Marking World Environment Day, the United Nations on Tuesday named plastic one of the biggest environmental threats facing the world. 

The report, Single-Use Plastics: A Roadmap for Sustainability, said while government regulation on the use of plastic has made some impact on reducing waste, it is not enough, and more urgent action is needed. 

“Our world is swamped by harmful plastic waste,” U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres said in a speech. “Microplastics in the seas now outnumber stars in our galaxy.”

“From remote islands to the Arctic, nowhere is untouched. If present trends continue, by 2050 our oceans will have more plastic than fish,” he said.

The report noted that by some estimates, as many as 5 trillion plastic bags are used worldwide every year. 

While acknowledging that combating plastic waste is different for every country, the U.N. report suggested 10 universal steps that policymakers can follow, including use of more eco-friendly alternatives to plastics and the promotion of reusable products.

​According to the Ocean Conservancy, 8 million metric tons of plastic enters the Earth’s oceans every year, which adds to the estimated 150 million metric tons already in the marine environment. 

A 2017 report by the Ocean Conservancy said China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam are dumping more plastic than the rest of the world combined.

But the advocacy group warned that the problem is not Asia’s alone. It noted the United States tosses out more than 33 million tons of plastic, of which less than 10 percent is recycled. 

For years, environmentalists have warned of the deadly effect plastic trash has on marine wildlife. This week, a pilot whale died in Thailand after struggling for five days to stay alive. Thailand’s Department of Marine and Coastal Resources announced that the whale had 80 plastic bags lodged in its stomach. 

A Thai marine official said the whale, which normally feeds on squid, probably mistook the floating debris for food. 
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports no new cases of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of Congo have been confirmed since May 17. WHO finds of 56 reported cases, 37 are confirmed, 13 are probable and six are suspected. The death toll stands at 25.

The U.N. agency said not too much should be read into the fact that the number of confirmed Ebola cases has remained stable since mid-May. It said  these numbers should be viewed with some caution.

WHO spokesman Tarik Jasarevic said it is critical that all people who have had contact with an infected person are identified. He said even one person with Ebola could create a number of new cases by coming in contact with people at social events or religious ceremonies such as funerals.

Jasarevic told VOA it is premature to let down one’s guard. He says health care workers, responders and communities must remain vigilant.

“The Ebola outbreak in DR Congo is not over and we need to continue to work,” he added. “… There are lots of areas that are difficult to reach that we have to go to, that we need to make sure that we get to all the contacts. So, there still are contacts that have not been reached. So, it is really too early to say that the outbreak is contained.”

Jasarevic said good progress is being made in vaccinating people who have come in contact with infected individuals. He said a vaccination campaign in Mbandaka, a city of more than one million people, is now over as all 577 known contacts of Ebola patients, health care workers and other vulnerable people there have been inoculated against the disease.

He said vaccinations are ongoing in the village of Bikoro, where Ebola was first detected and in Iboko a remote, difficult to reach area.

Ebola has broken out nine times in the DRC since the virus was discovered in that country in the 1970s. An outbreak in West Africa a few years ago left more than 11,000 people dead.
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A pill could soon radio signals from inside your gut to help doctors diagnose diseases from ulcers to cancer to inflammation, according to a new study.

Scientists have developed a small, swallowable capsule that mixes synthetic biology and electronics to detect bleeding in the digestive tract.

The system can be adapted for a wide range of medical, environmental and other uses, the researchers say.

The biological part of the pill uses bacteria engineered to glow when exposed to heme, the iron-containing molecule in blood.

The electronic side includes a tiny light detector, computer, chip, battery, and a transmitter that sends data to a cell phone or computer.

“A major challenge for sensing in the GI tract is, the space available for a device is very limited,” said Massachusetts Institute of Technology electrical engineer Phillip Nadeau.

Using very low-power electronics they designed, Nadeau and colleagues fit all the components into a capsule about 3 centimeters long by 1 centimeter wide.

It’s still a bit big to swallow. But Nadeau says with engineering work it can likely be made about a third that size.

The engineered bacteria are contained in chambers covered by a membrane that lets small molecules in but does not let the organisms out. The researchers say the bacteria can be engineered to die if they accidentally leak from the capsule. Or future models may just use the key enzymes, rather than whole bacteria.

In laboratory tests, the pill successfully distinguished pigs fed small amounts of blood from those not given blood. The capsule has not yet been tested on humans. The team aims to do so in the next year or two.

Since the components are all fairly cheap to manufacture, the researchers speculate that the cost would be in the range of tens to hundreds of dollars.

And they say the same platform could be used to detect markers of a range of illnesses. Or, it could be used to sense chemicals in the environment.

“It’s really exciting, and I think it’s got a lot of legs,” said Rice University bioengineer Jeff Tabor, who was not part of the research team.

But Tabor notes that the sensors may need to be much more sensitive than what was used in the pig tests. He says there may be much less blood in the guts of actual patients than what the pigs were given. Other conditions may have the same limitations.

“For many actual diseases, you might have far less of the molecule that you need to sense available to you,” he added.

The research is published in the journal Science.
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Five and a half thousand kilometers of open water lie before Ben Lecomte as he attempts to swim across the entire Pacific Ocean. The journey of endurance for science begins June 5. VOA’s Steve Baragona has more.
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The U.S. Defense Department’s inspector general has opened an investigation into misconduct allegations against White House physician Ronny Jackson, the inspector general’s office said in a statement on Monday.

President Donald Trump nominated Jackson to be veterans affairs secretary in March, but Jackson withdrew from consideration a month later amid allegations he had overseen a hostile work environment as White House physician, drank on the job and allowed the overprescribing of drugs.

Jackson, a U.S. Navy rear admiral, has denied the allegations.

“The DoD Office of Inspector General has initiated an investigation into allegations related to Rear Admiral (Lower Half) Ronny L. Jackson,” Bruce Anderson, spokesman for the inspector general’s office, said in a statement.

Democrats on the Senate Veterans’ Affairs Committee have said more than 20 current and former colleagues had come forward to accuse Jackson of prescribing himself medications, getting drunk at a Secret Service party and wrecking a government vehicle.

Jackson has worked as a presidential physician since 2006. After withdrawing his nomination for the VA post, Jackson stopped serving as Trump’s lead physician.
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A woman with an aggressive form of breast cancer which defied chemotherapy and spread to other organs, was cured with an experimental treatment that triggered her immune system, researchers said Monday.

The woman has been cancer-free for two years, reported the U.S.-based team, presenting their results as “a new immunotherapy approach” for the treatment of patients with a late-stage form of the disease.

Other experts not involved in the work hailed it as “exciting”.

So-called “immunotherapy” has already been shown to work in some people with cancer of the lung, cervix, blood cells (leukaemia), skin (melanoma) and bladder.

But an immune breakthrough for bowel, breast and ovary cancer has remained elusive.

In the latest study, a team extracted immune cells called lymphocytes from the patient, tweaked them in the lab, then reinjected them.

The woman was 49 when she signed up for the clinical trial after several attempts at a cure through conventional treatments had failed, said the study published in the scientific journal Nature Medicine.

The cancer had spread to various parts of her body, including the liver.

A person’s immune system is designed to kill invaders, including rogue, cancerous cells. But it can fail, often because it cannot recognize cancer cells containing the patient’s own DNA.

Immunotherapy trains a patient’s own immune cells to recognize and fight cancer.

For the new study, researchers took lymphocytes from a tumor in the woman’s body and scanned them for specific types which reacted to mutant, cancerous cells.

Complete regression

These were reactivated or “switched on” in the lab and injected back, along with a so-called “immune checkpoint inhibitor” — another type of immunotherapy that has shown success in other types of cancer.

This resulted in a “highly personalized” anti-cancer therapy that yielded “complete tumor regression,” the researchers wrote.

In a comment also published by Nature Medicine, expert Laszlo Radvanyi from Canada’s Ontario Institute for Cancer Research said the woman’s response to the treatment was “unprecedented” for such advanced breast cancer.

This work showed “we are now at the cusp of a major revolution in finally realizing the elusive goal of being able to target the plethora of mutations in cancer through immunotherapy,” he wrote.

In a reaction via the Science Media Centre in London, immunotherapy professor Alan Melcher of The Institute of Cancer Research said the trial was “fascinating and exciting.”

The work “provides a major ‘proof-of-principle’ step forward, in showing how the power of the immune system can be harnessed to attack even the most difficult-to-treat cancers,” he said.

Peter Johnson, an oncology professor at the Cancer Research UK Centre, said the study confirmed the immune system can recognize some cancers, and “if this can be stimulated in the right way, even cancers that have spread to different parts of the body may be treatable.”

The technique is “highly specialized and complex”, he cautioned, and may not be suitable for many patients.

 
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Only 3 countries have never stopped transmission of polio: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, largely because conflicts and cultural opposition thwart vaccination efforts. A common perception in Pakistan is that polio vaccination teams face difficulties only in tribal or rural areas, but there are equally big challenges in the country’s cities, such as Lahore, the country’s second most populous city. More in this report from Saman Khan in Lahore. VOA’s Bezhan Hamdard narrates.
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German chemicals and pharmaceuticals giant Bayer will discard the name Monsanto when it takes over the controversial US seeds and pesticides producer this week, it said Monday.

But Bayer executives insisted Monsanto practices rejected by many environmentalists, including genetic modification of seeds and deployment of “crop protection” technologies like pesticides, were vital to help feed a growing world population.

“The company name is and will remain Bayer. Monsanto will no longer be a company name,” chief executive Werner Baumann told journalists during a telephone conference.

Bayer’s $63 billion (54 billion euro) buyout of Monsanto — one of the largest in German corporate history — is set to close Thursday, birthing a global giant with 115,000 employees and revenues of some 45 billion euros.

Bosses plan to name the merged agrichemical division Bayer Crop Science once the merger is complete, German business newspaper Handelsblatt reported, citing “industry sources”.

The Monsanto brand “was an issue for some time for Monsanto management,” noted Liam Condon, president of Bayer’s crop science division, adding that the US firm’s employees were “not fixated on the Monsanto brand” but “proud of what they’ve achieved.”

Weedkiller arms race

Producing high-tech genetically modified seeds, many designed to grow crops resistant to its proprietary pesticides, Monsanto has been a target for environmentalist protests and lawsuits over harm to health and the environment for decades.

“It’s understandable that Bayer wants to avoid having bought Monsanto’s negative image with the billions it has spent on the firm,” said Greenpeace campaigner Dirk Zimmermann.

“More important than giving up the Monsanto name would be a fundamental transformation in the new mega-company’s policies,” he added, accusing Bayer of having “no interest in developing future-proof, sustainable solutions for agriculture.”

Activists fear the firm’s addition to Bayer will further reduce competition in the hotly-contested agrichemical sector, limiting farmers’ and consumers’ choices if they want to avoid GM and chemically treated crops.

What’s more, in recent years weeds have begun to emerge that are resistant to products like Monsanto staple glyphosate, marketed as Roundup alongside “Roundup-ready” seeds beginning in the 1990s.

As agrichemical firms scramble to respond with new pesticides and resistant seeds, there are fears of an arms race with ever-more-potent weedkillers.

Some scientists already suspect glyphosate could cause cancer, with a 2015 World Health Organization study determining it was “probably carcinogenic” — although Bayer and other defenders of the chemical have contested the research.

In 2017, attempts to block the European Union’s five-year renewal of its approval for the weedkiller were unsuccessful.

But activists are lobbying governments and France has vowed to outlaw the substance within three years.

When launching the Monsanto takeover bid, Bayer also promised it would not introduce genetically modified crops in Europe.

“We will listen to our critics and work together where we find common ground,” Baumann said, but added that “agriculture is too important to allow ideological differences to bring progress to a standstill”.

With the world population set to reach almost 10 billion people by 2050, Bayer argues its products and methods are needed to meet demand for food.

‘Number one in seeds’

Bayer has put massive resources behind the deal, raising $57 billion in financing including a new share issue worth six billion euros announced Sunday.

It will also sell large parts of its existing agrichemical and crop seeds business to BASF in concessions to competition authorities on both sides of the Atlantic.

Once the buyout and the sales to BASF are completed, Leverkusen-based Bayer’s crop science business plus Monsanto will account for around half its turnover, with the remainder coming from pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter health products.

At around 19.7 billion euros in 2017, Monsanto and Bayer’s combined agriculture sales outweighed those of competitors ChemChina, DowDuPont and BASF, according to figures provided by Bayer.

“We estimate that Bayer will become number one in seeds and number two in crop protection globally” following the merger, analysts at Standard and Poor’s wrote Monday.

Nevertheless, the ratings agency downgraded its score for Bayer’s debt from “A-” to “BBB,” while upgrading the outlook to “stable”.

“Bayer’s stronger business position in agriculture products… does not fully offset the increased debt in its capital structure,” the analysts wrote.

 
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An accident, a stroke, or a disease can leave someone paralyzed and unable to walk. That happens to more than 15 million people around the world each year.

But new technological advances and physical therapy could help some of them walk again.  

Among the most promising is the use of robotic exoskeletons, like one made by Ekso Bionics. It looks a bit like a backpack that straps on the user’s back and around the midsection. Robotic ‘legs’ complete with foot panels extend from either side of the pack and wrap around the patient’s legs. A video game-style controller attaches to the pack with a long cord.

“I’m going to be a robot!”

Lindsey Stoefen has been doing physical therapy with the exoskeleton for an hour a day, as she works to recover from the rare disorder that put her in a wheelchair in October.

The 17-year-old athlete climbed into a specially designed exoskeleton for the first time in late April, after becoming an in-patient at Marianjoy Rehabilitation Hospital in Chicago.

She recalls being nervous. “I was like ‘Dang, I’m going to be a robot!’ I was scared at first.  I was like, ‘Am I going to like it?  Will I be okay?’  And once I got into it, I loved it.”

Lauren Bularzik, Lindsey’s physical therapist, says the exo robots help to accelerate the rehabilitation process. “For someone who takes a lot of energy to only walk a few feet, exo can get them up, can get them moving, it can supplement their movements, get that reciprocal pattern, encourage the correct motor planning.”

Beside speeding up recovery times, these robotic skeletons are especially helpful for those with paralysis, from spinal cord injuries and strokes. Using the machine can help some patients rewire their brains to use secondary muscles, so they can eventually walk again – without the device.

The downside

Scientists at the University of Notre Dame are leading the way with their work on wearable robots that allow patients to regain some or all of their mobility.  But Patrick Wensing, assistant professor of mechanical engineering, says exoskeletons have one big drawback.

“While existing exoskeletons are very powerful, they don’t understand what the user wants to do. So in order to transition between activities in daily life, you often have to press a button interface to tell the exoskeleton ‘I would like to stand up now.’”

Wensing and his team are collaborating with Ekso Bionics, a leading developer of wearable robots, to create a machine that can understand what its user wants to do without implanted sensors and complicated control panels.

The new three-year project funded by The National Science Foundation’s robotic initiative, hopes to achieve a more fluid, intuitive system.

Taylor Gambon has spent the last year analyzing data from exoskeleton users and comparing them to models of everyday walking. “What we’re seeing is that slow walking in general, whether in the exoskeleton or just the human, is much different from walking at a speed that you would choose naturally.”

Later this year, the team will travel to Ekso Bionics’ California headquarters, where they will work directly with exoskeletons to design programs that interact with users of various disabilities, so that more people like Lindsey Stoefen can get back on their feet again.
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Every year more than 15 million people worldwide suffer injuries and illnesses that leave them unable to walk according to the World Health Organization. But new technological advances and physical therapy could help some of them walk again. Among the most promising – is the use of robotic exoskeletons. As Erika Celeste reports, scientists at the University of Notre Dame are leading the way with their work on wearable robots that allow patients to regain some or all of their mobility.
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