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Dining out more at restaurants, cafeterias and fast-food outlets may boost total levels of potentially health-harming chemicals called phthalates in the body, according to a study out today. Phthalates, a group of chemicals used in food packaging and processing materials, are known to disrupt hormones in humans and are linked to a long list of health problems.

A proposal for an electric cargo airship has made it to the second round of a national contest to come up with “the next big thing” that will transform Canada. The brainchild of Dr. Barry Prentice, the proposal pitches the development of a cargo airship transport network that would do for the Canadian North what the railway did for Western Canada 140 years ago.

Injecting minute amounts of two immune-stimulating agents directly into solid tumors in mice can eliminate all traces of cancer in the animals, including distant, untreated metastases, according to a study by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine.

The approach works for many different types of cancers, including those that arise spontaneously, the study found.

As many of Hawaiʻi‘s leading water professionals near retirement, there’s an urgent need to train a new local workforce of scientists. That’s happening at the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa thanks to ʻIke Wai, a large five-year project funded by the National Science Foundation that aims to understand how water moves and is captured and stored underground in Hawaiʻi. Its main study sites include the Kona and Pearl Harbor aquifer systems.

China met its 2020 carbon intensity target — the amount of carbon dioxide it produces per unit of economic growth — three years ahead of schedule, according to the country’s top climate official, Xie Zhenhua. In 2017, China cut its carbon intensity by 46 percent from 2005 levels, a drop of 5.1 percent from the previous year, the state-run Xinhua News Agency reported.

Xie announced the milestone at the country’s Green Carbon Summit on Monday.