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Prince Harry's devastating photos from South Africa are why poaching needs to go.

Prince Harry's tour of Kruger National Park in South Africa quickly become emotional for the 31-year-old royal.

Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images.

(Warning: Potentially upsetting image below).

The prince was heartbroken to see the carcasses of endangered animals left behind by poachers.

Photo by Paul Edwards/Getty Images.

"This belongs to South Africa and it's been stolen by other people. And the body's left here, wasted," the prince said upon viewing the body of a rhinoceros with just its horn cut away, according to a report in The Guardian.

Harry has been documenting the trip on Instagram and appealing to his followers to help stop poaching.

Among the heartrending photos: this one of the prince hugging an elephant that had been sedated for examination.

A photo posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on

"After a very long day in Kruger National Park, with five rhinos sent to new homes and three elephants freed from their collars - like this sedated female - I decided to take a moment.

I know how lucky I am to have these experiences, but hearing stories from people on the ground about how bad the situation really is, upset and frustrated me. How can it be that 30,000 elephants were slaughtered last year alone? None of them had names, so do we not care? And for what? Their tusks? Seeing huge carcasses of rhinos and elephants scattered across Africa, with their horns and tusks missing is a pointless waste of beauty."

And this one, in which Harry, sadly, works to dehorn a rhino — one of the only short-term methods of deterring potential poachers.

A photo posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on

"I was working with Dr. Mark Jago and Dr. Pete Morkel in Namibia. Some countries are de-horning small populations of rhino to deter poachers from shooting them. It is a short-term solution and surely no substitute for professional and well-trained rangers protecting these highly sought-after animals. De-horning has to be done every two years for it to be effective and can only realistically be done with small populations in open bush."

There are many more here. Warning: Several of them are extremely graphic and upsetting.

Poaching is no joke, and it's a growing problem.

The ivory trade has already devastated the rhinoceros population, which currently sits at around 29,000 (down from about 500,000 in the early 1900s). The death of a white rhino at the San Diego Zoo last month left the total number of that rhino species remaining on Earth at just three.

It's not just the animals that are at risk.

Big-game poaching often disrupts tourism for countries that depend on it, as the growing scarcity of wildlife to view and the possibility of violence dissuades potential visitors. Fewer visitors means increased local poverty and staff cutbacks at national parks, which can lead to even more poaching.

There are some signs of hope, however, that the tide might be slowly turning.

Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images.

Back in September, the U.S. and China signed an agreement to take steps to stem the ivory trade — a very big deal, as both countries are among the world's largest markets for the illicit substance. And this New York Times report found increasing levels of local support for anti-poaching efforts. It also found that even some former poachers are turning against the trade, which they see as contributing to the destruction of their own communities.

Ultimately, Prince Harry is right. It's critical that we save these majestic animals and — just as importantly — the people whose livelihoods depend on their survival before it's too late.

Here are some good folks — including Save the Rhino, the Black Mambas (a predominantly female anti-poaching brigade in South Africa), and the International Anti-Poaching Foundation — who are on that. Do check them out.

We can't allow moments like this to become a thing of the past.

Prince Harry has released this personal photo taken during his summer visit to southern Africa. Here Prince Harry shares his story behind the photograph... "This was the second time Zawadi, a female black rhino, met someone from my family. My brother William fed her three years ago in Kent just before she left under a translocation project to Tanzania where she now lives in a sanctuary. Thanks to the passion and stubbornness of Tony Fitzjohn OBE and his amazing rangers, she and many others are living it up in the bush and their numbers are growing. She goes nuts for carrots and I loved being able to send William this photo. Hats off to Tusk Trust." http://www.tusk.org/mkomazi-national-park Photograph ©Prince Harry
A photo posted by Kensington Palace (@kensingtonroyal) on
Pop Culture

Artist uses AI to create ultra realistic portraits of celebrities who left us too soon

What would certain icons look like if nothing had happened to them?

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Mercury would be 76 today.

Some icons have truly left this world too early. It’s a tragedy when anyone doesn’t make it to see old age, but when it happens to a well-known public figure, it’s like a bit of their art and legacy dies with them. What might Freddie Mercury have created if he were granted the gift of long life? Bruce Lee? Princess Diana?

Their futures might be mere musings of our imagination, but thanks to a lot of creativity (and a little tech) we can now get a glimpse into what these celebrities might have looked like when they were older.

Alper Yesiltas, an Istanbul-based lawyer and photographer, created a photography series titled “As If Nothing Happened,” which features eerily realistic portraits of long gone celebrities in their golden years. To make the images as real looking as possible, Yesiltas incorporated various photo editing programs such as Adobe Lightroom and VSCO, as well as the AI photo-enhancing software Remini.

“The hardest part of the creative process for me is making the image feel ‘real’ to me,” Yesiltas wrote about his passion project. “The moment I like the most is when I think the image in front of me looks as if it was taken by a photographer.”

Yesiltas’ meticulousness paid off, because the results are uncanny.

Along with each photo, Yesiltas writes a bittersweet message “wishing” how things might have gone differently … as if nothing happened.
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American Cancer Society
American Cancer Society
Science

Meet the researcher shining a light on the “white lens” of medical AI in skin cancer prevention

How we can create equity for all communities?

All images provided by Adewole Adamson

It begins with more inclusive conversations at a patient level

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Adewole Adamson, MD, of the University of Texas, Austin, aims to create more equity in health care by gathering data from more diverse populations by using artificial intelligence (AI), a type of machine learning. Dr. Adamson’s work is funded by the American Cancer Society (ACS), an organization committed to advancing health equity through research priorities, programs and services for groups who have been marginalized.

Melanoma became a particular focus for Dr. Adamson after meeting Avery Smith, who lost his wife—a Black woman—to the deadly disease.

melanoma, melanoma for dark skin Avery Smith (left) and Adamson (sidenote)

This personal encounter, coupled with multiple conversations with Black dermatology patients, drove Dr. Adamson to a concerning discovery: as advanced as AI is at detecting possible skin cancers, it is heavily biased.

To understand this bias, it helps to first know how AI works in the early detection of skin cancer, which Dr. Adamson explains in his paper for the New England Journal of Medicine (paywall). The process uses computers that rely on sets of accumulated data to learn what healthy or unhealthy skin looks like and then create an algorithm to predict diagnoses based on those data sets.

This process, known as supervised learning, could lead to huge benefits in preventive care.

After all, early detection is key to better outcomes. The problem is that the data sets don’t include enough information about darker skin tones. As Adamson put it, “everything is viewed through a ‘white lens.’”

“If you don’t teach the algorithm with a diverse set of images, then that algorithm won’t work out in the public that is diverse,” writes Adamson in a study he co-wrote with Smith (according to a story in The Atlantic). “So there’s risk, then, for people with skin of color to fall through the cracks.”

Tragically, Smith’s wife was diagnosed with melanoma too late and paid the ultimate price for it. And she was not an anomaly—though the disease is more common for White patients, Black cancer patients are far more likely to be diagnosed at later stages, causing a notable disparity in survival rates between non-Hispanics whites (90%) and non-Hispanic blacks (66%).

As a computer scientist, Smith suspected this racial bias and reached out to Adamson, hoping a Black dermatologist would have more diverse data sets. Though Adamson didn’t have what Smith was initially looking for, this realization ignited a personal mission to investigate and reduce disparities.

Now, Adamson uses the knowledge gained through his years of research to help advance the fight for health equity. To him, that means not only gaining a wider array of data sets, but also having more conversations with patients to understand how socioeconomic status impacts the level and efficiency of care.

“At the end of the day, what matters most is how we help patients at the patient level,” Adamson told Upworthy. “And how can you do that without knowing exactly what barriers they face?”

american cancer society, skin cacner treatment"What matters most is how we help patients at the patient level."https://www.kellydavidsonstudio.com/

The American Cancer Society believes everyone deserves a fair and just opportunity to prevent, find, treat, and survive cancer—regardless of how much money they make, the color of their skin, their sexual orientation, gender identity, their disability status, or where they live. Inclusive tools and resources on the Health Equity section of their website can be found here. For more information about skin cancer, visit cancer.org/skincancer.

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