Most people have likely heard about the dangers of microplastics, the particles less than 5 millimeters in size that deteriorate from larger plastic pieces that have entered the oceans. Scientists are beginning to realize the effect this plastic is having on all kinds of sea life, from the smallest to the largest, and even those that live in the deepest darkest parts of the Mariana Trench. VOA’s Kevin Enochs has details.
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A relatively large asteroid will cross Earth’s orbit around the sun this month. Astrophysicists and astronomers say there is no chance of a collision, but it will be the closest flyby of an asteroid that large for at least another 10 years.
Asteroid 2014 JO25, discovered three years ago, is about 650 meters (2,100 feet) in diameter, 60 times as large as the small asteroid that plunged into our atmosphere as a meteor and exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013. That blast was felt thousands of kilometers away and caused havoc on the ground, damaging more than 7,000 homes and offices and injuring 1,500 people.
Asteroid 2014 JO25’s pass by Earth on April 19 will be a near miss, cosmically speaking. The U.S. space agency NASA said no one should worry: “There is no possibility for the asteroid to collide with our planet, [but] this will be a very close approach for an asteroid of this size.”
The Minor Planet Center of the International Astronomical Union classifies 2014 JO25 as a “potentially hazardous asteroid.” (Astronomers classify asteroids as “minor planets”; when they pass close to Earth they are termed “near Earth objects.”)
WATCH: NASA Animation: Asteroid 2014 JO25’s Orbit
An animation of the intersection of Earth’s orbit and that of 2014 JO25, prepared by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a unit of the California Institute of Technology, makes it look like an awfully close call, but the hard facts are more reassuring: At its closest point, the asteroid will be about five times as far from Earth as the moon is, more than 1.75 million kilometers away (1,087,400 miles).
Although the asteroid is expected to be twice as reflective as our moon, it will be difficult to spot in a night sky filled with stars, and certainly not without help. Scientists say the sort of telescope amateur astronomers use should be adequate to pick out the space rock as it whizzes across the sky at 120,000 kilometers per hour (74,500 mph).
EarthSky.org, a website that follows developments in the cosmos and throughout nature in general, has posted an article with detailed information to help sky-watchers find the asteroid on April 19, and for a day or two afterward.
Professional astronomers also will be tracking 2014 JO25 closely. Puerto Rico’s Arecibo Observatory, an extremely powerful radio telescope center, will study the asteroid for five days.
After all, it’s not often that something as big as this comes along, even a couple of million kilometers from home. NASA says 2014 JO25 hasn’t been this close to Earth in the past 400 years, and it will be at least 500 years before it comes back for a repeat close encounter with our planet.
Asteroids actually pass close to Earth fairly often, but it’s their size that matters. Asteroid 2017 GM made one of the closest passes by Earth ever seen — 16,000 kilometers (9,900 miles) above sea level — less than a week ago, on April 4. Little notice was taken, however, because that chunk of space rock was about the size of a small car.
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When Arnaud Laillou, a nutrition specialist with UNICEF, led a salt iodization study in 2014, he wanted to be sure that salt producers were not adding too much iodine.
Just four years earlier, UNICEF had stopped providing iodine to salt producers at the end of a decade-long, largely successful government-run iodization program.
Laillou was stunned to find that 90 percent of coarse salt and 40-50 percent of fine salt was now not iodized. And all of it was labeled as iodized.
“It was a real shock for us,” says Laillou of the findings of the paper that was published last year in the online journal Nutrients.
Serious public health problem
That paper said iodine deficiency in Cambodia had become “a serious public health problem” just years after the issue had largely been dealt with, and warned that poorer families and rural families were worst affected.
That was at odds with a study carried out three years earlier that showed salt producers were adding iodine, and that authorities were enforcing a 2003 subdecree that mandated iodization.
Iodine is essential to brain development and hormonal functions. If a pregnant woman is iodine-deficient, for example, her baby’s brain will not develop properly. The mineral is vital for brain development in children, too, and for proper hormone functioning in all ages. Iodine is so important that the World Health Organization has described iodine-deficiency as “the [world’s] single greatest preventable cause of mental retardation.”
Iodizing salt is widely regarded as one of the cheapest and most effective public health measures: it costs 2 cents per kilogram of salt.
Children hurt most
Iodine-deficiency, Laillou said, is particularly damaging for children.
“For example, Cambodia is investing a lot of money at the level of the Ministry of Education to improve the education of their children,” he said. “But having a lack of iodine in the brain, it decreases [their] IQ by 13 points.”
That, he points out, compares with the loss of three IQ points for a child who is not breastfed for the first six months of life.
Wholesale failure
In theory, adding iodine to Cambodia’s annual output of 80-100,000 tons of salt should be simple: close to 100 percent is produced by the SPCKK cooperative in the southern province of Kampot. SPCKK produces coarse salt, which it sells in bulk to middlemen who operate boilers that refine that into fine salt.
By law, SPCKK must iodize all of its salt output. But over the years several of the iodizing machines it was given have broken down, and SPCKK has not sourced spare parts. Now it has four working machines and that’s not enough.
And so, as SPCKK’s technical chief, Bun Narin told VOA, its workers often spray iodine by hand, a method that is at best imprecise.
“Large companies [outside Cambodia] use machines to monitor, whereas we are still using labor and so it’s not always accurate,” he said.
That is putting it mildly, given that Laillou’s research found 90 percent of the country’s coarse salt lacks any iodine. Despite that, SPCKK’s output is labeled as containing the mandated amount of iodine.
If boilers don’t test for the concentration of iodine in the coarse salt that they buy, and if, further along the production line, salt repackagers, like 57-year-old Koy Rithiya, don’t test for the concentration in the fine salt that they buy from the boilers and then add iodine where needed, the result is noniodized salt.
Which is exactly what has happened.
Routine testing
When Rithiya set up his business in Phnom Penh 15 years ago, he didn’t know he needed to add iodine; he started doing that a decade ago after being advised by UNICEF.
These days he uses an electronic monitor to test the concentration of iodine in the 500 kilograms of fine salt that he repackages each day, and adds iodine where needed to meet the mandated standard of 30-60 parts per million.
He doesn’t yet use the monitor to test his daily output of 400 kilograms of coarse salt; instead he relies on a test that merely shows whether iodine is present or not. That test, however, does not measure the concentration.
Rithiya reckons the problem of iodine-deficiency has emerged in part because some producers use expired iodine, “but also because some producers combine salt with iodine without correctly balancing it.”
“And some don’t bother to use it correctly,” he said.
A lack of enforcement
The report makes clear where the problem lies: on the production side is SPCKK, as well as some boilers and salt repackagers; on the enforcement side are the authorities for failing to ensure that producers follow the law.
The irony is that by 2010, the government’s program meant the health problems associated with iodine deficiency in Cambodia were largely a thing of the past. A decade earlier, nearly 1 in 5 primary school children had goiters, a condition where the thyroid in the neck swells up. Many adults did, too. By 2010, that was no longer the case.
But when iodine prices tripled after the 2011 Fukushima nuclear disaster in Japan, many salt producers in Cambodia stopped buying the additive, and the authorities failed to make sure they were iodizing. The result: a re-emergent public health issue that has, to date, remained largely invisible.
The situation, though bad, should start to improve. UNICEF is working with a government subcommittee to devise a certification standard for all producers, although that could take two years to implement.
Ven Keahak, who heads the subcommittee on salt iodization, says the new licensing system will mean producers “have to have a machine, iodine powder [in stock], a brand name, and salt with proper quality in order to get a license.”
“It’s a legal enforcement that the ministry has to conduct,” he said.
A lack of enforcement has been part of the problem, but Keahak would not comment on the failure of government agencies to apply the current law. He did confirm that no one has been prosecuted for failing to add iodine or for failing to monitor the system.
The difficulty for concerned Cambodians is that every bag of salt carries the logo stating that it is iodized. To deal with that, the Ministry of Planning will now test all salt brands and will place advertisements in newspapers to tell people which brands they can trust.
Until then, the failure to police the country’s salt output will keep damaging lives in what experts say was an entirely avoidable public health issue.
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With the right attachment, a smartphone can be used as a diagnostic tool for infectious diseases like tuberculosis. Faith Lapidus reports.
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The World Health Organization Friday marked World Health Day with the warning that depression is the most common cause of ill health, affecting some 300 million people worldwide. The U.N. agency is urging people to seek treatment for depression, which can lead to disability and even death.
WHO says conflict, wars and natural disasters are major risk factors for depression.
WHO estimates one in five people affected by these events suffers from depression or anxiety. Given the magnitude of the problem, it says mental health and psychosocial assistance should be a part of all humanitarian assistance.
Apart from these situations, WHO reports depression is the leading cause of disability. The director of WHO’s department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Shekhar Saxena, says depression is behind a global epidemic of death by suicide.
“All over the world, 800,000 people die because of suicide every year and this converts into a death every 40 seconds,” said Saxena. “So, while we are dealing with the number of deaths, which are of course very unfortunate in conflicts and wars, we also need to remember that there are silent epidemics going on in the world, which are also killing a very large number of people without obvious headlines and banners.”
Saxena tells VOA there is no significant difference in the prevalence of depression between developed and developing countries. He notes the majority of people with depression lives in low- and middle-income countries.
“Depression is more common amongst the women – 5.1 percent versus 3.6 percent amongst men,” said Saxena. “Other risk factors include poverty, discrimination, and all adverse life situations – either chronic or acute, especially amongst young people.”
Saxena says treatment usually involves psychotherapy, antidepressant medication or a combination of both. He says it is not necessary to have a specialist treat depression. He says the so-called talking cure administered by general doctors, nurses, or health care workers can be just as effective.
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We have radars to track flying objects, but a tiny fly may be even better at tracking and grabbing fast moving prey. Scientists at the University of Cambridge learned that not only the number of lenses in the fly’s eye, but also their variety, help it focus on fast moving objects. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The U.S. Air Force is open to buying rides on previously flown SpaceX rockets to put military satellites into orbit, a move expected to cut launch costs for the Pentagon, the head of the Air Force Space Command said on Thursday.
The idea of flying on recycled rockets became a reality a week ago when privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched a communications satellite on a Falcon 9 booster that previously put a cargo ship into orbit for NASA.
That Falcon main stage had been recovered from a successful return landing on an ocean platform shortly after its maiden flight last April, then was relaunched and salvaged again last Thursday, marking a spaceflight first.
“I would be comfortable if we were to fly on a reused booster,” General John “Jay” Raymond told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “They’ve proven they can do it. … It’s going to get us to lower cost.”
SpaceX has so far won three launch contracts to fly military and national security satellites – business previously awarded exclusively to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.
All those flights will take place on new Falcon 9 rockets.
SpaceX, owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a backlog of more than 70 missions worth more than $10 billion.
After last week’s landmark launch, Musk said the company planned to fly about 20 more rockets this year, including the debut blastoff of its new heavy-lift vehicle. Up to six of those missions, including the Falcon Heavy, will use previously flown boosters, he said.
Speaking at the symposium on Wednesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the cost of refurbishing and reflying the Falcon 9 first stage was “substantially less than half” the cost of manufacturing a new booster – the most expensive part of the rocket. SpaceX’s website lists the cost of a basic Falcon 9 launch at $62 million.
SpaceX expects to reduce costs even further.
The company’s next goal is to launch and return a rocket and relaunch it within 24 hours. “That’s when we’ll really feel like we’ve got reusability right,” Shotwell said.
Raymond said the Air Force would need to certify that a used booster could safely deliver its satellites into orbit.
“I’m pretty comfortable we’ll get comfortable with doing it,” Raymond said. “This is just beginning.”
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Don’t look to the Kentucky Coal Museum to bring coal back.
The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the city’s largest electric customers. It’s also a symbol of the state’s efforts to move away from coal as its primary energy source as more coal-fired power plants are replaced by natural gas. The state legislature recently lifted its decades-old ban on nuclear power.
“It’s a little ironic or coincidental that you are putting solar green energy on a coal museum,” said Roger Noe, a former state representative who sponsored the legislation that created the coal museum. “Coal comes from nature, the sunrays come from nature, so it all works out to be a positive thing.”
The museum is in Benham, once a coal camp town whose population peaked at about 3,000, according to Mayor Wanda Humphrey, 85. Today, it has about 500 people.
The town’s second building was a company commissary known as the “big store,” where Humphrey would visit every day after school to order an RC Cola and a bag of peanuts, charged to her father’s account. Today, that building houses the Kentucky Coal Museum, which opened in 1994 with the help of some state funding. The museum houses relics from the state’s coal mining past, including some items from the personal collection of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” country singer Loretta Lynn.
It’s also the best place in town to get the most direct sunlight, which made it an ideal location for solar panels.
“The people here are sort of in awe of this solar thing,” Humphrey said.
The Southeast Community and Technical College, which owns the museum, expects the solar panels to save between $8,000 and $10,000 a year on energy costs, according to spokesman Brandon Robinson.
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Jupiter is extra close and extra bright this week, and that means some amazing, new close-ups.
The Hubble Space Telescope zoomed in on the solar system giant Monday, and NASA released the pictures Thursday. Jupiter was a relatively close 415 million miles (668 million kilometers) away.
The planet’s Great Red Spot is especially vivid. It’s a storm big enough to swallow Earth, but is mysteriously shrinking. Hubble’s ongoing observations may help explain why. Also visible in the photos is Red Spot Jr.
On Friday, Jupiter will be in opposition. That’s when Jupiter, Earth and the sun all line up, with Earth in the middle. Jupiter will appear brighter than usual — the brightest all year. Stargazers won’t want to miss it.
Look for one of the brightest objects in the night sky, visible from sundown to sunrise near the moon.
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Cheap antibiotic disrupts negative associations in the brain
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John Glenn, the first American to orbit the earth who later became the world’s oldest astronaut and a longtime U.S. senator, was laid to rest on Thursday at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
Glenn, who author Tom Wolfe once called “the last true national hero America has ever had,” died four months ago in his home state of Ohio at the age of 95.
After a private service at a chapel on the cemetery grounds, a horse-drawn carriage pulled Glenn’s flag-draped casket to his burial site. There was a short graveside ceremony broadcast online by NASA Television. Then, Gen. Robert Neller, Commandant of the Marine Corps, handed the flag that had draped the casket to Glenn’s 97-year-old widow, Annie Glenn. She kissed him.
Glenn was a Marine Corps test pilot when he was chosen to be one of the seven original U.S. astronauts. He was the third American in space, the first to orbit the earth.
His three laps around the world on Feb. 20, 1962, in a space capsule called Friendship 7, forged a powerful link between the former fighter pilot and the Kennedy-era quest to explore outer space as a “New Frontier.” After his mission, he received a hero’s welcome including a tickertape parade near Wall Street, in New York City’s “Canyon of Heroes.”
Wolfe chronicled the experiences of the original seven U.S. astronauts in his book, “The Right Stuff,” which later became a popular movie.
Glenn’s widespread popularity helped him get elected as a Democratic candidate to the U.S. Senator from his home state of Ohio, which he represented from 1974 to 1999.
Just before the end of his Senate career, in October 1998, the 77-year-old Glenn became the oldest astronaut, serving as a mission specialist on the seven-member crew of the space shuttle Discovery.
The NASA launch announcer at the time said, “Liftoff of Discovery with six astronaut heroes and one American legend.”
The ripple effects of the Zika virus are hitting the poor hard in Latin America and the Caribbean, and could knock back development unless states involve communities in a stronger push to tackle the disease, a U.N.-led study said Thursday.
The mosquito-borne Zika virus will cost the region between $7 billion and $18 billion from 2015 to 2017, said the report by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC).
Large economies like Brazil will shoulder the biggest share of the cost, but poorer countries such as Belize and Haiti will suffer the severest impacts, it added.
Jessica Faieta, UNDP director for the region, said the virus — linked to birth defects in some cases where it infects pregnant women — is not only causing direct economic losses and putting health systems under stress.
“The long-term consequences of the Zika virus can undermine decades of social development, hard-earned health gains and slow progress towards the Sustainable Development Goals,” she said in a statement.
Focusing on Brazil, Colombia and Suriname, the report calculated that the economic impact of the virus was five times higher for the Caribbean than South America, and could cost the Caribbean as much as $9 billion in lost revenues over the three-year period as tourists stay away.
Labelling Zika a “disease of poverty,” the study said support was not reaching the region’s most vulnerable who often lack access to health and social services.
Countries are struggling to coordinate and finance programs to control, monitor and diagnose the virus, it added.
Walter Cotte, IFRC’s director for the Americas, said funds should be used to involve communities in responding to the disease, so as to build their resilience and reduce stigma.
Carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which also hosts dengue, chikungunya and yellow fever, Zika has spread to more than 60 countries and territories since the outbreak was identified in 2015 in Brazil.
Here the alarm was raised over Zika’s ability to cause microcephaly — a birth defect marked by small head size and underdeveloped brains — and Guillain-Barre syndrome, a rare neurological disorder.
Social inequities
Spending more money on tackling Zika now would have long-term benefits and curb the spread of other diseases carried by the same mosquito, said the report.
With women on the fringes of fast-growing cities among those most at risk, it called for states to step up help for poor communities where many lack access to sanitation, health care and jobs.
“While a swift and timely emergency response is a necessary step in controlling the Zika epidemic, there is a growing need to address the quieter effects of the outbreak — the social impacts, economic loss and hardship — which are exacerbated by pre-existing inequities,” the report said.
Families looking after children born with related birth defects will need greater assistance, partly to help with long-term care, which could cost up to $5 billion in lost income as parents stay out of the work force, said the report.
It estimated the cost of microcephaly to be $8 billion, largely because people born with the disorder are unlikely to be able to work, while costs linked to Guillain-Barre could reach $3 billion.
The World Health Organization projected some 3 to 4 million people would be infected with Zika in Latin America by early 2017, saying in February the region was recording lower numbers of infections than last year, but countries must stay vigilant.
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A cancer causing strain of the human papillomavirus, or HPV, has infected 25 percent of men and 20 percent of women in the United States, new statistics from the National Center for Health Statistics.
Furthermore, some 45 percent of men have a genital form of the virus.
“Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually-transmitted infection in the United States,” the team at the NCHS, part of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, wrote.
“Some HPV types can cause genital warts and are considered low risk, with a small chance for causing cancer. Other types are considered high risk, causing cancer in different areas of the body including the cervix and vagina in women, penis in men, and anus and oropharynx [mouth and throat] in both men and women.”
The virus has been linked to head and neck cancer as well as cervical cancer.
According to NBC News, doctors think about 70 percent of head and neck cancers are caused by HPV spread through oral sex. They add that by 2020, head and neck cancers will be more common than the cervical cancer caused by the virus.
Roughly four percent of adults are infected with an oral, cancer causing strain of HPV. Men had a higher rate than women.
For people under 25, there is a vaccine that can defend against the cancer causing strains of HPV. Among older adults, the virus continues to be passed around.
According to NBC, the FDA-approved vaccines are Cervarix and Gardasil.
There are 109 known strains of HPV.
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More than 400 icebergs have drifted into the North Atlantic shipping lanes over the past week in an unusually large swarm for this early in the season, forcing vessels to slow to a crawl or take detours of hundreds of miles.
Experts are attributing it to uncommonly strong counter-clockwise winds that are drawing the icebergs south, and perhaps also global warming, which is accelerating the process by which chunks of the Greenland ice sheet break off and float away.
As of Monday, there were about 450 icebergs near the Grand Banks of Newfoundland, up from 37 a week earlier, according to the U.S. Coast Guard’s International Ice Patrol in New London, Connecticut. Those kinds of numbers are usually not seen until late May or early June. The average for this time of year is about 80.
In the waters close to where the Titanic went down in 1912, the icebergs are forcing ships to take precautions.
Icebergs force detours
Instead of cutting straight across the ocean, trans-Atlantic vessels are taking detours that can add around 400 miles to the trip. That’s a day and a half of added travel time for many large cargo ships.
Close to the Newfoundland coast, cargo ships owned by Oceanex are throttling way back to 3 or 4 knots as they make their way to their homeport in St. John’s, which can add up to a day to the trip, said executive chairman, Capt. Sid Hynes.
One ship was pulled out of service for repairs after hitting a chunk of ice, he said.
“It makes everything more expensive,” Hynes said Wednesday. “You’re burning more fuel, it’s taking a longer time, and it’s hard on the equipment.” He called it a “very unusual year.”
‘Extreme ice season’
Coast Guard Cmdr. Gabrielle McGrath, who leads the ice patrol, said she has never seen such a drastic increase in such a short time. Adding to the danger, three icebergs were discovered outside the boundaries of the area the Coast Guard had advised mariners to avoid, she said.
McGrath is predicting a fourth consecutive “extreme ice season” with more than 600 icebergs in the shipping lanes.
Most icebergs entering the North Atlantic have “calved” off the Greenland ice sheet. Michael Mann, director of the Earth System Science Center at Pennsylvania State University, said it is possible climate change is leading to more icebergs in the shipping lanes, but wind patterns are also important.
Ice patrol a success
In 2014, there were 1,546 icebergs in the shipping lanes — the sixth most severe season on record since 1900, according to the patrol. There were 1,165 icebergs in 2015 and 687 in 2016.
The International Ice Patrol was formed after the sinking of the Titanic to monitor iceberg danger in the North Atlantic and warn ships. It conducts reconnaissance flights that are used to produce charts.
In 104 years, no ship that has heeded the warnings has struck an iceberg, according to the ice patrol.
Teaching is a stressful profession. A 2014 survey found that nearly half of U.S. teachers say they experience a lot of daily stress. That affects their health, well-being, and job satisfaction.
Jayne Donohoe is out to change that, with exercise. The physical education teacher at Gunpowder Elementary School in Baltimore, Maryland, notes that physical activity produces endorphins — chemicals in the brain that act as natural painkillers — and also improves the ability to sleep, which in turn reduces stress.
She organized a Teachers Fitness group at her school, which meets after the day’s classes and offers a variety of exercise classes.
“Today we’re doing Bodyflow’ which is like a yoga-Pilates-type class. Before that we had a step aerobics class, or we had a Bootcamp,” she said. “We all come from a variety of shapes and sizes and fitness levels. If I can get them to show up, I can usually keep them in here. That’s probably the hardest part because they are tired. I tell them ‘You’re tired. Once you come here and exercise, it’s going to give you energy.’ I started my workday at 7 a.m., so it’s a long day for me, but I know it’s important. So I’m here.”
Watch: Teaching Teachers a Healthier Lifestyle
Keep Teachers Healthy
Many workplaces in the area offer similar programs. But Jenny Ward, spokeswoman for Baltimore County Public schools’ Employee Wellness, says they are especially important for teachers.
“They do have a very specific job during the day and they’re really tied to their classrooms with their students. They don’t have as much free time or flexibility in their day,” she said. “So it’s more difficult for them to schedule physical activity in their day, which is why we offer classes after work. So, as soon as the students left, they can change to their fitness attire and go to the gym with all of their coworkers who participate.”
The program is a big hit. It draws teachers from nearby schools, and they’re not all women.
“We have three men teachers,” Donohoe said. “One was staying today, but when the class got changed to Bodyflow instead of Bootcamp, he decided to go to his gym. The two other teachers are not interested yet. But I’ll get them, don’t you worry!”
Exercise and be happy
Gunpowder Principal Wendy Cunningham has watched attendance rise since Donohoe started the program a year and half ago.
“The teachers are excited to be together, to exercise, to support one another, to be healthy and maintain healthy habits,” she said. “Learning about how to manage stress has been extremely important. That is helping them to be more productive, be more positive in the classroom and have a lot more patience with all students every day,” Cunningham added.
“It’s very important for stress reduction, for just making you feel better about yourself,” Donohoe said.
Participating teachers agree. Third-grade teacher Ashley Schuchardt says being part of this group makes exercising more fun.
“Really, it’s the people,” she said. “They are a great support team. They really help you after a really long day. They help you keep going. I’m not a person who loves exercise, but they really make it fun. So I keep coming back week after week.”
Eating right
Exercise is only one component of Donohoe’s Wellness program. Good nutrition is another.
“We have a weight loss healthy teachers program that I also organize,” she said. “We meet once a week. I bring in guest speakers on motivation and nutrition. We’ve been doing that since last year. We’ve lost over 300 pounds (136 kg), 18 of us, and you feel better and healthier, and you’re drinking more water and you’re eating better.”
Employee Wellness spokeswoman Jenny Ward is excited about the prospects for the program.
“We’re happy to say we have more teachers and staff participating than we have before,” she said. “But it’s still not high enough. We still have quite a few more staff that we try to get involved in healthy eating, healthy activity, stress management, and all components of wellness.”
Ward hopes to see every school offering on-site fitness classes at the end of the workday — in Baltimore and beyond.
Teaching is a stressful job. To help teachers take care of their mind and body, a wellness program was introduced in Baltimore County public schools. Faiza Elmasry visited a school that offers the new program. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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As part of his policy to roll back what he calls “job killing” environmental regulations, President Trump has proposed cancelling funding for the Chesapeake Bay Program – a widely supported environmental project involving six states. In its 34 years, the program has allowed America’s largest estuary to recover from near disaster.
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U.S. astronaut John Glenn, who died in December at age 95, will be buried Thursday in Arlington National Cemetery, a place of honor for members of the U.S. military.
His family and invited guests, including astronauts and dignitaries, will say goodbye to the first American to orbit Earth at a small private service at the Old Post Chapel beginning at 9 a.m.
The U.S. Marine Corps will begin a live stream at 9:40 a.m. (EDT) that will include a processional to the graveside by caisson, a flyover, a graveside service and taps. Streaming video also will be available on NASA TV.
Glenn served as a U.S. senator from Ohio for 24 years and founded the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at Ohio State University.
In Glenn’s honor, President Donald Trump has ordered flags at federal entities and institutions flown at half-staff Thursday, his press secretary tweeted, and Ohio Gov. John Kasich has done the same at public grounds and buildings across Glenn’s home state.
Glenn played a historic part in the U.S. space race, piloting one of the United States’ earliest manned space missions and later, at age 77, returning to space to become the oldest astronaut ever to do so.
Glenn, seen as an all-American hero, has been the subject of heartfelt tributes since his death. After his death December 8, his body lay in state in the Ohio Capitol. He was memorialized in a service at Ohio State University, where his children told mourners that their father repeatedly asked them, “What have you done for your country today?”
Former U.S. Vice President Joe Biden memorialized Glenn at that service by saying, “He knew by his upbringing that ordinary Americans can do extraordinary things.”
Arlington Cemetery, Glenn’s final resting place, is where many American military heroes and statesmen are buried. A national monument to unknown soldiers is located there, to honor soldiers whose wartime deaths could not be documented.
The cemetery sits on a hill in Virginia overlooking the Potomac River, with a clear view of the U.S. Capitol and the Washington Monument.
It is one of the most-visited sites in the Washington area.
Some information for this report from AP.
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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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