Rock Steady Boxing NOVA gym opened in McLean, Virginia, outside Washington, D.C., last December. That was the good news for 75-year-old Neil Eisner, who was diagnosed with Parkinson’s six years ago and finds boxing an effective way to fight back against the disease.

Rock Steady Boxing (RSB) was designed especially for people with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to tremors and balance problems. Each exercise in the program focuses on a specific skill — one is combining punches on a bag to work on strength, another is crawling across the floor. Eisner says the exercises help him perform everyday tasks like moving around and getting in and out of bed.

Some strengthening exercises target vocal cords. “One of the things that’s interesting enough is [Parkinson’s patients] tend to have a [softer] voice. When you have that lower voice, and people can’t hear you, you don’t realize. So, he asks us to bring our voice clearly and more loudly,” Eisner said.

​Becoming an RSB trainer

For personal trainer Alec Langstein, working with an older population is familiar. He understands their health issues and the need for them to stay active.

“My aunt has a gym in Westchester, New York, and she does a Rock Steady Boxing program there,” he said. “She invited me up to her gym to check out the program. She thought it would be a perfect fit for what I do. I helped out with a few classes, and it was just, I thought, an amazing program.”

The Rock Steady Boxing nonprofit was founded in 2006 by attorney Scott C. Newman, who was looking for ways to stay active after being diagnosed with Parkinson’s at age 40. Since then, more than 500 boxing programs have been introduced in the U.S. and around the world.

Langstein went to the organization’s headquarters to become an RSB-licensed trainer, and a few months later, he opened his Rock Steady Boxing NOVA gym.

“It’s a typical boxing program,” he explained. “They focus on balance, hand-eye coordination, reaction, footwork. There is some cognitive stuff because in boxing, certain numbers equal certain punches. So, when I yell certain numbers, you have to move and react at the same time. So, the brain and the body are working together. It’s also taking out the aggression some people may have out of having the disease.”

​Improving quality of life

To understand how RSB can help Parkinson’s patients, physical therapist Danielle Sequira says it’s important to know what triggers the symptoms.

“Parkinson’s mainly affects the dopamine-producing cells in the brain. That leads to a lack or a loss of dopamine, which contributes to the movement difficulties,” she said.

While boxing and other exercises don’t cure the disease or stop the dopamine decline, they can improve the patient’s quality of life. Exercises can be modified for people with Parkinson’s, including those in wheelchairs.

“The research shows that exercise helps the brain use dopamine more efficiently,” Sequira said. “My goal usually, after I work with some of my patients with Parkinson’s, is to refer them out to get involved in an exercise program out in the community.”

​The social effect

RSB seems to have helped Victoria Hebert reduce the symptoms of her Parkinson’s. She has a tremor in her left hand, and says certain situations trigger it.

“Being cold, being hot, or sitting with a crowd I’m not very comfortable with, I can’t help starting to shake. I end up having to sit on my hand just to keep it still,” she said.

But with this crowd, Hebert doesn’t feel the need to hide the disease. “These people have become very close in the four or five months we’ve been together.”

“That’s the big part of it, sharing experiences with others,” she added. “I have to say, it’s very embarrassing, but over eight years of time I’ve never met another person with Parkinson’s. Then, I came here, and it was like a whole class of 20, 25 people with it. It was kind of surprising to me, kind of surprising that I, myself, didn’t reach out to anybody before that.”
…

Rock Steady Boxing (RSB) is a fitness program designed for people with Parkinson’s, a neurodegenerative disorder that leads to tremors and balance problems. The Rock Steady Boxing nonprofit was founded in 2006. Since then, more than 500 boxing programs have been introduced in the U.S. and around the world. Faiza Elmasry visited an RSB gym in McLean, Virginia. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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A consortium of astronomers said Thursday they had for the first time confirmed a prediction of Albert Einstein’s theory of general relativity by observing the gravitational effects of a supermassive black hole on a star zipping by it.

The German-born theoretical physicist had posited that large gravitational forces could stretch light, much like the compression and stretching of sound waves we perceive with the change of pitch of a passing train.

Researchers from the GRAVITY consortium led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics realized that they had a “perfect laboratory” to test Einstein’s theory with the Sagittarius A* black hole in the center of the Milky Way.

Black holes are so dense that their gravitational pull can trap even light, and the supermassive Sagittarius A* has mass four million times that of our sun, making it the biggest in our galaxy.

Astronomers followed the S2 star as it passed close to the black hole on May 19 at a speed in excess of 25 million kilometers (15.5 million miles) per hour.

They then calculated its velocity and position using a number of instruments and compared it with predictions made by Einstein that the light would be stretched by the gravity in an effect called gravitational redshift. Newtonian physics doesn’t allow for a redshift.

“The results are perfectly in line with the theory of general relativity” and are “a major breakthrough towards better understanding the effects of intense gravitational fields,” said the research team, whose findings are published in Friday’s issue of Astronomy & Astrophysics.

This is the first time observers have been able to measure such an effect.

The European Southern Observatory, whose Very Large Telescope in Chile was used to make the observations, had watched S2 pass by Sagittarius A* in 2016 but the instruments it was using then were not sensitive enough to detect the gravitational redshift.

“More than 100 years after he published his paper setting out the equations of general relativity, Einstein has been proved right once more — in a much more extreme laboratory than he could have possibly imagined,” said the ESO in a statement.

Astronomers already use another effect predicted by Einstein’s theory of general relativity — that a black hole can bend passing light. Called gravitational lensing, researchers have used it to peer behind black holes.

Astronomers hope they can make practical use of the latest confirmation of Einstein’s theory to track shifts in S2’s trajectory due to gravity, which could yield information on mass distribution around the black hole.

“I am always blown away by Einstein’s predictions, by the power of his reasoning which yielded this theory and which has never been faulted,” French astrophysicist Guy Perrin, a member of the GRAVITY consortium, told AFP.

Partnering with the Max Planck Institute in the consortium were French research institute CNRS, the Paris Observatory and several French universities along with Portugal’s CENTRA astrophysics center.
…

Pet owners are always happy to share a memory about the time their dog responded to their distress by coming to them or trying to get their attention. But those seemed to just be stories, until new research in the journal Learning & Behavior found that dogs really do feel empathy toward their owners.

According to Ripon College psychology professor Julia Meyers-Manor, the research was inspired by her earlier work on empathy in rats.

“One of the challenges we face when we’re trying to study empathy is that the idea behind empathy is you are recognizing the emotional states of another individual and responding to it,” she told VOA.

The problem is you can’t tell why a rat would help another rodent. For example, it might help to free a trapped friend because the other rat is stressed, or the first rat might be just lonely or bored.

“I can’t make rats have an emotional state” for an experiment, said Meyers-Manor, “but I can ask humans to adopt an emotional state.”

Human actors

To help researchers find out if dogs recognize and react to others’ feelings, they asked humans to mimic behaviors that reflect different feelings.

Her lead study author, Emily Sanford of Johns Hopkins University, added, “People tend to think that dogs really care about their emotions, but we were interested in seeing if there was any scientific evidence to back that up.”

The researchers tested dogs’ prosocial reaction, or their willingness to help another, in a simple door-opening task. The owner sat in a small room with a clear door that the pups could easily push open. The owner was instructed to either pretend to cry or hum a tune. The dog was released into the adjacent room and videotaped to see whether it would push open the door to check on its owner.

When the researchers looked at which condition led dogs to open the door, Meyers-Manor said, “we found it was about equal between the dogs in the distressed, the crying condition, and in the dogs in the humming condition.” In other words, most of the dogs often opened the door regardless of what their owner was doing.

The real difference between the crying and humming conditions was seen in the amount of time it took for the dogs to act. The dogs whose owners appeared to be crying were much faster to check on them than those whose owners were humming. The speed of the dogs’ response was also predicted based on their bond with their owners.

‘Impossible task’

“There’s some research that says that when dogs are faced with a task they can’t solve, that they will direct their attention more to an owner whom they have a close bond with,” said Meyers-Manor. So they gave the dogs what’s called “the impossible task,” which places them in a room with both their owner and a stranger. They are shown an inaccessible treat and the researchers then time how long the dogs looked at their owner for help compared with the time it took to turn to the stranger.

Sanford said this was where individual differences appeared among dogs in the crying condition. “We actually found that dogs that gazed at their owners longer during the impossible task were faster to open the door during the prosocial helping task.”

A second way to predict how quickly a dog would open the door, if at all, was based on stress levels. The researchers collected physiological data and watched the dogs for signs of stress during the main task. Dogs who showed lots of stress behaviors like whining or excessive panting were less likely to push open the door.

“The dogs who opened [the door] were actually the dogs who are the most calm and collected,” said Meyers-Manor. “The dogs who were more distressed shut down. They showed lots of distress behaviors, but they couldn’t seem to get past that distress to open the door.”

Therapy dogs

About half of the dogs in this experiment were nationally certified therapy dogs. Although there was some sense that these trained pooches might respond more quickly than their untrained counterparts, this wasn’t borne out in the data.

“So certainly if you ask the therapy dog owners, I’m sure they would say, yes, their dogs are more empathetic than the average. But that’s not what our research says,” Meyers-Manor said.

James Serpell, director of the Center for Interaction of Animals and Society, agreed that therapy dogs aren’t necessarily more empathetic. “They don’t necessarily need to be any more friendly or empathic than any pet dog,” he told VOA. “They just need to not be aggressive or react violently when someone drops a crutch or something next to them.”

Whether they’re certified or not, this research demonstrates that our dogs do recognize our emotional states and respond to them.

As Sanford put it, “Your pet dogs are part of your family and they do feel feelings towards you. And if you are talking to them, they might not necessarily understand all the words that you’re saying, but they certainly understand the emotions behind them.”
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Brazilian researchers are developing an innovative process using pineapples to speed the healing process for skin wounds. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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Since 2011, a year when Kentucky was flooded with 371 million doses of opioid painkillers, state officials have cracked down on pain clinics, sued pharmaceutical companies and limited how many pills doctors can prescribe.

The result is nearly 100 million fewer opioid prescriptions in 2017 — and an 11.5 percent increase in drug overdose deaths.

That’s the sobering findings of a new report from the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy in a state on the front lines of the nation’s opioid epidemic. The report says 1,565 people died from drug overdoses in 2017, a 40 percent increase in the past five years.

Deaths attributed to prescription painkillers and heroin are declining. But other drugs have taken their place. Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid, accounted for more than half of all the deaths. And methamphetamine has made a comeback, accounting for 360 deaths. That’s a 57 percent increase in just one year.

“We are in a crisis state,” Republican Gov. Matt Bevin said. “While we are putting money at it and while we are drawing attention to it, until we start to truly address this and look at underlying causes of these things and what is leading to this it is not going to be addressed.”

​42,000 deaths in US in 2016 

Nationally, opioids accounted for more than 42,000 deaths in 2016. States with the highest rates of drug overdose deaths that year were West Virginia, Ohio, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania and Kentucky, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Every year, Kentucky lawmakers have been passing more laws designed to address the opioid problem. They have increased penalties for heroin dealers. They have diverted more money to drug treatment programs. And they limited patients to a three-day supply of prescription painkillers unless a doctor gives them written permission for a larger amount.

State officials spent $500,000 to create 1-833-8KY-HELP, a hotline to connect people with treatment options. And they have spent thousands of dollars giving first responders naloxone, medicine that can reverse an opioid overdose.

Medicaid expansion helped

Anti-drug advocates celebrate those changes, but their celebration is tempered once a year when the new numbers come out detailing how many more people have died.

“Most of the things we do we realize are not going to take that immediate effect,” said Van Ingram, executive director of the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy. “It just never gets any easier.”

Many anti-drug advocates have credited the Affordable Care Act with helping people get treatment. The law, known as Obamacare, expanded the Medicaid program to give more than 400,000 Kentuckians health coverage. Many used that coverage to get drug treatment.

Bevin wants to require people in Kentucky’s expanded Medicaid population to get a job, go to school or do volunteer work to keep their coverage. He also wants to charge them small monthly premiums to model private insurance plans.

Critics have said the result will be fewer people on Medicaid with fewer treatment options. But Bevin’s plan would exempt people with substance abuse disorder from complying with the new rules. Those rules were supposed to go into effect July 1, but were blocked by a federal judge.
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One girl between the ages of 15 and 19 is infected with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, every three minutes of every day, a United Nations report found.

The report, released Wednesday at the International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam, said teenage girls are bearing the brunt of the AIDS epidemic, largely due to gender inequality.

Henrietta Fore, head of the U.N. Children’s Fund (UNICEF), called it a “crisis of health.”

“In most countries, women and girls lack access to information, to services, or even just power to say no to unsafe sex,” she said. “HIV thrives among the most vulnerable and marginalized, leaving teenage girls at the center of the crisis.”

The report said while there was significant progress in the battle against AIDS in other age groups, it is notably lacking among adolescents.

While AIDS-related deaths among all other age groups have been falling since 2010, those among children aged 15 to 19 have seen no reduction.

In 2017, 1.2 million 15- to 19-year-olds were living with HIV, three in five of them were girls, according to UNICEF.

Actress and activist Charlize Theron addressed the issue in her speech at the conference.

The AIDS epidemic is “not just about sex or sexuality,” she said. It is also about “the second-class status of women and girls worldwide.”

The solution, according to Angelique Kidjo, a UNICEF goodwill ambassador who contributed to the report, is education and economic empowerment.

“We need to make girls and women secure enough economically that they don’t have to turn to sex work,” she said. “We need to make sure they have the right information about how HIV is transmitted and how to protect themselves.”
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Belgian doctors have euthanized three minors in the past two years, according to a report from the nation’s chief euthanasia regulatory body released earlier this month.

The report, produced by Belgium’s Federal Commission for Euthanasia Control and Evaluation, said these three minors were the first to be euthanized since the country’s parliament voted to lift age restrictions on euthanasia in the country, the first such law in the world. Euthanasia for adults has been legal in Belgium since 2002.

“There is no age for suffering,” said Professor Wim Distelmans, chairman of the euthanasia committee. “Fortunately, euthanasia among young people remains very exceptional. Even if it were only one, the law would have been very useful. ”

The minors were 9, 11 and 17 years old, according to the report. Their conditions ranged from muscular dystrophy to brain tumors to cystic fibrosis. The conditions of all three were determined to be terminal, and euthanasia was approved unanimously by the committee.

The report, part of a series released by the committee every two years, examined all euthanasia cases within Belgium from January 2016 to December 2017. The report said 4,337 euthanizations were administered in Belgium during that time. The majority of euthanizations — 2,781 — were for cancer patients. The second leading cause was “poly-pathologies,” ranging from dementia and heart disease to incontinence and hearing loss, with 710 euthanizations listing “poly-pathology” as its primary reason.

Euthanasia cases rising

Since euthanasia was first legalized in Belgium in 2002, the number of deaths from it have steadily increased every year. In 2016, the report found, the number of people who died via euthanasia was 2,028. In 2017, that number jumped to 2,309, nearly a 14 percent increase.

The Netherlands and Belgium are the only two countries in the world that permit the euthanasia of minors. The Netherlands, however, restricts euthanasia to minors above the age of 12.

The 2014 law stipulated that before euthanasia can be considered for a minor, he or she must be suffering from terminal illness, face “unbearable physical suffering” and repeatedly request to die.

“The law says adolescents cannot make important decisions on economic or emotional issues, but suddenly they’ve become able to decide that someone should make them die,” said Andre-Joseph Leonard, head of the Catholic Church in Belgium, following the passage of the 2014 law.

In 2017, a doctor resigned from Belgium’s euthanasia commission, alleging that the committee had euthanized a demented patient who had not formally requested to die. 
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Most pet owners are ready to share stories of how their pets have consoled or responded to them during a time of distress. Most were just cute pet stories, until now — as new research is showing that dogs actually feel empathy for others. Sadie Witkowski has more.
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In a new warning, the U.N.’s World Meteorological Organization said the world is becoming increasingly vulnerable to the impact of climate change. It said this phenomenon is due to many factors and is not occurring at the same rate or degree around the globe.

Parts of the world are feeling the strain of record-breaking heatwaves, drought, devastating floods and raging wildfires. They are having a widespread impact on human health, agriculture, ecosystems and infrastructure.

The World Meteorological Organization reports climate change is influencing this trend in varying degrees. The chief of the WMO’s World Weather Research Program, Paulo Ruti, said there is no discernible global pattern of climate change, but, its impact is increasingly visible in certain areas, such as the Arctic.

“We have seen wildfires in the Arctic,” he said. “So, there are favoring conditions related to the fact that climate change is acting. So, you are melting the Permafrost, you have much more vegetation that is available. Sometimes you have stronger winds. So, you have several factors.”

Another interesting factor, he said, is a discernible increase in storms and lightning, events which also can trigger fires in the Arctic. He said climate change in some places is happening faster than previously predicted.

“It depends on what is your target because if it is the Arctic, the answer is yes,” he told VOA. “So, you see an acceleration of the melting in the recent five, six years.”

WMO scientist Ruti notes this question needs to be put into context. He said what is happening in the Arctic regarding climate change would not apply to other global events, such as sand or dust storms.
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Scientists announced Wednesday they had discovered what appears to be a body of salty, liquid water beneath the surface of Mars, raising the possibility of detecting life on the Red Planet.

The reservoir, spanning about 20 kilometers in diameter under ice on the planet’s southern pole, was found through a radar instrument on the Mars Express Orbiter, which was launched in 2003.

Researchers previously discovered signs that water once flowed on Mars.

“It’s tempting to think that this is the first candidate place where life could persist [on Mars],” said Roberto Orosei, a professor with the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics. He led the research published in the journal Science. He also said Mars may contain hidden bodies of water that have yet to be discovered.

Orosei said the size of the reservoir “really qualifies this as a body of water,” like a lake, and not like “some kind of melt water filling some space between rock and ice.”

The scientists say the discovery gives them a roadmap to potentially finding life under the surface.

“We are not closer to actually detecting life,” said Dr. Manish Patel, an astrobiologist at Britain’s Open University, in comments published by the BBC. “What this finding does is give us the location of where to look on Mars. It is like a treasure map – except in this case, there will be lots of ‘X’s marking the spots.”

Mars is cold, barren and dry, but used to be warm and wet. The researchers say the water in the lake might have been kept from freezing due to a high concentration of salt. One scientist who was not involved with the study said microorganisms have been able to survive in similar conditions on Earth.

 
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Aggressively lowering blood pressure significantly reduced the risk of mild cognitive impairment and dementia among hypertension patients in a large government-backed clinical trial, U.S. researchers said on Wednesday.

The results, presented at the Alzheimer’s Association International Conference in Chicago, offer some of the first tangible steps individuals can take to reduce their risk for dementia, experts said.

The results come from a landmark 2015 trial dubbed SPRINT involving of more than 9,300 hypertension patients which showed significant cardiovascular benefits in people whose systolic blood pressure – the top number in a blood pressure reading – was lowered aggressively to below 120, compared to a higher target of under 140.

The Sprint MIND study looked specifically at the implications of aggressive blood pressure lowering on symptoms of dementia from any cause, and mild cognitive impairment, or MCI, a precursor to dementia.

It found that people whose blood pressure was lowered to below 120 had a 19 percent lower rate of new cases of mild cognitive impairment and a 15 percent reduction in MCI and dementia combined.

The takeaway of the study, said Dr. Keith Fargo, director of scientific and outreach programs at the Alzheimer’s Association, is “see your doctor and know your numbers,” and if individuals have hypertension, get it treated.

“Not only do we already know that it reduces the risk for death due to stroke and heart attacks but we now know it supports healthy brain aging,” he said in an interview.

Although the study showed effects on MCI and combined dementia plus MCI, it did not show an overall reduction in dementia alone, at least not yet.

Fargo said it takes longer for people to develop dementia, but as the study continues, he expects more people treated to the higher target of 140 will develop dementia.

“Since it’s too early, too few people have developed dementia,” he said.

The study looked at all causes of dementia, including Alzheimer’s, the most common form marked by clumps of amyloid in the brain, and vascular dementia, which is caused by blocked blood flow to the brain.

Fargo said the result most likely affects the impact of blood pressure lowering on vascular dementia but noted that many people with Alzheimer’s also have some degree of vascular disease, and reducing the total dementia risk could delay the onset of memory problems.

 
…

At least 15 officials at a Chinese drug manufacturer have been detained as part of an investigation that it produced false records involving its rabies vaccine.

The detained executives include the chair of Changsheng Biotechnology, which was ordered last week to stop production and recall the vaccine after the China Food and Drug Administration discovered it had been falsifying production and inspection records.

Premier Li Keqiang issued a statement Sunday denouncing Changsheng for crossing a moral line, and promised to “resolutely crack down” on any actions that endangers public safety.

There have no reports of injuries from the vaccine, but the news led to a wave of criticism on social media.

Changsheng Biotechnology was forced to stop production of a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis last year after regulators found the vaccine to be defective.

China has been working to restore confidence in its food and drug industries, both at home and abroad, after a series of scandals over the last decade over shoddy and tainted products, the most notorious in 2008, when 300,000 children were sickened when they were given milk powder contaminated with the chemical melamine. Six of the children died.

 
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African and South Asian nations could miss national targets to curb greenhouse gas emissions unless rich countries stop using them as dumping grounds for millions of polluting old cars, a study has warned.

The report by the Center for Science and Environment (CSE) said the United States, Japan and European Union countries had for years been exporting old, used cars — or clunkers — to nations such as Nigeria and Bangladesh.

The secondhand vehicles, which should have been scrapped under domestic regulations, are instead being used by poorer nations where they are contributing to carbon emissions, said CSE, a New Delhi think tank.

Weak environmental regulations in poorer economies and stronger emissions regulations in exporting countries are among the factors “inciting this unregulated global trade in clunkers,” Anumita Roychowdhury of CSE said this week.

“If this continues unchecked, without the exporting countries sharing the responsibility of addressing this problem, the poorer countries will not be able to meet their clean air and climate mitigation goals,” she said during a news conference on Facebook Live.

There are about 2 billion vehicles globally, of which 2 percent, or 40 million, are deemed unworthy for road use in developed nations annually, according to the report.

Many of them end up in countries such as Kenya, Nigeria and Ethiopia. Ninety percent of Nigeria’s 3.5 million cars are imported secondhand vehicles, according to data from the management consultancy firm Deloitte.

​Growing source of pollution

These old, poorly maintained and often malfunctioning vehicles become energy guzzlers and emit high levels of heat-trapping gases, CSE said.

Even though the level of emissions in less developed nations is lower than the world average, clunkers are a rapidly rising source of pollution, added the report. If left uncontrolled, clunkers could jeopardize climate goals set by poorer nations on reducing greenhouse gas emissions as part of an international pact to slow down global warming.

The cars are also contributing to high levels of air pollution in cities like Dhaka and Lagos, increasing the risk of lung diseases, respiratory illnesses and cancer, it added.

Car manufacturers should be responsible for taking back the vehicles, recycling or disposing of them, while authorities in higher-income countries should put in place export regulations.

Strong exit rules are needed to verify, inspect, certify and codify vehicles before export, and all vehicles with compromised emissions and safety features need to be barred from export, the study said.

Many lower-income nations are taking steps to control the sector — from reducing their dependency on used-car imports by promoting their own automobile manufacturing sector to raising import duties on big, fuel-guzzling vehicles.

But experts from the U.N. Environment Program (UNEP) said many lower-income countries still lack a comprehensive set of policies to keep a check on imported clunkers.

“Our observation is that countries that lack policies and incentives to attract cleaner vehicles are importing inefficient vehicles that emit greenhouse gases above the global averages,” said Jane Akumu from UNEP’s Air Quality and Mobility Unit.
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New research shows more promise for using AIDS treatment drugs as a prevention tool, to help keep uninfected people from catching HIV during sex with a partner who has the virus.

There were no infections among gay men who used a two-drug combo pill either daily or just before and after sex with someone with HIV, one study found. In a second study, no uninfected men caught the virus if they had sex only with a partner whose HIV was well suppressed by medicines.

Both studies were discussed Tuesday at the International AIDS conference in Amsterdam.

The United States’ top AIDS scientist, Dr. Anthony Fauci, called the results “very impressive” and “really striking.”

About 36 million people worldwide have HIV and 1.8 million new infections occur each year, said Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

“The only way you’re going to end the epidemic is by preventing additional cases of transmission,” he said. The treatment drugs are “tools that, if widely implemented, theoretically could end the epidemic.”

Expanding access to them is not only humanitarian but also smart policy, Fauci added.

“You get a twofer: You save the life of the person who’s infected … and you’re making it virtually impossible for that person to transmit that infection to their sexual partner.”

Until there’s a vaccine, condoms are the best way to prevent HIV infection, but not everyone uses them or does so all the time, so other options are needed. 

A two-drug combo used to treat people with HIV, sold as Truvada by Gilead Sciences and in generic form in some countries, has been shown to help prevent infection when one partner has the virus and one does not, but the evidence so far has been strongest for male-female couples.

Preventive pills

A new study was designed as a real-world test in about 1,600 gay men in the Paris region who were at high risk of getting HIV because of many sex partners, reluctance to use condoms or other reasons. They were offered the preventive pills either for daily use, as is recommended in the United States, or “on demand” — before and after unprotected sex. A little more than half chose on demand, and have been tested every three months to see if they had caught HIV.

“Since we started a year ago, we have not seen a single infection,” said the study leader, Dr. Jean-Michel Molina of Saint Louis Hospital in Paris. “On-demand seems to be at least as effective as daily when it’s used in real life.”

No one stopped using the drugs because of side effects.

“Now we can have just as much confidence in the power of treatment as prevention for gay male couples as we have had for heterosexual couples,” said Dr. Linda-Gail Bekker, AIDS conference chief and deputy director of the Desmond Tutu HIV Center at the University of Cape Town in South Africa.

Suppressing HIV

The second study tested a different approach — keeping an infected partner’s virus severely suppressed with HIV medicines, which is known to greatly reduce the risk of spreading it.

Dr. Alison Rodger of University College London led a study of 779 gay male couples in 14 European countries where one partner was uninfected and the other was taking drugs to suppress HIV. They were tested every six to 12 months to see if the infected partner still had the virus under control, and whether the other partner had caught it.

After a median of 18 months, none of the infected men spread HIV to their partner, despite about 75,000 sex acts without condoms. There were 17 new HIV infections among men who were uninfected when the study started; tests showed those infections were from sex with someone other than the partner in the study.
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Now’s the time to catch Mars in the night sky.

 

Next week, the red planet is making its closest approach to Earth in 15 years.

 

The two planets will be just 35.8 million miles (57.6 million kilometers) apart next Tuesday. And on Friday, Mars will be in opposition. That means Mars and the sun will be on exact opposite sides of Earth. That same day, parts of the world will see a total lunar eclipse.

 

Mars is already brighter than usual and will shine even more — and appear bigger — as Tuesday nears. Astronomers expect good viewing through early August.

 

A massive dust storm presently engulfing Mars, however, is obscuring surface details normally visible through telescopes. The Martian atmosphere is so full of dust that NASA’s Opportunity rover can’t recharge — not enough sunlight can reach its solar panels — and so it’s been silent since June 10. Flight controllers don’t expect to hear from 14-year-old Opportunity until the storm subsides, and maybe not even then.

 

The good news about all the Martian dust is that it reflects sunlight, which makes for an even brighter red planet, said Widener University astronomer Harry Augensen.

 

“It’s magnificent. It’s as bright as an airplane landing light,” Augensen said. “Not quite as bright as Venus, but still because of the reddish, orange-ish-red color, you really can’t miss it in the sky.”

 

In 2003, Mars and Earth were the closest in nearly 60,000 years — 34.6 million miles (55.7 million kilometers). NASA said that won’t happen again until 2287. The next close approach, meanwhile, in 2020, will be 38.6 million miles (62 million kilometers), according to NASA.

 

Observatories across the U.S. are hosting Mars-viewing events next week. Los Angeles’ Griffith Observatory will provide a live online view of Mars early Tuesday.

 

The total lunar eclipse on Friday will be visible in Australia, Africa, Asia, Europe and South America. A total lunar eclipse occurs when the sun, Earth and moon line up perfectly, casting Earth’s shadow on the moon. Friday’s will be long, lasting 1 hour and 43 minutes.
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Britain’s Prince Harry joined pop star Elton John on Tuesday to launch a campaign to raise HIV awareness among men, warning that “dangerous complacency” about the virus threatened the quest to wipe it out.

The billion-dollar project “MenStar” will target men living with or at risk of HIV in sub-Saharan Africa, which has been ravaged by AIDS since the 1980s.

“The MenStar coalition is bravely tackling the root cause of this problem — the lack of awareness of HIV prevention amongst hard-to-reach young men,” Harry said at the 22nd International AIDS Conference in Amsterdam.

Speaking at the launch, which also featured South African actress Charlize Theron and Ndaba Mandela, the grandson of late President Nelson Mandela, Elton John said: “If we want to end AIDS once and for all, we must make men part of the solution.”

Around 36.7 million people around the world have HIV, according to 2016 figures cited by the United Nations’ HIV/AIDS body UNAIDS. Fewer than half of men living with HIV receive treatment compared with 60 percent of women, it said.

“It is time there was a global coalition to teach men to protect themselves. And in doing so, it will teach them to better protect not only their wives and girlfriends, their sisters and daughters, but also, critically, their brothers and their sons,” the British singer said.

UNAIDS said this month that the fight against HIV/AIDS was “slipping off track” and while deaths were falling and treatment rates rising, rates of new HIV infections threatened to derail efforts to defeat the disease.

Prince Harry said the campaign launch came at “a time when new energetic and innovative solutions are needed more than ever before.”

“MenStar” is supported by the U.S. government’s PEPSTAR program and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Experts at the conference hope for the elimination of AIDS worldwide by 2030, but the United Nations warned last Wednesday of a funding gap of £4.6 billion that threatens efforts.
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On a recent weekday afternoon in Ho Chi Minh City, the passengers bouncing along on one of the city’s green buses breathed in mouthfuls of carbon monoxide, hydrogen cyanide and other chemicals that add to Vietnam’s notorious pollution.

The toxic smoke did not come from the bus itself, but from the man driving it — one hand supporting the wheel, the other holding a cigarette.

Vietnam bans smoking on public transit, but that does not stop some of the bus drivers from lighting up on a daily basis. Amid this loose compliance and enforcement of tobacco rules, as well as an increase in overall smoking in the country, the government is looking at another policy option: taxes.

The Ministry of Health has recommended tacking on a levy of 2,000 Vietnam dong (9 cents) to each pack of cigarettes.

Cheap cigarettes

While incomes in Vietnam have gone up in recent years, cigarette prices have been slower to rise, making the tobacco product relatively more affordable than before. For example, per capita income jumped 370 percent in 2005 and 2006, but cigarettes cost just 120 percent more in that period, the government’s Vietnam News Agency reported.

Supporters of higher tobacco taxes say that’s why the Southeast Asian country must do more to help people kick the habit.

“To quit smoking is not easy,” Luong Ngoc Khue, director of the Tobacco Control Fund at the health ministry, said on national broadcaster VTV. “However, sanctions in Vietnam have not reached the level hoped. In other countries, there are strict penalties. But in Vietnam, enforcement is difficult, even though we have the laws.”

Restaurants, bars and clubs are a case in point.

Authorities prohibit smoking in these and other public places, but business owners continue to provide ashtrays to customers.

40,000 deaths

This flouting of the law contributes to the 40,000 tobacco-linked deaths that Vietnam sees each year, the World Health Organization estimates.

A single pack can cost about 10 times less in Vietnam than it does in nearby Singapore.

The defiance of the law underscores how hard it has been for Hanoi to curb the country’s nicotine addiction. The government has tried other ways to influence public behavior, including a ban on tobacco sales to those under 18 years of age; no sales near hospitals and schools; not allowing industry advertising; and the introduction of graphic health warnings on labels.

There have even been groups of young campaigners donning blue shirts and biking through the Vietnamese streets to raise awareness, a common form of public service announcements in the country.

‘Tobacco breaks hearts’

Worldwide, nearly a third of deaths stemming from heart problems are connected to smoking, the WHO said.

“In Vietnam and other places, many people might be aware that smoking can harm their health, particularly associating smoking with lung cancer and respiratory diseases. Many smokers and nonsmokers alike, however, still lack awareness of the impact of smoking on heart health,” said Kidong Park, the WHO representative in Vietnam, explaining why the agency chose the “Tobacco Breaks Hearts” theme for this year’s anti-smoking efforts.

The WHO also warned that tobacco hurts economies through the cost to public health and lost workforce productivity.

TPP and tobacco

If nothing changes, Vietnam could see an increase in smoking.

Vietnam is one of 11 countries that remained in the Trans-Pacific Partnership after President Donald Trump withdrew the U.S. from the trade deal in 2017. The World Bank said in a 92-page report in March that the tobacco industry will be one of the big beneficiaries of TPP tariff reductions, along with the food, beverage and agriculture sectors.

While the U.S. is not in the TPP, it is still benefiting from trade growth. The U.S. exported $10 million worth of tobacco to Vietnam in 2016, an increase of more than 250 percent compared with shipments in 2012, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

Last year, the Southeast Asia Tobacco Control Alliance criticized the U.S. embassy in Hanoi for including the Philip Morris tobacco company in a trade mission with the Vietnamese prime minister.

“It is unfortunate that although the U.S. is only one of two countries in the world [Britain is the other country] that has good laws to prohibit their diplomatic missions from being used to promote tobacco, a tobacco company can still meet with a country’s top leadership through an event promoted by the U.S. embassy,” SEATCA said.
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The eruption of Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano could last for months or years and threaten new communities on the Big Island, according to a report by U.S. government geologists.

A main risk is a possible change in the direction of a lava flow that would destroy more residential areas after at least 712 homes were torched and thousands of residents forced to evacuate since Kilauea began erupting on May 3, the report by the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said.

A higher volume of molten rock is flowing underground from Kilauea’s summit lava reservoir than in previous eruptions, with supply to a single giant crack — fissure 8 — showing no sign of waning, according to the study published last week.

“If the ongoing eruption maintains its current style of activity at a high eruption rate, then it may take months to a year or two to wind down,” said the report designed to help authorities on the Big Island deal with potential risks from the volcano.

Lava is bursting from same area about 25 miles (40 km) down Kilauea’s eastern side as it did in eruptions of 1840, 1955 and 1960, the report said. The longest of those eruptions was in 1955. It lasted 88 days, separated by pauses in activity.

The current eruption could become the longest in the volcano’s recorded history, it added.

Geologists believe previous eruptions may have stopped as underground lava pressure dropped due to multiple fissures opening up in this Lower East Rift Zone, the report said.

The current eruption has coalesced around a single fissure, allowing lava pressure to remain high.

A 1,300-foot-wide (400-meter) lava river now flows to the ocean from this “source cone” through an elevated channel about 52 to 72 feet (16 to 22 meters) above ground.

“The main hazard from the source cone and the channel system is a failure of the cone or channel walls, or blockage of the channel where it divides in narrower braids. Either could divert most, if not all, of the lava to a new course depending on where the breach occurs,” the report said.

The report said it only considered risks from a change in lava flow direction to communities to the north of the channel as residents there have not been evacuated, whereas residents to the south have already left their homes.
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An international team of scientists has moved closer to creating artificial embryos after using mouse stem cells to make structures capable of taking a crucial step in the development of life.

Experts said the results suggested human embryos could be created in a similar way in future — a step that would allow scientists to use artificial embryos rather than real ones to research the very earliest stages of human development.

The team, led by Magdalena Zernicka-Goetz, a professor at Britain’s Cambridge University, had previously created a simpler structure resembling a mouse embryo in a lab dish. That work involved two types of stem cells and a three-dimensional scaffold on which they could grow.

But in new work published Monday in the journal Nature Cell Biology, the scientists developed the structures further — using three types of stem cells — enabling a process called gastrulation, an essential step in which embryonic cells begin self-organizing into a correct structure for an embryo to form.

“Our artificial embryos underwent the most important event in life in the culture dish,” Zernicka-Goetz said in a statement about the work. “They are now extremely close to real embryos.”

She said the team should now be better able to understand how the three stem cell types interact to enable embryo development. And by experimentally altering biological pathways in one cell type, they should be able to see how this affects the behavior of the other cell types.

“The early stages of embryo development are when a large proportion of pregnancies are lost and yet it is a stage that we know very little about,” said Zernicka-Goetz.

“Now we have a way of simulating embryonic development in the culture dish, so it should be possible to understand exactly what is going on during this remarkable period in an embryo’s life, and why sometimes this process fails.”

Christophe Galichet, a senior research scientist at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute who was not directly involved in this work, agreed that the results held promise.

“While [this study] did not use human stem cells, it is not too far-fetched to think the technique could one day be applied to studying early human embryos,” he said in an emailed comment. “These self-assembled human embryos would be an invaluable tool to understand early human development.”
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Scientists say the longest total lunar eclipse of this century will grace the night sky on Friday, turning the moon a reddish color.

NASA says the lunar eclipse will last for 1 hour and 43 minutes with total viability in Eastern Africa and Central Asia. Residents in most of the world will be able to see at least a partial eclipse. However, it won’t be visible from North America.

Scientists say that in the United States the period of totality will start around 4:21 p.m. Eastern time, making it too light outside to see the red moon.

During a lunar eclipse, the moon appears to be red because it lines up perfectly with the Earth and sun such that the Earth’s shadow totally blocks the sun’s light. The moon loses the brightness normally caused by the reflection of the sun’s light and takes on an eerie, reddish glow, giving the lunar eclipse moon the nickname of blood moon.

Scientists say the reason this Friday’s lunar eclipse is especially long is because the moon is passing almost directly through the central part of Earth’s shadow. To compare, it falls just 4 minutes shy of the longest possible time a lunar eclipse could last.

For those who aren’t able to see the lunar eclipse this month, July has another treat in store for skygazers when Mars makes a close approach to Earth. Mars will appear about 10 times brighter than usual the last few days of the month, with peak brightness occurring on July 31.

Everyone in the world will have the possibility to see this celestial phenomenon, providing the skies are clear.
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The use of packaging plastic continues to rise as the world’s population grows. Environmentalists say compostable and biodegradable packaging is needed now more than ever, particularly when it comes to plastics used to protect our food.  But now, a biodegradable film made from discarded shellfish and trees may fill that need. It’s being developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Lead researcher Carson Meredith is interested in exploring alternatives to crude-oil-based plastics now being used. “Probably about eight years ago, we got involved in what’s referred to as forest-based nanotechnology,” he told VOA news.  This is an emerging area “looking at using wood and other plant resources to extract high performance nano-crystalline materials made out of cellulose and using those in creating light-weight, high strength materials.”

Wood, clamshells, lobsters

What that means, is that the same cellulose fibers found in woody plants used to make paper can also be used to replace plastic packaging material. Meredith’s group found that by combining the plant cellulose with chitin, the hard material that makes up clamshells and the exoskeleton of lobsters, they could create a biodegradable coating.

At the molecular level, chitin and cellulose are oppositely charged — meaning they are attracted to each other. The Georgia Tech scientists used this property when they sprayed very thin, alternating layers of the two materials onto a base. 

“In this case, we chose to use polylactic acid, or PLA, which is also derived from natural materials and is biodegradable,” said Meredith. PLA is a plastic made from renewable sources such as corn starch or sugarcane. It can be a clear film like cellophane or shaped into disposable tableware.

Plastics without crude oil

There is a common misconception that all plastics are made using crude oil. Susan Selke, who directs the Center for Packing Innovation and Sustainability, explained that technically, the term plastic refers to “a long-chain carbon-based structure that is capable of being shaped through an application of heat and pressure.” She continued, “PLA itself is classified as a compostable plastic. So if you put it into a municipal composting program that’s organized to get to the elevated temperatures with lots of moisture, then what happens is that the PLA hydrolyzes. And once it’s hydrolyzed, then it can biodegrade.”

So in the case of the new plastic film, Meredith and his co-authors used a clear flexible PLA base and applied alternating layers of chitin and cellulose nano-fibers that dry into a thin, but durable clear plastic like that used most commonly in grocery stores.

Meredith notes his research shows that the chitin and cellulose “perform much better as two or three thin layers, than they would as independent materials of equivalent thickness.”

The new material is exceptionally good at keeping oxygen out, which would make it useful for food packaging. Meredith says they haven’t formally tested it as a food packing material, but one of the attractions is that this would be a compostable packaging material that would be completely biodegradable.

Green alternative

Moving forward, Meredith hopes to see the new material put to use as a green alternative, although challenges remain. “I think the major challenge for commercializing this would be having a scalable supply chain of raw materials. Right now that largely doesn’t exist,”he told VOA. 

Selke agrees, wondering how cost-effective the material might be. “It’s going to have to compete with other kinds of materials that are designed to do the same kind of thing in improving the barrier.”

Although future obstacles remain, the new material has two key benefits. The plastic itself is completely composed of bio-materials, and is compostable, meaning it can break down without the harmful pollution associated with fossil fuel-based plastics.
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Chinese Premier Li Keqiang has called for an investigation of a domestic drug manufacturer accused of violating regulations in making a rabies vaccine.

Changsheng Biotechnology has been ordered to stop production and recall the vaccine after the China Food and Drug Administration discovered it had been falsifying production and inspection records.

Premier Li issued a statement Sunday denouncing Changsheng for crossing a moral line, and promised to “resolutely crack down” on any actions that endangers public safety.

There have no reports of injuries from the vaccine, but the news led to a wave of criticism on social media.

Changsheng Biotechnology was forced to stop production of a vaccine for diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis last year after regulators found the vaccine to be defective.

China has been working to restore confidence in its food and drug industries, both at home and abroad, after a series of scandals over the last decade over shoddy and tainted products, the most notorious in 2008, when 300,000 children were sickened when they were given milk powder contaminated with the chemical melamine. Six of the children died.
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Too few people with signs of mental decline or dementia are getting checked during routine medical visits or told when a problem is found, says a panel of Alzheimer’s disease experts who offered new guidance Sunday.

The idea is to get help sooner for people whose minds are slipping — even if there’s no cure.

Though mental decline can be an uncomfortable topic for patients and their doctors, the panel says family physicians should do a thorough evaluation when concerning symptoms arise and share the diagnosis candidly.

Patients and family members should push for an evaluation if they’re worried that symptoms might not be normal aging – the difference between occasionally misplacing keys versus putting them in the freezer or being confused about their function.

“By the time you forget what the keys are for, you’re too far gone to participate in your own care. We’ve lost probably a decade” that could have been spent planning, said the panel’s leader, Dr. Alireza Atri, a neurologist at Banner Sun Health Research Institute in Arizona.  

It’s not just memory that can suffer when mental decline starts, Atri said.

“It’s actually people’s judgment being off, their character and personality being off,” sometimes years before dementia is diagnosed, he said.

The need

About 50 million people worldwide have dementia; Alzheimer’s is the most common form. In the United States, nearly 6 million have Alzheimer’s and almost 12 million have mild cognitive impairment, a frequent precursor.

In 2015, Alzheimer’s Association research using Medicare records suggested that only about half of people who were being treated for Alzheimer’s had been told by their health care provider that they had been diagnosed with the disease.

“All too often, physicians will hear of some symptoms or memory complaints from patients or their spouse and say, `you know, you seem OK to me today,”‘ so check back in six months, said James Hendrix, an Alzheimer’s Association science specialist who worked with the panel. Meantime, the patient may end up hospitalized for problems such as forgetting to take a diabetes medicine because their mental impairment wasn’t caught.

“We hear stories all the time of people taking years to get an accurate diagnosis,” said Nina Silverberg, a psychologist who runs Alzheimer’s programs at the National Institute on Aging, which had no role in the guidelines.

Medicare recently started covering mental assessments as part of the annual wellness visit, but doctors aren’t required to do it and there was no guidance on how to do it, she said. In some cases, it might be as cursory as asking “how’s your memory?”

The panel was appointed by the Alzheimer’s Association and included primary care doctors, aging specialists, nurses and a psychiatrist. Broad guidelines were released on Sunday at the group’s international conference in Chicago; details will be published later this year.

The guidelines do not recommend screening everyone. They outline what health workers should do if people describe worrisome symptoms. That includes: checking for risk factors that may contribute to dementia or other brain diseases, including family history, heart disease and head injuries; pen-and-pencil memory tests; imaging tests to detect small strokes or brain injuries that could be causing memory problems.

Tough topic

Dr. Michael Sitorius, family medicine chairman at the University of Nebraska Medical Center, said dealing with mental decline adds to the challenge of caring for often frail elderly patients.

It’s a tough diagnosis to make for many doctors, he said, because medical training focuses on “trying to cure people and Alzheimer’s and dementia are not curable.”

He said he gives his older patients mental tests at their annual checkups — but that sometimes patients or loved ones don’t want to hear the results. In those cases, Sitorius still addresses related issues including depression, safeguarding medication, nutrition and whether patients should continue driving.

He said the new guidelines are a welcome reminder for family doctors to tackle these issues earlier.

“Clearly … we could do better,” he said.

A diagnosis should never be withheld out of fear of making the patient depressed, Atri said.

“We strongly encourage a full disclosure,” including diagnosis, stage and prognosis, he said.

Patient’s story

At her daughter’s urging, Anne Hunt visited her family doctor in 2011 because of increasing forgetfulness. Hunt, 81, who once ran a Chicago cooking school, recalls struggling with memory tests involving letters and numbers that her doctor had her perform.

“I thought, `OK, this is it, I’m a vegetable,”‘ Hunt said. But the test results were inconclusive and there was no diagnosis.

“We didn’t do much about it,” said Bruce Hunt, Anne’s husband, until five years later, when her behavior was clearly worsening — more memory lapses, repeating herself and forgetting where to put things.

She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after an imaging test showed brain changes often seen with the disease. Imaging tests are sometimes used along with mental tests to diagnose the disease or rule out other conditions.

Is it good to know?

“There’s no pill they can take to make it go away, so some people think there’s no point to getting a diagnosis,” but that’s not true, the National Institute of Aging’s Silverberg said. “It really does offer an opportunity to plan.”

Alzheimer’s medicines such as Aricept and Namenda can ease symptoms but aren’t a cure.

Experts say other benefits include a chance to join experiments testing treatments, resolve finances, find caregivers, make homes safer and use memory aids and calendars to promote independent living.

The Hunts joined support groups and a singing ensemble, hoping that trying new things would help them both cope. They were better prepared than some. Long before her diagnosis, they converted a vintage Chicago apartment building into two spacious homes so they could “age in place” with help from one of their daughters and her family.

Anne Hunt said she had wanted to know the truth about her diagnosis.

“Not to know is to wonder why things are happening to you and you don’t understand them,” she said. “I would rather know and have somebody help me figure out how can I control this to the best of my ability.”

 

 
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