Democratic Republic of Congo’s Health Ministry has approved the use of a new Ebola vaccine to counter an outbreak of the hemorrhagic fever in its northeast that has killed four people, a spokesman said on Monday.

“The non-objection was given. Now there’s a Medecins Sans Frontieres team that is arriving [in Congo] today to validate the protocol with the technical teams,” Jonathan Simba, a Health Ministry spokesman, said by telephone.

The vaccine, known as rVSV-ZEBOV and developed by Merck, is not yet licensed but was shown to be highly protective against Ebola in clinical trials published last December.

As of Friday, Congo had registered 52 total suspected cases, including two that have been confirmed, the World Health Organization spokesman in Congo, Eugene Kabambi, said by telephone, adding that the situation appears to be under control.

Simba said that the details of the vaccination campaign would be announced after a meeting of the health ministry and its partners set to take place on Monday or Tuesday.

A vaccination campaign would present logistical challenges in Congo’s isolated northeastern forests, including transporting and storing the vaccine in special containers at the required minus 80 degrees Celsius.

 
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Scientists are helping to combat the world hunger crisis by breeding nutrient-packed crops that will fill stomachs and lessen the effects of malnutrition.

It’s called biofortification.

It sounds complicated, but the concept is simple: create smarter seeds that grow into more nutrient-dense staple crops than regular ones. Then distribute the seeds on a large scale to farmers in developing countries, so they can grow crops that are more nutritious.

Seeds with more nutrients

This is what researchers at HarvestPlus, a Washington-based nonprofit, have been doing on a large scale since 2003, feeding an estimated 20 million people in 30 countries.

Their biofortified seeds pack one or more vital nutrients, such as iron, zinc and Vitamin A, said Bev Postma, HarvestPlus’ CEO.

“It’s very important that the seeds are not just high in nutrition, but that they are still high-yielding, they are pest resistant, they are climate resistant — because these are the things a farmer still wants more,” she said.

Deficiencies of these nutrients can leave people more vulnerable to illness and infections, and in extreme cases cause blindness and stunt growth. Children are especially affected.

The organization’s research has found that many of these effects can be reversed in a matter of months once nutrient-packed foods are introduced into the local diet.

150 varieties of 12 staples

HarvestPlus scientists have produced 150 varieties of 12 staple foods, including corn, beans, rice, lentils and wheat.

In 2003, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation gave the organization a $25 million grant over four years to help them scale up. This year, they are one of eight finalists for a $100 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation, which could help them realize their goal of reaching 1 billion people with biofortified crops by 2030.

“We’re not trying to change behavior, we are looking to see what people are eating and we are just switching out to make that food more nutritious,” Postma said.

Biofortified seeds are produced in a traditional manner, and they are not genetically modified.

Seed distribution

The seeds are distributed through seed companies and sometimes directly to farmers.

“We’ve learned that in some countries, if we give the seed away, we can encourage the farmers to not just grow this new variety, but then ask them to give the next year’s seed that they harvest to four new farmers,” Postma said.

In other instances, she said, they work with seed companies to persuade them to adopt biofortified seeds and sell them as part of a package of options to farmers.

“We find in some instances it is better if farmers are paying for these seeds, because then there is a perceived value and adoption is higher,” she said. Postma said they try to make sure that their seeds are not more expensive than regular varieties.

The organization works with government agriculture and health ministries in developing countries to encourage them to adopt biofortified seeds as a cost-effective way to solve some of their major health problems.
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Turkey is fast becoming a top destination for medical tourism. Tens of thousand of people a year are flocking to Istanbul and other Turkish cities for procedures ranging from gynecology to orthopedics to plastic surgery. Tan Cetin reports for VOA’s Turkish service from Istanbul.
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It’s an old riddle: What is the human body’s largest organ? The answer, of course, is skin. And while it’s certainly tough, skin’s enemy is heat. Treating serious burns usually involves placing human or pig skin over the burn to help it heal. Doctors in Brazil are using a unique skin replacement that may also help the healing process. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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People with a common cluster of symptoms that puts them at increased risk of heart disease and diabetes are two times as likely to die as people without those risk factors if they get less than six hours of sleep per night.

That was the finding of a new study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State College of Medicine and reported in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

So-called metabolic syndrome is marked by elevated blood sugar, high blood pressure and cholesterol, and excess fat around the waistline. A diagnosis of metabolic syndrome also includes a high body mass index (BMI), a measurement of a person’s weight relative to his height.  

People with a high BMI and other symptoms of metabolic syndrome are at increased risk of developing heart disease and diabetes.

Study participants

In the study, a group of 1,344 adults agreed to spend one night in a sleep clinic. Almost 40 percent of the participants were found to have at least three of the risk factors of metabolic syndrome.

When the participants were followed up an average of 16 years later, 22 percent of them had died.

Compared with those without metabolic syndrome, investigators found those with a cluster of heart disease and diabetes risk factors were 2.1 times more likely to have died of stroke if they slept less than six hours during their night in the lab.

If they had slept more than six hours, those with metabolic syndrome were about 1½ times more likely to have suffered a fatal stroke than normal participants.

Finally, those with metabolic syndrome who slept less than six hours were almost two times more likely to have died of any cause compared with those without the heart disease and diabetes risk factors.

The study is the first to examine the impact of sleep duration on the risk of death in patients with metabolic syndrome.

More trials planned

If you have metabolic syndrome, the study’s authors note it is important to notify your doctor if you are not getting enough sleep to reduce the risk of death from heart attack or stroke.

The researchers plan future clinical trials to determine whether increasing the length of quality sleep, in addition to lowering blood pressure and glucose, improves the prognosis for people with metabolic syndrome.

The American Heart Association recently issued a scientific statement noting that an increasing number of Americans suffer from sleep difficulties, either involuntarily or because they’d rather stay up late, and this trend may be associated with increased cardiovascular risks and outcomes.
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Construction began in Chile on Friday on the European Extremely Large Telescope, which when completed will be the world’s largest optical telescope, some five times larger than the top observing instruments in use today.

The size of the ELT has the potential to transform our understanding of the universe, say its backers, with its main mirror that will measure some 39 meters (43 yards) across.

Located on a 3,000 meter-high mountain (9,800 feet) in the middle of the Atacama desert, it is due to begin operating in 2024.

Spark the spotting of more planets

Among other capabilities, it will add to and refine astronomers’ burgeoning discoveries of planets orbiting other stars, with the ability to find more smaller planets, image larger ones, and possibly characterize their atmospheres, a key step in understanding if life is present.

“What is being raised here is more than a telescope. Here we see one of the greatest examples of the possibilities of science,” said Chilean President Michelle Bachelet in a speech to mark the beginning of construction at the site.

Dry air makes for near perfect conditions

The dry atmosphere of the Atacama provides as near perfect observing conditions as it is possible to find on Earth, with some 70 percent of the world’s astronomical infrastructure slated to be located in the region by the 2020s.

The ELT is being funded by the European Southern Observatory, an organization consisting of European and southern hemisphere nations. Construction costs were not available but the ESO has said previously that the ELT would cost around 1 billion euros ($1.12 billion) at 2012 prices.
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Tests are underway to determine the genetic sequence of the Ebola virus behind an outbreak in central Africa, a U.S. Centers for Disease Control researcher said Friday.

Dr. Barbara Knust, an epidemiologist, told VOA’s Horn of Africa service that scientists are looking for “clues” about where this strain of Ebola originated and how to treat it.

“That could help [us] understand how this virus is related to other viruses that have caused other Ebola outbreaks,” she said.

The latest Ebola outbreak is in northern Democratic Republic of the Congo, in a remote area near the border with the Central African Republic.  The World Health Organization said that as of May 24, Ebola had killed four people in the area and the number of suspected cases stood at 44.

The Ebola virus, which causes a type of hemorrhagic fever, killed more than 11,000 people across the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in 2014 and 2015.  

Resources ‘mobilized quickly’

Staff from the CDC, the WHO, the Congolese Ministry of Health and other agencies are in Congo’s Bas Uele province, working to contain the spread of the virus. Knust said the international response was going “fine.”  

“The responders involved in this outbreak very certainly are taking it seriously and the resources have been mobilized quickly,” she said. “At least at this point of time [it] appears that it was detected fairly early, although that information is forthcoming. There is some hope it will remain a limited outbreak.”

She said there had been discussion of using experimental treatments used in the West African outbreak, but that the Congolese government had not given its approval.

Dr. Galma Guyo, a disease control specialist in Nairobi, was part of an African Union team that responded to the Ebola outbreak in Liberia.  He warned that the DRC’s location in the center of Africa could allow the virus there to spread across borders.

“There is a possibility that the viruses can easily spread and be hard to detect due to the remoteness of the region, too,” he said.
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There’s a glimmer of hope for the American bee population. But, according to a new study, the outlook for this critical insect is mostly grim. Researchers report a slowing of the rate of decline in the bee population over the past year, dropping to its lowest since 2011-2012.

But, both commercial and small-scale beekeepers lost 33 percent of their honey bee colonies between April 2016 and April 2017.

“While it is encouraging that losses are lower than in the past, I would stop short of calling this ‘good’ news,” said Dennis van Engelsdorp, an assistant professor of entomology at the University of Maryland and project director for the Bee Informed Partnership, in a summary of the study.

“Colony loss of more than 30 percent over the entire year is high,” he added. “It’s hard to imagine any other agricultural sector being able to stay in business with such consistently high losses.”

Researchers point to many causes for the drop in bee populations, with parasites, particularly the varroa mite, and other diseases as the main culprits. Pesticides are also a factor, according to the study, particularly among commercial beekeepers. The researchers describes like a kind of synergy among all the causes that amount to worsening each individual problem.

“This is a complex problem,” said Kelly Kulhanek, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who helped with the survey. “Lower losses are a great start, but it’s important to remember that 33 percent is still much higher than beekeepers deem acceptable. There is still much work to do.”

The annual survey, which has been conducted for 11 years, aims to find why bee colonies are suffering, a problem that can have big consequences for human beings, given that honey bees pollinate $15 billion worth of U.S. agriculture annually. Almonds, researchers say are a perfect example: their growth is entirely dependent on bees for pollination.

“Bees are good indicators of the health of the landscape as a whole,” said Nathalie Steinhauer, a graduate student in the UMD Department of Entomology who leads the data collection efforts for the annual survey. “Honey bees are strongly affected by the quality of their environment, including flower diversity, contaminants and pests….Honey bee health is a community matter.”
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Sunday is World Hunger Day, an annual reminder that millions of people around the world suffer from chronic hunger, despite abundant global food production. Persistent shortages of food in some regions are linked to deep-seated social inequities and long-term mismanagement. An expert tells VOA’s Zlatica Hoke that empowering women is key to ending world hunger.
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Scientists looking at the first pictures of the planet Jupiter sent by the NASA probe Juno were shocked at what they saw: monster cyclones, hundreds of kilometers wide, tearing across the planet’s north and south poles.

The scientists said the poles are nothing like the planet’s familiar placid and colorful equatorial region.

“That’s the Jupiter we’ve all known and grown to love,” Scott Bolton of the Southwest Research Institute, an applied research and development organization in San Antonio, Texas, said in an article released Thursday in the journal Science.  “And when you look from the pole, it looks totally different. … I don’t think anybody would have guessed this is Jupiter.”

Bolton called the findings “Earth-shattering. Or, should I say, Jupiter-shattering.”

Along with the fierce storms, the researchers saw a huge river of ammonia gas extending from Jupiter’s deep atmosphere down to its interior. They said they thought the ammonia might be part of what’s causing the huge storms.

NASA launched Juno in 2011, and it reached Jupiter’s orbit last year. The scientists said Juno’s next fly-by would come in July, when it will take pictures of the planet’s trademark Great Red Spot — a huge, hurricane-like storm that experts say has been raging for hundreds of years.
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The next generation hypersonic space plane just took a big step toward reality as the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) announced Boeing will “complete advanced design work” for the Experimental Spaceplane, XS-1.

The goal of the project is to offer quicker access to low Earth orbit, decreasing the preparation time to launch from months to days. For example, in the case of the loss of a military or commercial satellite, the unmanned, reusable XS-1 could quickly be used to launch a replacement.

“The XS-1 would be neither a traditional airplane nor a conventional launch vehicle, but rather a combination of the two, with the goal of lowering launch costs by a factor of 10 and replacing today’s frustratingly long wait time with launch on demand,” said Jess Sponable, DARPA program manager.

According to DARPA, the XS-1 will be about the size of a business jet and take off vertically, propelled not by external boosters but by “self contained cryogenic propellants.” After reaching a suborbital altitude, the plane would launch an expendable upper stage that would be able to push a satellite into orbit. The plane would then return to Earth, landing like a plane.

DARPA said the plane could then be reused “potentially within hours.”

The XS-1 could fly as fast as Mach 10, DARPA said.

The XS-1 is still years away from reality, with DARPA saying testing the plane’s engines on the ground slated for 2019.
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