YCLOAK

Brazil’s Health Ministry says 424 people have been infected with yellow fever in the largest outbreak the country has seen in years. Of those, 137 have died.

An update published Thursday said that more than 900 other cases are under investigation. During the current outbreak in the Southern Hemisphere’s summer rainy season, the vast majority of the confirmed cases have been in the southeastern state of Minas Gerais.

Much of Brazil is considered at risk for yellow fever, and people in those areas are supposed to be vaccinated. But this outbreak struck some areas not previously considered at risk, and Brazil is rushing vaccines to those areas.

Yellow fever is a mosquito-borne disease that cause causes fever, body aches, vomiting and can cause jaundice, from which it gets its name.
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A U.N. body on Thursday added two chemicals used to make the drug fentanyl, which killed music star Prince, to an international list of controlled substances, which the United States said would help fight a wave of deaths by overdose.

Fentanyl is a man-made opioid 100 times more powerful than morphine. Roughly 20,000 U.S. overdose deaths in 2015 involved heroin or synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

An annual meeting of the Commission on Narcotic Drugs, which also acts as the governing body of the Vienna-based U.N. office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), voted to “schedule” two fentanyl precursors and a fentanyl-like substance, meaning they would be added to an international control list.

Putting the chemicals on the control list ensures closer international monitoring of suspicious orders and transactions, which should make it harder for people aiming to produce fentanyl illegally to get hold of these chemicals.

“None of us lives under the illusion that this is a silver bullet to solving our opioid crisis,” a U.S. State Department spokeswoman said in response to the decision.

“But this vote will make it harder for the criminals that are illicitly producing fentanyl to access the necessary resources. It will require countries to regulate the production, sale, and export of the precursors to fentanyl, and to criminalize sale or trafficking outside of those regulations.”

The UNODC named the two precursors as 4-anilino-N-phenethylpiperidine (ANPP) and N-phenethyl-4-piperidone (NPP). A fentanyl analogue called butyrfentanyl, a drug similar to fentanyl, was also added, it said.

The State Department spokeswoman said they were the two leading chemicals used to illegally produce fentanyl in the United States.

United Nations and U.S. officials also emphasized that Thursday’s decision was an example of effective action by the United Nations at a time when the Trump administration is aiming to slash funding for both the State Department and the United Nations.

“The U.S. mission [to the United Nations in Vienna] … welcomes this decision as a concrete example of how international action can have a clear benefit for the United States, as we face a crisis taking a tremendous toll on American communities,” it said in a statement.
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Developers of an experimental blood test for autism say it can detect the condition in more than 96 percent of cases and do so across a broad spectrum of patients, potentially allowing for earlier diagnosis, according to a study released on Thursday.

The findings, published in PLoS Computational Biology, are the latest effort to develop a blood test for autism spectrum disorder, which is estimated to affect about 1 in 68 babies. The cause remains a mystery although it has been shown that childhood vaccines are not responsible.

The hope for such tests, if proven accurate, is that they could reassure parents with autism fears and possibly aid in the development of treatments, coauthor to the study, Dr. Juergen Hahn of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, told Reuters Health.

They could also speed the age at diagnosis. Autism encompasses a wide spectrum of disorders, ranging from profound inability to communicate and mental retardation to relatively mild symptoms, as in Asperger’s Syndrome.

Doctors typically diagnose children by observing behaviors associated with the disorder, such as repetitive behaviors or social avoidance. Most children are not diagnosed until around age 4, although some skilled clinicians can pick it up earlier.

Hahn and colleagues measured levels of 24 proteins that have been linked to autism and found five that, in the right combination, seemed most predictive of the condition, which affects about 1.5 percent of children and can vary widely in severity and how it manifests.

Dr. Max Wiznitzer of the University Hospitals Cleveland Medical Center, who was not involved in the research, called the finding “interesting, but not earth-shattering,” saying that it needs to be tested by many more at-risk children.

“We don’t know if this is a marker specific to autism or whether it’s a marker for any chronic illness of any kind,” he told Reuters Health. “They have quite a way to go before they can show if it has any meaning.”

The researchers derived the combination by testing 83 children age 3 to 10 who had been diagnosed with autism through conventional means. While the combination was present in 97.6 percent, it was absent in 96.1 percent of 76 normal children.

Wiznitzer noted that the research offers no evidence that the chemical combination being blamed for autism “will be there for infants and toddlers.”
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Twice a week, fisherman Romould Compton puts on scuba gear to dive to the seabed and clean tiny elkhorns growing in the coral nursery off the Caribbean island of Carriacou, tending them until they can be transplanted to a damaged reef nearby.

He hopes his conservation work will help to bring back more of the fish, such as red snapper, king butterfish and hind, that many islanders depend on.

“In my area we depend on the reef for our survival and livelihoods, and a lot of reef is dead,” said Compton by phone from Windward, Carriacou, one of the lush, mountainous islands that make up Grenada in the southeast of the Caribbean.

“A lot of unemployment has been happening so we’ve got to turn to the sea to keep our livelihood going.”

Across the Caribbean, scores of projects are underway to restore battered coral reefs and replant damaged mangroves, crucial to livelihoods from fishing and income from the millions of tourists who flock to the tropical beaches each year.

The intricate reefs and salt-tolerant mangrove swamps also offer protection against storms and hurricanes on climate-vulnerable islands which often lack resources to build extensive engineered coastal defenses.

Insurers are now looking closely at how ecosystems can help bolster coastal resilience, while high-tech models help determine how new hotels and infrastructure might impact the fragile ecological balance as well as local communities.

“When you talk to the prime minister of any country in the Caribbean, they absolutely recognize the path of climate change,” said Luis Solorzano, executive director of The Nature Conservancy’s (TNC) program in the Caribbean, which is working to restore marine habitats.

“They’re also thinking, instead of providing assistance, what can we do to prevent, to try and minimize the expected damage of what we know is going to be an increasing frequency of extreme events,” he said.

Using ecosystems to help buffer against extreme events such as hurricanes and storm surges could generate cost-savings of “billions if not trillions” of dollars, he said.

Climate resistance

At the Mote Marine Laboratory in Florida, scientists are trying to replicate the sea conditions they expect to see in 50 to 100 years to determine which corals are the hardiest, then cross strains to produce climate-resistant species that can be transplanted onto reefs across the Caribbean, said David Vaughan, who manages Mote’s reef restoration program.

One of Vaughan’s most important discoveries came by chance: He accidentally shattered an elkhorn coral and found micro-fragmentation can cause it to grow up to 40 times faster.

“If people think climate change is just a theory, they should just look at that wonderful thermometer in the field that’s called corals and that’ll tell them differently,” said Vaughan, whose laboratory works with TNC and produces 1,000 corals a day, including bulbous brain and mountain corals.

He hopes the new coral “offspring” will be “better prepared in the future for whatever man or mother nature hands to them.”

The 63-year-old, who has vowed to plant a million corals by the time he retires, said Mote is planning a laboratory to train up to 50 people each week from around the world, who could eventually replicate its coral restoration project.

With that scale-up, “we could literally plant a billion corals around the world,” he said.

Getting ahead

Alongside bringing in tourist dollars, healthy coral reefs, seagrasses and salt-tolerant mangroves provide habitats for many species that generate an income for fishermen — from spiny lobsters in Belize to bonefish in the Bahamas.

Reefs can also act like breakwaters to dramatically reduce wave strength, while mangroves can buffer against hurricane winds and storm surges.

Marine scientist Michael Beck calculates coral reefs can slash up to 97 percent of the wave energy that would otherwise hit the shoreline, while a 100-meter-wide (330 feet) band of mangrove can cut wave height by up to two-thirds.

High-tech modelling is helping Caribbean governments bolster coastal resilience by demonstrating how development can affect coastal ecosystems, livelihoods and property, said Katie Arkema, lead scientist at the Natural Capital Project, which has used its technology in Belize and the low-lying islands of the Bahamas.

“What we seek to do is understand how will our decisions and the decisions of governments … affect ecosystems and how in turn will those ecosystem changes affect people,” said Arkema.

The World Bank, which is helping pilot a coastal insurance project offering reduced premiums to governments working to make the region’s over-exploited fisheries more resilient, said Jamaica, Grenada and St. Lucia were among those interested.

But payouts would likely hinge on countries agreeing to invest a slice of the money in marine habitats, he said.

“Increasingly, Caribbean governments are finding ways to make better use of their marine resources, [to] take advantage of their marine ecosystems, the natural assets that are so important to them,” said Miguel Angel Jorge, senior fisheries specialist with the World Bank.

“They want to be much smarter about how they invest and plan with the likely climate impacts in mind.”

In Grenville, Grenada, where many low-income families depend on fishing, efforts to boost coastal resilience were partly driven by the community — which is involved in projects to replant mangroves and establish an artificial reef, said Nealla Frederick, TNC’s Eastern Caribbean conservation planner.

“Just everybody has recognized this is happening and wants to try to get ahead of it,” she said.
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Scientists can tell by your blood whether you have cancer cells, how well your organs are functioning, and if they’ve been affected by cancer. Now there’s a new blood test that could help prevent heart attacks and strokes.

Jeff Meeusen, Ph.D., developed the test at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota. Meeusen told VOA in a Skype interview that the test will determine who’s at risk for a heart attack or stroke, “and it seems to have a chance to determine who’s at risk, even accounting for current gold standard tests like LDL (low-density lipoprotein) cholesterol.” LDL cholesterol is considered the “bad” cholesterol because it becomes part of plaque, the waxy stuff that can clog arteries.

The test measures the amount of ceramides in the blood. Ceramides are waxy molecules strongly linked to cardiovascular disease. They are similar to cholesterol, but unlike cholesterol, they are biologically active.

Meeusen explained that when we start to have cardiovascular risk factors, the ceramide levels build up and then they can promote things like the LDL cholesterol crossing into the vascular wall. Once it’s there, he said, ceramides develop atheroscopic plaque, which causes hardening of the arteries.

“Even if you have a very low LDL cholesterol, this ceramide test is able to identify who is going to be at risk for developing a heart attack or stroke later in life,” Meeusen said. Meeusen is a clinical chemist and co‑director of Cardiovascular Laboratory Medicine at the Mayo Clinic. 

The test could be used to help patients who have progressing coronary artery disease as well as to find out who is at risk for developing coronary artery disease.

Our physicians are really embracing this new test,” Meesen said. “There’s been a need for tests that can help identify those people that are at higher risk, and they’re using this test among individuals that would otherwise seem to be at target, on track. They have good cholesterol. They don’t have too many other risk factors. And yet, if you have an elevated ceramide score, being able to prescribe a statin, or encourage that patient to exercise and diet, is going to prevent these events in the long run.” 

Meeusen said the test provides an incentive to patients to take better care of their health. What’s more, the test is available to doctors and their patients outside the Mayo Clinic hospital network.
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The Trump administration may be ready to roll back some regulations covered by the Clean Air Act limiting some pollutants that contributed to smog-choked American cities in the 1970s.

But new research from China suggests clean air can save millions of lives.

More pollution, more deaths

Researchers at the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention compared the levels of particulate air pollution in 38 of China’s largest cities.

The pollution they studied is tiny, less than 10 microns. That’s smaller than the width of a human hair. 

Over a three-and-a-half-year period from 2010 to 2013, the researchers recorded more than 350,000 deaths.

Examining those deaths, the researchers found that 87 percent of them could be tied to high levels of particulate matter in the air.

And the more research they did they discovered that air pollution “appeared to have a much greater impact on deaths due to cardiorespiratory diseases,” the researchers said in a press release, “such as asthma and chronic lung disease (COPD), than it did on deaths due to other causes.”

They also found that air pollution seems to have a larger effect on women and older people than on men or younger people.

The researchers predict that just lowering air pollution to the standards suggested by the World Health Organization could prevent “3 million premature deaths each year.”

The research is published in the journal BMJ.
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Springtime is allergy season, and many people suffer from recurring headaches and congestion. But while medication and nasal sprays provide relief to some patients, those with chronic sinus problems may need complex treatment and sometimes surgery. A breakthrough procedure called balloon sinuplasty is less invasive and has shown to be highly effective. VOA’s Zlatica Hoke looks into how it works.
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With a grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, scientists at Purdue University are researching new methods for affordable large-scale monitoring of crucially important traits of industrial crops. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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On this day in 1879, famed physicist Albert Einstein was born in Ulm, Germany.

Best known for his theories of relativity, Einstein would toil alone with his obsessive queries of the universe for years in the Swiss patent office before gaining international recognition by winning the Nobel Prize for physics in 1921.

Space and time and E = mc 2

In 1905, Einstein addressed what he termed his special theory of relativity. In special relativity, time and space are not absolute, but relative to the motion of the observer. 

In other words, Einstein posited that the universe was not static, but instead, expanding.  

Thus, two objects traveling at great speeds with regard to each other would not necessarily observe simultaneous events in time at the same moment, nor agree on their measurements of space. He theorized that the speed of light, which is the limiting speed of any body having mass, is constant in all frames of reference.

​He expanded on this theory, searching for a mathematical equation that could calculate his belief that mass and energy were equivalent. Einstein famously created that equation, known as E = mc 2.

General relativity

In 1916, he published The Foundation of the General Theory of Relativity, which proposed that gravity, as well as motion, impact time and space. 

According to Einstein, gravitation is not a force, as his longtime scientific hero Isaac Newton had argued; rather, Einstein believed gravity was a curved field in the space-time continuum, created by the presence of mass. 

An object of very large gravitational mass, such as the sun, would therefore appear to warp space and time around it, which could be demonstrated by observing starlight as it skirted the sun on its way to earth.

In 1919, astronomers studying a solar eclipse confirmed Einstein’s general theory of relativity, propelling him to instant celebrity. 

As a world-renowned public figure, he became increasingly political, taking up the cause of Zionism and speaking out against militarism and rearmament.

In his native Germany, this made him an unpopular figure. After Nazi leader Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany in 1933, Einstein renounced his German citizenship, freeing him from military service, and left the country. He later moved to the United States and became a U.S. citizen.

The atom bomb

In 1939, despite his lifelong pacifist beliefs, he agreed to write to President Franklin D. Roosevelt on behalf of a group of scientists who were concerned with American inaction in the field of atomic-weapons research. 

“The important thing is not to stop questioning; curiosity has its own reason for existing.” Albert Einsten

Like the other scientists, he feared sole German possession of such a weapon.

He played no role in the subsequent Manhattan Project and later deplored the use of atomic bombs against Japan.

After the war, he called for the establishment of a world government that would control nuclear technology and prevent future armed conflict.

Later in life, he worked on a unified field theory, which he never completed to his or other scientists’ satisfaction.

Einstein died on April 18, 1955, in Princeton, New Jersey. In 1999, Time magazine named him Person of the Century.
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Health experts say more than 700 people have died of malaria so far this year in Burundi, prompting the government to declare the disease an epidemic.

The determination was based on findings of a survey by Burundian and World Health Organization experts, said Josiane Nijimbere, Burundi’s Minister of Health.

She said there have been 1.8 million cases of malaria registered since the beginning of the year — a huge number in a country with a population of less than 11 million.

The minister attributed the increase of malaria partly to climate change.

“There is a strong association between malaria and warm temperatures, which have led to significant increase in malaria cases because of the spread of mosquitoes,” Nijimbere told reporters Monday.

According to the World Health Organization, some 8.2 million Burundians — 73 percent of the total population — were affected by malaria in 2016. More than 3,800 died.

The health minister said government is dispatching doctors and health care providers to villages to care for patients who cannot afford to go to hospitals.

The government says it needs at least $31 million to fight the epidemic.

Aid agencies have warned that Burundi’s ongoing political crisis is hurting the economy and contributing to a humanitarian crisis.

The small African country has been in turmoil since President Pierre Nkurunziza ran for a controversial third term in 2015. Some 400,000 Burundians have fled to neighboring countries to escape political violence and reported human rights abuses.

A U.N. report last month said the number of people in need of assistance increased from 1.1 million to at least 3 million.
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Victims of stroke often face years of grueling, physical therapy, if they can even find a qualified therapist. Now a Portuguese inventor has created a computer program that delivers high quality, monitored therapy, and it’s just a mouse click away. Faith Lapidus narrates this report from Kevin Enochs.
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Madrid’s city government announced plans on Monday to ban the oldest and most polluting vehicles from the city center by 2025 in a bid to crackdown on air pollution.

The local government will prohibit the use within the city’s limits of gasoline cars registered before 2000 and diesel-powered cars registered before 2006, which at the moment account for 20 percent of all those registered.

The ban would lower nitrogen dioxide levels in the city by an estimated 15 percent, a poisonous gas behind respiratory problems, Madrid’s local  government said in a presentation.

Madrid has failed to meet European Union-set limits on air quality for the last eight years. Other European cities such as Paris and Berlin have already put similar plans in place to curb emissions.

“This is plan A for air quality in Madrid. It’s plan A because there can’t be any plan B,” Madrid’s mayor Manuela Carmen said at an event to present the new plan.

Madrid’s local government has allocated 544 million euros ($580.83 million) to completing 30 measures included in the  plan, which also encourages greater use of renewable energy and regenerating urban areas, according to the presentation.

 
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It’s not every day that an unmanned scientific submarine makes international headlines, but this sub is named Boaty McBoatface, and it is about to embark on its first mission.

The sub is operated by Britain’s National Environmental Research Council, which last year turned to the internet to name the group’s new $248 million research ship that is still under construction.

The online naming poll went viral, but NERC opted instead to name the ship the Royal Research Ship Sir David Attenborough, after the famous British naturalist.

Making sure not to anger the internet, NERC opted to use Boaty McBoatface for the drone sub.

Now, little Boaty is about to undertake its first mission, according to a NERC statement.

“Cute though it sounds, this unmanned submarine is part of a fleet of some pretty intrepid explorers,” it said. “This month they’ll begin their first mission, traversing a deep current that originates in Antarctica and flows through the Southern Ocean. They’ll be collecting data for the Dynamics of the Orkney Passage Outflow (DynOPO) project as they ‘fly’ through submarine waterfalls and rapids, shedding light on how global warming is changing our oceans.”

Boaty McBoatface will likely be operated from the RSS Sir David Attenborough when it is finished being built in 2019.

“Work continues on dry land for now, but she’ll be ready to ‘splashdown’ off the yard and into the blue early next year, whilst works will continue inside,” NERC said. “Then she’ll be taken for trials to make sure she’s seaworthy and her scientific equipment is working to perfection before she sets off for her first mission in 2019.”
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There were startling colors here just a year ago, a dazzling array of life beneath the waves. Now this Maldivian reef is dead, killed by the stress of rising ocean temperatures. What’s left is a haunting expanse of gray, a scene repeated in reefs across the globe in what has fast become a full-blown ecological catastrophe.

The world has lost roughly half its coral reefs in the last 30 years. Scientists are now scrambling to ensure that at least a fraction of these unique ecosystems survives beyond the next three decades. The health of the planet depends on it: Coral reefs support a quarter of all marine species, as well as half a billion people around the world.

“This isn’t something that’s going to happen 100 years from now. We’re losing them right now,” said marine biologist Julia Baum of Canada’s University of Victoria. “We’re losing them really quickly, much more quickly than I think any of us ever could have imagined.”

Even if the world could halt global warming now, scientists still expect that more than 90 percent of corals will die by 2050. Without drastic intervention, we risk losing them all.

“To lose coral reefs is to fundamentally undermine the health of a very large proportion of the human race,” said Ruth Gates, director of the Hawaii Institute of Marine Biology.

Coral reefs produce some of the oxygen we breathe. Often described as underwater rainforests, they populate a tiny fraction of the ocean but provide habitats for one in four marine species. Reefs also form crucial barriers protecting coastlines from the full force of storms.

They provide billions of dollars in revenue from tourism, fishing and other commerce, and are used in medical research for cures to diseases including cancer, arthritis and bacterial or viral infections.

“Whether you’re living in North America or Europe or Australia, you should be concerned,” said biologist Ove Hoegh-Guldberg, director of the Global Change Institute at Australia’s University of Queensland. “This is not just some distant dive destination, a holiday destination. This is the fabric of the ecosystem that supports us.”

And that fabric is being torn apart.

“You couldn’t be more dumb … to erode the very thing that life depends on — the ecosystem — and hope that you’ll get away with it,” Hoegh-Guldberg said. 

Corals are invertebrates, living mostly in tropical waters. They secrete calcium carbonate to build protective skeletons that grow and take on impressive colors, thanks to a symbiotic relationship with algae that live in their tissues and provide them with energy.

But corals are sensitive to temperature fluctuations, and are suffering from rising ocean temperatures and acidification, as well as from overfishing, pollution, coastal development and agricultural runoff.

A temperature change of just 1 to 2 degrees Celsius (1.8 to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) can force coral to expel the algae, leaving their white skeletons visible in a process known as “bleaching.”

Bleached coral can recover if the water cools, but if high temperatures persist for months, the coral will die. Eventually the reef will degrade, leaving fish without habitats and coastlines less protected from storm surges. 

The first global bleaching event occurred in 1998, when 16 percent of corals died. The problem spiraled dramatically in 2015-2016 amid an extended El Nino natural weather phenomenon that warmed Pacific waters near the equator and triggered the most widespread bleaching ever documented. This third global bleaching event, as it is known, continues today even after El Nino ended.

Headlines have focused on damage to Australia’s famed Great Barrier Reef, but other reefs have fared just as badly or worse across the world, from Japan to Hawaii to Florida.

Around the islands of the Maldives, an idyllic Indian Ocean tourism destination, some 73 percent of surveyed reefs suffered bleaching between March and May 2016, according to the country’s Marine Research Center.

“This bleaching episode seems to have impacted the entire Maldives, but the severity of bleaching varies” between reefs, according to local conditions, said Nizam Ibrahim, the center’s senior research officer.

Worst hit have been areas in the central Pacific, where the University of Victoria’s Baum has been conducting research on Kiritimati, or Christmas Island, in the Republic of Kiribati. Warmer water temperatures lasted there for 10 months in 2015-2016, killing a staggering 90 percent of the reef.

Baum had never seen anything like it.

“As scientists, we were all on brand new territory,” Baum said, “as were the corals in terms of the thermal stress they were subjected to.”

To make matters worse, scientists are predicting another wave of elevated ocean temperatures starting next month. 

“The models indicate that we will see the return of bleaching in the South Pacific soon, along with a possibility of bleaching in both the eastern and western parts of the Indian Ocean,” said Mark Eakin, coral reef specialist and coordinator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s Coral Reef Watch, which uses satellites to monitor environmental conditions around reefs. It may not be as bad as last year, but could further stress “reefs that are still hurting from the last two years.”

The speed of the destruction is what alarms scientists and conservationists, as damaged coral might not have time to recover before it is hit again by warmer temperatures.

But some may have a chance.

Last month, Hoegh-Guldberg helped launch an initiative called 50 Reefs, aiming to identify those reefs with the best chance of survival in warming oceans and raise public awareness. His project partner is Richard Vevers, who heads the XL Caitlin Seaview Survey, which has been documenting coral reefs worldwide.

“For the reefs that are least vulnerable to climate change, the key will be to protect them from all the other issues they are facing _ pollution, overfishing, coastal development,” said Vevers, who founded The Ocean Agency, an Australian organization seeking new technologies to help mitigate some of the ocean’s greatest challenges. If the reefs remain healthy and resilient, “they can hopefully become the vital seed-centers that can repopulate surrounding reefs.”

Nature itself is providing small glimmers of hope. Some of Kiritimati’s corals, for example, are showing tentative signs of a comeback.

But scientists don’t want to leave it to chance, and are racing ahead with experiments they hope might stave off extinction.

“We’ve lost 50 percent of the reefs, but that means we still have 50 percent left,” said Gates, who is working in Hawaii to breed corals that can better withstand increasing temperatures. “We definitely don’t want to get to the point where we don’t intervene until we have 2 percent left.”

Going a step further, she is also trying to “train” corals to survive rising temperatures, exposing them to sub-lethal heat stress in the hope they can “somehow fix that in their memory” and survive similar stress in the future.

“It’s probably time that we start thinking outside the box,” Gates said. “It’s sort of a no-win game if we do nothing.”
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A leopard showed up in London this week, sharing space with the lions of Trafalgar Square. The cat was no more real than the famous bronze lions and was there to point out that big cats like leopards and lions are in trouble all around the world. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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An emerging foodscape frontier offers opportunity for anyone to grow and eat organic. Brie Arthur shows Maryland residents how to grow food plants alongside flowers and shrubs as a way to increase bio-diversity and feed the community. Bronwyn Benito has the story.
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Two people are critically sick in San Francisco after drinking tea from the same Chinatown herbalist. 

The tea leaves bought at Sun Wing Wo Trading Company contained the plant-based toxin aconite, the Department of Public Health said Friday. 

A man in his 50s last month and a woman in her 30s this month became critically ill within an hour of drinking the tea, and both remain hospitalized, health officials said. 

Each person grew weak then had life-threatening abnormal heart rhythms that required resuscitation and intensive care. 

Aconite, also known as monkshood, helmet flower and wolfsbane, is used in Asian herbal medicines. But it must be processed properly to be safe. 

Health officials are working to find the original source of the tea leaves, and they are warning others to stop consuming it.

“Anyone who has purchased tea from this location should not consume it and should throw it away immediately,” said Dr. Tomás Aragón, health officer for the city and county of San Francisco. “Aconite poisoning attacks the heart and can be lethal.”
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U.S. President Donald Trump has chosen Dr. Scott Gottlieb, a conservative health policy expert with deep ties to the pharmaceutical industry, to lead the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, a White House official said Friday.

If confirmed by the Senate, Gottlieb would be in charge of implementing Trump’s plan to dramatically cut regulations governing food, drugs, cosmetics, dietary supplements and tobacco.

Gottlieb is well-known on Capitol Hill, where he has testified multiple times on hot-button health issues, including complex drug pricing matters, and is viewed favorably by drug companies and pharmaceutical investors. A former FDA official, Gottlieb also sits on the boards of pharmaceutical companies.

“Thank God it’s Gottlieb,” Brian Skorney, an investment analyst at Robert W. Baird, wrote in a research note. “We view this as a favorable development for the sector.”

Gottlieb, 44, is a resident fellow at the conservative American Enterprise Institute think tank and a partner at a large venture capital fund. He is a former FDA deputy commissioner who has frequently advocated a loosening of requirements needed for approval of new medical products.

“Scott knows how the agency works and he will move it forwards, though maybe not always in ways the agency is comfortable with,” said John Taylor, a lawyer and president of compliance and regulatory affairs with the consulting firm Greenleaf Health and a former acting FDA deputy commissioner.

Picked over O’Neill

Gottlieb was chosen over Jim O’Neill, a libertarian investor close to Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel, a PayPal co-founder who now advises Trump on technology and science matters. O’Neill’s stated view that drugs should be approved before being proven effective generated widespread alarm.

Gottlieb, who declined to comment on the nomination, is unlikely to upend the FDA in the way O’Neill might have, but he is nonetheless expected to bring significant change, including moving the agency to increase flexibility in the clinical trial development process.

In this he will be supported by the recently passed 21st Century Cures Act, which instructs the FDA among other things to consider the use of “real world evidence” to support new drug applications. This could include anecdotal data, observational studies and patient reports.

“People don’t want to take chances with safety, but there’s increasingly some clamor to be more flexible on the efficacy side,” said Kathleen Sanzo, who leads the FDA practice at the law firm Morgan, Lewis & Bockius. “You need to have some signal of efficacy. The question is: How much?”

Generic therapeutics

One of Gottlieb’s priorities will most likely be to streamline the process for approving generic versions of complex, difficult-to-copy therapeutics. He has stated publicly that he does not believe the FDA has good tools or policies to move such products and has advocated the creation of different approval standards.

A survey conducted by Mizuho Securities USA Inc. of 53 pharmaceutical executives found that 72 percent favored Gottlieb over other potential candidates. Many described him as knowledgeable, experienced and balanced.

“He will be a pragmatic leader with an eye toward both expedited approvals and safety,” one executive wrote.

Others were less sanguine, citing his deep ties to industry, including his seat on multiple pharmaceutical company boards, as potential conflicts of interest.

Dr. Michael Carome, director of Public Citizen’s Health Research Group, said Gottlieb “has spent most of his career dedicated to promoting the financial interests of the pharmaceutical industry.” If confirmed, he added, “he will have to be recused from key decisions time and time again.”
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In America’s current polarized climate, social observers have noted, people tend to turn to news sources that reflect their political beliefs and avoid listening to anything that challenges them. But without a shared understanding of what’s going on, it becomes difficult, if not impossible, to achieve cooperation and compromise.

It is not only regarding politics that people avoid or ignore information that may be useful, according to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University. Dieters may choose to overlook how many calories there are in a rich dessert. People with a family history of a genetic disease may skip screening tests that could reveal whether their health is at risk.

Writing in the Journal of Economic Literature, the study’s authors explain how and why people deliberately avoid information that could threaten their happiness and well-being. “People often avoid information that could help them to make better decisions if they think the information might be painful to receive,” said George Loewenstein, who co-founded the field of behavioral economics.

Loewenstein and his colleagues found that when people cannot avoid encountering information that goes against their beliefs, they may discount it; they point to widespread disbelief and doubts about scientific evidence of climate change. By the same token, questionable evidence may be treated as credible if it confirms what someone wants to believe.

There can be understandable reasons for avoiding information. Not taking a genetic test could allow someone to enjoy life until illness can’t be ignored. Not following the stock market could keep investors from selling in a panic.

Co-author David Hagmann notes that “bombarding people with information that challenges their cherished beliefs … is more likely to engender defensive avoidance than receptive processing.”

To reduce the political divide, “we have to find ways not only to expose people to conflicting information, but to increase people’s receptivity to information that challenges what they believe and want to believe,” he said.
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A decision by the government to fire doctors who went on strike three months ago has left Kenya’s health care sector in crisis.

Kenyans remain in limbo after the two sides failed to agree on and sign documents that cover a range of issues, including better pay and working conditions for the doctors, improved health facilities and security for medical staff.

Peter Munya is the governor of the state of Meru and chairman of the council of governors. He says the government remains firm in its decision to penalize doctors who refuse to return to work.

“The decision we took still stands and I am told people are following the processes of laying off those who have not reported back to work,” said Munya. “I am told [disciplinary measures] have been given. So that is what we are implementing.”

12 medics fired

On Wednesday, the biggest hospital in the county, Kenyatta National Hospital, fired 12 medics and put 48 others on notice.

Kenyan media report a handful of physicians returned to work.  

Dr. George Got is with the union that represents the doctors. He said its national advisory council agreed to proposed amendments presented in a collective bargaining agreement (CBA) that now awaits the signatures of both parties.

“I can only confirm, we were told that the CBA would be signed with the amendments,” said Got. “I will not tell you exactly which amendments because that’s fairly confidential. So the third document to be signed is a formal return-to-work formula checking out the procedures of returning to work.”

Union remains optimistic

Got said the union had yet to receive word whether the government would sign the documents, but that union officials remained optimistic.

“The national advisory council remains committed, and so far we have not received any communication that those documents will not be signed.” Got said. “We are just waiting for our negotiators to brief us as when they sign, and they advise us to resume work; we already gave them our blessing, and we shall resume work.”

Governor Munya confirmed to VOA that changes were made to the previous collective bargaining agreement of 2013 in which doctors sought a pay raise of up to 180 percent. The government’s offer stands at 40 percent.

Foreign doctors may be hired

Munya says the government is considering hiring foreign doctors.

“We want to start working out the process of hiring doctors from outside the country, and the minister of health is already working on that,” Munya said. The minister “has spoken to friendly countries that can provide doctors, and he is also working on the legal framework to register these doctors locally.”

This is not the first time the government has announced the plan to fire doctors and bring in physicians from abroad.

The state plans to hire physicians from neighboring Tanzania as well as Cuba and India. Before that happens, an appeals court will have to rule on the matter.
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The World Health Organization says about half a million Africans die of cancer each year, or six percent of global cancer deaths annually.

The leading cancers in Africa affect the breast, cervix and prostate, according to WHO.

Dr. Andre Ilbawi, the technical officer for cancer control at WHO headquarters in Geneva, says the cause of the illness in Africa is not always clear, though factors that may contribute to breast cancer include alcohol use, obesity and lack of physical activity.

Weakened immune systems also play a role, making people susceptible to many infections and diseases, including the human papilloma virus, or HPV, which can cause cervical cancer.

“Women in Africa have a higher rate of HIV, which makes worse the effect of HPV,” Ilbawi said, “so we see the combination of infectious causes really can explain the majority of cervical cancer cases in Africa and elsewhere.”

Ilbawi says other infections, besides HPV, also can lead to cancer.

“We know the immune system plays a very important role in fighting cancer. And in some situations, infections can cause cancer themselves,” he said. “It’s not always as easy as saying malaria triggers cancer years down the line for someone exposed to malaria, but we do know there are some cause and effects for infectious causes of cancer in Africa. Some include hepatitis B and C, [which] contribute to liver cancer. … There are infections in the stomach that can contribute to gastric cancer … so infections both directly and by weakening the immune system can contribute to cancer cases.”

Early detection

Not all cancers are fatal, especially if detected early. The WHO is working to encourage governments to adopt measures that are low cost, but high impact, especially on the local, or primary care, level.

“Early diagnosis has a strategic position in health expenditures because if we are able to detect cancer early, then the costs of treatment are lower,” Ilbawi said. “We know from high-income countries that detecting cancer at stage one or two [out of four] reduces the cost of treatment between two- to four-fold in some settings.”

He also says earlier detection makes it likely that less toxic medications can be used.

WHO guidelines suggest inexpensive ways to improve cancer detection, beginning by educating the public and health workers on how to recognize potential symptoms.

“We need that provider to identify high-risk symptoms and say to a patient, ‘I understand you are having bleeding in your stool or a lump or mass that may be concerning to you. It could be many possible diseases. But what you need to do is get from the primary care level to the diagnostic facilities, where you can access biopsy and pathology to confirm whether it’s cancer,'” Ilbawi said.

“The first-level provider is critical because that’s where most patients go first. And we have to bring those providers into the health system for cancer — not just focus on high-cost treatment at a centralized facility when most people can’t get there, can’t afford those treatments or get there far too late,” he added.

Low-cost options

Other low-cost options include providing social workers and patient navigators who can help direct patients to facilities that provide blood and tissue testing — and treatment.

Ilbawi says therapies for cancer patients do not have to be costly. They might involve surgery, chemotherapy, and oral and hormonal treatments.

The WHO advises countries on how to improve cancer care, including insurance and other mechanisms that make treatment more affordable.

Ibawi says it’s a coordinated effort that includes governments, advocacy groups, the U.N. and donors. Together, they help identify where strategic investments can help improve health services and extend the lives of hundreds of thousands of people.
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Extremely brief but powerful radio bursts coming from billions of light years away could be evidence of an advanced alien civilization, according to a new paper.

Fast radio bursts, which are “millisecond-long flashes of radio emission” could be “leakage” from “planet-sized transmitters” that power alien spaceships over incredible distances.

“Fast radio bursts are exceedingly bright given their short duration and origin at great distances, and we haven’t identified a possible natural source with any confidence,” said theorist Avi Loeb of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “An artificial origin is worth contemplating and checking.”

The bursts were first observed in 2007, and so far, fewer than two dozen have been detected using massive radio telescopes. They appear to originate from galaxies billions of light years away, researchers said.

For the paper, researchers tried to assess the feasibility of creating massive transmitters, determining that while it would be well beyond our technology, it would be within the realm of possibility, according to the laws of physics.

They also investigated whether such a device would be viable from an “engineering perspective,” with particular focus on how something that would need such massive amounts of energy would not melt. They said “a water-cooled device twice the size of Earth could withstand the heat.”

Researchers theorize that the use of such massive radio transmitters could be to power “interstellar light sails.” The power would be enough to push a ship of a million tons or about the same as 20 large cruise ships here on Earth.

“That’s big enough to carry living passengers across interstellar or even intergalactic distances,” said co-author Manasvi Lingam, also of Harvard.

In order to do that, the beam of energy would need to be focused constantly on the would-be ship. The reason we may only observe brief flashes here on Earth is that the “host planet, star and galaxy are all moving relative to us. As a result, the beam sweeps across the sky and only points in our direction for a moment.”

The paper was published in the Astrophysical Journal Letters.
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Air pollution takes the lives of more than half a million young children every year, according to the World Health Organization. An entrepreneur in London has come up pollution-busting face masks to protect kids from toxic air.
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It’s a major natural disaster that slowly grows in one place and then moves across a region, gaining intensity and size. As it spreads, it destroys land, ruins agriculture and tears apart communities, and it can kill people.

It’s a drought.

Researchers are just beginning to view droughts as this type of dynamic force, and some hope that soon they will be monitored similarly to hurricanes — with scientists able to predict their development, helping to protect those living in their path.

Ten percent of droughts travel between 1,400 to 3,100 kilometers from where they begin, according to a recent study. The study, which analyzed 1,420 droughts between 1979 and 2009, identified “hot spots” around the world and common directions in which droughts move.

Some droughts in the southwest United States, for example, tend to move from south to north. In Argentina, they usually migrate the opposite direction. In Central Africa, droughts tend to go southeastern toward the coast.

“It can start somewhere, move throughout the continent, and obviously cause harm throughout its way,” Julio Herrera-Estrada, a doctoral candidate at Princeton University and leader of the study, said Thursday.

Droughts that travel are usually the largest and most disastrous, the scientists found. They can cause a loss of agriculture, wildlife, wetlands and human life, according to the National Drought Mitigation Center in Lincoln, Nebraska.

Very costly

They are also one of the most expensive natural disasters that people face today, according to Herrera-Estrada, who collaborated on the study with the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis in Vienna.

The most recent moving drought that Herrera-Estrada studied began in 2008 in Ukraine and Russia, and moved 1,700 kilometers northeast, ending in northwest Russia and affecting parts of Kazakhstan on the way. It lasted almost a year.

“People haven’t really thought of droughts in this way,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Future research, Herrera-Estrada said, can shed light on what mechanisms cause some droughts to move and what affects their paths. This can be done accurately, however, only through collaboration among national governments, he said.

“It’s important to have a global or a continental understanding about how droughts are behaving,” he said. Collaboration “benefits people on the ground, farmers, cities that need water, power plants that need water.”

The study was published last week in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.   
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