Overfishing in Senegal is crippling a once-prodigious artisanal industry long relied on to help feed the West African nation’s population. Moreover, this crisis is happening at a time when climate change is reducing the amount of food grown on land. To learn more, VOA’s Salwa Jaafari met with traditional fishermen outside the capital, Dakar.
…
Month: May 2019
Fiat Chrysler proposed a merger Monday with Renault, a union that would create the world’s third biggest automaker.
The merger, if it happens, would vault the new company, with annual sales of 8.7 million vehicles, into a position ahead of General Motors and behind only Volkswagen and Toyota, both of which sell about 10.6 million.
The merger could give the combined companies a better chance in the battle among auto manufacturers to build new electric and autonomous vehicles.
Investors in both companies showed their initial approval of the announcement, with Renault’s shares jumping 15 percent in afternoon trading in Paris and Fiat Chrysler stock up more than 10 percent in Milan. The proposal calls for shareholders to split ownership of the new company.
Fiat Chrysler said the deal would save the combined companies $5.6 billion annually with shared payments for research, purchasing and other expenses. The deal does not call for closure of any manufacturing plants but the companies did not say whether any employees would lose their jobs.
The deal would give Fiat access to Renault’s electric car technologies, allowing it to meet the strict carbon dioxide emission standards the European Commission is enacting.
For its part, Renault might be able to gain ground in the U.S. market because of Fiat’s extensive operations in North America.
The French government owns 15 percent of Renault and said it supports the merger, while adding that “the terms of this merger must be supportive of Renault’s economic development, and obviously of Renault’s employees.”
Artificial intelligence-driven phones that turn photos into 3D images and PCs with interactive speakers will come a step closer to reality this week during Asia’s biggest consumer technology show.
Organizers of the Computex Taipei show with 1,685 exhibitors — including a who’s who of global high tech companies — call artificial intelligence one of their top 2019 themes.
Microchip developers Intel, Nvidia and Qualcomm are expected to talk up their latest gear during the four-day show that opens Tuesday. Memory chip maker Micron Technology says it will exhibit a “broad portfolio of memory and storage” for artificial intelligence.
“My personal expectations toward AI this year are quite high,” said Helen Chiang, general manager of market research firm IDC in Taipei. “Whether from the perspective of the information systems or the technology, I’ve got some anticipation for these device-plus things.”
Artificial intelligence — AI for short — lets computers make human-like decisions based on data collected from hardware. Classic examples available to common users now include speech recognition, e-mail spam filters and personal assistants such as Siri and Alexa.
Apps, speakers and 3D images
Almost all the world’s chief hardware and software developers say they are researching what they else can do with AI. That push promises more functions that will be built into PC operating systems and mobile phone apps.
Forrester Research, a leading industry advisory firm, predicts that artificial intelligence will reach a market value of $1.2 trillion per year by 2020 as investment triples from 2018.
Consumers should expect in the short term to find AI-assisted matchmaking apps, more chatbots used by financial services companies to talk with customers, and new tools for processing financial data, said Jamie Lin, founding partner of AppWorks Ventures, a startup accelerator in Taipei.
One app designer is working with a Taiwanese smartphone company on AI technology that would turn camera images into 3D scenes, Lin said.
“Pretty soon you’re going to see phone device ODMs (developers) coming to the market where phones that are able to capture 3D images are loaded with software to help you turn that 3D image into content that can be used for different formats, for example games or 3D playbacks of sceneries,” he said.
Among AI-enabled hardware, “smart” speakers are especially likely to reach mass markets next year, Lin added. Consumers will be able to ask them questions such as the day’s weather forecast or the latest NBA scores, he expects.
Speakers already make up the highest growth category among “smart home devices” because of their “easy” voice interface, Forrester said in a May 21 report.
The rapid expansion of AI consumer products may not last. The market research firm Gartner forecasts that growth in the business value of artificial intelligence will slow through 2025 from a peak of 70 percent to just 7 percent as companies end up seeking “niche solutions that address one need very well.”
But the show host Taiwan is forecasting a boom for now. Premier Su Tseng-chang said in mid-May the government would help train 10,000 people every year to work in AI research and development. Taiwan, a global tech hardware hub since the 1980s, already has enough engineering knowhow to draw big-name Silicon Valley firms such as Google and Microsoft to open local R&D centers.
Computex 2019
Among the Computex exhibitors, Microsoft will show AI-enabled software and applications, said Mark Linton, general manager for Microsoft’s partner-devices unit. AI features included in its Office 365 software already direct the PowerPoint program to make downloaded images “gel” into its presentations, he said.
“There’s no doubt that AI is a transformative area of the technology industry, and over time it will prove to be a major investment area for Microsoft and I think the industry as a whole,” Linton said. “And really the benefits that we’re looking to get there is to make systems and applications smarter, more intuitive.”
A lot of AI-linked gear is expected to surface this year at the show’s InnoVEX segment. This zone for startups grew last year to 388 exhibitors, and 456 have registered for the event this week.
Gartner anticipates that startup firms working with AI will overtake Amazon, Google, Microsoft and IBM this year in “driving the artificial intelligence economy” for businesses.
The Taipei show, now in its 38th year, expects to draw 5,508 exhibition booths, up nearly 10 percent over 2018. The number of exhibitors should rise 5%, the organizer said in a pre-show statement.
Only the chirping of birds and insects break the silence at a gold mining site in the Eastern Region of Ghana, right at the foot of the Atewa forest reserve.
Caterpillar excavators stand still, as the two Ghanaian companies operating them wait for a new mining permit a process that has been in the works for months.
But a fresh pile of sludge spilt over a patch of vegetation suggests the mine is being operated illegally.
Felix Addo-Okyreh, who works for Ghana’s Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), says the sludge — referred to as slime’ in mining jargon — is dirty waste water created when gold is separated from sediment, sometimes with the help mercury. It is stored in dams on the site.
“It rained heavily last week. The embankment of the dam was weak. It got broken, and this is the result,” he says.
The toxic slime landed a few meters away from a stream that flows into the Birim, a river supplying water to millions of people in the capital Accra.
Ghana cracked down on illegal small-scale gold mining in 2017, after the national water company warned that the chemicals discharged by what is locally known as galamsey could force the country to import all its drinking water within the next two decades.
That year the government set up a military task force to dismantle illegal mining sites and imposed a 20-month ban on all small-scale mining to give nature a breather. Satellite imagery and digital technologies are being used to better monitor mining activity.
Yet Global Forest Watch data released last month shows the rate of deforestation in Ghana increased by 60 percent in 2018, faster than in any other part of the world. The country lost 1.13 percent its primary forest last year, in part due to gold mined illegally and often siphoned away by Chinese buyers.
Daniel Kwamena Ewur, an officer for conservation group A Rocha, said the ban pushed more small-scale miners to work within the protected Atewa forest, operating at night when security officials are off duty.
Local authorities and NGOs have started training illegal miners to learn alternative livelihood skills such as soup-making and farming bees. But critics doubt these activities are economically viable.
“It’s kind of scratching the surface of the core issues of livelihood driving people,” said Nafi Chinery, Ghana country manager for the New York-based Natural Resource Governance Institute.
Chinery believes the anti-galamsey campaign has been more about politics than impact. “We don’t have enough data about who is actually involved in galamsey,” she added.
Around 1.1 million Ghanaians were estimated to work in small-scale mining before the ban, which was lifted in December, accounting for around 30 percent of the country’s annual mineral production.
EPA’s head of mining Michael Ali says the government is now going to great lengths to “sanitize” the gold industry by formalizing galamsey sites, being stricter with paperwork and cracking down on the use of mercury.
“The mission is to reduce it to the barest minimum,” said Ali. “We cannot eliminate it completely, unless the citizens themselves police it.”
The EPA has reclaimed ten acres of illegally mined land around the Atewa forest, near the southeastern town of Kyebi. Trees were planted to encourage residents to take initiative and help meet an ambitious reclamation target of more than 7,000 square kilometers of land by 2022.
In the nearby town of Sagymase, 65-year old cocoa farmer Janet Achampong does not know what to do about the gaping pit left on land she leased to illegal miners five years ago. She cannot afford to fill the hole herself and reconvert it to farmland.
The government has acknowledged money is short and says it is seeking support from the international community. In Sagymase, Norwegian donors are funding the reclamation of six acres of galamsey land over the next four years.
A Rocha’s Ewur is facilitating the project, but is wary of planting trees and food crops in soil that has been mixed with chemicals.
“There is some quantity of mercury in the belly of this land,” said Ewur. “I would not eat the mangoes that grow here.”
…
A fluffy pink fungus that decorates itself with gold nanoparticles has been found in Western Australia. Researchers believe the fungus is an indicator of gold deposits and hope the discovery will help miners narrow down where to dig.
Scientists in Australia have found a fungus that can bond with gold particles. It releases a chemical called superoxide that can dissolve gold in the soil. It is then able to mix this dissolved metal with another chemical to turn it back into solid gold, in the form of tiny nanoparticles.
So why does this gold-loving fungus have an attraction to this precious metal? The research team believes by interacting with gold in this way it can grow faster and bigger relative to other fungi that do not.
The research has been carried out by Australia’s national science agency.
The Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, the CSIRO, believes the discovery could be a new way to mine gold. The fungi could be markers that indicate the presence of gold, and narrow down the area where exploratory drilling would be most beneficial.
The study’s author is Dr. Tsing Bohu, a CSIRO geo-microbiologist.
“I think this is probably very novel because gold is very inert generally speaking but we found actually this fungus can interact with gold by dissolving gold. So I think it is very novel and it is also very important for mining and other industrial [processes] like leaching, so [it] has some potential applications,” he said.
The fungus was found in soil at Boddington, 130 kilometers south-east of Perth in Western Australia.
The research has been published in the journal Nature Communications.
Australia is the world’s second-largest producer of gold, but its output is expected to fall unless more deposits are discovered.
In recent weeks, two Australians have stumbled upon large gold nuggets worth tens of thousands of dollars in Western Australia and the state of Victoria.
New discoveries about what is inside the body are making scientists rethink what makes a person human and what makes people sick or healthy.
Less than half of the cells in the body are human. The rest belong to microorganisms that affect the health, mood and whether certain people respond better to certain medications.
“So to our 30 trillion human cells, we have on average about 39 trillion microbial cells. So by that measure, we’re only about 43% human,” said Rob Knight, director of the University of California San Diego Center for Microbiome Innovation and professor of pediatrics and computer science and engineering.
Microbes affecting health
It is common knowledge that bacteria, or even viruses and fungi, exist in areas of our body, including the mouth, skin and gut. However, it is only in recent years that scientists have discovered that each person’s gut bacteria is unique, and the collection of microbes can greatly impact a person’s health — such as their weight and whether they will develop ailments such as heart disease.
Microbes in the gut can even affect mood. Researchers are studying whether conditions such as autism, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson’s disease are linked to microbes.
“They changed the way we think about biology, and changed the way we think about what it means to be human,” Knight said.
The collection of microbes in each person is different, starting from when babies are born. How they enter the world, whether vaginally or through cesarean section (C-section), whether they drink breast milk or not, the animals they are exposed to and the medications they take, can all impact their development.
“The biggest problem with antibiotics is early in childhood, and especially the combination of C-section and antibiotics and bottle feeding is especially bad for kids. We’ll see impacts on that even at age 8 to 12, in terms of their weight, even in terms of the cognitive performance,” Knight said.
The cancer puzzle
Karen Sfanos, associate professor of pathology, oncology and urology at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, said researchers think at least 70% of a human body’s immunity and immune cells exist in the gut.
She is studying the link between microbes and cancer.
“There’s still many cancers out there where we have no idea what even causes the cancer. We’ve been trying to solve this puzzle, and up until this point, half the pieces were missing because we didn’t even know half the pieces existed. There’s just a tremendous amount of knowledge that’s to be gained and to be researched to understand the profound influence that these microbes might have on both cancer initiation but also therapeutic response to certain cancer therapies,” she said.
What affects microbes in an adult body most is diet and how many different types of plants a person eats.
“By eating a high-fat diet or an unhealthy diet, (it) can lead to pro-inflammatory microbes. It can cause inflammation in the gut, in your GI tract, and, unfortunately, in that scenario, the inflammation that happens in your gut can have a really long-distance effect on many other organ systems in your body,” Sfanos said.
One company, DayTwo, is using the findings of gut microbe research to fight diabetes.
“The diversity and abundance of the bacteria in the gut are a very useful predictor in how people process food,” said Josh Stevens, president of DayTwo.
Since each person’s gut bacteria is different, how a body reacts to sugar is also different for each person.
“So by profiling the gut, we can actually help people get to a personalized prescription for food that works for them,” Stevens said.
Distinguishing the good from the bad
Microbes in the body are changing every day. A growing number of scientists are researching these microbes to learn which ones are good and bad. They are seeing promising results in treating a hospital-acquired infection called C. diff.
“You can treat C. diff by taking a stool from a healthy person and giving it to a sick person. And they typically recover in two or three days. And it has about (a) 90% cure rate, as opposed to 30% for antibiotics,” Knight said. This process is done by mixing a fecal sample from a healthy person into a liquid preparation and introducing it to a sick person via a feeding tube or colonoscopy.
Researchers are working toward a future where there is a more precise approach to weeding out the bad bacteria and introducing more good microbes into the body to improve health.
…
New discoveries are making scientists rethink what makes us human, and even why we get sick and how to stay healthy. Research estimates that we’re only about 43% human. The rest are microorganisms that affect health, mood and how you respond to medication. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee visited a lab at the University of California San Diego for a peek at research about the bugs that live in all of us.
…
San Francisco, California recently became the first U.S. city to ban police and other city agencies from using facial recognition technology. The city is not alone. More people are growing wary of the powerful tech, at the same time that others are embracing it. Deana Mitchell reports.
…
When a natural disaster strikes, some of first pieces of infrastructure to go down are communication networks. And for first responders, that could lead to chaos and in some cases even lives lost. But a group of entrepreneurs, with some help from IBM, has created what they think is a solution to the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
The Circus Maximus Experience, opened in Rome this week and offers visitors the chance to relive the ancient splendors of chariot racing in the Imperial period of Rome through augmented and virtual reality. The innovative project implements interactive display technologies never before used in such a large outdoor area.
“Now you find yourself in front of the Arch of Titus, which was possibly built in the place of a more ancient arch and dedicated in the year 81 After Christ by the Roman Senate and people to Emperor Flavius”.
This is just an example of what modern-day visitors will be listening to in their headsets, while at the same time through special visors see a virtual rendering of the majestic 20-meter Arch of Titus in Rome’s Circus Maximus.
Thanks to a ground-breaking project using interactive display technology never before used in such an extended outdoor area, visitors are able to re-live the life in one of Rome’s undisputed landmarks.
Visitors immerse themselves in history for with overlapping images from the past and those of the reality of today. They are able to visualize architectural and landscape reconstructions of what life was like during all of the historical stages of the Circus Maximus.
They can see the ancient Murcia Valley enriched with buildings and walk around in the Circus among the shops of the time. They can visualize the Circus during Imperial times, the Middle Ages and in a more modern age.
The full itinerary involves eight stops including: the valley and the origins of the Circus, the Circus from Julius Caesar to Trajan, the Circus during the Imperial age, the cavea or tiered seating arena, the Arch of Titus, the tabernae or shops, the Circus during the Middle Ages and modern age, and lastly “A Day at the Circus” for an experience of the exciting chariot race of the quadrigas with the screams of incitement of the public and the overturning of wagons.
Visitors are able to enjoy similar experiences in Rome at the Baths of Caracalla, the Ara Pacis and the Domus Aurea.
…
The world’s coral reefs host an astounding amount of the ocean’s biodiversity, but warming waters are putting them at risk around the world. Now a group of Australian scientists is searching for corals that can thrive in warm, acidic waters. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
The United Nations has drawn up new measures to strengthen its response to the Ebola epidemic in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo and put an end to the spread of this deadly virus, which already has claimed more than 1200 lives.
The plan is top-heavy with senior officials who will oversee and coordinate U.N. and international efforts to come to grips with this virulent disease. The Ebola epidemic was declared 10 months ago in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces in eastern DRC.
Since then, growing insecurity and community mistrust have hampered efforts to contain the virus, heightening the risk of the disease spreading to neighboring countries.
To deal with this increasingly complex situation, World Health Organization spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says the U.N., in close cooperation with the DRC government and partners, is strengthening its political engagement, bolstering preparedness plans and increasing support for humanitarian coordination.
“WHO is adapting public health response strategies to identify and treat people as quickly as possible, expanding vaccination to reach and protect more people; and redoubling work to end transmission in health facilities,” said Jasarevic. “The United Nations Secretary-General has established a strengthened coordination and support mechanism in the epicenter of the outbreak, Butembo.”
To head this effort, the U.N. chief has appointed two high-ranking experienced officials. David Gressly, newly appointed as U.N. Emergency Ebola Response Coordinator will oversee the coordination of international support for the Ebola response.
He will work closely with WHO on health operations and with Assistant Director-General for Emergency Response, Ibrahima Soce Fall. He has been leading WHO’s Ebola response in DRC from Butembo since mid-March.
Fall, whose responsibilities will be expanded, praises the new approach to the Ebola crisis. He says it will provide better security for patients and health workers and wider access to an effective Ebola vaccine. He says the plan also will present a more humane face to the response, which should help allay community suspicion.
A water-proof drone is being used by Australian scientists to collect the highly-treasured nasal mucus of migrating whales. The snot is rich with fresh DNA, viruses and bacteria, and is collected by a drone that hovers over the blowholes of humpback whales as they embark on their epic annual journey along Australia’s east coast.
Whales, like all mammals need air, and come to the surface to breathe through a blowhole.
Vanessa Pirotta, a marine biologist at Macquarie University, says that nasal mucus indicates the health of the whale.
“It is the juicy biological mixture that you see as a whale takes a breath as they surface from the water,” she said. “You often see that plume and it sounds like this like [sounds of sharp breaths] as a whale breathes because, after all, they are mammals like you and I and they have two nostrils, and it is the humpback whale that I am talking about. So as they take a breath it is a lot of lung bacteria coming out from their lungs, which we can collect to provide a snapshot of whale health.”
Australian researchers have attached a petri dish that is used in scientific tests to a drone which flies through the whale’s nasal mist.
“As a whale comes to take a breath — you can actually see it coming to the surface on really good weather days that is — the drone then lowers, the petri dish is then opened and the drone is flown through the densest part of the whale snot, collecting the sample in the petri dish. Now once this happens the lid is shut and the drone is flown back to the research vessel and we collect the sample to later process it in the laboratory,” said Pirotta.
The research could help to solve one of the mysteries of another magnificent creature of the deep — the Southern right whale. Its numbers have recovered on Australia’s west coast since hunting was outlawed but its population on the eastern seaboard remains stubbornly low.
In the past studies into whale health had to rely on examining whales that were either killed or those whales that had been stranded on a beach.
Drones allow scientists to collect samples from free-swimming whales to gather information in a safe and non-invasive way.
Regular screenings and advanced treatments are helping more women than ever to survive breast cancer. But even when their disease is caught early, more than 200,000 U.S. women each year are facing possible mastectomies or weeks of radiation. But a new study suggests that, for some women, there’s an easier third option. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…
In a building a few miles from Google and Facebook’s plush campuses is the Pentagon’s sparse outpost in Silicon Valley.
Here, military personnel and civilians look for commercial technology that can help the armed services solve problems they face in the field.
That could be working with a local commercial rocket company to deploy satellites faster. Or finding an up-and-coming firm that has created a novel communication system that works in some of the harshest conditions.
Defense Innovation Unit
Founded four years ago, the Defense Innovation Unit has a sense of urgency now more than ever, says its director, Michael Brown, formerly chief executive of Symantec, the cyber security firm, and of Quantum, a computer storage firm.
Because of the new so-called Tech Cold War, tensions are surging between the U.S. and China over emergent technologies, such as 5G mobile phone networks, artificial intelligence and autonomous driving.
“The Defense Innovation Unit’s mission has never been more critical, given the tech race that we’re in with China, than it is today,” Brown said.
Chinese investors and companies also are here, for many of the same reasons — to find the breakthroughs that will help their nascent and growing tech industry. But they’re presence is under increasing scrutiny, fueled by a concern that Chinese investors and companies are part of a system of transferring technology out of the U.S. and into the hands of an adversary, the Chinese government.
Raising alarms
Brown is the co-author of a report that shed light on the growing presence of Chinese firms and investors in Silicon Valley and raised alarms over whether the U.S. was in danger of losing key technology to the Chinese.
The U.S. government has expanded its restrictions on Chinese companies buying firms deemed to hold key technology. And Chinese investors are finding it harder to be part of funding rounds of U.S. startups.
“Investors have become much more sensitive to the issue,” said Rebecca Fannin, author of “Tech Titans of China.” “They’re more cautious about investing.”
Mixed reception
Some in the tech industry are skeptical of working for either the Pentagon or Chinese companies and the Chinese government. Employees at Google this year pushed back on projects involving both.
Brown’s job is two-fold. With his deep ties in the tech industry, he helps find technology that might help the military. He is also an ambassador of sorts for the Pentagon in Silicon Valley, building a bridge to tech firms large and small.
“For areas like artificial intelligence or cyber, we need those companies more than they need us,” he said. “But when we’re talking about smaller companies that are trying to get off the ground, get to their first $100 million in revenue, they’re interested in large customers. So, we have found no reluctance at all, in fact, enthusiastic response that they participate in our solicitations.”
American tech companies have long argued for the same access to China’s market that Chinese companies have here, for a “level playing field.” That hasn’t happened yet, but some are skeptical that disengaging from the Chinese economy is the right approach.
Vigilance, engagement
At a recent event by the Asia Society Northern California, investors, former tech executives and intellectual property experts discussed the conflict with China. Engagement with China has worked, argued Andy Rothman, an investment strategist at Matthews Asia, an investment firm, even if there is still a lot China hasn’t done that it said it would do.“The level of personal freedom that the Chinese people have today is dramatically better than it was 30 or 40 years ago and part of that is due to engagement with the rest of the world,” Rothman said.
For Brown, the issue isn’t how far China has come. It’s about the U.S. maintaining its technology edge and getting tech firms to think twice about working with the Chinese, even though the country represents a huge, largely untapped market.
“We do not share the same values as the Chinese Communist Party,” he said. “We need to be aware of that as we’re looking to make the next dollar. There’s other things at stake.”
However the trade war is settled, the ongoing tensions over whether there will be one or two tech super powers likely will remain.
…
U.S. regulators have approved the most expensive medicine ever, for a rare disorder that destroys a baby’s muscle control and kills nearly all of those with the most common type of the disease within a couple of years.
The treatment is priced at $2.125 million. Out-of-pocket costs for patients will vary based on insurance coverage.
The medicine, sold by the Swiss drugmaker Novartis, is a gene therapy that treats an inherited condition called spinal muscular atrophy. The treatment targets a defective gene that weakens a child’s muscles so dramatically that they become unable to move, and eventually unable to swallow or breathe. It strikes about 400 babies born in the U.S. each year.
The Food and Drug Administration on Friday approved the treatment, called Zolgensma, for all children under age 2 who are confirmed by a genetic test to have any of the three types of the disease. The therapy is a one-time infusion that takes about an hour.
Novartis said it will let insurers make payments over five years, at $425,000 per year, and will give partial rebates if the treatment doesn’t work.
The one other medicine for the disease approved in the U.S. is a drug called Spinraza. Instead of a one-time treatment, it must be given every four months. Biogen, Spinraza’s maker, charges a list price of $750,000 for the first year and then $350,000 per year after that.
‘Dramatically transforms’ lives
The independent nonprofit group Institute for Clinical and Economic Review, which rates the value of expensive new medicines, calculated that the price of the new gene therapy is justifiable at a cost of $1.2 million to $2.1 million because it “dramatically transforms the lives of families affected by this devastating disease.”
ICER’s president, Dr. Steven D. Pearson, called the treatment’s price “a positive outcome for patients and the entire health system.”
The defective gene that causes spinal muscular atrophy prevents the body from making enough of a protein that allows nerves that control movement to work normally. The nerves die off without the protein.
In the most common type, which is also the most severe, at least 90% of patients die by age 2, and any still alive need a ventilator to breathe. Children with less-severe types become disabled more slowly and can live for up to a couple decades.
Zolgensma works by supplying a healthy copy of the faulty gene, which allows nerve cells to then start producing the needed protein. That halts deterioration of the nerve cells and allows the baby to develop more normally.
In patient testing, babies with the most severe form of the disease who got Zolgensma within 6 months of birth had limited muscle problems. Those who got the treatment earliest did best.
Babies given Zolgensma after six months stopped losing muscle control, but the medicine can’t reverse damage already done.
Success story
Evelyn Villarreal was one of the first children treated, at eight weeks. Her family, from Centreville, Va., had lost their first child to spinal muscular atrophy at 15 months. Two years later when Evelyn was born a test showed she also had the disease, so the family enrolled her in the gene therapy study at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio.
Evelyn is now 4½ years old and showing no muscle problems other than minor trouble standing up, said her mother, Elena Villarreal. She has been feeding herself for a long time, she draws and speaks well, and will be starting kindergarten in the fall.
She's very active and goes to the playground a lot,'' said Elena Villarreal.She’s walking and even jumping.”
It is too early to know how long the benefit of the treatment lasts, but doctors’ hopes are rising that they could last a lifetime, according to Dr. Jerry Mendell, a neurologist at Nationwide Children’s. Mendell led one of the early patient studies and is Evelyn’s doctor.
“It’s beginning to look that way,” he said, because a few children treated who are now 4 or 5 still have no symptoms.
Early diagnosis is crucial, so Novartis has been working with states to get genetic testing for newborns required at birth. It expects most states will have that requirement by next year.
The FDA said side effects included vomiting and potential liver damage, so patients must be monitored for the first few months after treatment.
…
A SpaceX rocket has launched 60 satellites into orbit, which will be used to provide internet service from space.
The rocket was launched Thursday night from Cape Canaveral in the southeastern U.S. state of Florida.
It had been originally scheduled to launch last week, but was postponed because of high winds over the Cape and the need for a software update.
The Starlink internet service will go into service only after hundreds more satellites are launched into orbit and activated.
SpaceX is the private rocket company of Tesla CEO and billionaire Elon Musk.
Musk said he saw Thursday’s launch as “a key stepping stone on the way towards establishing a self-sustaining city on Mars and a base on the moon.”
Thousands of school students in Australia and New Zealand took to the streets Friday, initiating an international day of protests against the lack of action against climate change.
Organizers expect that more than a million young people in at least 120 counties will participate in protests.
Demonstrators are demanding that politicians and business leaders take swift measures to slow global warming due to greenhouse gas emissions, which are damaging planet Earth.
The school protesters in Frankfurt, Germany, marched on the headquarters of the European Central Bank (ECB) to demand it stop financing the fossil fuel industry.
According to environmental scientists, greenhouse gases from burning fossil fuels have caused droughts and heatwaves, the melting of glaciers, rising sea levels and devastating floods.
The worldwide protests are inspired by Greta Thunberg, a 16-year-old Swedish activist who began a single-handed climate protest outside the Swedish parliament in August. Since then, her school strike movement “Fridays for Future” has grown exponentially.
Global carbon emissions reached a record high last year, despite warnings from the United Nations-backed Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change in October that gas emissions must be curbed over the next 12 years to stabilize the climate.
…
Silicon Valley has long been a power center of American innovation. Now that high-tech is also becoming a focus of tensions between the U.S. and China, companies based here are trying to understand how they fit in. VOA’s Michelle Quinn speaks with the head of the U.S. Defense Department’s local outpost who sees the tech industry as key to U.S. national security.
…
Anna, a female green anaconda that has lived most of her life in an all-female enclosure at the New England Aquarium, has given birth.
The anaconda produced 18 snakes in early January. A DNA test has confirmed that the births were a result of a nonsexual reproduction process known as parthenogenesis, or “virgin birth,” according to the aquarium.
Parthenogenesis commonly occurs in the plant world and among animals without a backbone, but is rare among vertebrates. The process has been documented only among lizards, birds, sharks and snakes.
The phenomenon involving Anna is the second known confirmed case of parthenogenesis for a green anaconda. The first was at a British zoo in 2014.
Only two of Anna’s 18 offspring have survived.
Aquarium staff said the young snakes are clones of their mother. Limited genetic sequencing shows complete matches on all the sites tested.
…
Chile’s 12,000 square kilometer (4,633 square mile) Southern Patagonia Ice Field split in two and is likely to continue to fracture amid climate change, according to a team of Chilean scientists who were in the region in March.
Gino Casassa, chief of the Snow and Glacier Division of Chile’s DGA water authority, told Reuters increasing temperatures along the Andes Mountains in southern Chile and Argentina have meant less snow and ice to replenish the region’s abundant glaciers.
“What occurred is a fracture as the ice has retreated, Casassa said.
The chunk of ice that split off from the main glacier was estimated at 208 square kilometers (80.3 square miles), a relatively small part of the ice field.
But Casassa said it may be a sign of things to come.
The ice field, he said, is now “split in two, and we’ll likely discover further divisions to the south,” he said.
Two icebergs broke off the Grey Glacier in southern Chile’s Torres del Paine National Park earlier this year, adding to fears that such ruptures are becoming more frequent.
President Donald Trump says he is “honored” to give U.S. farmers hurt by the trade war with China another $16 billion in aid.
Flanked by potato growers, ranchers and dairymen in the White House, Trump said Thursday the aid “will help keep our cherished farms thriving and make clear that no country has a veto on America’s economic and national security.”
Trump added that trade has been “very unfair” to the farmers who he says support him politically.
This is the second multibillion-dollar bailout the Trump administration has provided to U.S. farmers who have seen Chinese markets for their products dry up because of tariffs China imposed on U.S. goods to retaliate for U.S. tariffs on Chinese products. The White House gave farmers $12 billion last year.
U.S. Agriculture Secretary Sonny Perdue says farmers should see the first installment of the new $16 billion in aid in July or August. Perdue said he doubts if the United States and China can reach a trade deal by then.
Most of the money will go to farmers who grow and sell such crops as soybeans, corn, peanuts and wheat. Money will also be set aside to buy excess products from the farmers and send them to schools and food banks.
“I can’t recall a president more concerned about farmer well-being. We are working hard to assess trade damages and this package ensures farmers will not bear the brunt,” Perdue said.
While Trump said Thursday that many farmers told him he is “doing the right thing,” some trade experts call the bailout a political ploy and say farmers are more concerned about winning back the lost Chinese market.
…
East African countries are set to ban skin-lightening products that contain hydroquinone, a medical agent linked to health problems when used in high concentrations. The East African Legislative Assembly last week passed a resolution calling for a region-wide ban on the manufacturing and importation of products containing hydroquinone.
At a beauty parlor in Arusha, 52-year-old Rose Mselle has been using skin-bleaching products since she was a teenager. She says women like her want to be beautiful
“And in the process of looking for beauty, or for our skin color to shine, we use things that we shouldn’t,” she added.
At a nearby market, 32-year-old clothing vendor Janet Jonijosefu used skin-lightening products that contain hydroquinone, a medical agent used to treat dark spots, for years. She stopped after her skin became fragile.
She said the beauty products containing hydroquinone badly affected her skin. She started developing patches on her face. She went to the doctor and was advised to stop using products containing hydroquinone and instead use aloe vera.
Skin-lightening products often use high concentrations of hydroquinone, which can cause skin problems or become toxic when mixed with other bleaching chemicals.
Ghana, Ivory Coast, Kenya, Nigeria, Rwanda, and South Africa ban or regulate the agent in cosmetics. Tanzania bars imports.
The East African Legislative Assembly last week passed a resolution on a region-wide ban of hydroquinone’s manufacture and importation.
Suzan Nakawuki, a member of the regional assembly from Uganda, noted that hydroquinone is not only used by women but also men.
“We have seen men bleaching seriously even more than women,” she said. “But it’s becoming a problem. If we don’t regulate it, it is going to become very problematic.”
When used medically, hydroquinone can be an effective treatment for skin discoloration. Some East African lawmakers spoke out against a blanket ban.
Aden Abdikadir, a lawmaker from Kenya, said he is concerned a blanket ban will cause “serious trade disruption” for cosmetics.
If signed by heads of state, the ban becomes law in all six East African Community states, which include Burundi, Kenya, Rwanda, South Sudan, Tanzania and Uganda.
Critics point out bans on hydroquinone have failed to stop smuggled products from being sold openly. Cosmetics labeled as having hydroquinone are on display at shops in Arusha.
If bans are not backed by enforcement, they will have little effect on the use of the high demand skin-lightening products, despite the risk to health.
…
A Belgian abbey is reviving its centuries-old tradition of beer-making after 220 years. The monks at Grimbergen Abbey are using ancient recipes to offer specialty beers in their new microbrewery. Meanwhile, researchers in Israel have made beer with yeast from jars that are thousands of years old. Beer is one of the oldest beverages, but producers are making new and attractive brews. As VOA Zlatica Hoke reports, there is a growing interest in traditional beers and the history of brewing.
…