Thousands of megawatts of wind and solar energy contracts in the Mekong region of Southeast Asia have been signed, seriously challenging the financial viability of major hydropower projects on the river, an energy expert told a water conference last week.

Buoyed by a recent Thai government decision to delay a power purchase deal with a major mainstream Mekong dam, clean-energy proponents and economists told the third Mekong River Commission summit that the regional energy market was on the cusp of a technological revolution.

Brian Eyler, director of the Southeast Asia Program at the Stimson Center, a nonprofit in Washington dedicated to enhancing global peace and security, said 6,000 megawatts’ worth of wind and solar contracts had been signed in Cambodia, Vietnam, Thailand and Laos in the last six months.

He said that in January 2017, he and his colleagues had suggested that more solar and wind energy projects be incorporated into Cambodia’s power development plan, the prospect of which had been “basically off the table” at the time. “In a year’s time, Cambodia has entirely restructured its energy sector” to emphasize solar projects in the country, “and if Cambodia’s doing it, you can bet that the other countries are doing it as well.”

Two gigawatts of wind and solar projects were announced in Vietnam in February and March alone according to a spreadsheet provided by the Stimson Center.

Hyunjung Lee, senior energy economist at the Asian Development Bank’s Southeast Asia Energy Division, said technologies such as wind and solar power were “going to hit the region very significantly, in my view.”

“The atmosphere in the region has been changed,” she said, even in just the past year. “We see a lot of development can happen in solar and wind in the region,” though more integrated approaches were needed.

Lee said the ADB was working to set up a Regional Power Coordination Center that would mimic a highly successful project in southern Africa to create an efficient, integrated regional market.

Impact on river system

A six-year Mekong River Commission Council study on development plans for the Mekong, which was the focus of the summit, suggested catastrophic impacts upon the health of the river system if all planned hydropower dams — 11 mainstream projects and more than 100 on tributaries — were built.

In a January report, the International Renewable Energy Agency found that the cost of electricity generated by solar facilities that supply utilities had fallen by 73 percent from 2010 to 2017, and the cost was forecast to be cut in half again by 2020. 

At that price trajectory, the cost of solar power would fall below that of hydropower by 2020, long before many planned Mekong dams go online.

Global solar capacity grew 32 percent, adding 94 gigawatts in 2017, while renewables across the board increased by 8.3 percent, the IREA survey of 15,000 data points found. Renewables and solar grew faster in Asia than anywhere else in the world, while the amount of hydropower commissioned across the globe was the lowest in a decade.

Wang Wenling, an assistant professor at Yunnan University’s Institute of International Rivers and Eco-Security, said she had just seen firsthand how far the price of solar technology had plummeted on a recent trip to North Carolina in the United States.

“I was super surprised how their solar power production cost per unit is actually cheaper than hydropower. I don’t know how they make it — it’s almost impossible for me — but their cost is only about 15 percent of the cost in China,” she said.

“So I think we have a lot of alternatives and it needs to be considered,” she said.

Some participants, particularly from Laos and Cambodia, remained skeptical of the technology.

“I think we need some more figures,” said a Cambodian member of the audience, raising concerns about stability. “We also think about some figure for the comparison between the occupation of the land of hydropower with solar energy.”

Attractive idea for Cambodia

Jake Brunner, program coordinator for the International Union for Conservation of Nature, said the figures for solar were particularly attractive in Cambodia, where land remained relatively cheap, while energy demand was high in neighboring southern Vietnam.

“We calculated that if you took one 10,000-hectare economic land concession in Cambodia, for example, and you made some very conservative assumptions, you could generate about 3 gigawatts, which is pretty close to Cambodia’s entire national consumption,” he said.

Land is a particularly sensitive issue in Cambodia, where rights group Licadho says more than half a million people have been affected by land conflicts.

Gregory Thomas, executive director of the Natural Heritage Institute, told the summit his organization had researched a solar photo-voltaic alternative for Cambodia that didn’t require any land at all.

Instead of building the massive planned Sambor dam on the Mekong, a “no dam alternative” study commissioned by the Cambodian government had recommended placing solar cells on the existing reservoir of the Lower Sesan II dam in Stung Treng.

“The advantage of integrating solar arrays on a hydropower reservoir that already exists is that you can use the unoccupied space on the reservoir without any land use conflicts whatsoever,” he said. “And, of course, the reservoir storage acts as a battery, essentially, to backstop the intermittent nature of the solar generation.”

Such a project could be cost-competitive and go online much more quickly than a hydropower dam, with 100 megwatts deployable in year, he said.

Floating solar projects are being developed around the world, including in China, where an enormous 150-megawatt installation on a lake that used to be a deserted coal mine is expected to go online in May, powering 15,000 homes.
…

Doctors are increasingly optimistic that new advances in gene therapy will change the outlook for patients living with ALS and other Motor Neuron Diseases. Neurodegenerative disorders selectively affect cells that control the body’s voluntary muscles, leading to difficulty speaking, walking, swallowing and moving. As VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports, researchers have now identified the faulty gene which may cause the condition in some people with a family history of the disease.
…

The world’s rivers and fresh water systems are full of pollution from prescription and over-the-counter drugs and it is taking a toll on the environment and wildlife, experts say.

Scientists meeting Tuesday in Vienna said if no action is taken, the problem will increase by 65 percent by 2050.

The drugs include painkillers, hormones, anti-depressants and antihistamines.

Much of it ends up in the waters through human and animal waste because only small amounts are filtered out in treatment plants or absorbed into the ecosystem.

The drugs have caused sex charges in fish and amphibians and one type of anti-inflammatory drug has driven vultures in India close to extinction.

U.N. experts have also said medicines in the environment are helping create drug-resistant bacteria.

Some experts say that technology is not enough to tackle the problem and that a substantial reduction on a dependence on drugs is also needed.
…

A large study offers more evidence of a link between traumatic brain injuries and dementia later in life, with repeated injuries and severe ones posing the greatest danger.

Researchers analyzed 36 years of health records of 2.8 million people in Denmark, where a national health system makes it possible to explore connections in a far-reaching way.

Overall, the risk was small. About 95 percent of people who suffered a brain injury never developed dementia.

But a single severe brain injury increased the risk of later dementia by 35 percent compared with a person who never had brain trauma. A mild brain injury increased the risk by 17 percent. Each additional brain injury added to the danger.

Overall, the risk of dementia was 24 percent higher for people with a traumatic brain injury compared with people without one. The study was published Tuesday in the journal Lancet Psychiatry. A study of 3.3 million people in Sweden earlier this year showed similar results.

Despite the size of the studies, they won’t settle scientific questions – or social debate – about brain injuries from sports, war, car crashes or domestic violence.

Scientists know that a blow to the head can damage brain cells, but they don’t know exactly how that might lead to later cognitive problems, said lead researcher Dr. Jesse Fann of University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle.

This kind of study can’t prove a cause-and-effect relationship, but researchers tried to eliminate the possible effect of age, gender, marital status and health, including depression. And they looked at other types of trauma, such as broken bones, and found that brain injuries were more closely tied to dementia.

In a commentary in the journal, Dr. Carol Brayne of University of Cambridge’s medical school in England wrote that improvements in care mean more people are surviving brain injuries, making it crucial to understand more about their long-term effects.
…

Government and other scientists are proposing a new way to define Alzheimer’s disease basing it on biological signs, such as brain changes, rather than memory loss and other symptoms of dementia that are used today.

The move is aimed at improving research, by using more objective criteria like brain scans to pick patients for studies and enroll them sooner in the course of their illness, when treatments may have more chance to help.

But it’s too soon to use these scans and other tests in routine care, because they haven’t been validated for that yet, experts stress. For now, doctors will still rely on the tools they’ve long used to evaluate thinking skills to diagnose most cases.

Regardless of what tests are used to make the diagnosis, the new definition will have a startling effect: Many more people will be considered to have Alzheimer’s, because the biological signs can show up 15 to 20 years before symptoms do.

“The numbers will increase dramatically,” said Dr. Clifford R. Jack Jr., a Mayo Clinic brain imaging specialist. “There are a lot more cognitively normal people who have the pathology in the brain who will now be counted as having Alzheimer’s disease.”

He led a panel of experts, working with the Alzheimer’s Association and the National Institute on Aging, that updated guidelines on the disease, published Tuesday in Alzheimer’s & Dementia: The Journal of the Alzheimer’s Association. 

About Alzheimer’s

About 50 million people worldwide have dementia, and Alzheimer’s is the most common form. In the U.S., about 5.7 million have Alzheimer’s under its current definition, which is based on memory problems and other symptoms. About one-third of people over 70 who show no thinking problems actually have brain signs that suggest Alzheimer’s, Jack said.

There is no cure – current medicines such as Aricept and Namenda just temporarily ease symptoms. Dozens of hoped-for treatments have failed, and doctors think one reason may be that the studies enrolled patients after too much brain damage had already occurred.

“By the time that you have the diagnosis of the disease, it’s very late,” said Dr. Eliezer Masliah, neuroscience chief at the Institute on Aging.

“What we’ve realized is that you have to go earlier and earlier and earlier,” just as doctors found with treating cancer, he said.

Another problem: as many as 30 percent of people enrolled in Alzheimer’s studies based on symptoms didn’t actually have the disease – they had other forms of dementia or even other medical conditions. That doesn’t give an accurate picture of whether a potential treatment might help, and the new definition aims to improve patient selection by using brain scans and other tests. 

Better tests

Many other diseases, such as diabetes, already are defined by measuring a biomarker, an objective indicator such as blood sugar. That wasn’t possible for Alzheimer’s disease until a few years ago, when brain scans and spinal fluid tests were developed to do this.

They measure certain forms of two proteins – amyloid and tau – that form plaques and tangles in the brain – and signs of nerve injury, degeneration and brain shrinkage.

The guidelines spell out use of these biomarkers over a spectrum of mental decline, starting with early brain changes, through mild impairment and Alzheimer’s dementia.

What to do?

People may be worried and want these tests for themselves or a family member now, but Jack advises: “Don’t bother. There’s no proven treatment yet.” 

You might find a doctor willing to order them, but spinal fluid tests are somewhat invasive, and brain scans can cost up to $6,000. Insurance usually does not pay because they’re considered experimental outside of research. A large study is underway now to see whether Medicare should cover them and when.

Anyone with symptoms or family history of dementia, or even healthy people concerned about the risk can consider enrolling in one of the many studies underway.

“We need more people in this pre-symptomatic stage” to see if treatments can help stave off decline, Masliah said. 
…

Landfills around the world are getting overloaded with waste, much of it hazardous and slow to decompose. As it becomes increasingly difficult to find new places for discarded unwanted items, people around the world are looking for ways to re-use as much stuff as possible before throwing it away. Designers are embracing the trend and are increasingly using recycled materials in their new creations.
…

A jawbone fossil found on a rocky English beach belongs to one of the biggest marine animals on record, a type of seagoing reptile called an ichthyosaur that scientists estimated at up to 85 feet (26 meters) long – approaching the size of a blue whale.

Scientists said on Monday this ichthyosaur, which appears to be the largest marine reptile ever discovered, lived 205 million years ago at the end of the Triassic Period, dominating the oceans just as dinosaurs were becoming the undisputed masters on land. The bone, called a surangular, was part of its lower jaw.

The researchers estimated the animal’s length by comparing this surangular to the same bone in the largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever found, a species called Shonisaurus sikanniensis from British Columbia that was 69 feet (21 meters) long. The newly discovered bone was 25 percent larger.

“This bone belonged to a giant,” said University of Manchester paleontologist Dean Lomax.

“The entire carcass was probably very similar to a whale fall in which a dead whale drops to the bottom of the sea floor, where an entire ecosystem of animals feeds on the carcass for a very long time. After that, bones become separated, and we suspect that’s what happened to our isolated bone.”

Fossil collector Paul de la Salle, affiliated with the Etches Collection in Dorset, England, found the bone in 2016 at Lilstock on England’s Somerset coast along the Bristol Channel.

“The structure was in the form of growth rings, like that of a tree, and I’d seen something similar before in the jaws of late Jurassic ichthyosaurs,” he said.

Ichthyosaurs swam the world’s oceans from 250 million years ago to 90 million years ago, preying on squid and fish. The biggest were larger than other huge marine reptiles of the dinosaur age like pliosaurs and mosasaurs. Only today’s filter-feeding baleen whales are larger. The blue whale, up to about 98 feet (30 meters) long, is the biggest animal alive today and the biggest marine animal ever.

The researchers estimated the new ichthyosaur at 66 to 85 feet long (20 to 26 meters).

It appears to have belonged to an ichthyosaur group called shastasaurids. Because the remains are so incomplete, it is unclear whether it represents a new ichthyosaur genus or is a member of a previously identified genus, said paleontologist Judy Massare of the State University of New York College at Brockport.

The research was published in the journal PLOS ONE.

This story was written by Reuters.
…

A fossil finger bone dating back about 90,000 years that was unearthed in Saudi Arabia’s Nefud Desert is pointing to what scientists are calling a new understanding of how our species came out of Africa en route to colonizing the world.

Researchers said on Monday the middle bone of an adult’s middle finger found at site called Al Wusta is the oldest Homo sapiens fossil outside of Africa and the immediately adjacent eastern Mediterranean Levant region, as well as the first ancient human fossil from the Arabian peninsula.

While the Nefud Desert is now a veritable sea of sand, it was hospitable when this individual lived – a grasslands teeming with wildlife alongside a freshwater lake.

Our species first appeared in Africa roughly 300,000 years ago. Scientists previously thought Homo sapiens departed Africa in a single, rapid migration some 60,000 years ago, journeying along the coastlines and subsisting on marine resources, said anthropologist Michael Petraglia of the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History in Germany.

This fossil of an intermediate phalanx bone, 1.2 inches (3.2 cm) long, suggests our species exited Africa far earlier.

“This supports a model not of a single rapid dispersal out of Africa 60,000 years ago, but a much more complicated scenario of migration. And this find, together with other finds in the last few years, suggests … Homo sapiens is moving out of Africa multiple times during many windows of opportunity during the last 100,000 years or so,” Petraglia said.

The discovery also shows these people were moving across the interior of the land, not coastlines, Petraglia added.

Numerous animal fossils were discovered, including hippos, wild cattle, antelopes and ostriches, University of Oxford archeologist Huw Groucutt said. Bite marks on fossilized bones indicated carnivores lived there, too.

Stone tools that hunter-gatherers used also were found.

“The big question now is what became of the ancestors of the population to which the Al Wusta human belonged,” Groucutt said.

“We know that shortly after they lived, the rains failed and the area dried up. Did this population die out? Did it survive further south in Arabia, where even today there are mountainous areas with quite high rainfall and coastal regions which receive monsoonal rains?” Groucutt added. “Or did the drying environment mean that some of these people were ‘pushed’ further into Eurasia, as part of a worldwide colonization?”

The research was published in the journal Nature Ecology and Evolution.

This story was written by Reuters.
…

Pakistan launched a nationwide polio vaccination drive this week to try to reach 38.7 million children and eradicate the paralyzing and potentially deadly virus in one of the last countries where it is endemic.

Nearly 260,000 volunteers and workers fanned out across Pakistan in an effort to vaccinate every child below the age of five in a week-long campaign, Pakistan’s national coordinator on polio, Mohammad Safdar, said.

“We’re really very close to eradicating the disease,” Safdar told Reuters, appealing to the people to cooperate with the door-to-door effort.

Pakistan is one of only three countries in the world, along with Afghanistan and Nigeria, that suffers from endemic polio, a childhood virus that can cause paralysis or death.

In 2018, Pakistan has had just one polio case, reported last month, Safdar said. The number of cases has steadily declined since 2014 when 306 were reported. Last year, there were only eight cases, he said.

Efforts to eradicate the disease have been undermined by opposition from the Taliban and other Islamist militants, who say immunization is a foreign ploy to sterilise Muslim children or a cover for Western spies.

In January, gunmen killed a mother-and-daughter vaccination team working in the southwestern province of Baluchistan, where the year’s only case so far was later reporter.

Three years earlier, 15 people were killed in a bombing by the Pakistani Taliban outside a polio vaccination center in Baluchistan.

Polio teams working on Monday were undeterred.

“Yes we feel threatened, but our work is like this,” said Bilquis Omar, who has served on a mobile vaccination team for the past six years in the southern port metropolis of Karachi.

“We are working for the children,” she said.

Aziz Memon, who heads the Rotary Club’s PolioPlus program that funds many of the immunization teams, said this year the drive was also making a renewed effort to reach migrants who come back and forth from Afghanistan.

“Mission number one is to get to zero cases and eradicate polio,” Memon said.

A country must have no cases for three consecutive years in order to be considered to have eradicated polio by the World Health Organization.

Pakistan has to contend with extra suspicion of immunization drives because of the 2011 U.S. special forces raid inside the country that killed al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, architect of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in 2001.

A Pakistani doctor was accused of using a fake vaccination campaign to collect DNA samples that the CIA was believed to have been using to verify bin Laden’s identity. The doctor remains jailed in Pakistan, convicted of waging war against state.

This story was written by Reuters.
…

An experimental smartphone application could monitor changes in Parkinson’s disease symptoms throughout the day, sending data to doctors to help them treat patients, U.S. researchers say.

“Like diabetes, Parkinson’s has variability and symptom fluctuations, which can also vary the treatment. We can’t measure these fluctuations at home, and you can only do so many measurements in the clinic,” said senior study author Suchi Saria of Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

The app developed by Saria and her colleagues asks patients to complete five tasks that assess speech, finger tapping, gait, balance and reaction time. From that, it generates a “mobile Parkinson’s Disease score,” which doctors can use to assess symptom severity and adjust medication, the team writes in JAMA Neurology.

Parkinson’s disease is a neurodegenerative disorder that affects dopamine-producing nerve cells in the brain. Symptoms include tremors, body stiffness, slow movement and difficulty walking.

“This new development is very exciting because this wasn’t feasible even a few years ago,” Saria said in a telephone interview. “Patients seem eager, willing and curious to do this with their phones.”

The researchers developed their app, HopkinsPD, for Android smartphones to assess performance on the five tasks as often as patients want to use the app. The mobile score is based on the types of assessments usually done in doctor’s offices.

To test the app and the scoring system, the researchers recruited 129 patients who completed more than 6,000 smartphone assessments. Scores ranged from 0 to 100, with higher numbers indicating more severe symptoms. Participants completed the tasks before and after their first daily dose of dopamine medication. They also completed standard assessments in the clinic.

Symptoms varied by an average of 14 points through the day, information that could help doctors understand the highs and lows for their Parkinson’s patients.

The team also found a strong correlation between the mobile app score and the in-office rating scales. On average, the mobile app score also decreased more than the official scales when dopamine medication was taken, which could highlight its sensitivity and accuracy in monitoring real-time symptoms, the authors note.

“The data from the phone aligns beautifully with what we found with classic instruments in the clinic,” Saria said. “It gives us a sense of patients’ motion and movement, like breadcrumbs along the way to understanding their symptoms.”

A limitation of the study is that only five tasks are used to measure behaviors and symptoms, the authors acknowledge.

Additional studies will evaluate whether changes in the app score represent a significant difference experienced by patients.

“We physicians may measure phenomena we think are highly relevant, but patients may disagree,” said Dr. Alberto Espay, director of the James J. and Joan A. Gardner Center for Parkinson’s Disease and Movement Disorders at University of Cincinnati in Ohio, who wasn’t involved in the study.

“Also, it will be important to determine if the machine-learning component will require less active entry of data by patients, rendering it easier to use long-term,” Espay said in an email. “Long-term adherence will be important to ascertain if this application . . . can capture data for patients in their home settings.”

Researchers want to know whether elderly patients and those in developing countries can use similar apps, said Ye Wang of the National University of Singapore, who wasn’t involved in the current study.

“These ubiquitous technologies can and should be used to help doctors with their diagnosis,” Wang told Reuters Health by email.

“They are diagnostic aids and are not supposed to replace doctors,” he said. “But perhaps they can be part of the screening process.” 

SOURCE: JAMA Neurology

This story was written by Reuters.
…

Obesity rates among children in Asia-Pacific are rising at a rapid rate, and more action is needed to encourage healthier lifestyles and ease pressure on fledgling healthcare systems, researchers said.

The number of overweight children under five rose 38 percent between 2000 and 2016 in the region, and the problem is growing, said Sridhar Dharmapuri, a food safety and nutrition officer at the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) in Bangkok.

“The rate of growth in obesity in Asia-Pacific is higher than in many other countries,” Dharmapuri told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“While the United States leads the way on obesity rates, the number of overweight children in Asia-Pacific is rising rapidly, and many countries in this region are now among the most health-threatened in the world.”

Adult obesity rates are highest in the United States, Mexico, New Zealand and Hungary, and lowest in Japan and South Korea, according to a report on member states by the Paris-based Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development.

But the rapid rise in obesity among young people in Asia-Pacific is worrying because overweight children are at higher risk of becoming obese as adults and then developing serious health problems like type 2 diabetes, high blood pressure and liver disease.

Malaysia, Indonesia, Singapore and Thailand are among the most overweight countries in Southeast Asia, while Samoa, Tonga and Nauru are the most overweight in the Pacific. Australia also has high rates of obesity.

Many of these nations are also struggling to tackle malnutrition among their citizens.

The cost to the Asia-Pacific region of citizens being overweight or obese is $166 billion a year, a recent report by the Asian Development Bank Institute (ADBI) said.

Rising wealth levels over the last 20 years have played a major role in the rise in obesity levels, researchers say.

“The region has undergone economic growth, so food has become available at a relatively cheaper price,” said Matthias Helble, an economist at the ADBI in Tokyo.

“For the last 20 years the economic growth has been almost uninterrupted,” said Helble, who has researched obesity levels in the region for three years.

The “obesity time bomb” will be discussed by the 46 member governments attending the FAO conference for Asia and the Pacific, which starts in Fiji from Monday.

Lifestyle choices

In addition to consuming more, as economies have grown, people in Asia-Pacific have moved away from farming into manufacturing, and then to service sector jobs – which are more sedentary, researchers said.

Cities in Asia-Pacific have also seen unprecedented growth over the last two decades; this year more than half the region’s population will for the first time be urban, the United Nations has estimated.

City-dwellers in Asia-Pacific can spend hours commuting – due to poor transport systems and infrastructure – and when they finally reach home they have little time to cook. Many opt to eat out.

This new lifestyle has caused a rise in the consumption of convenience and processed foods, which often contain excess fats and more salt and sugar, researchers said.

People in the region also struggle to maintain a balanced diet, said Dharmapuri, with meals often lacking vegetables.

“The diet is largely rice-based,” he said. “On anybody’s plate, rice takes up between 50-70 percent of the space.”

When people are overweight they often suffer from other health problems, economists said, and this is likely to put pressure on public healthcare systems that are only just being established in many Asia-Pacific nations.

Absenteeism from work is also higher among obese people, said Helble, adding that overweight people often die earlier than those who lead healthy lives, so have a shorter productive life.

“The term ‘obesogenic environment’ has been used to describe an environment that promotes obesity among individuals and populations,” Elizabeth Ingram of the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare — a government statistics agency — said by email.

“It includes physical, economic, political, and sociocultural factors.”

Joint effort

Fixing the problem will likely take years, and researchers said a joint effort by business and governments was needed.

Better labeling on foods to promote healthier options, education about healthier diets and lifestyles, and even healthier school meals would improve the situation, analysts said.

“Being obese can also be seen as a sign of prosperity, because you have enough food to show your wealth through the fact that you have a lot to eat,” said Helble.

Sugar taxes, which have been introduced or are being discussed in the Philippines, Singapore and Indonesia, are also one way to change people’s mindset, he added.

Building more sports facilities at schools and ensuring urban planners include recreational areas for cities and make them more walkable and less polluted, is also crucial.

Governments must work with retailers, like in Singapore, to create a coordinated approach on packaging and promote a balanced diet, researchers said.

Working with retailers to ban unhealthy and sweet foods from checkout areas, and pushing street vendors to switch from fried foods to healthier, more traditional options, are also key.

And countries should adopt a “farm to fork” approach, which encourages farmers to diversify what they grow and be less reliant on growing just rice, said Dharmapuri.

“In some Pacific island countries, it’s actually easier to buy soft drinks and processed foods than buy fruits and vegetables,” said Dharmapuri. “It’s almost a delicacy to have a vegetable in a restaurant.”
…

Spanish researchers have developed a technique to quickly remedy acute psychosocial stress, described as a short-term intense stress that occurs during social or interpersonal relationships caused by a verbal argument. The treatment involves blue, light-emitting diodes. VOA’s Mariama Diallo has more.
…

Scientists in Antarctica have harvested their first crop of vegetables grown without earth, daylight or pesticides as part of a project designed to help astronauts cultivate fresh food on other planets.

Researchers at Germany’s Neumayer Station III say they’ve picked 3.6 kilograms (8 pounds) of salad greens, 18 cucumbers and 70 radishes grown inside a high-tech greenhouse as temperatures outside dropped below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 Fahrenheit).

The German Aerospace Center DLR, which coordinates the project, said Thursday that by May scientists hope to harvest 4-5 kilograms of fruit and vegetables a week.

While NASA has successfully grown greens on the International Space Station, DLR’s Daniel Schubert says the Antarctic project aims to produce a wider range of vegetables that might one day be grown on Mars or the Moon.
…

Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world’s population, went hungry in 2016. That number seems to be rising.

Poverty is not the only reason, however, people are experiencing food insecurity.

“Increasingly we’re also seeing hunger caused by the displacement related to conflict, natural disaster as well, but particularly there’s been an uptick in the number of people displaced in the world,” said Robert Opp, director of Innovation and Change Management at the United Nations World Food Program.

Humanitarian organizations are turning to new technologies such as AI, or artificial intelligence, to fight global food insecurity.

WATCH: Global Hunger Is Rising — Artificial Intelligence Can Help

“What AI offers us right now, is an ability to augment human capacity. So, we’re not talking about replacing human beings and things. We’re talking about doing more things and doing them better than we could by just human capacity alone,” Opp said.

Analyze data, get it to farmers

Artificial intelligence can analyze large amounts of data to locate areas affected by conflict and natural disasters and assist farmers in developing countries. The data can then be accessed by farmers from their smartphones.

“The average smartphone that exists in the world today is more powerful than the entire Apollo space program 50 years ago. So just imagine a farmer in Africa who has a smartphone has much more computing power than the entire Apollo space program,” said Pranav Khaitan, engineering lead at Google AI.

“When you take your special data and soil mapping data and use AI to do the analysis, you can send me the information. So in a nutshell, you can help me [know] when to plant, what to plant, how to plant,” said Uyi Stewart, director of Strategy Data and Analytics in Global Development of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

“When you start combining technologies, AI, robotics, sensors, that’s when we see magic start to happen on farms for production, to increase crop yields,” said Zenia Tata, vice president for Global Impact Strategy at XPRIZE, an organization that creates incentivized competitions so innovative ideas and technologies can be developed to benefit humanity.

“It all comes down to developing these techniques and making it available to these farmers and people on the ground,” Khaitan said.

Breaking down barriers

However, the developing world is often the last to get new technologies.

As Stewart said, “815 million people are hungry and I can bet you that nearly 814 million out of the 815 million do not have a smartphone.”

Even when the technology is available, other barriers still exist.

“A lot of these people that we talked about that are hungry, they don’t speak English, so when we get insights out of this technology how are we going to pass it onto them?” Stewart said.

While it may take time for new technologies to reach the developing world, many hope such advances will ultimately trickle-down to farmers in regions that face food insecurity.

“You’ve invented the technology. The big investments have gone in. Now you’re modifying it, which brings the cost down as well,” said Teddy Bekele, vice president of Ag Technology at U.S.-based agribusiness and food company Land O’Lakes.

“So, I think three to four years maybe we’ll have some of the things we have here to be used there [in the developing world] as well,” Bekele predicted.

Those who work in humanitarian organizations said entrepreneurs must look outside their own countries to adapt the new technologies to combat global hunger, or come up with a private, public model. Farmers will need the tools and training so they can harness the power of artificial intelligence to help feed the hungry in the developing world.

This story was written by Elizabeth Lee​.
…

Despite a global abundance of food, a United Nations report says 815 million people, 11 percent of the world’s population, went hungry in 2016. Advances in technology and artificial intelligence can help feed them, but there are challenges that keep first world technologies from reaching the developing world. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee explains.
…

Almost half of the Australian military personnel who’ve left the defense force in the past five years have some sort of mental disorder, according to a new study.   The Australian government says it is the most comprehensive study ever undertaken in Australia of the effect of military service on the mental, physical and social health of veterans, including those who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  

For many former Australian service men and women, adapting to civilian life can be tough.  According to a new study by the Department of Veterans’ Affairs, about half suffer debilitating conditions that include anxiety and depression.  Some retired soldiers, however, believe the true number of those affected is much higher.  

Robin Lee was in the Australian army for 14 years, and served in Iraq and Afghanistan.  He was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder before he left the military in 2015.

He says the system for helping veterans with mental health issues is poor. 

“These men are serving, getting problems,” said Lee. “They know they have problems but they have to go through a recognition process that is just disgusting.  (It has) been mishandled at every level.”

The Australian government acknowledges that leaving the military can be a “daunting and challenging experience.”

The Veterans Affairs minister is Darren Chester.

“The government is determined to put veterans and their health at the center of everything we do,” said Chester. “We are putting veterans first, we are putting veterans’ families first.  In a nutshell, the research we are releasing today is confirming that we are heading in the right direction but more needs to be done to assist veterans and their families during the critical transitional period to civilian life.”

Ministers say that free treatment for any mental health condition is now available to all veterans.  The research into the mental and physical impact of Australia’s military service is continuing.  Six further reports will be released by the end of next year.

The Australian Defense Force comprises the Navy, Army and Air Force.  It has more than 100,000 personnel, including permanent military personnel, reservists and civilian employees.

This story was written by VOA’s Phil Mercer in Sydney.
…

April 7 marks the 70th anniversary of the World Health Organization. It also marks World Health Day. In the past seven decades much has been accomplished, but much still needs to be done.

The World Health Organization has spearheaded efforts to free the world of killer diseases like smallpox. It has formed partnerships to end other diseases, including polio. Only 17 children contracted polio last year. The cases were all in remote areas of Pakistan.

WATCH: On World Health Day, What’s Been Accomplished in 70 Years

In March, South Sudan joined the list of countries that have stopped Guinea worm disease. Former U.S. President Jimmy Carter began the campaign to eradicate guinea worm in 1986 when the parasite afflicted 3.5 million people in Asia and Africa. Since then, the WHO has certified 199 countries, territories, and areas as free of Guinea worm disease.

Access to other lifesaving vaccines, like the measles vaccine, is out of reach for many people. That’s why the World Health Organization declared the theme for this World Health Day “health for all.”

“Good health is the most precious thing anyone can have,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO director-general, in a news release from WHO headquarters in Geneva. “When people are healthy, they can learn, work, and support themselves and their families. When they are sick, nothing else matters. Families and communities fall behind. That’s why WHO is so committed to ensuring good health for all.”

James Fitzgerald oversees the development of universal health coverage in the Americas at the Pan American Health Organization, a regional division of the World Health Organization.

“Much of the world is talking about universal health coverage at the moment. It is one of the global challenges that we have,” he said. Universal health care, he added, includes both access to medical care and coverage so families don’t have to impoverish themselves to care for a member who is sick.

But there are barriers that prevent people from accessing care, leaving 2 out of 3 people in the Americas as well as half the people in the world without access to health care.

Fitzgerald explains that the barriers are pretty much universal: lack of health care institutions; not enough doctors, nurses, technicians and others involved in the health industry; and a lack of funds for health at the national, local and individual levels. He also cites social discrimination within the health systems.

It’s a tall order to get countries to invest in national health services. The WHO argues that when people have access to health care, they live more productive lives, epidemics can be held at bay more easily, and the countries are more likely to prosper.

The story was written by Carol Pearson.
…

April 7 marks the 70th anniversary of the World Health Organization. It also marks World Health Day. VOA’s Carol Pearson looks at what’s been accomplished over the past seven decades and what still needs to be done.
…

Millions of people worldwide face financial ruin; their assets wiped out because of a catastrophic illness or accident that saddles them with staggeringly high health bills they are unable to pay.

This nightmare scenario rarely, if ever, occurs in countries that have universal health coverage. Such systems insulate people from the financial disasters that occur in countries where national health schemes do not exist.

“Today, about 100 million people fall into poverty because of health expenditure,” said Rudiger Krech, World Health Organization director for health systems and innovation. He told VOA that every country, poor and rich alike, can afford universal health coverage.

“It is not just a matter of money, but of political will, of political choice. So, you can afford health coverage for everyone, even if you are not one of the most affluent countries in the world,” he said.

For example, he said that relatively low-income countries such as Cuba and Costa Rica have developed good health systems; while in the United States, one of the world’s richest countries, “people have to pay huge amounts of their salaries and their income for health services.”

“We call these catastrophic health expenditures because people are losing their fortune because they had a big accident or an open-heart surgery,” he said. “So, this still pulls people into poverty.”

Half of world lacks full coverage

The World Health Organization reports at least half of the world’s population lacks full coverage for essential health services. More than 800 million people, or nearly 12 percent of the world’s population, spend at least 10 percent of their household budgets to pay for health care, WHO said. In 2015, it said the world spent an eye-watering $7.3 trillion on health, representing close to 10 percent of global Gross Domestic Product.

WHO is on a mission to make it possible for all people and communities to receive the health services they need without suffering financial hardship. As such, it is using this year’s World Health Day, April 7, to promote the U.N. Sustainable Development Goal that calls for the adoption of universal health coverage in 90 percent of the world’s countries by 2030.

“I think this is a goal that people all over the world should aspire toward,” said Shih-Chung Chen, Taiwanese minister of health and welfare.

“I will not say that it will be achieved by 2030,” Chen told a group of visiting journalists, “but I think all countries should have the willingness to try to achieve this, and that is why we want to participate in the World Health Assembly. That would allow us to contribute toward that goal.”

Last year, China blocked Taiwan from participating in the WHA as an observer and, so far this year, Taiwan has not received an invitation to attend.

Taiwan’s system

“I think that in order to ensure that health is a basic human right, no country’s experience should be left out,” said the Taiwanese health minister. “We are extremely proud of our universal health coverage system. I think this would be a very important way for us to share with the world.”

Taiwan’s single payer National Health Insurance, a compulsory program that was launched in 1995, provides comprehensive, affordable coverage for the island’s more than 23 million inhabitants. The government calculates “a family of four pays roughly $100 U.S. per month as the premium.” This comes to about 2 percent of the average household income. Average life expectancy in Taiwan has risen to 80 years, on a par with Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries.

“More than 85 percent of the people in Taiwan report very high satisfaction with our national health Insurance,” Chen said.

Low health expenditure

The health minister told VOA that Taiwan’s total health expenditure is 6 percent of GDP, the lowest in the world, compared with more than 16 percent for the United States.

“The U.S. is entirely capable of providing universal health care to its citizens,” he said. “However, because the U.S. has a multitude of systems in place that have been there for a long time and there are a lot of stakeholders involved, it would be a bit difficult. In addition, the U.S. places a lot of importance on freedom of choice.”

Chen said the world could learn a lot from Taiwan’s health insurance program. Unfortunately, he said Taiwan was not able to help because it is barred from participating in international organizations such as the World Health Organization.

Krech told VOA it was the United Nations, not WHO, that decided whether Taiwan could be included in international health matters.

“We are talking to Member States and obviously Taiwan is not a Member State. But, it is Chinese Taiwan and Chinese Taipei and, therefore, it is under this “One China” policy.

“That does not bar us from discussing with representatives of Chinese Taipei, at all,” he said. “We have regular exchanges. We see what is happening.”

This story was written by Lisa Schlein.
…

The science behind the grain that feeds half the world may have taken a big leap forward. 

Scientists are reporting the biggest improvements in rice productivity in decades.

If the results hold up in further tests, it could greatly increase supplies of a critical food staple at a time when the global population is growing rapidlyResearchers found a version of a gene that increased the number of branches in the flowering part of the plant. 

The team used conventional breeding to introduce this gene version into five rice varieties. The new strains produced from 28 to 85 percent more rice than their parents. 

That’s a huge increase, says University of Arkansas rice breeder Xueyan Sha.

“If we can achieve, say, 6 percent, we can probably consider it a great achievement,” Sha said.

Sha was not part of the new study, published in the journal Scientific Reports. 

He cautions that it’s a small-scale, controlled experiment, and it’s not clear how the results will hold up in farmers’ fields. 

Rice yields have not improved much since the big gains of the “Green Revolution” of the 1960s, aimed at boosting grain production.

Experts say big increases in food production will be necessary to feed the additional 2 billion or so people expected on the planet by 2050.

Not all rice varieties tested by the scientists produced the same hefty gains. That’s another reason for caution, notes rice geneticist Shannon Pinson with the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

“There’s something exciting here,” Pinson said. “I don’t think it’s as exciting as Green Revolution caliber.”

New varieties will be available to farmers in two to four years. 

This story was written by VOA’s Steve Baragona.
…

About 1 percent of the world’s population lives with the mental condition called bipolar disorder, characterized by swings between elevated and depressed moods. In most cases, timely interaction with psychotherapists, family and friends can alleviate the symptoms. Researchers in Denmark say modern technology can help by keeping track of a patient’s symptoms and summoning help quickly when needed. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

Humanitarian groups in South Korea are using the ocean current to send needed food and information from the outside world into impoverished regions of North Korea. 

On Ganghwa Island in the Yellow Sea, located just south of the inter-Korean border, a group of North Korean defectors and volunteers with humanitarian groups this week launched aid packages containing rice, medicine, U.S. dollars and banned information. The ocean’s current, they say, will carry the sealed bottles to the cities and towns along the west coast of North Korea.

“If we set the date and time right, it will get there 100%,” said Park Jung-oh, with the Kuen Saem Education Center in Seoul that helps defectors from the communist North assimilate into life in the democratic South. 

Bottles vs balloons

Park said the ocean current is a safer and more reliable delivery system than launching balloons into the wind, a method that other North Korea activist groups have used to send packages containing mostly South Korean movies, television dramas and news critical of the Kim Jong Un government that is prohibited in the North.

In 2014, North and South Korean forces exchanged gunfire when an activist group from the South launched balloons full of leaflets into the North. That incident nearly disrupted plans at the time to hold a reunion for families that have been separated by the division of the Korean Peninsula at the end of World War II.

The activists have received little attention this year from either Seoul or Pyongyang as inter-Korean relations are improving and diplomatic talks appear to be progressing to peacefully resolve the North’s nuclear threat.

This week, the group involved in floating bottles of aid to the North sent over 500 kilograms of rice and 400 computer memory sticks full of South Korean movies and foreign news programs that are also not permitted in the North. In the last three years they have performed this operation 53 times, and will come out again in about 15 days. 

The United Nations reports that over 40% of North Korea’s population is undernourished. Conditions in the country have improved since the 1990s when failures in the communist agricultural system led to a severe famine and millions died of starvation. But food shortages are still common and there are concerns that sanctions on most exports, meant to pressure Pyongyang to give up its nuclear program, are increasing poverty and hunger in the country.

Defectors

Many of the aid activists are defectors who escaped poverty and repression in North Korea, and have become advocates to bring international attention to the widespread human rights abuses still going on in their homeland.

Jung Kwang-il, a North Korean defector who recently met with U.S. President Donald Trump at the White House, has included a copy of the U.S. president’s fiery address last year to the United Nations as part of the information package being sent.

In his speech, Mr. Trump threatened to “totally destroy North Korea” if the Kim government continues to threaten the world with its nuclear weapons development program. He also strongly criticized the North Korean leader for the pervasive starvation and oppression in the country.

“So the message that we are sending to them is that the U.S. President knows that you are living in these harsh conditions,” said Jung, who leads a North Korean human rights activist group in Seoul called No Chain.

The North Korean defectors involved in this unconventional aid effort have raised money and donated their time to help those most in need in the country they left behind.

“It is very difficult when doing it, but after sending it I feel proud,” said Kim Yong-hwa, who is also a defector-turned-activist with the North Korean Refugees Human Rights Association of Korea in Seoul.

Some of their support comes from Christian churches that want to send bibles into the communist North, where religious teaching is also highly restricted.

A 2014 U.N. human rights report documented a network of political prisons in North Korea and numerous cases of state sponsored murder, torture and rape. In the U.N. Security Council, China, North Korea closest ally, is believed to be holding up a motion passed by the General Assembly to refer the Kim Jing Un government to the International Criminal Court for crimes against humanity.
…

Virtual reality, or VR, is finding more applications as the technology matures. It is no longer only used for gaming or entertainment. One Austin-based company is using VR to improve health by making cardiovascular workouts more fun. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
…

The nation’s chief doctor wants more Americans to start carrying the overdose antidote naloxone to help combat the nation’s opioid crisis and save lives.

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams is expected to speak about the new public health advisory Thursday morning at the National Rx Drug Abuse & Heroin Summit in Atlanta.

In a news release, Adams said he hopes those who are at risk, as well as their friends and family members, will keep the antidote on hand and learn how to use it.

“Each day we lose 115 Americans to an opioid overdose, that’s one person every 12.5 minutes,” Adams said in a statement. “It is time to make sure more people have access to this lifesaving medication, because 77 percent of opioid overdose deaths occur outside of a medical setting and more than half occur at home.”

Fatal opioid overdoses

More than 42,000 Americans suffered fatal opioid overdoses in 2016, his statement said.

Naloxone can restore a person’s breathing after it is injected or sprayed in the nostrils, quickly bringing overdose victims back from near-death.

The drug, which, is often referred to by the brand name Narcan, is available over the counter in most states and is regularly used by first responders across the country. A two-dose pack of Narcan is among many options available and the drug is increasingly covered by insurance, according to The Network for Public Health Law, a nonprofit that helps government agencies.

As of July 2017, all 50 states have passed laws improving naloxone access, the nonprofit said.

A safety net?

Maine’s Republican Gov. Paul LePage has been one of the most outspoken opponents of the push, arguing that naloxone doesn’t treat addiction and merely discourages people from seeking treatment by essentially offering a safety net if they do overdose.

Proponents, however, argue that greater access to naloxone doesn’t draw people to illegal drug use or foster an addiction.

“To manage opioid addiction and prevent future overdoses, increased naloxone availability must occur in conjunction with expanded access to evidence-based treatment for opioid use disorder,” Adams said in a statement.

Adams’ recommendation for more people to possess naloxone comes a month after Philadelphia’s health department urged residents to do the same.

Before his current role, Adams had been Indiana’s health commissioner, where he promoted needle-exchange programs aimed at stemming the spread of diseases among intravenous drug users.
…