“I saw the joy it brought to Liam. I felt that this was his happy place. Like myself, AJ and Kelly, we’ve lived this. We’ve learned it.”
She continued: “To be able to bestow any inspiration and knowledge and wisdom and experience on any of these contestants and these bands, it brought us all joy. Particularly Liam. I felt this really inspired him and this was his happy place. This was his happy place because Liam was such a beautiful heart, and he loved to give back. He loved to help.”
Following Payne’s untimely death, the show’s producers and the star’s grieving family weighed Payne’s inclusion in the series. Ultimately, with his family’s consent, they decided to move forward.
Episodes of Building the Band began rolling out in groups, starting with the first four, from Wednesday, Jul. 9. Scherzinger said about the format: “It doesn’t get any more real than having a band put themselves together without any record execs or labels telling them what they have to do, what they have to look like.
“That doesn’t work anymore,” she added. “That’s the old formula.”
More than 1 in 5 US adults with arthritis do not know their specific subtype, with a lack of awareness disproportionately affecting certain racial and ethnic groups, as well as individuals with lower income, less education, and no health insurance, according to a study published in the CDC’s Preventing Chronic Disease.1
Arthritis is one of the most common chronic diseases in the US, affecting an estimated 53.2 million adults.2 This number is projected to increase to 78.4 million by 2040.3 The term “arthritis” encompasses over 100 conditions, each with different symptoms, treatments, etiologies, and pathogeneses.4
Consequently, the researchers emphasized the importance of individuals with arthritis knowing their specific subtype to support effective disease management. They added that having up-to-date prevalence estimates for various arthritis subtypes can help inform public health policies, support prevention programs, and allocate resources effectively.
Despite its importance, limited research has examined the prevalence and distribution of arthritis subtypes among US adults. To fill this gap, the researchers analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey collected between 2017 and March 2020.
The study found that the overall crude prevalence of any diagnosed arthritis among US adults aged 20 or older was 27.9%, affecting about 67.1 million individuals (95% CI, 23.5%-30.6%). The overall age-standardized prevalence was 24.9% (95% CI, 23.2%-26.7%).
These significant gaps in arthritis subtype awareness among US adults underscore the need for improved health literacy and more targeted public health efforts. | Image Credit: Evrymmnt – stock.adobe.com
Osteoarthritis was the most common subtype, affecting an estimated 33.2 million US adults (crude prevalence, 49.6%; age-standardized prevalence, 44.5%). This was followed by rheumatoid arthritis, which impacted 10.6 million people (crude, 15.8%; age-standardized, 18.9%), and psoriatic arthritis, which affected 1.0 million people (crude, 1.4%; age-standardized, 1.7%).
Additionally, more than 1 in 10 individuals with arthritis reported having an unlisted type of arthritis (n = 7.7 million; crude, 11.5%; age-standardized, 15.6%), and about 1 in 5 affected adults did not know their specific arthritis type (n = 14.4 million; crude, 21.6%; age-standardized, 22.3%).
The age-standardized prevalence of not knowing one’s arthritis type was higher among certain racial and ethnic groups. Among adults who self-identified as Mexican American, 31.9% were unaware of their arthritis type, compared with 20.2% of non-Hispanic White adults (P = .03). Similarly, the prevalence was 26.7% among non-Hispanic Black adults and 29.5% among other Hispanic adults.
The data also showed a clear association between educational attainment and arthritis type awareness, with the prevalence of not knowing increasing as educational attainment decreased (P = .006). Adults with a college degree (14.8%) had a lower prevalence of not knowing their arthritis type compared with those with some college education (23.4%; P = .02), a high school education (24.1%; P = .03), or less than a high school education (31.8%; P = .005).
Income level also played a role. Adults with a family income at or below 125% of the federal poverty level (FPL) had a higher prevalence of not knowing their arthritis type (26.7%) than those with a family income above 400% of the FPL (16.6%; P = .004). Lastly, a lack of health insurance was another significant factor, with 36.1% of uninsured adults unaware of their arthritis type compared with 20.7% of insured adults (P = .03).
The researchers concluded by acknowledging their limitations, including the fact that arthritis subtypes were self-reported and not validated by a health care professional. As a result, recall bias may have led to misclassification of arthritis types, affecting the accuracy of prevalence estimates.
Nonetheless, they expressed confidence in their findings, which highlight a broader issue of health literacy in the US. The researchers stressed that understanding one’s arthritis type is essential for effective treatment, self-management, and improved health outcomes.
“Knowing arthritis type is crucial for successfully managing the disease and preventing further damage,” the authors wrote. “Using strategies to improve organizational and personal health literacy could contribute to more informed patients, thereby reducing the prevalence of not knowing arthritis type and improving health outcomes.”
References
Foster AL, Boring MA, Lites TD, Croft JE, Odom EL, Fallon EA. Distribution of arthritis subtypes among adults with arthritis in the United States, 2017-March 2020. Prev Chronic Dis. 2025;22:E28. doi:10.5888/pcd22.240393
Fallon EA, Boring MA, Foster AL, et al. Prevalence of diagnosed arthritis – United States, 2019-2021. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2023;72(41):1101-1107. doi:10.15585/mmwr.mm7241a1
Hootman JM, Helmick CG, Barbour KE, Theis KA, Boring MA. Updated projected prevalence of self-reported doctor-diagnosed arthritis and arthritis-attributable activity limitation among US adults, 2015-2040. Arthritis Rheumatol. 2016;68(7):1582-1587. doi:10.1002/art.39692
A Delta jet experienced engine problems on what was supposed to be a trans-Atlantic flight and landed on an island in the middle of the ocean, where the nearly 300 travelers and crew had to spend the night, officials said Thursday.
Flight 127 left Madrid on Sunday, bound for New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, when it had “to divert to Lajes, Azores (TER) after indication of a mechanical issue with an engine,” according to an airline statement.
A satellite image of the Azores, a Portuguese archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean. Planet Observer / Getty Images
The Airbus A330 had 282 customers and 13 crew members on board, Delta said.
The passengers and crew “deplaned via stairs at TER” and “were accommodated overnight in area hotels and provided meals,” the airline added.
They were taken off the island in Portugal’s Azores archipelago on a new aircraft on Monday.
“The flight landed safely, and we sincerely apologize to our customers for their experience and delay in their travels,” Delta said.
Breathing polluted air daily may do more harm than we thought—especially to your brain. A new Danish study published in Neurology has found a potential link between long-term air pollution exposure and a higher risk of developing meningioma, a typically non-cancerous but serious type of brain tumour. The research followed nearly four million adults over 21 years and revealed that exposure to ultrafine particles—like those from traffic and diesel fumes—was associated with increased tumour risk. These findings add to growing evidence that air pollution doesn’t just affect your lungs and heart—it may impact brain health too.
Meningioma brain tumour development linked to air pollution in large-scale study
A new large-scale Danish study has found that people exposed to higher levels of air pollution over long periods may face an increased risk of developing meningioma—a type of brain tumour that is typically non-cancerous but can still cause serious health problems.Published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, the study followed nearly four million Danish adults over a span of 21 years. Researchers tracked the development of tumours of the central nervous system and found that approximately 16,600 participants were diagnosed during that period—of which 4,600 cases were meningioma.
What is meningioma brain tumour and why is it a concern?
Meningiomas are the most common type of primary brain tumour. While usually benign (non-cancerous), they can grow large enough to press on nearby brain tissue, nerves, or blood vessels, potentially leading to neurological symptoms such as headaches, vision problems, or seizures. Because they grow slowly, they can go unnoticed for years.
Ultrafine particles in air pollution linked to higher brain tumour risk
To estimate long-term pollution exposure, researchers assessed air quality in participants’ neighborhoods—particularly traffic-related emissions, diesel exhaust, and ultrafine particles such as those found in smoke and vehicle fumes.The analysis revealed a clear link between higher air pollution levels and increased risk of meningioma, especially in those exposed to ultrafine particles. However, no strong connection was observed between air pollution and more aggressive or cancerous tumours, such as gliomas.According to lead study author Dr Ulla Hvidtfeldt, a senior scientist at the Danish Cancer Institute, these findings add to the growing understanding that air pollution doesn’t just harm the lungs and heart—but may also affect the brain. “While research on the health effects of ultrafine particles is still in its early stages, these findings point to a possible link between traffic-related ultrafine particle exposure and the development of meningioma,” said Hvidtfeldt in a statement.
How can air pollution affect brain health?
Although the study does not establish direct causation, it strengthens the growing body of evidence suggesting that airborne pollutants can cross the blood-brain barrier, potentially triggering inflammation or damage to brain tissue.Previous research has found that ultrafine particles, due to their small size, may penetrate deeply into the lungs, enter the bloodstream, and reach the brain, where they may contribute to neurodegenerative diseases or cognitive decline.
Other known risk factors for meningiomas brain tumour
While the exact cause of meningioma is still unclear, other recognised risk factors include:
Radiation exposure, especially during childhood
Hormonal factors (more common in women)
Genetic conditions such as Neurofibromatosis type 2 (NF2)
This study sheds new light on the possible role of environmental triggers like air quality in meningioma development.While the findings are significant, researchers noted several limitations. Pollution exposure was estimated based on outdoor air quality in residential areas and did not account for time spent indoors or at work, where pollution levels can differ. The authors emphasised that more detailed studies are needed to confirm these results and explore whether reducing air pollution could help lower the risk of developing brain tumours.Also Read: This superfood could be the cheapest way to eat healthier and it’s already in your kitchen
Marine plastic litter tends to grab headlines, with images of suffocating seabirds or bottles washing up along coastlines. Increasingly, researchers have been finding tiny microplastic fragments across all environments, from the most densely populated cities to pristine mountaintops, as well as in human tissue including the brain and placenta. A study published today reveals yet another hidden source of this deadly waste: nanometre-scale particles are literally everywhere, says co-author Dušan Materić, an environmental analytical chemist at the Helmholtz Centre for Environmental Research in Leipzig, Germany.
Materić and his colleagues sampled water at three depths representative of different environments in the North Atlantic Ocean. Throughout the water column, they found three types of nanoplastic: polyethylene terephthalate (PET), polystyrene (PS) and polyvinylchloride (PVC). These were present at average concentrations of 18 milligrams per metre cubed, which translates to 27 million tonnes of nanoplastics spread across just the top layer of the temperate to subtropical North Atlantic. “Nanoplastics make up the dominant fraction of marine plastic pollution,” Materić says. In the entire world’s oceans, it is estimated that there are around 3 million tonnes of floating plastic pollution — excluding nanoplastics.
What are plastic nanoparticles and how different are they from microplastics?
The tiniest of pieces of plastic, nanoplastics are defined by the researchers as having a diameter of less than one micrometre (one one-thousandth of a metre). Microplastics are between one micrometre and 5 millimetres across. At the smaller scale of nanoplastics, materials behave differently. Materić and his colleagues found that the particles were distributed throughout the water column, rather than settling to the bottom. The movement of the nanoplastic particles was dominated not by gravity, but by the random movement called Brownian motion, and by collisions with water molecules.
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How did the team find the nanoplastics?
The scientists took water samples during a November 2020 cruise on research vessel Pelagia, which is owned by the Royal Netherlands Institute of Sea Research in Texel. They sampled at 12 locations: 5 in the system of circular currents called the North Atlantic subtropical gyre; 4 in the open ocean; and 3 from coastal areas on the European continental shelf. At each location, they gathered samples at depths of 10 metres and 1,000 metres below the surface, and then 30 metres off the ocean bottom.
The nanoplastics were detected using a technology called thermal-desorption proton-transfer-reaction mass spectrometry. “We faced multiple challenges,” says Materić, including the need to remove contaminants other than nanoplastics. Each 10-millilitre sample was run through a filter with micrometre pores to clear out microplastics. Samples were then slowly heated, releasing any organic matter and allowing the remaining plastics to be identified.
Not all was as expected. “We faced a big mystery,” says Materić. One major class of plastics, polyethylene (PE), was missing from the data, even though fragments almost certainly enter the ocean. The fragments probably transform into something else, or might fall to the sea bed, says Materić. “This suggests that PE nanoplastic cycling in the ocean environment follows some unusual pathway — either rapid chemical alteration or mineralization, or fast sinking.”
Should we be surprised that nanoplastics are an overlooked source of plastics pollution? Should we be worried?
“This does not come as a surprise to me, as I have been aware of the extent and magnitude of the problem for some time,” says Tony Walker, an environmental scientist at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Canada. “Nanoplastics, unlike microplastics, are able to pass through cell walls, meaning that they are already incorporated into the ocean phytoplankton which serve as the base of the marine food web and are able to be transferred through the marine food web,” he explains.
The ubiquitousness of nanoplastics means they should be taken seriously, says Materić. “Given their toxicological potential, they may represent the most problematic plastic size fraction for ocean life,” he says. Walker agrees: “This should be a wake-up call to all of us,” he says. “The extent to which nanoplastics can infiltrate every ecosystem and living cell on the planet is even far worse than what we already know about microplastics and larger plastic pollution.”
What can be done to mitigate the pollution?
The next and likely final round of negotiations for a legally binding United Nations treaty on plastics pollution will kick off in August in Geneva, Switzerland. On the table is a limit on future plastic manufacture, but this is being resisted by some countries, including those that rely on oil and gas exports to power their economies.
“One of the best strategies to mitigate future nanoplastics pollution or release into the environment is to cap plastic production,” says Walker. “Turn off the tap.”
This article is reproduced with permission and was first published on July 9, 2025.
Primarily, we’re thinking back to South Africa in 1997 when the Lions concept was less commercial, when players were allowed to be more open and when the talk was not of “learnings” but of “Everest”.
The Lions had just lost to Northern Transvaal and were now playing the Gauteng Lions. It was a battle, but they won.
Coach Jim Telfer said it was the night that re-established momentum, silenced the Bokke and saved the tour. We all know what happened after that.
“It was like a fourth Test match and I don’t think the guys who played realised what they’d done at the time,” recalled Martin Johnson, captain of the tour but not in the squad that night.
“When they came off, the ovation they got from the rest of the squad – I’ll never forget that. That game was massive. That’s one of my favourite moments of being a Lion – and I didn’t even play.”
It’s a mad segue to Saturday in Adelaide, but there’s a point to be made. The side made up of former All Blacks and Wallabies is, on paper, threatening.
The carrot of killing Lions’ momentum and plunging them into self-doubt a week out from the first Test must serve as an enormous incentive, even to all the Kiwi members of the group.
So, it’s the job of the Saturday boys to keep Lions’ spirits high.
“That’s the beauty of professional sport, isn’t it?” says White. “You always have that challenge, you always have that pressure.
“It’s not about going out there and trying to do things differently. It’s about enjoying the occasion, being free and showing what you can do.
“And when you put in a good performance and you’re sat in the changing room, you can look around at your peers and say, ‘that was good fun’.”
He has work to do before that sensation kicks in, but it’s work White’s dreamed about doing for the longest time.
Tremendous tilts of Mars’ rotational axis during the past 20 million years may have dried out the planet, according to a new study. The findings may help solve the mystery of how Mars, which once contained lakes, rivers and possibly oceans, lost its water.
Dry, dust-filled deserts cover much of Mars’ surface today. Astronomers think most of the planet’s scant water reserves are frozen within fine-grained surface dirt, with above-surface ice confined to the polar regions.
But the Red Planet hasn’t always been so dry. Gullies, lake beds and valleys photographed by early NASA missions like the Viking project suggest that since Mars’ birth, the planet’s surface has been periodically inundated by billions of gallons of liquid water. In fact, planetary scientists have calculated that the volume of water that carved out these geological features amounted to a layer at least 300 feet (100 meters) thick over the planet’s entire surface.
One hypothesis for where the water went is that much of it was “boiled” off. In a joint email to Live Science, Gabriella Gilli and Francisco González-Galindo, astronomers at the Astrophysics Institute of Andalusia in Spain and the new study’s first and second authors, respectively, explained this process.
Water vapor in the Martian atmosphere — kicked high up by powerful dust storms — would have separated into atomic hydrogen and oxygen due to the sun’s powerful ultraviolet radiation. A fraction of this lightweight atmospheric hydrogen would have been sufficiently energetic to escape into space.
“Given that ultimately the hydrogen in Mars’ atmosphere comes from water, the escape of hydrogen atoms involves the loss of water molecules,” Gilli and González-Galindo said.
Related: Mars rover captures first close-up photos of giant ‘spiderwebs’ on the Red Planet
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Measurements by NASA’s ongoing Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Emission mission suggest that, at present, approximately 100 trillion trillion hydrogen atoms exit Mars’ atmosphere every second. But estimates — using this present-day escape rate — of the total water Mars has lost over its 4 billion-year lifetime are, at best, only a quarter of the amount calculated to have sculpted the various geological features. In other words, most of Mars’ historic water loss can’t be explained by this mechanism alone.
To resolve this discrepancy, the new study’s authors proposed a different idea: that Mars lost much more water when its axis of rotation was enormously tilted in the past. Today, Mars’ tilt, or obliquity, is 25.2 degrees relative to its orbital plane around the sun, similar to Earth’s 23.5 degrees. However, the Red Planet’s tilt hasn’t remained stable over the past several million years.
“The main reason is that Mars, contrary to the Earth, does not have a massive satellite (the Moon), which plays a major role in stabilizing the orbital variations of the planet,” Gilli and González-Galindo said. As a result, Mars has gyrated wildly between 0 degrees and a massive 66 degrees, averaging 35 degrees.
Mars’ craters, canyons and gullies all show evidence of past water on the Red Planet’s surface. (Image credit: NASA/JPL/Malin Space Science Systems)
The researchers hypothesized that as Mars tilted more, its north pole received more sunlight, which likely would have melted more ice and increased the amount of atmospheric vapor that could escape. Daniel Lo, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Michigan who wasn’t involved in the study, agreed with this reasoning, telling Live Science by email that “during intervals of increased axial tilt for Mars, global temperatures actually increased, and some of the water ice [across the planet] would sublimate into water vapour.”
To test their hypothesis, the new study’s authors turned to a computational simulation called the Mars Planetary Climate Model, “among the best that we currently have for the Martian atmosphere,” Lo said. The team virtually changed the planet’s tilt to 30 degrees and 35 degrees, and tracked the amount of hydrogen lost over a Martian year. They also evaluated the impact of dust storms using real data.
The analyses revealed that such storms increased hydrogen losses by up to 50%, depending on the storm’s strength. But the real eye-opener came with the obliquity results: At a 35-degree tilt, an average of 19 more hydrogen atoms (compared to present-day values) escaped every second from Mars’ atmosphere. This corresponds to a Martian yearly loss of a billion more hydrogen atoms compared with today’s hydrogen losses. Gilli and González-Galindo noted that this would translate to Mars having the equivalent of a 260-foot-thick (80 m) global layer of water over its lifespan — close to the lowest geological estimate for its water content.
The findings, published May 21 in the journal Nature Astronomy, showed that changes in the planet’s tilt substantially increased the amount of hydrogen — and thus water — that was lost.
“It suggests that the atmospheric thermal escape played a larger role than thought in drying the planet,” Gilli and González-Galindo said. However, they noted that factors such as the planet’s dust composition likely differed from present-day values and also may have influenced water loss.
