YCLOAK

To build a sandcastle here on Earth, the sand needs to be wet so it can stick together. Not so on Saturn’s strange and largest moon Titan, according to a new study.

Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology say the moon’s non-silicate sand is “electrically charged” and “resistant to motion.” Researchers liken the charge to the static electricity generated when you rub a balloon on your hair.

“If you grabbed piles of grains and built a sand castle on Titan, it would perhaps stay together for weeks due to their electrostatic properties,” said Josef Dufek, the Georgia Tech professor who co-led the study. “Any spacecraft that lands in regions of granular material on Titan is going to have a tough time staying clean. Think of putting a cat in a box of packing peanuts.”

The electrical charge, according to researchers, can last for days or months.

The charge is likely generated by the winds on Titan, which blow at around 30 kilometers per hour. As the sand moves, it begins to hop and collide, becoming charged.

Researchers say the electrification of Titan’s sands could explain why dunes on the moon, some of which are more than 90 meters tall, form in the opposite direction of the prevailing winds.

“These electrostatic forces increase frictional thresholds,” said Josh Mendez Harper, a Georgia Tech geophysics and electrical engineering doctoral student who is the paper’s lead author. “This makes the grains so sticky and cohesive that only heavy winds can move them. The prevailing winds aren’t strong enough to shape the dunes.”

To reach their conclusions, researchers built a model to replicate conditions on Titan. For the model, they put grains of “naphthalene and biphenyl — two toxic, carbon and hydrogen bearing compounds believed to exist on Titan’s surface — into a small cylinder.”

The cylinder was then rotated in a nitrogen environment similar to Titan. Then, they measured the electric characteristics of the grains.

“All of the particles charged well, and about two to five percent didn’t come out of the tumbler,” said Mendez Harper. “They clung to the inside and stuck together. When we did the same experiment with sand and volcanic ash using Earth-like conditions, all of it came out. Nothing stuck.”

Sand on Earth also can pick up an electric charge, but the grains are much smaller and dissipate rapidly.

“These non-silicate, granular materials can hold their electrostatic charges for days, weeks or months at a time under low-gravity conditions,” said George McDonald, a graduate student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who also co-authored the paper.

The study was published in the journal Nature Geoscience.
…

Lifting boxes by hand, day after day, in places like warehouses can cause muscle strain and other injuries. But now a new exoskeleton — a rigid external body frame that assists with limb movement can help prevent problems associated with repetitive tasks like handling boxes or materials at construction sites. VOA’s Deborah Block tells us more about it.
…

In the U.S. and Africa, communities of African descendants are experiencing a high rate of diet related disorders like diabetes and heart disease. A Nigerian American in Washington wants to change that. Nutritionist Tambra Raye Stevenson is on a mission to inspire young girls and women in the diaspora and in Africa to embrace their heritage from farm to fork and become leaders in nutrition. VOA’s June Soh caught up with Stevenson at a recent event to promote her initiative.
…

Broadband access in the United States is not universal, with a longtime digital divide between urban and rural areas. But in one small town just four hours from Washington, D.C., there’s no internet service at all, because Green Bank, W.Va., is the site of the largest fully steerable radio telescope in the world, so internet connections and anything else that can create electromagnetic waves are banned. VOA’s Lesya Bakalets traveled to Green Bank as we see in this report narrated by Joy Wagner.
…

Spinach is known as a super food for its nutritional value, but a new experiment reveals another power of the green leaf.

Researchers say they’ve grown beating human heart cells on spinach leaves, using the vascular network of the plant to transport fluids. The finding could eventually lead to being able to grow working human cardiac tissue that could one day be used to replace heart cells damaged by heart attacks.

“Plants and animals exploit fundamentally different approaches to transporting fluids, chemicals, and macromolecules, yet there are surprising similarities in their vascular network structures,” said researchers from Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI), the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Arkansas State University-Jonesboro. “The development of decellularized plants for scaffolding opens up the potential for a new branch of science that investigates the mimicry between plant and animal.”

The breakthrough is important because so far, bioengineering such as 3-D printing, can’t replicate the complex system of blood vessels in the human body that deliver the oxygen, nutrients, and essential molecules required for proper tissue growth.

For the experiment, researchers first stripped plant cells from spinach leaves and passed beads the size of human blood cells through the leftover vascular system and seeded the spinach veins with human cells that line our blood vessels.

“We have a lot more work to do, but so far this is very promising,” said Glenn Gaudette, PhD, professor of biomedical engineering at WPI and corresponding author of the paper. “Adapting abundant plants that farmers have been cultivating for thousands of years for use in tissue engineering could solve a host of problems limiting the field.”

Researchers added that other plants have been shown to offer the same kind of promise, including parsley, Artemesia annua (sweet wormwood), and peanut hairy roots.

“The spinach leaf might be better suited for a highly vascularized tissue, like cardiac tissue, whereas the cylindrical hollow structure of the stem of Impatiens capensis (jewelweed) might better suit an arterial graft. Conversely, the vascular columns of wood might be useful in bone engineering due to their relative strength and geometries,” the authors wrote.

Using plants could also be economical.

“By exploiting the benign chemistry of plant tissue scaffolds,” researchers wrote, “we could address the many limitations and high costs of synthetic, complex composite materials. Plants can be easily grown using good agricultural practices and under controlled environments. By combining environmentally-friendly plant tissue with perfusion-based decellularization, we have shown that there can be a sustainable solution for pre-vascularized tissue engineering scaffolds.”

The paper, “Crossing kingdoms: Using decelluralized plants as perfusable tissue engineering scaffolds” is published online in advance of the May 2017 issue of the journal Biomaterials.
…

President Donald Trump’s aides opened the door to working with moderate Democrats on health care and other issues while Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer quickly offered to find common ground with Trump for repairing former President Barack Obama’s health care law.

Schumer said Sunday that Trump must be willing to drop attempts to repeal his predecessor’s signature achievement, warning that Trump was destined to “lose again” on other parts of his agenda if he remained beholden to conservative Republicans.

Trump initially focused the blame for the failure on Democrats and predicted a dire future for the current law. But on Sunday he turned his criticism toward conservative lawmakers for the failure of the Republican bill, complaining on Twitter: “Democrats are smiling in D.C. that the Freedom Caucus, with the help of Club For Growth and Heritage, have saved Planned Parenthood & Ocare!”

The Freedom Caucus is a hard-right group of more than 30 GOP House members who were largely responsible for blocking the bill to undo the Affordable Care Act, or “Obamacare.”

The bill was pulled from the House floor Friday in a humiliating political defeat for the president, having lacked support from conservative Republicans, some moderate Republicans and Democrats.

In additional fallout from the jarring setback, Rep. Ted Poe, R-Texas, said he was leaving the caucus. Poe tweeted Friday that some lawmakers “would’ve voted against the 10 Commandments.”

“We must come together to find solutions to move this country forward,” Poe said Sunday in a written statement. “Saying `no’ is easy, leading is hard but that is what we were elected to do.”

On Sunday, Trump aides made clear that the president could seek support from moderate Democrats on upcoming legislative battles ranging from the budget and tax cuts to health care, leaving open the possibility he could revisit health care legislation. Whether he would work to repair Obama’s law was a big question.

White House chief of staff Reince Priebus scolded conservative Republicans, explaining that Trump had felt “disappointed” with a “number of people he thought were loyal to him that weren’t.”

“It’s time for the party to start governing,” Priebus said. “I think it’s time for our folks to come together, and I also think it’s time to potentially get a few moderate Democrats on board as well.”

As he ponders his next steps, Trump faces decisions on whether to back administrative changes to fix Obama’s health care law or undermine it as prices for insurance plans rise in many markets. Over the weekend, the president tweeted a promise of achieving a “great healthcare plan” because Obamacare will “explode.”

Priebus did not answer directly regarding Trump’s choice, saying that fixes to the health law will have to come legislatively and he wants to ensure “people don’t get left behind.”

“I don’t think the president is closing the door on anything,” he said.

Schumer, a New York Democrat, suggested that “if he changes, he could have a different presidency.”

“But he’s going to have to tell the Freedom Caucus and the hard-right special wealthy interests who are dominating his presidency … he can’t work with them, and we’ll certainly look at his proposals,” Schumer said.

Their comments came after another day of finger-pointing among Republicans, both subtle and otherwise. On Saturday, Trump urged Americans in a tweet to watch Judge Jeanine Pirro’s program on Fox News that night. She led her show by calling for House Speaker Paul Ryan to resign, blaming him for the defeat of the bill in the Republican-controlled chamber.

Priebus described the two events as “coincidental,” insisting that Trump was helping out a friend by plugging her show and no “preplanning” occurred.

“He doesn’t blame Paul Ryan,” Priebus said. “In fact, he thought Paul Ryan worked really hard. He enjoys his relationship with Paul Ryan, thinks that Paul Ryan is a great speaker of the House.”

Priebus said Trump was looking ahead for now at debate over the budget and a tax plan, which he said would include a border adjustment tax and middle-class tax cuts.

“It’s more or less a warning shot that we are willing to talk to anyone. We always have been,” he said. “I think more so now than ever, it’s time for both parties to come together and get to real reforms in this country.”

Congressman Mark Meadows, R-N.C., chairman of the Freedom Caucus, acknowledged he was doing a lot of “self-critiquing” after the health care defeat. He insisted the GOP overhaul effort was not over and that he regretted not spending more time with moderate Republicans and Democrats “to find some consensus.”

Priebus spoke on Fox News Sunday, and Schumer and Meadows appeared on ABC’s This Week.
…

As East Africa struggles through a drought, scientists say climate change may be making the situation worse as a warming planet may be altering the weather patterns that bring rain to the region.

In Somalia, the rains failed late last year. And the rains before that were meager. Livestock have died. Crops have failed.

Famine threatens Somalia for the second time this decade.

While drought is not uncommon in this dry region, it has gotten worse, Chris Funk, a climate scientist at the University of California at Santa Barbara, said.

“What we’ve seen over, say, the last 35 years is that the rainfall during what’s called the long rains in East Africa has declined substantially,” Funk said.

He added the explanation may lie in an atmospheric cycle that links East Africa and the Pacific Ocean.

WATCH: Experts: Climate change may be making drought worse

Warm, wet air rises over the western Pacific, causing rain over Southeast Asia.

On the other side of the cycle, dry air descends over East Africa. That is why not much rain falls here even in normal years.

But when the western Pacific is warmer, it pushes the whole system harder: more rain over Southeast Asia, and more dry air descending on East Africa.

More dry air means more drought.

And Funk said the ocean is getting warmer.

“The warming over the western Pacific appears to be pretty much directly related to increasing greenhouse gases in the atmosphere,” he said.

Research shows that in the past, a warmer ocean meant a drier East Africa. But Funk says it is not entirely clear whether the current drying trend will continue.

“One of the things making it hard to look into the future is the fact that the story told by the global climate models, the climate change models, is pretty much the exact opposite of what we’re seeing in East Africa,” Funk said.

The models predict it should be getting wetter. But experts increasingly think the models may be flawed in this area.

Funk and others are working on it.

The short term is more clear. The western Pacific is still warmer than average. Which means the forecast is for a third season of disappointing rains.
…

A massive renewable energy project could change the seascape of the Welsh city of Swansea in coming years. The plan is to encase the city’s lagoon in a horshoe shaped causeway that will serve as a giant tidal generator. The four year project is massive but if its approved would create a long-term reliable source of clean energy. VOA’s Kevin Enochs report.
…

The World Health Organization and U.N. children’s fund are spearheading a massive immunization campaign across Africa to rid the continent of the last vestiges of polio.

Tens of thousands of health workers will fan out across 13 central and western African countries to vaccinate more than 116 million children under age five against the crippling disease.

The U.N. agencies report more than 190,000 volunteers, traveling on foot or bicycle, will go house to house across all cities, towns, and villages in 13 countries to vaccinate every child under age five against polio.

The synchronized vaccination campaign, one of the largest ever conducted in Africa, will run from March 25-28. Director of Polio Eradication at the World Health Organization Michel Zaffran said children must be immunized in a short span of time to raise childhood immunity to polio across the continent.

“The synchronization of this immunization campaign is needed to rapidly strengthen protection,” he said. “If all children are vaccinated at the same time or around the same time in a very short period of time, the virus cannot find anywhere to hide.”​

 

In August 2016, four children were paralyzed by polio in Borno State, in northeast Nigeria, which has been under attack by Boko Haram militants for several years. It was the first time in more than two years that polio was detected in Africa.

Governments in the Lake Chad basin declared a public health emergency and a vaccination campaign was conducted. Zaffran said there has been no case of polio since the last one was detected on August 21.

Nevertheless, he told VOA there is concern the polio virus still may be circulating in this area because of the humanitarian crisis, exacerbated by political instability and conflict. He said health workers are operating under very dangerous and difficult circumstances.

“We cannot be sure that some of our vaccinators or health workers cannot be collateral damages of suicide bombing, which is not directly attacking the vaccination site,” he said. “This has not been the target of these insurgents, but there could actually be hurt because of the proximity of the events.”

The African countries will be declared polio free if no case of polio is detected in the next three years.That will bring the goal of global polio eradication very near as only five cases of polio remain in Afghanistan and Pakistan.
…

There are an estimated 1.1 million Syrian refugees in Lebanon, 500,000 of them are children. For many of them, getting enough food and water are their biggest challenges. Children who are hearing impaired face even bigger obstacles. But some of them are getting help, thanks to a U.S. based charity called Deaf Planet Soul. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

It was lights out in about 170 countries on Saturday as millions of people and thousands of cities took part in Earth Hour, a global effort to draw attention to climate change.

The World Wide Fund for Nature organized the first Earth Hour in 2007 in Australia. The international effort began as a grass-roots event to urge people to reduce their use of energy as a way to help combat climate change.

Dozens of well-known monuments, buildings and locales — from Red Square in Moscow to Big Ben in London to the Sydney Opera House to the Burj Khalifa, the world’s tallest building in Dubai — took part, dousing their lights for 60 minutes at 8:30 p.m., local time.

“We started Earth Hour in 2007 to show leaders that climate change was an issue people cared about,” coordinator Siddarth Das of WWF told the French news agency AFP. “For that symbolic moment to turn into the global movement it is today, is really humbling and speaks volumes about the powerful role of people in issues that affect their lives.”

Many events were staged to draw awareness to how human activities contribute to climate change.

In India, hundreds of cyclists participated in “Pedal for the Planet,” part of a campaign to encourage people to save energy and minimize the use of fossil fuels.

Organizer Anuj Mathur told Reuters news agency, “This is for our society, this is for the well-being of our planet and this is something we need to give to our kids, to our generation. So this we are doing for the planet, and this is a small initiative to show our commitment toward our country and society.”

Largest group of its kind

The World Wide Fund for Nature dates to 1961, when it was founded in Switzerland as the World Wildlife Fund. The world’s largest conservation organization changed its name years later to reflect a broader focus on all environmental issues rather than just wildlife; it is still known as the World Wildlife Fund in the United States and Canada, and all units worldwide use the acronym WWF.

In January, NASA and the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said research has shown that 2016 was the hottest year on record, for the third year in a row. “The 2016 globally averaged surface temperature ended as the highest since record-keeping began in 1880,” the two agencies said.

They also said temperatures, raised mainly by man-made greenhouse gases and partly by a natural El Nino weather event that released heat from the Pacific Ocean, beat the previous record in 2015, when 200 nations signed on to the Paris Agreement, a plan to limit global warming.
…

New data shows that parts of New Zealand’s South Island moved several meters closer to the North Island during last November’s 7.8 magnitude earthquake.

The data, including satellite radar imagery, shows that parts of New Zealand’s South Island have shifted more than 5 meters closer to the North Island, and that some areas were raised by up to 8 meters.

 

Other information has come from observations on the ground and the analysis of coastal regions by GNS science, a New Zealand government research agency.

The tremor, near the tourist town of Kaikoura, ruptured a swath of land almost 200 kilometers long.

Research coming out

GNS has published the first of 10 papers on the powerful quake in mid-November 2016 in the international journal Science. Two people were killed when the magnitude 7.8 earthquake struck and Kaikoura was cut off by landslides.

 

Ian Hamling is the lead author of the research paper. He says the shifting of the earth in New Zealand occurred when powerful seismic forces pulled the ground in different directions.

“It is kind of like a shearing, so I guess the classic people always think of is a San Andreas-style fault, where you get the two sides of the fault zone move in opposite directions,” Hamling said. “And so that is what we see, is that parts of inland Kaikoura up to Cape Campbell have gone to the northeast and then in some areas to the south of that have gone in the opposite direction.”

The earthquake struck last November northeast of the city of Christchurch. It was felt in the New Zealand capital, Wellington, on the North Island, 200 kilometers away.

Shaky Isles

 

Christchurch is still recovering from a devastating 2011 earthquake that killed 185 people and destroyed the city center.

 

New Zealand is known as the Shaky Isles. The South Pacific nation lies on the unpredictable Ring of Fire that circles almost the entire Pacific rim.

 

Each year more than 15,000 earthquakes are recorded in New Zealand, but only about 150 are large enough to be felt.

 

The research paper, led by GNS, included the work of 29 co-authors from 11 national and international institutes such as the NASA laboratory in California and the University of Leeds in Britain.
…

Doctors at a Chicago-area hospital have successfully operated on a baby from Africa born with a parasitic twin and having four legs and two spines. VOA’s Bronwyn Benito reports the girl, known only as “Dominique” from Ivory Coast, is recovering well from the delicate and groundbreaking March 8 surgery and is expected to live a normal, fully functional life.
…

Some Americans breathed a sigh of relief, others bubbled with frustration, and nearly all resigned themselves to the prospect that the latest chapter in the never-ending national debate over health care would not be the last.

The withdrawal of the Republican-sponsored health bill in the face of likely defeat Friday in the U.S. House seemed to ensure that the deep divisions over the Affordable Care Act and its possible replacement would continue to simmer.

As news spread, Americans fell into familiar camps, either happy to see a Democratic effort live another day, or eager to see Republicans regroup and follow through with their “repeal Obamacare” promises.

“Yessssss,” elated artist Alysa Diebolt, 27, of Eastpointe, Michigan, typed on Facebook in response to the news, saying she was relieved those she knew on Affordable Care Act plans wouldn’t lose their coverage. “I’m excited, I think it’s a good thing,” she said.

Millions more shared her view, and #KillTheBill was a top trending topic on Twitter on Friday afternoon.

 

Among those who have long sought to see Obama’s health law dismantled, though, there was disappointment or chin-up resolve that they still could prevail.

“Hopefully, they’ll get it right next time,” said Anthony Canamucio, 50, owner of a barbershop in Middletown Township, Pennsylvania. He gave his vote to Trump in November and wanted to see Obama’s health law repealed, but found himself rooting for the GOP replacement bill to fail. He is insured through his wife’s employer and laments the growing deductibles and out-of-pocket costs, blaming Obama’s law even as health economists say those trends in employer-provided health coverage preceded the legislation.

Sticking with Trump

For Canamucio, the Republicans’ bill didn’t go far enough in dismantling the ACA. But he remains steadfast behind Trump and said he believes the president will still deliver.

Cliff Rouse, 34, a banker from Kinston, North Carolina, likewise was willing to give the president he helped elect a chance to make good on his promise. He sees Obama’s law as government overreach, even as he knows it could help people like his 64-year-old father, who was recently diagnosed with dementia but refused to buy coverage under a law he disagreed with. Rouse sees Trump’s moves on health care as hasty but believes the GOP will eventually come around with better legislation.

“They’ve not had enough time to develop a good plan,” Rouse said. “They should keep going until they have a good plan that Americans can feel confident in.”

 

It remained far more than a petty political debate, though, and some like Janella Williams, framed the issue as a question of life and death.

The 45-year-old graphic designer from Lawrence, Kansas, spent Friday in the hospital hooked up to an intravenous drip for a neurological disorder, getting the drugs that she says allow her to walk. Under her Affordable Care Act plan, she pays $480 a month for coverage and has an out-of-pocket maximum of $3,500 a year. If she were to lose it, she wouldn’t be able to afford the $13,000-a-year out-of-pocket maximum under her husband’s insurance. Her treatments cost about $90,000 every seven weeks.

As she followed the efforts to undo Obama’s law, Williams found herself yelling at the TV a lot. She wrote her senators, telling how she felt “helpless and out of control,” and how her hope was dwindling.

‘I am thankful’

After watching coverage on Friday while tethered to a port in an outpatient area, she said when the bill was withdrawn, “I am thankful. I hope that this makes Trump the earliest lame duck ever.”

Whatever comes of the developments, they became the latest chapter in a long-running policy debate — from Teddy Roosevelt’s call for national health insurance in 1912; through waves of New Deal and Great Society legislation that brought Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid, but no comprehensive health system for all; to an unsuccessful attempt at universal coverage at the start of Bill Clinton’s administration. For now at least, Trump joins a list of American presidents who sought but failed to bring major health-related reform.

Trump has railed against the 2010 ACA since the start, and GOP leaders in Congress have rallied for its repeal with dozens of votes during the Obama years. Republicans won the chance to replace the health law with Trump’s win and control of both chambers of Congress.

“This is our opportunity to do it,” White House spokesman Sean Spicer said Friday. “We’ve talked about this thing since 2010. Every Republican … has campaigned, from dogcatcher on up, that they would do everything they could to repeal and replace Obamacare.”

ACA approval rises

Meantime, the Affordable Care Act has enjoyed growing approval with Obama’s departure from the White House and the emergence of details of Trump’s plan. For the first time, the law drew majority approval in a Pew Research Center poll last month, with 54 percent of Americans in favor.

Even some of Trump’s voters have come around to supporting the Obama law, or to a late realization that their coverage was made possible by it.

Walt Whitlow, 57, a carpenter from Volente, Texas, gave Trump his vote even as he came to view Obama’s law as “an unbelievable godsend.” He went without health coverage for nearly 20 years, but after the ACA passed, he signed up. Two months later, he was diagnosed with tongue cancer. He proclaims himself opposed to government handouts that he thinks people grow too dependent on, though he wouldn’t say what he hoped would happen with the GOP bill. Still, its withdrawal brought relief for a man who said his ACA coverage kept him from massive debt and maybe worse.

“It saved my life,” he said. “I really don’t know what to say.”
…

Kenya on Friday recognized World Tuberculosis Day by releasing results of a TB study by the country’s ministry of health  — the first of its kind since Kenya’s independence. TB remains high in Kenya, and experts say the country lags in the fight against the disease.

The survey represents a united front by many committed parties to determine the true burden of tuberculosis and how to best combat the fourth-leading cause of death in Kenya.

The survey is intended to provide an accurate estimate of Kenya’s TB burden, determine existing challenges in delivering TB testing and treatment, and identify people with TB not yet detected by the National TB control program. It was conducted to inform the government on how to effectively respond to TB control.

More than 63,000 people across 45 counties in Kenya were screened for the survey and, for the first time, there is accurate data on TB’s prevalence.

Dr. Enos Masini, the head of the National Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Lung disease program at the Ministry of Health, said the survey was driven by a need to know what the country was facing.

“We undertook to do this survey in the community to provide us with the exact data of the burden of the disease in Kenya, but also to go further and find out which groups of people are affected by the disease and what would be the best strategies for us to reach them,” he said.

The report states that there are more TB cases in Kenya than previously estimated, with a TB prevalence of 558 per 100,000 people.

TB was found to be higher in men between the ages of 25 and 34 years, urban dwellers, and women over the age of 65.

The majority (83 percent) of TB cases were HIV negative, suggesting that broad efforts at controlling TB in people with and without HIV are needed.

“For a long time, the estimates that we have used to accurately determine the burden of tuberculosis has been provided by the World Health Organization,” said Masini. “And this has been derived from the data we get from hospital records. We have always suspected that there could be a huge number of patients in the community that go untreated and undiagnosed and, therefore, fuel the transmission of the disease.”

Now, with the findings, he said the government and various stakeholders can deal with the disease effectively.

“Now we are not groping in the dark,” he said. “We know how much disease there is in this country. Secondly, we know that 40 percent of disease that occurs in this country remains undetected and untreated, and then we have a pretty good idea where people who are undetected, who are called missing TB cases, are.”

Masini said this information will help with planning. “We can … have strategic plans that really target people at most risk, people who are missed. And so we are able to find them and provide them with treatment.”

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) provided technical and scientific support to the government of Kenya in the design and implementation of the survey and $575,000 in funding to conduct it.

According to Kenya’s National Tuberculosis, Leprosy and Lung Disease Program, the major factor responsible for the large TB disease burden is the concurrent HIV epidemic.

Other contributing factors include poverty and social deprivation that have led to a mushrooming of peri-urban slums between cities and the countryside, and limited access to general health care services.

The survey findings also reveal that the current practice of screening for TB symptoms and using microscopy as the only test misses many cases. Using GeneXpert, an innovative technology for the diagnosis of TB, has led to the detection of 78 percent of TB cases among those screened, making it a more reliable and efficient test.

A statement from the Cabinet secretary of Health, Dr. Cleopa Mailu, said in part “the government was committed to making TB diagnostics accessible”  by expanding “the use of Chest X-rays to screen all persons presumed to have TB and make GeneXpert the first diagnostic test for all presumed TB cases.”

The government also said that it would increase engagement with the private sector, carry out targeted approaches through community-based action, and improve community awareness of TB symptoms in an effort to make TB everyone’s business.
…

Astronauts ventured out on a spacewalk Friday to prep the International Space Station for a new parking spot.

NASA’s Shane Kimbrough and France’s Thomas Pesquet emerged early from the orbiting complex, then went their separate ways to accomplish as much as possible 250 miles up.

“We are ready to get to work,” Mission Control informed them.

Their main job involves disconnecting an old docking port. This port needs to be moved in order to make room for a docking device compatible with future commercial crew capsules, and provide more clearance. The new docking device — the second of two — will fly up late this year or early next and hook onto this port.

If all goes well, flight controllers in Houston will relocate the old docking port Sunday, using the station’s robotic arm. Then next Thursday, the crew will conduct another spacewalk to secure the unit.

SpaceX and Boeing are developing capsules capable of flying astronauts to and from the space station. Until the SpaceX Crew Dragon and Boeing Starliner come on line — possibly next year — U.S. astronauts will have to keep riding Russian rockets to orbit.

Before working on the docking port, Kimbrough replaced a computer-relay box with an upgraded version. Pesquet, meanwhile, looked for signs of a small ammonia coolant leak in outdoor plumbing. He patted and tugged at hoses, but did not spot any frozen flakes of ammonia. A GoPro camera caught his every move for playback later.

“No flakes. All good,” Pesquet reported.

Also on the spacewalkers’ to-do list Friday: Replace a pair of Japanese cameras and grease latching mechanisms on the end of the big robot arm.

NASA wants to cram in two and possibly three spacewalks before Kimbrough, the station’s commander, returns to Earth on April 10.

Before a third spacewalk can be conducted, however, Orbital ATK needs to launch a cargo ship to the space station with replacement parts. That shipment was supposed to be there by now, but repeatedly has been delayed because of rocket concerns. It’s unclear when the Atlas V rocket will be ready to soar from Cape Canaveral, Florida.

NASA has been contracting out cargo deliveries since the end of the space shuttle program in 2011. The space agency is counting on private companies to do the same with astronauts.
…

Friday marks World Tuberculosis Day, aimed at raising awareness of a disease that kills an estimated 1.8 million people every year. Six countries account for nearly two-thirds of the cases: India, Indonesia, China, Nigeria, Pakistan and South Africa. As Henry Ridgwell reports, resistant forms of TB bacteria are undermining efforts to roll out new treatments.
…

President Donald Trump told House Republicans the time for negotiations on a crucial health care vote had ended. After a chaotic day of dealmaking, the vote that could shape the future of the Republican Party was scheduled for Friday. VOA’s congressional reporter Katherine Gypson has more from Capitol Hill.
…

A new vaccine against rotavirus, a diarrheal disease that kills about 600 children a day, has been shown to have almost 67 percent efficacy in preventing the illness.

“This efficacy of about 70 percent is higher than any other vaccine in similar settings,” said Dr. Emmanuel Baron, director of Epicentre, the research arm of Doctors Without Borders, which conducted the trial.

A clinical trial of 3,500 infants in the African country of Niger showed the efficacy of the new vaccine, known as BRV-PV, to be 66.7 percent. Thirty-one cases of rotavirus were reported among children who got the vaccine, compared with 87 cases among those who received a placebo.

Details of the study and the vaccine’s effectiveness were published in the New England Journal of Medicine.

“We saw actually three things,” Baron said. “The first is that this vaccine is efficient. The second is that this vaccine is safe. And we also saw a good acceptability by the care providers and the families.”

An estimated 450,000 young children and babies die each year of diarrheal diseases. One of them is rotavirus, which causes a severe infection of the gastrointestinal tract. 

Experts say rotavirus is responsible for about 37 percent of deaths among children younger than 5 who succumb to diarrheal diseases each year, or about 215,000 deaths annually.

There are two existing vaccines, but Baron said they are not widely used, as they are relatively expensive and must be refrigerated. Refrigeration is an obstacle in many African countries where rotavirus is most pronounced because electricity there is unreliable.

Even when children are immunized with the older vaccines, Baron says, hundreds die each day around the world.

The new vaccine does not need refrigeration for up to six months, because it is mixed or reconstituted with liquid before it is given to children in a three-dose schedule, at 6, 10 and 14 weeks of age. 

Initially, the BRV-PV is expected to cost $6 dollars for the three shots, a price that is expected to drop as the vaccine gains traction.

Baron said clinicians in countries where rotavirus is a serious health threat are waiting for the green light from the World Health Organization to begin immunizing children with the new vaccine.
…

On Tuesday, the rusty patched bumblebee became the first wild bee in the continental United States to be placed on the U.S. endangered species list. Veronica Balderas Iglesias reports, scientists hope the designation will help safeguard one of the small insects that play a big role in American agriculture and the environment.
…

In advance of World TB day (March 24), the World Health Organization is warning the battle to wipe out the global tuberculosis epidemic will not be won unless stigma, discrimination and marginalization of TB patients is brought to an end. VOA was in Geneva at the launch of new WHO ethics guidance for the treatment of people with tuberculosis.

Progress is being made toward achieving the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal of ending the global TB epidemic by 2030.  The World Health Organization reports 49 million lives have been saved since 2000.

But, much remains to be done. 

Data from 2015 show more than 10.4 million people fell ill and 1.8 million died of tuberculosis, with most cases and fatalities occurring in developing countries.

The World Health Organization says stigma and discrimination against TB patients hamper efforts to wipe out this deadly disease. 

WHO Global TB Program medical officer Ernesto Jaramillo says vulnerable people, such as migrants, prisoners, ethnic minorities, marginalized women and children are most likely to suffer abuse, neglect and rejection.

He says this prevents them from seeking treatment for tuberculosis.

“Having new tools for diagnosis, and treatment of TB is not sufficient if there are not clear standards to ensure that vulnerable people can have access in a matter of priority to these tools in a way that the end TB strategy can really serve the interest not only of individuals, but also the interests of public health in general ,” said Jaramillo.

WHO Global TB program director Mario Raviglione tells VOA no country, rich or poor, is immune from getting tuberculosis.  He warns marginalizing patients with TB is dangerous.

“You cannot eliminate a disease like TB thinking that you build walls or you isolate your country,” said Raviglione. “TB is an airborne disease.  It travels by air.  So, you have a Boeing 747 that leaves Malawi tonight and it comes to Switzerland tomorrow morning and there you go.  So, it has to be faced from a global perspective.”

New WHO ethical guidance includes actions to overcome barriers of stigma, discrimination and marginalization of people with tuberculosis.  The agency says protecting the human rights of all those affected will save many lives and will make it possible to end this global scourge. 
…

Curious toddlers find the drugs in a mother’s purse or accidentally dropped on the floor. Sometimes a parent fails to secure the child-resistant cap on a bottle of painkillers.

 

No matter how it happens, if a 35-pound toddler grabs just one opioid pill, chews it and releases the full concentration of a time-released adult drug into their small bodies, death can come swiftly.

 

These are some of the youngest victims of the nation’s opioid epidemic — children under age 5 who die after swallowing opioids. The number of children’s deaths is still small relative to the overall toll from opioids, but toddler fatalities have climbed steadily over the last 10 years.

 

In 2000, 14 children in the U.S. under age 5 died after ingesting opioids. By 2015, that number climbed to 51, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, alone, four children died last year of accidental overdoses. Another 2-year-old perished in January.

 

Each family who loses a toddler to opioids confronts a death that probably could have been prevented. Here are a few of their stories:

 

An energetic birthday girl, a methadone mystery

 

Cataleya Tamekia-Damiah Wimberly couldn’t sit still. She spent most of her first birthday party in Milwaukee dancing and diving into the cake. But her first birthday party was also her last. Nearly three weeks later, she was found dead of a cause her mother never suspected — a methadone overdose.

 

Helen Jackson, 24, was styling her older daughter’s hair when she got a call from Cataleya’s father, who shared custody of the little girl. He sobbed on the phone as he explained how he found their daughter unresponsive the morning of Feb. 16, 2016.

 

“I screamed so hard and so loud,” Jackson said. “The screams that came out of me took all my strength, all my wind. It was just terrible.”

 

Police were puzzled. They looked into whether the toddler was smothered while co-sleeping with her father and his girlfriend. They also investigated carbon monoxide poisoning because of a gas smell. Toxicology tests eventually revealed the methadone in her system.

 

Jackson said her daughter, while in the care of her father, was at a relative’s house when she swallowed the methadone that took her life.

 

Police are still investigating how Cataleya got the methadone. The case could be referred to the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office for consideration of criminal charges, said Sgt. Timothy Gauerke.

 

Since Cataleya’s death, friends and family have commented on what they perceive as Jackson’s strength in dealing with her loss. In reality, she said, she feels fragile and weak.

 

“I don’t know when I’m going to fall apart,” she said. “I don’t know when I’m going to explode. It’s all still in there.”

Mother’s prescription proves fatal for daughter

 

At just 2 years old, Londyn Raine Robinson Sack was protective of her baby brother, Liam.

 

“She thought she was his mother,” said Londyn’s grandmother, Shauna Etheredge. “She liked to be the boss of her little brother.”

 

Londyn’s own mother was convicted of second-degree manslaughter and risk of injury to a child in connection with the Oct. 19, 2014, death of her daughter, who ingested an opioid known as Suboxone that was packaged in the form of a dissolving strip.

 

Prosecutors in New Britain, Connecticut, said the drug was obtained illegally by her mother and was dispensed in a box, not a child-resistant container.

 

Rebekah Robinson entered a plea in which she did not accept or deny responsibility for the charges but agreed to accept punishment. In June 2016, she was sentenced to 10 years in prison and 10 years of probation.

 

Robinson apparently knew Londyn had ingested the opioid but did not call for medical help, according to prosecutors. It was an older sibling who called 911 to say her little sister was not breathing.

 

The Connecticut Department of Children and Families was cited in a 2015 report for failing to adequately identify risks to Londyn and Robinson’s three other children, given her history of mental health, substance abuse and child-welfare complaints.

 

Besides her protective nature, Londyn loved making people laugh, Etheredge said.

 

“She would put underwear on her head and act goofy and silly,” her grandmother said. “She loved to explore.”

 

Etheredge, of Indian Trail, North Carolina, said one of her lasting memories of her grandchild was a visit to the local park.

 

“The last time I saw her, she was running around and trying to catch up with the birds,” she said.

Precocious “lil’ Reg” dies, uncle stands accused

Curious and energetic, Reginald Kendall Harris Jr. would hold conversations beyond those of a typical toddler.

 

“If he was talking to his mom, you would think he was five or six years old,” said his great-uncle Calvin Harris, of Portland, Oregon. “If you would talk to him, you would engage in a full conversation. It was hilarious for his age,” Harris said.

 

The boy died on Oct. 10, 2016, after swallowing methadone. Portland police soon issued a warning, saying the case was a reminder to keep all prescription drugs away from children.

 

Reginald’s uncle, Willie Lee Harris Jr., is behind bars, accused of leaving methadone in a place accessible to his nephew. He has pleaded not guilty to second-degree manslaughter.

 

Harris’ mother, Pamela Harris, of Vancouver, Washington, said her grandson got hold of the drug while riding in her son’s car.

 

“Lil’ Reg was so touchy and curious,” she recalled. The methadone was in a cup.

 

The boy whose family affectionately called him “Lil’ Reg” would “say some crazy stuff sometimes, somethings you wouldn’t expect a 2-year-old to say,” great-grandmother Lucy Lee Harris recalled. “He would answer the door: ‘What up, dawg?'”

 

Instead of the way he died, Pamela Harris chooses to remember how her grandson lived, such as his joy when the family made plans to visit his favorite hangout, a Chuck E. Cheese restaurant with a kid-friendly menu and games.

 

Harris said his death was almost too much to bear after losing her home in Hurricane Katrina and receiving a breast cancer diagnosis.

 

“Now I’ve got a grandson that’s not here and a son that’s being charged,” Harris said. “I couldn’t breathe. It was like I was being smothered.”

 
…

A photo published on social media reveals Elon Musk’s SpaceX Corporation is close to fielding a rocket robot.

According to Florida Today newspaper, Stephen Marr got a good view of the bot sitting on top of a SpaceX drone ship at Port Canaveral, Florida.

“I knew there was something different there,” Marr, 34, told the paper.

Marr posted the photo on Reddit where it was widely agreed to be a robot, and users on the site nicknamed it “Optimus Prime,” after a character from the movie Transformers.

The robot is expected to work on the drone ships, securing the first stage of SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rockets, which will land on the drone ships, Florida Today reports. The robot is expected to save the company money and increase safety.

Ricky Lim, of SpaceX, told Florida Today that the robot is in a “testing phase” as a “future capability.”

“I don’t think it’s very far away” from being used, Lim told the paper. “But it’s new.”

He added that the robot has not been officially named.

SpaceX has recovered eight first stages of Falcon 9 rockets, starting in 2015. Three of those stages landed on pads at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, and five times on drone ships at sea.

SpaceX is expecting to launch another rocket from Kennedy Space Center in coming months. That mission is expected to be the first use of a used or “flight tested” Falcon 9 rocket.
…

Amputees with prosthetic limbs may soon have much a better sense of touch, temperature and texture, thanks to the energy-saving power of the sun, British researchers said on Thursday.

While prosthetics are usually fully powered using batteries, a new prototype from University of Glasgow researchers opens up the possibility for so-called “solar-powered skin,” which would include better sense capabilities than current technology.

“If an entity is going out in a sunny day, then they won’t need any battery” to activate their senses, said Ravinder Dahiya, a research fellow at the university and a leader of the study. “They can feel, without worrying about battery.”

The technology involves installing a thin layer of pure carbon around a prosthetic arm, hand or leg. This allows light to pass through it and be easily used as solar energy, the researchers said in a research paper.

The sun can provide up to 15 times more energy than is usually needed to power a prosthetic limb, Dahiya said.

This extra — and renewable — energy can be used to power sensors that increase sense and feeling in a limb, so much so that the prosthetic can feel pressure, temperature and texture like natural skin, the paper said.

“The skin is sensitive to touch and pressure, so when you touch the skin there you will know what point you are contacting and how much force you are applying,” Dahiya said, describing the prototype.

The scientists are the first to develop a model for solar-powered prosthetic skin, he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The technology could also increase the functionality of robots, allowing them to have a better understanding of what they touch and interact with, according to Dahiya.

If robots had limbs that are sensitive to touch and pressure they would be less likely to make errors or injure humans, he said.

The researchers hope to further develop the prototype in the next two years, Dahiya said. Eventually, he hopes to power the limb’s motors with the renewable energy as well – rather than just the skin.

“Because we are saving a lot of energy, our vision is that … if we store this energy in some way we will be able to also power the motors with the energy,” he said.

“The prosthetic will be fully energy autonomous.”
…