Dogs can be trained to sniff out drugs and explosives, so Mark Ruefenacht wondered if their exquisite sense of smell could be used to detect changes in a diabetic’s blood sugar level.

A near fatal episode prompted the forensic scientist, who’s had diabetes for most of his adult life, to ask that question. In 1999, while he was training a puppy to be a guide dog for the blind, his blood sugar suddenly dropped to a dangerously low level.

“More than likely, I had a seizure, from the low blood sugar,” Ruefenacht recalled, as he explained how the puppy kept trying to rouse him. “And he stuck with me and I was able to get my blood sugar up.”

That incident made him wonder if dogs could be trained to detect the inherent chemical changes that accompany a drop in blood sugar, called hypoglycemia, then alert their owners.    

Dogs4Diabetics

Ruefenacht worked with scientists and funded research which determined that the “smell” of hypoglycemia shows up in both breath and sweat. He also worked with and studied professionals who train dogs to sniff out everything from explosives to cancer. And most important of all, Ruefenacht started training a fun-loving yellow Labrador retriever named Armstrong to alert him when he was having a dangerously low blood sugar. The training proved so successful, Armstrong is listed in the Guinness Book of World Records as the first diabetes-detection dog.

Sitting under a poster of Armstrong, who died in 2012, Ruefenacht recalls that those early successes led some organizations to offer him large sums of money for the rights to his discoveries.  Ruefenacht says he turned those opportunities down. Instead, in 2004, he founded Dogs4Diabetics. 

He says properly training a diabetes detection dog and its owner can cost $50,000.  The organization raises money to cover these expenses, then provides the dogs at no cost to people who qualify.

The smell of hypoglycemia

The dogs are trained to identify the scent of hypoglycemia on a reliable and consistent basis. Ruefenacht uses jars containing swabs of sweat from a diabetic who had low blood sugar, randomly mixed with jars of other distracting smells, such as peanut butter, dog food and eucalyputus.  The dogs are rewarded when they select the correct jar. This “sweat jar” method for training diabetes alert dogs has been validated scientifically.

The next step is to teach them to alert their owner. The dogs are trained to use subtle signals, but if those go unnoticed, to put their paws on his lap, or balance on their back legs and put their front paws on his shoulders. They learn to snuffle at his nose and mouth, lick his face and bark.  And if all else fails, they’re trained to get someone else to come and help.

Ruefenacht says the dogs are often aware of blood sugar drops long before electronic monitoring systems send a warning alarm.

Dogs4Diabetics has placed more than 100 dogs with diabetics.  They hope to expand the program – training humanity’s most loyal companion to save lives and help diabetics around the world.  
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Diabetics who use insulin to control their blood sugars can sometimes end up with very low readings that, if left untreated, can lead to death. While modern blood sugar monitoring systems can warn patients when their blood sugar levels are dangerously low, there is another, more “user-friendly” way to do the same thing. Shelley Schlender reports.
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The first vaccine campaign against cholera in Yemen has started, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday, a year and a half after an epidemic was triggered by war and a health and sanitation crisis.

There have since been more than one million suspected cases of cholera in Yemen, and 2,275 recorded deaths, the WHO says.

The disease is spread by feces in sewage contaminating water or food, and it can kill because patients quickly lose fluids through vomiting and diarrhea. Caught early it can be treated with oral rehydration salts.

The oral vaccination campaign, which began in four districts in Aden on Sunday targeting 350,000 people, coincides with the rainy season, which health workers fear could spread the disease further.

“The first four districts are being targeted… and then the campaign will move towards all the areas at risk in the country, covering at least four million people,” Lorenzo Pizzoli, WHO cholera expert, said in a tweet posted on Sunday.

Yemen’s war, a proxy conflict between Iran-aligned Houthis and the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led alliance, has killed more than 10,000 people since 2015.

It has also displaced more than 2 million and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including the health system whose workers have not been paid.

Nevio Zagaria, the WHO representative in Yemen, told Reuters in April that some 1.4 million vaccine doses had been shipped via Nairobi, out of 4.4 million planned.

“The rainy season is starting, so we need to use the window of opportunity to start a vaccination campaign,” he said at the time.

In July 2017, the International Coordinating Group on Vaccine Provision – which manages a global stockpile — earmarked one million cholera vaccines for Yemen. But the WHO and local authorities together to scrap a vaccination plan on logistical and technical grounds.

Some senior Houthi health officials have been known to object to vaccinations, delaying the campaign, aid workers say.
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Globally, more cases of cancer are reported in men than in women. A recent study in India reveals that the reverse is true there. Published in the medical journal Lancet, the study reports that Indian women not only have a higher rate of cancer, they are also afflicted by it at a younger age compared with their counterparts in developed Western countries. Ritul Joshi reports from New Delhi.
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An innovative consumer awareness campaign will be launched this summer in several cities in the United States. The campaign is aimed at preventing the waste of food that costs the world billions of dollars and has severe consequences on global food security and the environment. Verónica Balderas Iglesias spoke with experts.
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A powerful Atlas 5 rocket was poised for liftoff early Saturday from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California, carrying to Mars the first robotic NASA lander designed entirely for exploring the deep interior of the red planet.

The Mars InSight probe was scheduled to blast off from the central California coast at 4:05 a.m. PDT (1105 GMT), creating a luminous predawn spectacle of the first U.S. interplanetary spacecraft to be launched over the Pacific.

The lander will be carried aloft for NASA and its Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) atop a two-stage, 19-story Atlas 5 rocket from the fleet of United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin Corp and Boeing Co.

The payload will be released about 90 minutes after launch on a 301-million-mile (484 million km) flight to Mars. It is scheduled to reach its destination in six months, landing on a broad, smooth plain close to the planet’s equator called the Elysium Planitia.

InSight’s mission

That will put InSight roughly 373 miles (600 km) from the 2012 landing site of the car-sized Mars rover Curiosity. The new 800-pound (360-kg) spacecraft marks the 21st U.S.-launched Martian exploration, dating to the Mariner fly-by missions of the 1960s. Nearly two dozen other Mars missions have been launched by other nations.

Once settled, the solar-powered InSight will spend two years, about one Martian year, plumbing the depths of the planet’s interior for clues to how Mars took form and, by extension, the origins of the Earth and other rocky planets.

Measuring marsquakes

InSight’s primary instrument is a French-built seismometer, designed to detect the slightest vibrations from “marsquakes” around the planet. The device, to be placed on the surface by the lander’s robot arm, is so sensitive it can measure a seismic wave just one-half the radius of a hydrogen atom.

Scientists expect to see a dozen to 100 marsquakes over the course of the mission, producing data to help them deduce the depth, density and composition of the planet’s core, the rocky mantle surrounding it and the outermost layer, the crust.

The Viking probes of the mid-1970s were equipped with seismometers, too, but they were bolted to the top of the landers, a design that proved largely ineffective.

Apollo missions to the moon brought seismometers to the lunar surface as well, detecting thousands of moonquakes and meteorite impacts. But InSight is expected to yield the first meaningful data on planetary seismic tremors beyond Earth.

Insight also will be fitted with a German-made drill to burrow as much as 16 feet (5 meters) underground, pulling behind it a rope-like thermal probe to measure heat flowing from inside the planet. 

Meanwhile, a special transmitter on the lander will send radio signals back to Earth, tracking Mars’ subtle rotational wobble to reveal the size of the planet’s core and possibly whether it remains molten.

Hitching a ride aboard the same rocket that launches InSight will be a pair of miniature satellites called CubeSats, which will fly to Mars on their own paths behind the lander in a first deep-space test of that technology.
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Peanuts are the most common cause of fatal food-induced anaphylaxis, or severe allergic reaction. But British scientists have found a better way to monitor a significant food hazard by developing a more accurate blood test, and it’s five times cheaper than the existing one. VOA’s Mariama Diallo reports.
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Earthquakes, volcanic eruptions and heavy rains can cause large amounts of rock and soil to collapse under their own weight and tumble down a slope. These landslides can crush everything in their path. Aided by sophisticated satellites, scientists are creating a comprehensive catalogue of landslide-prone areas, hoping it will help affected communities predict when and where they might happen. VOA’s George Putic has more.
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A small amount of radioactive, weapons-grade plutonium about the size of a U.S. quarter is missing from an Idaho university that was using it for research, leading federal officials on Friday to propose an $8,500 fine.

The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission said Idaho State University can’t account for about a 30th of an ounce (1 gram) of the material that’s used in nuclear reactors and to make nuclear bombs.

The amount is too small to make a nuclear bomb, agency spokesman Victor Dricks said, but could be used to make a dirty bomb to spread radioactive contamination.

“The NRC has very rigorous controls for the use and storage of radioactive materials as evidenced by this enforcement action,” he said of the proposed fine for failing to keep track of the material. 

Dr. Cornelis Van der Schyf, vice president for research at the university, blamed partially completed paperwork from 15 years ago as the school tried to dispose of the plutonium.

“Unfortunately, because there was a lack of sufficient historical records to demonstrate the disposal pathway employed in 2003, the source in question had to be listed as missing,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press. “The radioactive source in question poses no direct health issue or risk to public safety.”

Idaho State University has a nuclear engineering program and works with the U.S. Department of Energy’s Idaho National Laboratory, considered the nation’s primary nuclear research lab and located about 65 miles (105 kilometers) northwest of the school.

The plutonium was being used to develop ways to ensure nuclear waste containers weren’t leaking and to find ways to detect radioactive material being illegally brought into the U.S. following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the school said in an email to the AP.

The university, which has 30 days to dispute the proposed fine, reported the plutonium missing on Oct. 13, according to documents released by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The agency said a school employee doing a routine inventory discovered the university could only account for 13 of its 14 plutonium sources, each weighing about the same small amount.

The school searched documents and found records from 2003 and 2004 saying the material was on campus and awaiting disposal. However, there were no documents saying the plutonium had been properly disposed.

The last document mentioning the plutonium is dated Nov. 23, 2003. It said the Idaho National Laboratory didn’t want the plutonium and the school’s technical safety office had it “pending disposal of the next waste shipment.”

The school also reviewed documents on waste barrels there and others transferred off campus since 2003, and opened and examined some of them. Finally, officials searched the campus but didn’t find the plutonium. 

The nuclear commission said senior university officials planned to return the school’s remaining plutonium to the Energy Department. It’s not clear if that has happened. 

Energy Department officials didn’t return calls seeking comment Friday. 

Dricks, the commission spokesman, said returning the plutonium was part of the school’s plan to reduce its inventory of radioactive material.

He said overall it has “a good record with the NRC.”
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The Kilauea volcano sent more lava into Hawaii communities Friday, a day after forcing more than 1,500 people to flee from their mountainside homes, and authorities detected high levels of sulfur gas that could threaten the elderly and people with breathing problems.

After a week of earthquakes and warnings, the eruption that began Thursday threw lava into the sky from a crack in a road and sent another line of molten rock snaking through a forest. On Friday, the activity continued, with reports of lava spurting from volcanic vents on two streets. Areas downhill from the vents were at risk of being covered up.

The community of Leilani Estates near the town of Pahoa on the Big Island appeared to be in the greatest danger. Authorities also ordered an evacuation of Lanipuna Gardens, a smaller, more rural subdivision directly to the east. But scientists said new vents could form, and it was impossible to know where.

Civil defense officials cautioned the public about high levels of sulfur dioxide near the volcano and urged vulnerable people to leave immediately. Exposure to the gas can cause irritation or burns, sore throats, runny noses, burning eyes and coughing.

Maija Stenback began to get nervous when she noticed cracks in the streets near her home. On Thursday, she shot video of the lava as it bubbled and splattered across a street about six blocks from her house.

“You can feel it all the way into the core of your being,” she said. “It’s just that roaring and unbelievable power of the lava bubbling up and spitting up into the air.”

Stenback, her daughter and grandchildren packed as much as they could into their car. The two kids were each allowed to select three toys to take before the family left for a friend’s home about a 30-minute drive away.

“I have lived through a lot of lava flows here, but never this close before,” Stenback said.

There were no immediate reports of injuries, but at least 100 people were staying in shelters Friday, with many more evacuees believed to be with relatives and friends.

The Hawaii governor activated the National Guard to help with evacuations and provide security to about 770 structures in Leilani Estates and 130 lots in Lanipuna Gardens left empty when residents sought shelter.

Kilauea has erupted periodically for decades, and scientists said they have no way of predicting how long the eruption will continue.

A key factor will be whether a magma reservoir at the summit starts to drain in response to the eruption, which has not happened yet, said Asta Miklius, a geophysicist with the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory.

“There is quite a bit of magma in the system.  It won’t be just an hours-long eruption probably, but how long it will last will depend on whether the summit magma reservoir gets involved. And so we are watching that very, very closely,” Miklius said.

County, state and federal officials had been warning residents all week that they should be prepared to evacuate because an eruption would give little warning.

The geological survey on Thursday raised the volcano’s alert level to warning status, the highest possible, meaning a hazardous eruption was imminent, underway or expected.

Henry Calio said the first sign that something might be wrong happened when cracks emerged in the driveway of his home in Leilani Estates. His wife, Stella, then received a call from an official who told them to get out immediately.

The two feared they might lose their house.

“This is our retirement dream,” Henry Calio said.

Kilauea’s Puu Oo crater floor began to collapse Monday, triggering the earthquakes and pushing the lava into new underground chambers. The collapse caused magma to push more than 10 miles (16 kilometers) downslope toward the populated southeast coastline of the island.

The magma later crossed under Highway 130, which leads to a popular volcano access point. Civil defense authorities closed the area to visitors and ordered private tour companies to stop taking people into the region.

Over the decades, most of Kilauea’s activity has been nonexplosive, but a 1924 eruption spewed ash and 10-ton (9-metric ton) rocks into the sky and killed one person.

A 1983 eruption resulted in lava fountains soaring over 1,500 feet (457 meters) into the sky. Since then, the lava flow has buried dozens of square miles of land and destroyed many homes.
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