YCLOAK

When people think of osteoporosis, they usually think of women, but men can get osteoporosis, too.

Osteoporosis literally means “porous bones.” Normal bones look somewhat like honeycombs. But with osteoporosis, the bones become so thin in places that even a simple stretch can result in a bone fracture.

Risk factors are smoking, drinking, having a family history of osteoporosis, and leading a sedentary lifestyle. 

Two hundred million people have osteoporosis worldwide and that number is expected to shoot up dramatically. The International Osteoporosis Foundation projects that the global incidence of hip fracture will double by 2025, and nearly triple by 2050, when it will affect more than 6 million people.

At least one study says hip fractures will increase in men by 310 percent. Hip fractures in women also are projected to rise by 240 percent.

These fractures can be fatal, so there’s a huge need for preventive strategies. One is exercise, but even active people can have low bone density, which may lead to osteoporosis.

Missourian Dean Hargett bikes more than 160 kilometers a week, but he was shocked to learn it did nothing for his bones. He found out he had low bone density. 

“It alarmed me…I don’t want to have fragile bones,” Hargett said.

A decrease in bone density could lead to osteoporosis. Pam Hinton, an associate professor at the University of Missouri, conducts research on nutrition and physical activity on bone health. She said about one in four men will have an osteoporotic-related fracture in their lifetime.

Over a 12-month period, Hinton studied how resistance and jump-training exercises affected the bone health for men ages 25 to 60. The results showed these exercises did more than just slow the rate of bone loss.

“We actually saw an increase in bone mass with either type of exercise that was a very encouraging and exciting result,” Hinton said.

The exercises decreased the level of sclerostin, a protein that slows bone growth. At the same time, it increased a hormone that promotes bone growth. 

Hargett now knows he has to do more than cycle and swim to strengthen his bones. Weightlifting is now a regular part of his exercise routine. Besides getting the right kind of exercise, getting enough vitamin D and calcium also can keep bones strong.
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The world’s most advanced space telescope, which NASA plans to launch late next year, is to undergo another important test – this time in a chamber capable of creating deep-space temperatures. VOA’s George Putic reports that being able to function in extremely cold conditions will enable the telescope to go back in time and see how the first planets formed billions of years ago.
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The number of people with osteoporosis is expected to grow dramatically. Weight lifting, resistance training is part of the answer. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports on a study about men and bone health at the University of Missouri.
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Russia is open to extending its partnership in the International Space Station with the United States, Europe, Japan and Canada beyond the currently planned end of the program in 2024, the head of the Russian space agency said on Tuesday.

“We are ready to discuss it,” Igor Komarov, general director of the Russian space agency Roscosmos, told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, when asked if his country would consider a four-year extension.

The $100 billion science and engineering laboratory, orbiting 250 miles (400 km) above Earth, has been permanently staffed by rotating crews of astronauts and cosmonauts since November 2000.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, spends about $3 billion a year on the space station program, a level of funding that is endorsed by the Trump administration and Congress.

House panel oversees NASA

A U.S. House of Representatives committee that oversees NASA has begun looking at whether to extend the program beyond 2024, or use the money to speed up planned human space initiatives to the moon and Mars.

Komarov said many medical and technological issues remain to be resolved before humans travel beyond the station’s orbit.

“I think that we need to prolong our cooperation in low-Earth orbit because we haven’t resolved all the issues and problems that we face now,” Komarov said.

The U.S.-Russian human space partnership has long endured despite the swirl of political tensions between the two countries. In 1975, for example, at the height of the Cold War, an American Apollo and Russian Soyuz capsule docked together in orbit.

“We appreciate that … political problems do not touch this sphere,” Komarov said.

Russia plans for independent outpost in orbit

Moscow has an alternative if relations with the United States sour. Russia last year unveiled a plan to detach some of its modules and use them to create a new, independent outpost in orbit.

“We adjusted and made some minor changes in our programs … but it doesn’t mean that we don’t want to continue our cooperation,” Komarov said. “We just want to be on the safe side and make sure we can continue our research.”

The United States is dependent on Russia’s propellant module to keep the station in orbit.
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Providing formal land ownership titles to indigenous communities is one of the most effective ways to preserve endangered rainforest in Peru’s Amazon, said a study published on Monday.

Forest destruction dropped 75 percent on land once it was formally granted to indigenous communities, said the study by American researchers published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Analyzing satellite data and land ownership certificates, the researchers compared forest cover on territory before and in the two years after it was formally titled to indigenous communities.

They make the case that granting land titles to indigenous communities who currently control about 10 million hectares of forests in Peru has direct, measurable benefits for Amazon preservation.

“Titling reduces forest clearing by three-quarters,” said Allen Blackman, a senior official with the Inter-American Development Bank and a co-author of the study.

The Amazon is the world’s largest tropical rainforest, teeming with biodiversity and spanning nine countries in South America – the bulk of it in Brazil. More than half of Peru’s territory is Amazon rainforest.

Protecting the Amazon, which has been shrinking in Peru due to illegal logging and other activities, is crucial for combating climate change because forests suck greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere and regulate the planet’s climate.

“Communities without titles don’t have the legal standing to complain to regulators when their lands have been encroached on,” Blackman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Once land has been formally titled, indigenous communities can get advice from government regulators on the best tactics for forest preservation and other official services, Blackman said.

With a fast-growing economy based on mining and its natural resources, the Andean nation of Peru has about 1,200 indigenous communities inhabited by 330,000 people, researchers said.

Indigenous activists hailed the study.

“Giving indigenous communities formal legal title to our lands protects tropical forest from illegal logging,” said Edwin Vazquez, a land rights campaigner with the Peru-based Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin.

“Without us, the mission to slow the emissions that threaten the … health of our entire planet is doomed to failure,” Vazquez said in a statement.

Indigenous communities and local residents manage about a third of all forests in developing countries – more than twice the share in government-protected areas, Blackman said.

The study implies that titling land for indigenous people could be effective for forest conservation in other countries, Blackman said, but more research is needed to test that hypothesis.
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Former U.S. President George W. Bush touted his signature aid project for Africa during a visit to Botswana on Tuesday, saying he hoped Washington would recognize its importance in saving lives threatened by AIDS.

Launched in 2003 during the first Bush administration, PEPFAR, the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, is the world’s largest provider of AIDS-fighting medicine and has branched out over the years to include provision of services for cervical cancer, which is linked to HIV infections in women.

U.S. President Donald Trump has proposed steep cuts in the budget for diplomacy and foreign aid but his administration has so far said it will “maintain current commitments and all current patient levels on HIV/AIDS treatment” under PEPFAR.

Bush, visiting a clinic with his wife Laura that provides screening and treatment for cervical cancer, said he hoped such commitments would remain.

“I hope our government when they analyze what works around the world will understand that PEPFAR has saved over 11 million lives,” he said.

“And while progress has been made we’ve got to continue to stay in this battle in order to save lives. Every human life matters. And I hope the people of America understand that through their generosity millions now live.”

Bush said cervical cancer was now the leading cause of death among women in Botswana, a sparsely-populated southern African nation where one in five adults is infected with HIV, according to the United Nations.

Bush, a Republican, had historically low popularity ratings – about 33 percent – when he left office.

But the Obama ministration maintained PEPFAR and the program enjoys bipartisan support – a rarity in Washington’s polarized atmosphere.

Pink Ribbon Red Ribbon, an initiative of the George W. Bush Institute, works with PEPFAR on programs to reduce mortality rates among women from cervical and breast cancer in developing countries.
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Doctors have used an electrical stimulation technique that allowed a paralyzed man to move his legs, stand and “make steplike motions.”

Four years ago, a snowmobile accident left Jared Chinnock, in his 20s, of Wisconsin, paralyzed from the mid-torso down.

“I just thought I got the wind knocked out of me and needed to catch my breath and realized I couldn’t get up,” he told KARE television. “I was just pretty much set in my ways of I’m going to be in my wheelchair the rest of my life and I was all right with it.”

But a new technique offers Chinnock some hope.

Doctors at the Mayo Clinic and UCLA found that physical therapy combined with electrical stimulation may one day allow some paralyzed people to “regain control over previously paralyzed movements.”

“We’re really excited, because our results went beyond our expectations,” says neurosurgeon Kendall Lee, principal investigator and director of Mayo Clinic’s Neural Engineering Laboratory. “These are initial findings, but the patient is continuing to make progress.”

To start the study, Chinnock did 22 weeks of physical therapy to prepare his muscles to move. He was regularly tested during that time to see changes and discovered it led them to characterize his injury as “discomplete,” meaning “dormant connections across his injury may remain.

After the physical therapy, surgeons implanted an electrode near the injured part of Chinnock’s spinal cord. The electrode is connected to a computer-controlled instrument under the skin on his abdomen.

The device senses thoughts of leg movement and sends electrical current to the spinal cord allowing Chinnock to move.

After a recovery period, Chinnock resumed physical therapy with the electric stimulation. Within two weeks, he was able to “control his muscles while lying on his side, resulting in leg movements,” make steplike motions while on his side and while standing with some support. He was also able to stand with some support.

“This has really set the tone for our post-surgical rehabilitation – trying to use that function the patient recovered to drive even more return of abilities,” says Kristin Zhao, Ph.D., co-principal investigator and director of Mayo Clinic’s Assistive and Restorative Technology Laboratory.

The results show that others with “discomplete” spinal cord injuries may benefit from the same kind of therapy, though researchers say more study needs to be done.

“While these are early results, it speaks to how Mayo Clinic researchers relentlessly pursue discoveries and innovative solutions that address the unmet needs of patients,” says Gregory Gores, M.D., executive dean of research at Mayo Clinic. “These teams highlight Mayo Clinic’s unique culture of collaboration, which brings together scientists and physician experts who work side by side to accelerate scientific discoveries into critical advances for patient care.”

Though Chinnock could not feel his legs moving, he is optimistic.

“Hopefully maybe walking again someday, if not very far at least a little ways,” he told KARE.

The study appears Tuesday in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.
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A common antibiotic called doxycycline can disrupt the formation of negative thoughts and fears in the brain and may prove useful in treating or preventing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), according to research by British and Swiss scientists.

In a specially designed trial involving 76 healthy volunteers who were given either the drug or a placebo dummy pill, those who were on doxycycline had a 60 percent lower fear response than those who were not.

Scientists said the antibiotic works in this way because it blocks certain proteins outside nerve cells, called matrix enzymes, which our brains need to form memories.

“We have demonstrated a proof-of-principle for an entirely new treatment strategy for PTSD,” said Dominik Bach, a professor at University College London and the University of Zurich, who co-led the research team.

In the trial, volunteers were given either doxycycline or a placebo and put in front of a computer. The screen would flash either blue or red, and one of the colors was associated with a 50 percent chance of getting a painful electric shock. After 160 flashes with colors in random order, participants learned to associate the ‘bad’ color with the shock.

A week later, under no medication, the volunteers repeated the experiment. This time there were no electric shocks, but a loud sound played after either color was shown.

Fear responses were measured by tracking eye blinks, as this is an instinctive response to sudden threats. The fear memory was calculated by subtracting the baseline startle response “to the sound on the ‘good’ color” from the response to the sound when the ‘bad’ color was showing.

While the fear response was 60 percent lower in those who had doxycycline in the first session, the researchers found that, importantly, other cognitive measures – including sensory memory and attention – were not affected.

“When we talk about reducing fear memory, we’re not talking about deleting the memory of what actually happened,” Bach said in a statement about the findings.

“The participants may not forget that they received a shock when the screen was red, but they ‘forget’ to be instinctively scared when they next see a red screen.

“Learning to fear threats is an important ability … helping us to avoid dangers. (But) over-prediction of threat can cause tremendous suffering and distress in anxiety disorders such as PTSD.”

PTSD is caused by an overactive fear memory and includes a broad range of psychological symptoms that can develop after someone goes through a traumatic event.

Bach said he and his team would now like to explore doxycycline’s potential effects further, including in a phenomenon called “reconsolidation” of fear memories – an approach to helping people with PTSD – in which memories and associations can be changed after an event when the patient experiences or imagines similar situations.
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The Trump administration said Monday it was cutting off U.S. funding to the United Nations agency for reproductive health, accusing the agency of supporting population control programs in China that include coercive abortion.

By halting assistance to the U.N. Population Fund, the Trump administration is following through on promises to let socially conservative policies that President Donald Trump embraced in his campaign determine the way the U.S. government operates and conducts itself in the world. Though focused on forced abortion — a concept opposed by liberals and conservatives alike — the move to invoke the “Kemp-Kasten amendment” was sure to be perceived as a gesture to anti-abortion advocates and other conservative interests.

The U.N. fund will lose $32.5 million in funding from the 2017 budget, the State Department said, with funds shifted to similar programs at the U.S. Agency for International Development. It wasn’t immediately clear whether the U.N. fund would also lose out on tens of millions of additional dollars it has typically received from the U.S. in “non-core” funds.

Under a three-decade-old law, the U.S. is barred from funding organizations that aid or participate in forced abortion of involuntary sterilization. It’s up to each administration to determine which organizations meet that condition. The U.N. Population Fund has typically been cut off during Republican administrations and had its funding resumed when Democrats control the White House.

The Senate Foreign Relations Committee was notified of the move by the State Department in a letter received Monday. The letter followed a formal designation by Tom Shannon, the State Department’s undersecretary of political affairs, that said the fund “supports, or participates in the management of, a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.”

In a lengthy memorandum obtained by The Associated Press, the State Department said the U.N. fund partners with China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission, responsible for overseeing China’s “two-child policy” — a loosened version of the notorious “one-child policy” in place from 1979 to 2015. It said the U.N. collaborates with the Chinese agency on family planning. Still, the memo acknowledged there was no evidence of U.N. support for forced abortions or sterilization in China.

The U.N. Population Fund, known as UNFPA, said it regretted the U.S. move and argued it was “erroneous” to suggest it was complicit in China’s policies.

“UNFPA refutes this claim, as all of its work promotes the human rights of individuals and couples to make their own decisions, free of coercion or discrimination,” the agency said in a statement.

The designation was the latest move by the Trump administration to prioritize traditionally conservative issues in the federal budget. The Trump administration has vowed to cut all dollars for climate change programming, and also restored the so-called global gag rule, which prohibits funding to non-governmental groups that support even voluntary abortions.

The Trump administration has also signaled that it no longer sees a need for the U.S. to so generously fund U.N. and other international organizations. The White House has proposed cutting roughly one-third from the State Department’s budget, with much of it expected to come from foreign aid and global organization dollars, although Congress is expected to restore at least some of that funding

The U.N. agency’s mission involves promoting universal access to family planning and reproductive health, with a goal of reducing maternal deaths and practices like female genital mutilation. The cut-off funds will be “reprogrammed” to USAID’s Global Health Programs account to focus on similar issues, said a State Department official, who wasn’t authorized to comment by name and requested anonymity.

The Kemp-Kasten amendment, enacted in 1985, led to some of the U.N. agency’s funding being initially cut off, then restored by Democratic President Bill Clinton in 1993, USAID said in a report. Republican George W. Bush’s administration reversed the decision in 2002, but President Barack Obama — a Democrat — gave the funding back after taking office.
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Babies cry more in Britain, Canada, Italy and Netherlands than in other countries, while newborns in Denmark, Germany and Japan cry and fuss the least, researchers said on Monday.

In research looking at how much babies around the world cry in their first three months, psychologists from Britain have created the first universal charts for normal amounts of crying during that period.

“Babies are already very different in how much they cry in the first weeks of life,” said Dieter Wolker, who led the study at Warwick University.

“We may learn more from looking at cultures where there is less crying — [including] whether this may be due to parenting or other factors relating to pregnancy experiences or genetics.”

The highest levels of colic — defined as crying more than three hours a day for at least three days a week — were found in babies in Britain, Canada and Italy, while the lowest colic rates were found in Denmark and Germany.

On average, the study found, babies cry for around two hours a day in the first two weeks. They then cry a little more in the following few weeks until they peak at around two hours 15 minutes a day at six weeks. This then reduces to an average of one hour 10 minutes by the time they are 12 weeks old.

But there are wide variations, with some babies crying as little as 30 minutes a day, and others more than five hours.

The research, published in the Journal of Pediatrics, was a meta-analysis of studies covering some 8,700 babies in countries including Germany, Denmark, Japan, Canada, Italy, the Netherlands and Britain.

Wolker said the new crying chart would help health workers reassure parents whether their baby is crying within a normal range in the first three months, or may need extra support.

 

 

 

 
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Cereals such as wheat and barley are important food plants, grown almost everywhere in the world. But they are susceptible to diseases and one of the most damaging is a fungal pathogen that causes the dreaded “wheat head blight” or “wheat scab.” Using modern gene editing technique scientists have discovered a new and effective way to fight the disease.
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It sounds like science fiction, but a cap-like device that makes electric fields to fight cancer improved survival for the first time in more than a decade for people with deadly brain tumors, final results of a large study suggest.

 

Many doctors are skeptical of the therapy, called tumor treating fields, and it’s not a cure. It’s also ultra-expensive – $21,000 a month.  

 

But in the study, more than twice as many patients were alive five years after getting it, plus the usual chemotherapy, than those given just the chemo – 13 percent versus 5 percent.

 

“It’s out of the box” in terms of how cancer is usually treated, and many doctors don’t understand it or think it can help, said Dr. Roger Stupp, a brain tumor expert at Northwestern University in Chicago.

 

He led the company-sponsored study while previously at University Hospital Zurich in Switzerland, and gave results Sunday at an American Association for Cancer Research meeting in Washington.

 

“You cannot argue with them – they’re great results,” and unlikely to be due to a placebo effect, said one independent expert, Dr. Antonio Chiocca, neurosurgery chief at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Dr. George Demetri of the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute in Boston and a board member of the association hosting the conference, agreed but called the benefit modest, because most patients still die within five years. “It is such a horrible disease” that any progress is important, he added.

 

About the treatment

 

The device, called Optune, is made by Novocure, based in Jersey, an island near England. It’s sold in the U.S., Germany, Switzerland and Japan for adults with an aggressive cancer called glioblastoma multiforme, and is used with chemo after surgery and radiation to try to keep these tumors from recurring, as most do.

 

Patients cover their shaved scalp with strips of electrodes connected by wires to a small generator kept in a bag. They can wear a hat, go about their usual lives, and are supposed to use the device at least 18 hours a day. It’s not an electric current or radiation, and they feel only mild heat.

 

It supposedly works by creating low intensity, alternating electric fields that disrupt cell division – confusing the way chromosomes line up – which makes the cells die. Because cancer cells divide often, and normal cells in the adult brain do not, this in theory mostly harms the disease and not the patient.

 

What studies show

 

In a 2011 study, the device didn’t improve survival but caused fewer symptoms than chemo did for people whose tumors had worsened or recurred after standard treatments. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved it for that situation.

 

A second study, in newly diagnosed patients, was stopped in 2014 after about half of the 695 participants had been tracked for at least 18 months, because those using the device were living several months longer on average than the rest.

 

The FDA expanded approval but some doctors were leery because the device wasn’t compared with a sham treatment – everyone knew who was getting what. Study leaders say a sham was impractical, because patients feel heat when they get the real thing, and many would refuse to shave their heads every few days and use an inconvenient device for years if the treatment might be fake.  

 

Some doctors said they would withhold judgment until there were long-term results on the whole group.

 

The new results

 

Now they’re in: Median survival was 21 months for those given Optune plus chemo versus 16 months for those on chemo alone. Survival rates were 43 percent versus 31 percent at two years; 26 percent versus 16 percent at three years, and 13 percent versus 5 percent at five years.

 

Side effects were minimal but included blood-count problems, weakness, fatigue and skin irritation from the electrodes.

 

“The device is now impossible to ignore … it absolutely is an advance,” said Dr. Andrew Lassman, brain tumor chief at the Columbia University Medical Center/New York-Presbyterian Hospital. He consults for Novocure, as do some doctors running the study.

 

The latest National Comprehensive Cancer Center guidelines include Optune as an appropriate treatment for brain tumors. It’s also is being tested for pancreatic, ovarian and lung cancers; electrodes are worn on the belly or chest for those.

The price

A big issue is cost – roughly $700 a day. Most U.S. insurers cover it but Medicare does not and “we are paying,” said Novocure’s chief executive, Bill Doyle. “We’ve never refused a patient regardless of insurance status.”

 

The price reflects “an extremely sophisticated medical device, made in very low quantities,” with disposable parts changed several times a week and a support person for each patient, he said. Plus 17 years of lab, animal and human testing.

 

That cost? “The round number is half a billion dollars,” Doyle said.

 

One patient’s experience

 

Joyce Endresen’s insurance covers all but about $1,000 a year for her device. “It’s a great plan, and that’s why I still work,” said Endresen, 52, employed by a direct mail company in suburban Chicago.

 

She has scans every two months to check for cancer and “they’ve all been good,” she said. “We celebrated two years of no tumor in December and went to South Africa.”

 

Doctors say many patients won’t try the device because of the trouble involved or because they don’t want a visible reminder of their cancer. Not Endresen.    

 

“I wear it and wear it proudly,” she said. “It’s an incredible machine and I’m fine not having hair.”
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Humans have always wondered why certain animals, such as tigers or pandas, have such unusual color patterns. Folklore usually explained it as a consequence of some dramatic event. But scientists say it has to do with the animal’s natural habitat, which is also the answer for panda’s black and white fur. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Scientists working at Cambridge University in England have coaxed a collection of mouse stem cells to turn into a mouse embryo. This breakthrough could change the way scientists study early development and how it can go wrong early in a pregnancy. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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If you were a casual observer watching Argonne National Laboratory scientist Seth Darling work, it would be easy to miss the low-tech but groundbreaking invention he’s concocted in his brightly lit workspace. 

It doesn’t have wires or circuitry, it doesn’t move, it doesn’t do much of anything. It is in fact, at least at first glance, simply a sponge.

“It looks real simple when you demonstrate it, right?” Darling explained as he lowered the small, dark-colored foam sponges into a bowl of water mixed with blue oil. “I mean, you just stick it down there and it works. But behind that is a lot of work.”

Darling explains that what we can see with the human eye — these dark-colored pieces of foam, or sponges — isn’t the major breakthrough. 

It’s what’s in, and on, the sponges that is revolutionary.

“After we do our treatment to it, and we create this Oleo Sponge, you put it on there and it’s got a voracious appetite for oil. It just soaks that oil right up,” he said.

Cleaning, saving oil

While the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in suburban Chicago is best known for its contributions to nuclear energy development, it is also an incubator for technological innovation and discovery, the very environment where Darling created the Oleo Sponge.

“So we’ve been working on this Oleo Sponge project for almost two years,” Darling told VOA. “The underlying technology is something that we’ve been working on for much longer.”

He explains the treatment that gives the Oleo Sponge that “voracious appetite” is the real innovation developed at Argonne — something Darling and his associates call Sequential Infiltration Synthesis, or SIS.

“It was just a new way to make materials,” Darling said.

SIS works at the nano level. When hard metal oxide atoms “with complicated nanostructures” are infused throughout the fibers of the foam, it gives it the extremely effective quality of allowing the foam to bind with the oil in the water, essentially separating the two liquids.

The breakthrough could dramatically change cleanup of oil spills, particularly the more difficult task of retrieving oil below the surface of the water.

“Once it all goes down below the surface of the water and you have clouds of droplets under the surface, I’m not aware of any technology today that can actually clean those up. And Oleo Sponge can,” Darling said.

But the Oleo Sponge doesn’t just clean up the oil — it saves it. 

Oil spilled into water is usually burned off or unusable after cleanup efforts, but the Oleo Sponge can collect, separate and deposit the oil for further use. 

Flood of interest

The sponge itself can also be re-used and recycled, all qualities that have brought a flood of interest to Argonne’s doors.

“It’s a wide variety of companies that are interested in it,” said Hemant Bhimnathwala, with Argonne Laboratory’s Business Development Group. “We’ve got inquiries from about 100-plus companies in the last few days … who want to be partners in a slew of things from manufacturing the foam to distribution.”

While oil spill cleanup in bodies of water is the most clearly identifiable use for the Oleo Sponge, the SIS technology behind it could offer breakthroughs in a variety of other ways, yet to be discovered.

“This application is just the tip of the iceberg,” Bhimnathwala said.

It is an iceberg Seth Darling and other scientists at Argonne are still delving into, while the Oleo Sponge continues to make its journey into the wider market — and hopefully the world’s bodies of water — in the coming years.
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Elon Musk’s SpaceX on Thursday salvaged half of the $6 million nosecone of its rocket, in what the space entrepreneur deemed an important feat in the drive to recover more of its launch hardware and cut the cost of space flights.

Shortly after the main section of SpaceX’s first recycled Falcon 9 booster landed itself on a platform in the ocean, half of the rocket’s nosecone, which protected a communications satellite during launch, splashed down via parachute nearby.

“That was the cherry on the cake,” Musk, who serves as chief executive and lead designer of Space Exploration Technologies, told reporters after launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Measuring 43 feet (13 meters) long and 17 feet (5 meters) in diameter, the nosecone is big enough to hold a school bus. It separates into two pieces, exposing the satellite, about 4 minutes after liftoff.

 

As a test, SpaceX outfitted the fairing with thrusters and a steerable parachute.

“It’s its own little spacecraft,” Musk said. “The thrusters maintain its orientation as it re-enters and then … the parachute steers it to a particular location.”

SpaceX has focused most of its efforts and more than $1 billion into developing technologies to recover the Falcon 9’s main section, which accounts for about 75 percent of the $62 million rocket. Musk’s goal is to cut the cost of spaceflight so that humanity can migrate beyond Earth.

“I hope people will start to think about it as a real goal to establish a civilization on Mars,” he said.

Landing on ‘bouncy castle’

After some debate about whether the nosecone could be recovered, Musk said he told his engineering team, “Imagine you had $6 million in cash on a pallet flying through the air that’s just going to smash into the ocean. Would you try to recover that? Yes, you would.”

Musk envisions deploying a kind of “bouncy castle” for the fairing to land on so it can be recovered intact and reused.

The company plans up to six more flights of recycled boosters this year, including two that will strapped alongside a third, new first stage for the debut test flight of a heavy-lift rocket.

Originally slated to fly in 2013, Falcon Heavy is now expected to fly late this summer.

“At first it sounded easy: We’ll just take two first stages and use them as strap-on boosters,” Musk said. “It was actually shockingly difficult to go from single core to a triple-core vehicle.”

SpaceX also may try to land the rocket’s upper-stage section, a feat the company has never attempted. “Odds of success low, but maybe worth a shot,” Musk wrote Friday on Twitter.

Privately owned SpaceX also is developing a commercial space taxi to fly astronauts to the International Space Station, a venture to send two space tourists on a trip around the moon and a Mars lander that is slated to launch in 2020.
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U.S. researchers have begun enrolling people in the next phase of testing for a vaccine to protect against Zika, the mosquito-borne virus that can cause birth defects in pregnant women.

Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), told reporters Friday that the Zika vaccine had cleared preliminary safety hurdles and would now be tested on human volunteers to see whether it is effective.

In the study, funded by the U.S. government, researchers aim to enroll more than 2,400 healthy volunteers from areas where mosquitoes carry the Zika virus — parts of the southern United States, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Peru, Costa Rica, Panama and Mexico.

Researchers at the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) said the trial would begin with a small number of people testing different doses or strengths of vaccine. Once the dosage is decided, the larger part of the study could begin by June, when the volunteers will receive either the vaccine or a placebo.

Participants will be monitored for two years to see whether the vaccine protects against Zika infection.

The vaccine being tested is a new type, called a DNA vaccine. Traditionally, vaccines are made using killed or weakened viruses, which increase the recipients’ ability to fight off an active infection.

The DNA vaccine contains no actual virus, but has genes extracted from Zika viruses. Once inside the body, the genes form particles resembling Zika that cannot cause infection. If all goes well, the gene particles should induce volunteers’ immune systems to produce antibodies capable of repelling the full virus.

NIH researchers also are studying more traditional Zika vaccines, but those are not yet ready for human trials.       

The DNA vaccine trial is expected to cost $100 million, but Fauci said the government was in talks with pharmaceutical companies to share the costs of the final stage of testing, in return for rights to manufacture the vaccine in the future.

Zika typically causes no symptoms or only mild ones, such as fever and body aches. If the virus infects a pregnant woman, however, it can result in birth defects in newborns, including microcephaly, which is characterized by an abnormally small head and brain, accompanied by marked developmental disorders.

Zika is primarily transmitted by mosquitoes, but it can also be transmitted via sexual contact.
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“This is nice, it tickles me,” Kaspar the social robot tells four-year-old Finn as they play together at an autism school north of London.

Kaspar, developed by the University of Hertfordshire, also sings songs, imitates eating, plays the tambourine and combs his hair during their sessions, aimed at helping Finn with his social interaction and communication.

If Finn gets too rough, the similarly sized Kaspar cries: “Ouch, that hurt me.” A therapist is on hand to encourage the child to rectify his behavior by tickling the robot’s feet.

Finn is one of around 170 autistic children that Kaspar has helped in a handful of schools and hospitals over the last 10 years.

But with approximately 700,000 people in Britain on the autism spectrum, according to the National Autistic Society who will mark World Autism Day on Sunday, the university want Kaspar to help more people.

“Our vision is that every child in a school or a home or in a hospital could get a Kaspar if they wanted to,” Kerstin Dautenhahn, professor of artificial intelligence at the University of Hertfordshire, told Reuters.

Achieving that goal will largely depend on the results of a two-year clinical trial with the Hertfordshire Community NHS Trust, which, if successful, could see Kaspar working in hospitals nationwide.

TRACKS, an independent charity and specialist early-years center for children with autism in Stevenage, have seen positive results from working with Kaspar, who sports a blue cap and plaid shirt for play sessions.

“We were trying to teach a little boy how to eat with his peers. He usually struggled with it because of his anxiety issues,” said deputy principal Alice Lynch. “We started doing it with Kaspar and he really, really enjoyed feeding Kaspar, making him eat when he was hungry, things like that. Now he’s started to integrate into the classroom and eat alongside his peers. So, things like that are just a massive progression.”

Many children with autism find it hard to decipher basic human communication and emotion so Kaspar’s designers avoided making him too lifelike and instead opted for simplified, easy-to-process features.

Autism support groups have been impressed.

“Many autistic people are drawn to technology, particularly the predictability it provides, which means it can be a very useful means of engaging children, and adults too,” Carol Povey, director of the National Autistic Society’s Centre for Autism, told Reuters.

“This robot is one of a number of emerging technologies which have the potential to make a huge difference to people on the autism spectrum.”
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Deadly cholera is spreading through drought-ravaged Somalia as clean water sources dry up, a top aid official said, deepening a humanitarian crisis in a country that is on the verge of famine.

The Horn of Africa nation has recorded more than 18,000 cases of cholera so far this year, up from around 15,000 in all of 2016 and 5,000 in a normal year, Johan Heffinck, the Somalia head of EU Humanitarian Aid, said in an email on Thursday.

The current strain of the disease is unusually deadly, killing around 1 in 45 patients.

Somalia is suffering from a severe drought that means more than half of its 12 million citizens are expected to need aid by July. Families have been forced to drink slimy, infected water after the rains failed and wells and rivers dried up.

“We are very close to famine,” Heffinck said.

The Security Information Network (FSIN), which is co-sponsored by the United Nations food agency, said in a report on Friday Somalia was one of four African countries at high risk of famine.

Somalia’s rainy season normally runs from March to May, but there has been no rain this month.

The drought has hit particularly hard in the breakaway northern region of Somaliland, where the rains began to fail in 2015, killing off animals that nomadic families rely on to survive.

‘This is the last bottle’

Listless, skinny children last week lay in crowded wards in the main hospital in the regional capital Hargeisa.

Three-year-old Nimaan Hassid had diarrhea for 20 days before his mother brought him to hospital. He weighs only 6.5 kilograms, less than half the normal weight for his age.

Doctors say he is suffering from severe malnutrition but his grandmother, 60-year-old Fadumo Hussein, told Reuters the family has no money for food or clean water.

“We don’t have mineral water to give to the sick child. This is the last bottle,” she said, carefully pouring it into a feeding tube inserted through his nose.

In the malnutrition ward in the general hospital of Somaliland’s second city Burao, Doctor Hamud Ahmed said children were also being hit hard by diseases like tuberculosis, meningitis and measles.

Children’s admissions reached almost 60 in March, up fourfold from October.

“This is due to the drought,” Ahmed said. “When families lose all their livestock and children do not get milk, this is the famine that causes the children to suffer.”

If the rains fail, the country could tip into famine.

Somalia’s last famine, in 2011, killed more than 260,000 people. Heffinck said aid agencies were working overtime to try to prevent a similar disaster, trucking in clean water and stepping up the distribution of food and cash.

“The big difference this time is that we have started the preparation and scaling up of the relief operations earlier,” he said.
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When Ebola struck Liberia, consumption of bushmeat dropped dramatically. But in an odd twist, poorer households cut their consumption much more than well-to-do households.

The findings have implications for public health, as well as wildlife conservation. Education campaigns about the risks and consequences of bushmeat hunting have focused on rural villagers near protected nature reserves.

But, it turns out, the more tenacious consumers may be the wealthier city-dwellers.

Bushmeat — wild animals like monkeys, duikers and pangolins — is an essential protein source for many rural West Africans, but it’s also a favorite of urbanites.

Satisfying that demand has created, in some places, “empty forests” that are otherwise pristine but are devoid of critical wildlife.

In addition, bushmeat can spread diseases like Ebola because, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “human infections have been associated with hunting, butchering and processing meat from infected animals.”

Before the 2015 Ebola outbreak, Jessica Junker and her colleagues at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology based in Leipzig, Germany, had studied Liberians’ preferences for bushmeat compared to chicken or fish.

Tradition, taste

“We asked people, ‘If you were at a party and you could choose the type of meat you could eat there, what would you like to eat?'” Junker told VOA. That scenario aimed to take cost out of the equation.

Bushmeat often topped the list.

People prefer the taste, Junker said. Bushmeat also is often cheaper than domesticated meat. Plus, it’s a traditional part of their diet.

“Many people have told me, ‘Well, we’ve always eaten bushmeat. Our fathers have eaten bushmeat,'” Junker said.

When Ebola hit, she decided it would be a good time to see how attitudes toward eating wildlife had changed.

Bushmeat consumption dropped, as expected. However, it dropped less among wealthier people.

Rich or poor, before Ebola, people said they ate bushmeat every other day on average. During the outbreak, that dropped to once a month among the lowest-income survey respondents, but once a week among the highest-income respondents.

It’s not clear why that should be, but Junker notes that poorer people hunt bushmeat themselves. “During the Ebola crisis, a lot of people didn’t leave their houses,” she said.

In the cities, it was illegal to sell bushmeat. But “there was an underground bushmeat market,” she said. “If you wanted to get bushmeat, you could still get it,” as long as you had money.

Awareness campaigns

The study was published in the journal PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases.

It presents a challenge for those seeking to preserve wildlife or protect public health.

“If you really like something, you’re not very likely to change that,” Junker said. “Ebola is quite a drastic event, but it doesn’t change your preference. You stop eating it because it’s dangerous.”

She says her group would like to repeat the survey now that the crisis is over. They suspect that people have gone back to their old eating habits.

And, she notes, the study suggests education efforts may need a change in focus.

“Most of the awareness campaigns nowadays are centered around protected areas where the animals actually live. But maybe those are not the people who then consume the bushmeat,” she noted. “It might be people much farther away in the urban centers and who need to be educated about the impact this has.”
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Prince William, his wife Kate and his brother Prince Harry are spearheading a campaign to encourage people to talk openly about mental health issues.

 

The young royals released 10 films Thursday as part of their Heads Together campaign to change the national conversation on mental health.

 

The videos feature celebrities and members of the public talking about the breakthrough conversation that helped them come to terms with their mental health problems.

 

The former England cricket captain Andrew Flintoff and former Prime Minister Tony Blair’s spin doctor Alastair Campbell are among those seen speaking about their experiences of anxiety or depression.

 

The films can be viewed on the Heads Together website and YouTube page.

 
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A video game from the 1980s could help those who suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.

Swedish researchers at the Karolinska Institutet say Tetris, a simple game of stacking variously shaped blocks, can “prevent the unpleasant, intrusive memories that develop in some people after suffering a traumatic event.”

Researchers found that survivors of deadly car crashes show fewer PTSD symptoms if they play a game of Tetris in the hospital within six hours of the event.

PTSD is common among survivors of natural disasters, war and violent crimes, and sufferers often complain of intrusive flashbacks to their trauma. Researchers say a common way to treat PTSD is through trauma-focused behavioral therapy. 

There are no current methods to prevent the symptoms from developing, researchers say.

“Our hypothesis was that after a trauma, patients would have fewer intrusive memories if they got to play Tetris as part of a short behavioral intervention while waiting in the hospital emergency department,” said Emily Holmes, professor of psychology at Karolinska Institutet’s Department of Clinical Neuroscience. “Since the game is visually demanding, we wanted to see if it could prevent the intrusive aspects of the traumatic memories from becoming established, i.e. by disrupting a process known as memory consolidation.”

For the Tetris study, the researchers looked at 71 car crash victims. Half of the subjects played Tetris while in the emergency room waiting room, and the other half performed another task. All were given the tasks within six hours of the accident.

Those who played Tetris showed fewer intrusive memories during the following week. What intrusive memories they did have “diminished more quickly,” according to researchers.

While promising, researchers say more studies need to be done.

“Anyone can experience trauma,” Holmes said. “It would make a huge difference to a great many people if we could create simple behavioral psychological interventions using computer games to prevent post-traumatic suffering and spare them these grueling intrusive memories.”

The study was published in the journal Molecular Psychiatry.
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As health experts stare down a looming health care worker shortage and try to find solutions, African nations say they are especially worried in the face of possible U.S. cuts to international aid.

In Uganda, the impact of poor-quality health services and a shortage of skilled health workers can be measured in human lives.

“We are losing 17 mothers and 106 newborns every day,” said Faridah Luyiga Mwanje of White Ribbon Alliance, an advocacy group that campaigns for women’s health and safe childbirth.

Mwanje’s sister became part of that grim statistic in 2013, a tragedy Mwanje attributes to doctors intervening too late and a lack of blood supplies. Her sister bled to death in a high-end hospital in Kampala, leaving behind four children.

Her baby boy survived, but was born with cerebral palsy and suffers from developmental delays and convulsions.

In rural Uganda, Mwanje says, the situation is worse.

“There are no health workers,” she said. “There’s a general lack of lifesaving commodities, the infrastructure is poor, health workers don’t have housing, the [operating] theaters are dilapidated, health facilities are not connected to the national power grid, and there’s no running water in these facilities.”

45 countries convene

Worldwide, that shortage and other health care challenges lead to 2.4 million preventable deaths of mothers and children every year. And making the picture even bleaker, by the year 2030, the World Health Organization estimates the world will be short 18 million health workers, a loss Mwanje says will be keenly felt in countries like Uganda.

Health experts and advocates from 45 countries convened this year in Johannesburg to discuss this looming problem. Stefan Peterson, UNICEF’s Chief of Health, told VOA that major gains can be made without complicated, costly medical research.

“I think we have many effective medical interventions that can save lives, but they don’t reach the people who need it, and the people don’t reach those interventions at the right time,” he said. “So what we’re talking about now is actually reducing access barriers by making health services more accessible, improving quality of those health services, so that these available, and even affordable, medical interventions reach the people who need them. And by doing that, we can save at least two-thirds of those lives without new innovation.”

He says African countries also have benefited from expanding community health programs, with low-level health workers who handle patients’ basic needs and shift some of the burden off nurses and doctors.

Possible funding cuts

But these changes will require money, and top health officials are concerned about possible funding cuts from the United Nations’ largest contributor, the United States. Mwanje says that she isn’t sure her country could recover from that sort of aid setback.

“We are truly concerned that donors are cutting back funding,” she said. “Because our governments, well, they’re not prioritizing health and they’ve relied mainly on donor funding. So, it will take them a long time to adjust — if they actually adjust. So we hope that donors can rethink their decisions and invest in health in countries where there are marginalized people. Because we live in a global village, and health affects all of us.”
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China said Wednesday it is committed to honoring its pledges under the Paris climate change agreement, a day after U.S. President Donald Trump signed a sweeping executive order that would effectively dismantle environmental regulations put in place by his predecessor, Barack Obama.

Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said combating climate change is a challenge for the entire world, and that China will maintain its approach even if other governments change their policies.

Trump’s order has rekindled the highly charged partisan debate about how human activity affects the earth’s climate and deepened concern that decades of work on global climate treaties may be unraveling.

“We will put our miners back to work” and produce “really clean coal,” Trump said during the signing ceremony Tuesday.

“Many agree that would be disastrous,” Dutch Nobel laureate Paul Crutzen told VOA in a telephone interview. “Whatever has been achieved could be destroyed, so I don’t think many scientists would be pleased with this,” said Crutzen, who won the 1995 Nobel Prize for work explaining the depletion of the earth’s ozone layer.

WATCH: Trump orders review of Obama climate rule

White House press secretary Sean Spicer said Trump believes he can balance twin goals of protecting the environment while promoting energy production in the U.S.

“The president strongly believes that protecting the environment and promoting our economy are not mutually exclusive goals,” Spicer said during his daily White House media briefing. “This executive order will help to ensure that we have clean air and clean water without sacrificing economic growth and job creation.

Half-dozen rules

Trump’s order will seek to suspend, rescind or identify for review more than a half-dozen rules, in an attempt to increase domestic energy production in the form of fossil fuels. It directs federal agencies to identify rules the administration says impede domestic energy production, as a first step in a 6-month process to create a blueprint for the administration’s future energy policy. Included in the review will be the Clean Power Plan, which restricts greenhouse gas emissions at coal-fired power plants. The rollback also scraps many of former President Barack Obama’s environmental initiatives and removes the requirement that federal officials weigh the impact of climate change when making decisions.

Trump has repeatedly signaled disdain for his predecessor’s climate policy. On the campaign trail, he called Obama’s Clean Power Plan “stupid,” largely because it put in place what he called “job killing” regulations. The executive orders he signed Tuesday direct the Environmental Protection agency to thoroughly revise regulations outlined in the Clean Power Plan.

Trump’s 2018 budget proposal slashes EPA funding by 31 percent, including an almost total cut of climate research funds. Trump’s Budget Director Mick Mulvaney told a White House briefing, “We’re not spending money on that anymore.”

International effect

Less clear is the president’s commitment to international agreements such as the 2015 Paris Climate Accord, signed by Obama. Trump has an aversion to treaties that cede U.S. authority to global bodies, and EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt, speaking Sunday on ABC’s This Week, called the Paris treaty a “bad deal.”

A hot issue

Leaked details of the executive orders ignited a firestorm among climate scientists.

Tim Barnett, emeritus research geophysicist at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in California says even he, a Trump supporter, would find it “unconscionable” to roll back regulations contained in the Clean Power Plan. “Global warming is not a Democratic issue or a Republican issue,” he said. “If you look at what’s going on the Arctic, the Antarctic, by continuing to put carbon dioxide in the atmosphere we’re making the oceans more acidic. It is thought that by 2040 half the planktonic creatures will be under stress.”

Sierra Club Executive Director Michael Brune called Trump’s order “the single biggest attack on climate action in U.S. history, period.” Brune said the action ignores the growing clean energy economy that serves as the best way to protect both workers and the environment.

In Washington, views on climate change generally split along party lines. With Republicans controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress, the views of climate skeptics, largely marginalized during the Obama years, are finding fresh voice.

The House Science Committee has scheduled hearings this week to look into the methods of climate scientists, as Chairman Lamar Smith (R-TX) pushes forward a bill to require the EPA to make public the data it uses to justify environmental regulations. The hearing will feature three prominent academics who question the scientific consensus, alongside Michael E. Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Penn State University and author of the “hockey stick” graph that suggests a steep rise in the earth’s temperature since fossil fuels came into wide use.

Speaking to VOA, Mann said the rising profile of climate change doubters in Washington is part of a well-funded campaign by big energy industry interests, mainly Charles and David Koch, who are major contributors to conservative political and policy groups.

“Trump’s administration has been filled with individuals who have close ties to polluting interests, ExxonMobil obviously, but the Koch brothers, the largest privately owned fossil fuel interests in the country,” Mann said. “… and their agenda has long been to gut all government regulations so they can increase their own profits from the sale of fossil fuels.”

Climate skeptics agree money has corrupted the scientific debate, but they differ on its effect. The dissenters argue that fierce competition for the billions of dollars in government research grants has forced academics to exaggerate the danger of climate chance.

Richard Lindzen, professor emeritus of meteorology at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, represents the small minority of scientists who find fault with the overwhelming consensus on climate change. He argues universities have given in to the temptation to exaggerate climate change as they have become increasingly dependent on billions of dollars in government research funding, effectively making bureaucrats the real judges of science.

“We went way backward in studying climate and replaced it with this single variable, (CO2) and increased funding by 1500% and created a whole new community that had never studied climate but was willing to attribute everything to it,” he said.
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