Emergency rooms saw a big jump in overdoses from opioids last year — the latest evidence the nation’s drug crisis is getting worse.

A government report released Tuesday shows overdoses from opioids increased 30 percent late last summer, compared to the same three-month period in 2016. The biggest jumps were in the Midwest and in cities, but increases occurred nationwide.

The report did not differentiate between prescription pain pills, heroin, fentanyl and other opioids.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently started using a new system to track ER overdoses and found the rate of opioid overdoses rose from 14 to 18 per 100,000 ER visits over a year.

Almost all those overdoses were not fatal. Opioids were involved in two-thirds of all overdose deaths in 2016.
…

A note written by Albert Einstein to an Italian woman scientist who had declined to meet him sold at auction Tuesday along with a batch of other letters left by the renowned physicist.

“To the scientific researcher, at whose feet I slept and sat for two full days, as a friendly souvenir,” reads the note in his native German, signed and dated October 1921, which fetched $6,100 at Winner’s Auctions & Exhibitions in Jerusalem.

The auction house said Einstein, then 42 and soon to win the Nobel Prize, wrote the letter to Elisabetta Piccini, a chemistry student half his age who lived one floor above his sister, Maja, in Florence.

During a visit to the city, “Einstein was very interested in meeting her. However, Elisabetta was introverted and too shy to meet with such a famous person,” Winner’s said on its website.

Also sold Tuesday for $103,000 was a 1928 note in which the auction house said Einstein outlined ideas for his “Third Stage of the Theory of Relativity.” A 1946 English-language letter of encouragement that he penned to an American World War II veteran who aspired to be a scientist also fetched $6,100.

Last October, Winner’s sold another Einstein letter, a 1922 meditation on happiness that he wrote upon learning he had won the Nobel, for $1.3 million.
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In a square in central Barcelona, families with young children perch at picnic tables as traffic thunders past and high-rise blocks loom above them.

But the concrete mecca that is Placa de les Glories Catalanes is about to undergo a major facelift that will create a new green public space for Spain’s second-largest city.

Starting this month, two underground tunnels will be built, funnelling traffic away from the square, Marta Pigem Jubany, a spokeswoman for Barcelona City Hall, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Subsequently a new park will be constructed, including a lawn and children’s play area, an outdoor market, exotic gardens, water features and a performing arts space.

In the city best known among tourists for its Las Ramblas shopping street, the regenerated zone will also feature a tree-lined avenue called the Rambla dels Encants (Boulevard of Charms).

It is not the only new park planned for Barcelona. In the north of the city, a 7.6 million-euro ($9.4 million) project begins in May to transform the grounds of a dilapidated early 20th century estate, known as Finca Ravetllat-Pla, into another green space.

Further afield, Madrid’s environment ministry embarked on a multi-million-euro project last year to expand the city’s parks, and cover walls and roofs with more greenery.

Meanwhile Italian architecture firm Stefano Boeri Architetti has had plans approved for France’s first vertical forest on the outskirts of Paris, featuring a 54-meter-high (177 feet) wooden tower block decked in trees, shrubs and plants.

Access to nature

Cities are increasingly looking for ways to provide more greenery, as migration to urban areas rises and a growing body of scientific evidence indicates that being close to nature is good for people.

Vegetation also sucks up planet-warming carbon dioxide, and is key to efforts to combat climate change.

Some 750 climate scientists and urban planners are gathered in Canada this week at a U.N.-hosted conference to discuss how to help cities reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and become more resilient to extreme weather and rising seas.

The proportion of the global population living in urban areas has risen from half in 2000 to 55 percent now, and is predicted to reach two-thirds by 2050.

“Access to nature provides an array of health and well-being benefits, from the psychological and physical to the social,” said Kevin J. Gaston, a professor of biodiversity and conservation at Britain’s University of Exeter.

“Particularly in westernized societies, we are becoming aware of a whole array of quite chronic health consequences associated with city living – for instance, obesity, mental illness, diabetes,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Making more room for nature in cities brings multiple advantages for residents and the environment, said Marcus Collier, an assistant professor of botany at Trinity College Dublin.

A green roof, for example, not only makes the landscape look more attractive, but also provides insulation, cutting back on energy usage, said Collier, who leads a Europe-wide research project called Connecting Nature.

Green spaces can help combat rising heat levels, provide a buffer against flooding and intercept dust, toxins and noise, according to the Connecting Nature website.

But some benefits are harder to quantify, such as a fall in hospital stays and lower blood pressure, Collier noted.

Sharing solutions

The 11.4 million-euro project, which began last year and runs until 2022, is developing “nature-based solutions”, such as street trees, parks, and green roofs and walls, across 11 European cities.

There are plans to replicate the project, funded by the European Commission, in China, Brazil, South Korea and the Caucasus.

European cities present a unique challenge because they are dense, and often in need of more residential housing – meaning urban planners who want to prioritize nature must compete for space.

The prevalence of old buildings in European cities can also cause complications, because green projects have to be retrofitted to them, noted Collier.

As many of those projects are relatively untested, finding finance for them and devising metrics to assess their performance are additional challenges, he said.

Partnerships with local authorities, industry and non-governmental groups are essential for the Connecting Nature project in Europe, but could be more difficult to achieve in other places, Collier said.

“Collaboration is very much the cornerstone of the European project, but in China community participation is not as common,” he added.

Green gentrification

Few would disagree that greenery makes cities prettier and more liveable, yet experts warn its deeper effects may take some time to show.

“Nature can’t be a 100 percent cure for all ills…. No one is claiming that you take someone for a walk in the park and tomorrow they will be thinner, or less stressed,” said Gaston.

“A lot of what we’re talking about here are benefits that play out over life spans rather than ones that are maximized by tomorrow,” he added.

Short, frequent experiences are probably more significant than total immersion in nature, meaning cities should look for ways of incorporating green space into their layout, he noted.

“We have to get very creative about it and take opportunities when bits of land do become available to think about the longer-term benefits they might provide rather than just putting a new building in their place,” he said.

Experts also warn that providing more nature in cities can raise rents, pricing out some residents.

“There’s always a threat of social displacement – especially in any kind of neighborhood that is already experiencing gentrification pressures,” said Daniel Aldana Cohen, an assistant professor in sociology at the University of Pennsylvania.

One solution is to roll out small green projects across a city, rather than focus on high-profile, flashier initiatives in just a few neighborhoods, he said.

Providing rail and bus links to green spaces outside a city is another way to help people access nature in a low-carbon way, he added.

“You see this in Japan, which has great rail linkages and has made a real effort to have a green belt with accessible mountains,” he said.

 
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The U.N.’s new envoy for climate action, former New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, said Monday that President Donald Trump can become “a great leader” if he changes his mind about global warming and keeps the United States in the Paris climate agreement.

 

The billionaire media mogul expressed hope that Trump will listen to his advisers, look at the data on climate change, and support the 2015 Paris accord aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

 

Bloomberg spoke during a ceremony at which U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres gave him the new title of U.N. special envoy for climate action, handing him the job of spurring international action to help curb global warming.

 

A longtime activist for clean energy and a green economy, Bloomberg was appointed U.N. special envoy on cities and climate change by then U.N. chief Ban Ki-moon in January 2014. Since then, he has been traveling around the United States and the world campaigning for a reduction in carbon emissions.

 

Guterres announced that Bloomberg will help support a U.N. Climate Summit that he is planning at U.N. headquarters in 2019 to mobilize more ambitious action and start implementing the Paris climate agreement now.

 

Countries agreed in the Paris accord to limit global warming to 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) and do their best to keep it below 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit), compared with pre-industrial times. But the agreement starts after 2020 — and at U.N. climate talks in November over 170 countries stressed the importance of implementing ambitious climate actions before 2020.

 

Trump announced last June that he was withdrawing the U.S. from the Paris agreement, fulfilling a campaign pledge to quit the world’s chief effort to slow planetary warming.

 

He framed his decision as “a reassertion of America’s sovereignty” and argued that the agreement had disadvantaged the U.S. “to the exclusive benefit of other countries,” leaving American businesses and taxpayers to absorb the cost.

 

Under terms of the agreement, the U.S. cannot officially pull out until 2020.

 

Bloomberg has urged world leaders not to follow Trump, and has pledged to save the Paris agreement.

 

Last October, for example, his foundation donated $64 million to a Sierra Club program seeking to phase out coal-fired power plants and reduce planet-warming carbon emissions.

 

Bloomberg said Monday that his foundation is interested “in spending a lot of money in helping us understand that climate change is real and it’s measurable.”

 

As examples, he said that for the first time the North Pole in the middle of the winter had temperatures above melting, oceans over the last 20 or so years have risen, and there are more frequent and powerful storms. In addition, Bloomberg said, there are floods where there used to be droughts — and droughts where there used to be floods.

 

He said the solution is for people everywhere to get together and change the way they live, “and we have to be a little smarter about how we generate energy.”

 

Guterres said last July that Bloomberg is convinced the United States will reach the Paris goals — despite Trump’s decision to abandon the Paris agreement.

 

Bloomberg expressed hope that Trump will change his mind.

 

“And if that’s the case, that shows a great leader who when facts change, and they recognize something different, they’re not bound to what they did before, they’re willing to change,” Bloomberg said. “And I think it’s fair to say this president does change his views — generally it’s one day to the next, but over a longer period of time.”

 

Guterres also stressed the evidence of global warming.

 

He said temperatures in the atmosphere and at sea level are rising faster than expected, glaciers are receding more quickly, and the Arctic ice cap is “shrinking much more quickly and dramatically than in the past — so climate change is running faster than we are.”

 

But the U.N. chief said there are two pieces of “very good news,” the secretary-general said: “Today, the cheapest energy is green energy” and the “green economy” is the economy of the future. And there is “enormous capacity” to mobilize civil society, the business community and cities.

 

Guterres pointed to the work Bloomberg has done in all those areas, saying: “I am very confident that this battle will be won, because the realities of today’s economy are such that the wise decision is the green decision.”
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Battery-powered drones have mostly replaced manned aircraft in a range of tasks, from scientific measurements to aerial photography, with one persistent disadvantage – the limit of their power source. A startup company in San Francisco says their airship can do a lot of those tasks while staying in the air much longer. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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A thriving “hotspot” of 1.5 million Adelie penguins, a species fast declining in parts of the world, has been discovered on remote islands off the Antarctic Peninsula, surprised scientists said Friday.

The first bird census of the Danger Islands unearthed over 750,000 Adelie breeding pairs, more than the rest of the area combined, the team reported in the journal Scientific Reports.

The group of nine rocky islands, which lie off the northern tip nearest South America, in the northwest Weddell Sea, housed the third- and fourth-largest Adelie penguin colonies in the world, they found.

“It is certainly surprising and it has real consequences for how we manage this region,” study co-author Heather Lynch of Stony Brook University told AFP.

Just 160 kilometres (100 miles) away on the west of the peninsula — a thin limb jutting out of West Antarctica — Adelie numbers have dropped about 70 percent in recent decades due to sea ice melt blamed on global warming.

“One of the ways in which this is good news is that other studies have shown this area [the eastern side of the Antarctic Peninsula] is likely to remain more stable under climate change than the western Antarctic Peninsula,” said Lynch.

“So we end up with a large population of Adelie penguins in a region likely to remain suitable to them for some time.”

Adelies are one of five penguin species that live in and around the Antarctic continent.

A medium-sized penguin, they grow to about 70 centimeters (almost 28 inches) tall, and weigh three to six kilograms (about seven to 13 pounds). They are identified by a white ring around the eye.

They are carnivores, and krill — shrimp-like creatures that are commercially fished in the area — is an Adelie staple.

The Danger Islands group was discovered thanks to Earth-monitoring satellites, said the research team from America, Britain and France.

“This is called the Danger Islands for a reason,” said Lynch.

“The area is covered by heavy sea ice most of the year, and even in the height of summer it is difficult to get into this region to do surveys.”

 ‘Very lucky’

Even the most visited of the isles, Heroina Island at the chain’s northeastern tip, receives only about one ship landing per year.

Evidence of the previously-unknown penguin colony first emerged in data from the Landsat Earth-monitoring satellites run by NASA and the US Geological Survey.

Lynch and her team “then went and looked at higher resolution commercial imagery to confirm the guano staining that our algorithms had picked up in the Landsat imagery,” she said.

When the Landsat data originally suggested the presence of hundreds of thousands of penguins on the islands, she thought it “was a mistake”.

“We were surprised to find so many penguins on these islands, especially because some of these islands were not known to have penguins.”

Then followed a field expedition for a census using a combination of drone footage, pictures taken on the ground, and an old fashioned walk-about headcount.

“We were… very lucky to have a window of time where the sea ice moved out and we could get a yacht in,” said Lynch.

The Danger Islands, said the team, has felt the ravages of climate change less than the western peninsula, and knew very little human activity.

Now it turns out, the area may need stronger protection from overfishing.

“The most important implication of this work is related to the design of Marine Protected Areas in the region,” said Lynch.

“Now that we know this tiny island group is so important, it can be considered for further protection from fishing.”

In addition to Adelies, the team also found about 100 nests of gentoo penguins, and about 27 nests of chinstrap penguins.

The polar regions are warming more rapidly than the rest of Earth as heat-trapping greenhouse gasses from fossil fuel-burning build up in the atmosphere.

 

 
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More people in Columbus, Ohio, are now surviving when their hearts suddenly develop an abnormal beat and stop beating altogether. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports their survival is due to a new procedure developed after the hospital partnered with a local fire department.
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A graphic medicine exhibit has opened at the U.S. National Library of Medicine at the National Institutes of Health, showcasing comics that show the medical journeys experienced by patients and caregivers. Organizers hope this ‘new language’ will give clinicians and policy makers a more personalized way of understanding the issues faced by them both. From Washington, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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On the occasion of World Hearing Day, Saturday, the World Health Organization (WHO) is warning one in 10 people globally, or more than 900 million, are at risk of disabling hearing loss by 2050 unless preventive action is taken now.

The World Health Organization reports 466 million people around the world currently suffer from disabling hearing loss. The annual cost to countries in direct health services and lost productivity resulting from this disability is estimated at $750 billion.

Problems resulting from hearing loss are expected to rise because of a growing and aging population – a population that is expected to reach 9 billion by 2050.

Shelly Chadha, a technical officer in the WHO’s Department of Prevention of Deafness and Hearing Loss, says the rise in the aging population does not mean that an increase in hearing loss is inevitable. She says there are many factors besides aging that affect hearing.

“These may be factors such as infectious diseases, which we may encounter in childhood – rubella or mumps, meningitis or ear infections. There may be factors such as exposure to loud sounds, to loud music or noise at work places. Many of these causes are preventable, and by addressing them, we can reduce or minimize the risk of hearing loss,” Chadha said.  

The WHO reports about 60 percent of hearing loss in children can be prevented. Measures include immunizing children against infectious diseases, screening and treating chronic ear infections, avoiding the use of drugs harmful to hearing, and controlling exposure to loud sounds and music.

In cases where hearing loss is unavoidable, the WHO says people can be helped through technologies such as hearing aids and surgically implanted electronic cochlear implants.

It says these devices are of great benefit to the hard-of-hearing because they make it possible for them to better communicate and socialize with others.
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Temperatures in the Arctic in recent days have surged above the freezing point, raising fears that climate change is affecting the planet’s atmospheric system far faster than predicted.

The Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard sits high above the Arctic Circle. It is still late winter, and the sun won’t rise above the horizon for another three weeks, and yet the ice is melting. Waves lap the shoreline of fjords that just a few years ago would have been frozen solid. Snowmobiles lie trapped in muddy meltwater.

In the past 30 days, temperatures in Svalbard have soared 10 degrees Celsius above average, and weather station data suggests it’s even gone above freezing at the North Pole.

 

WATCH: Huge Arctic Temperature Spike May Be Linked to Europe Cold Snap

“We’ve seen what are called these winter warming events before. But what we know is they’re becoming more common, and they’re lasting longer, and they’re becoming more intense as well,” NASA climatologist Alek Petty told VOA.

Warm Arctic, cold Europe

Warm, cyclonic low-pressure systems are being drawn into the Arctic. At the same time, winter sea ice cover is at its lowest since records began. Scientists say the arctic region is warming twice as fast as the global average.

“The ocean stores huge amounts of heat, and as soon as you remove that sea ice then this heat can essentially be transferred into the atmosphere, and so we think these lows are now gaining some additional heat,” professor G.W.K. Moore of the University of Toronto said.

The warm arctic weather coincides with an unusually severe cold snap across Europe. Temperatures in Germany have dipped to minus 27 degrees Celsius, while in Ukraine the severe weather has caused blackouts. Snow has covered Rome’s Colosseum and the palm-fringed shores of the Bay of Naples.

A theory known as “warm Arctic, cold continents” suggests that the winds that circulate around the Arctic and normally keep it cold, known as the polar vortex, become unstable. Warm air is taken in and cold air expelled into lower latitudes.

“Is this loss of sea ice and this rapid warming we’re seeing in the Arctic making the likelihood of these cold snaps in Europe, say, more common? And that’s the more contentious issue here. Unfortunately, we just don’t have many years of data here,” NASA’s Petty said.

Jet stream perturbed

Thirty kilometers up, there has also been what’s called stratospheric sudden warming, which is having a big influence on the weather, Moore said.

“Essentially, it perturbs the jet stream, which is this core of high winds that go around the Earth. And that perturbed jet stream is now leading to Europe being under the influence on easterly winds from Siberia,” he said.

Short term, the plunging temperatures have caused travel chaos in Europe, with several airports closed, and rail lines and roads blocked.

Longer term, the impact — though not yet fully understood — could be far more profound for the whole planet.
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Temperatures in the Arctic in recent days have surged above the freezing point, leading to renewed fears that climate change is affecting the planet’s atmosphere and causing sea ice to melt at a faster rate than predicted. The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the global average, scientists say, but at the same time much of Europe is experiencing a severe cold spell. Some scientists believe the two events are linked, as Henry Ridgwell reports from London.
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Illegal heroin and fentanyl exports from Mexico to the United States are on the rise, according to World Drug Report 2017 compiled by the International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) and backed by the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

Speaking in Mexico City, as the report, which tracks narcotics consumption and production throughout the world, was released Thursday, INCB President Raul Martin del Campo noted the significant increase of drug use around the world, highlighting the harvest and trafficking of illicit drugs in and from South America.

“Poppy harvest that you see in so many countries throughout South America, as you do in Mexico, en route to the United States has increased by a significant amount as registered in the report,” he said. “Fentanyl precursors have also been detected as entering the country, and that is having a consequence with respect to the composition of these drugs that are being exported illegally.”

Fentanyl interceptions skyrocket

Seizures of fentanyl, a significant contributor to the epidemic of overdose deaths, by the U.S. Customs and Border Protection increased from less than 1 kilogram in 2013 to about 200 kilograms in 2016, the INCB said.

Three-quarters of the cocaine consumed in Mexico comes from Mexico and Central America, the report noted.

Mexico is under increasing pressure to combat drug trafficking after more than 25,000 homicides were recorded last year across the country as rival drug gangs increasingly splintered into smaller, more violent groups.
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Uber is driving deeper into health care by offering to take patients in every U.S. market where it operates to their next medical appointment. 

The ride-hailing service said Thursday its Uber Health business will handle rides set up by doctor’s offices or other health care providers and then bill that business, not the patient, for the service. The company said rides can be set up within a few hours or days in advance. Patients won’t need access to a smartphone to use the service.

Uber began testing the service last summer. More than 100 health care providers have signed up including hospitals, clinics and physical therapy centers.  

Company leaders said they are expanding because there’s a need. They cite federal government research that estimates that more than 3 million people do not obtain medical care due to transportation problems.

“There are a lot of people out there who are not going to the doctor simply because they can’t physically make it there,” said Uber Health executive Jay Holley. 

He added that the service also represents a business opportunity for Uber by connecting the company with a lot of first-time users.

Uber will bill care providers who sign up for the service monthly based on their usage. Holley said some may pass the cost on to their customers, but most of the providers it has worked with so far pay for the rides out of their operating budget. 

Uber rival Lyft offers a similar service called Concierge, which allows health care providers to set up rides for patients to get to appointments. The providers pay for the rides. Lyft also has patient transport partnerships with larger health care providers.

Health insurers and others have long recognized the need to help some patients, especially those with low incomes, make their medical appointments. 

Molina Healthcare Inc. has offered a transportation benefit to its customers for around 25 years and says that more than 3 million people are eligible. Molina specializes in administering the state- and federally funded Medicaid programs for poor people and the disabled. 

Spokeswoman Laura Murray said the insurer found that covering transportation expenses helps patients keep regular appointments and preventive care visits, which can include things like flu shots or checkups. She said that can improve patient health and cut down on unnecessary emergency room visits.

Adams Clinical runs clinical trials for drug companies and started using Uber Health in the middle of last year. Since then, trial participation has grown and patients have started staying in the studies longer, CEO Nelson Rutrick said.

The Watertown, Massachusetts, company had used taxis before switching to Uber. Rutrick said taxis were more expensive and required advance planning to get a cab to drive an hour or two to pick someone up. 

 “Uber is already where the patient lives,” he said.

 
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Older men may face premature death if they spend most of the day sitting around, but it doesn’t require a huge amount of exercise to increase their chances of living longer, a study in the UK suggests.

Researchers asked 1,655 men, all between 71 and 92 years old, to wear accelerometers for one week. The goal was to assess their activity levels.

Among a subset of 1,274 men without cardiovascular disease or heart failure who wore the accelerometers as directed, participants logged a daily average of 616 minutes of sedentary time, 199 minutes of light activity and 40 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise.

After following the men for up to six years, there were 194 deaths.

For each additional 30 minutes of sedentary time on a typical day, men were 17 percent more likely to die during the study, researchers report in the British Journal of Sports Medicine.

Every extra half hour of light activity, however, was associated with 17 percent lower odds of death.

“For those who are able, it remains a good idea to aim for at least 150 minutes each week of moderate or more intense activity, that is, activities that get the heart beating faster,” said lead study author Barbara Jefferis of University College London.

“Our results suggest that whilst moderate or more intense activity is best, for older men who are unable to achieve the target, doing even light physical activity is worthwhile for extending the lifespan,” Jefferis said by email.

Not surprisingly, researchers also found that men were about 40 percent less likely to die during the study when they got the minimum recommended 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise each week, compared to men who didn’t achieve that amount.

Long or short bursts

And the benefit was similar whether men got this total amount of exercise in brief, sporadic bouts of less than 10 minutes at a time or they exercised in longer bouts of at least 10 minutes or more.

“We found that as long as men accumulated 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity per week, it didn’t matter whether it was in long or short bursts,” Jefferis said.

“This is encouraging for older adults, as it is easier for them to reach the target without worrying about sustaining activity in bouts.”

While 66 percent of the men managed to get at least 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous exercise in short bursts, just 16 percent achieved this in bouts of 10 minutes or longer, the study found.

The study wasn’t a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how the amount or duration of exercise men get might directly impact longevity.

Another limitation is that accelerometers used in the study didn’t distinguish between standing time and sitting, which might have different health effects, researchers note. Men who followed through with wearing the devices also tended to be younger and healthier than men who didn’t.

Mental benefits

Still, the results add to evidence that any exercise is better than none, even if more intense activity is better, said Keith Diaz, a researcher at Columbia University Medical Center in New York City who wasn’t involved in the study.

“So, whether one walks for 1 minute at a time or 10 minutes at a time, any duration of activity at a time is healthful,” Diaz said by email.

“Regular exercise can lower blood pressure, blood sugar levels, body weight, triglycerides, and unhealthy LDL cholesterol; all of which can improve your heart’s health and, in turn, longevity,” Diaz added. “Exercise can also help memory and thinking by stimulating the release of chemicals in the brain that affect the health of brain cells and the growth of new blood vessels in the brain.”
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Climbers on North America’s tallest mountain may have to start packing out more of their poop after a researcher determined a glacier in which much of it has been dumped over the past decade probably is not decomposing the human waste.

Michael Loso, a glacier geologist, calculates that 36,000 climbers between 1951 and 2012 deposited 152,000 to 215,000 pounds (69 to 97 metric tons) of feces onto Kahiltna Glacier, part of the most popular route to Denali’s summit.

For more than a decade, the National Park Service has required that climbers keep waste off the Alaska mountain’s surface. Mountaineers captured their poop in biodegradable bags held by portable toilets and pitched it into deep crevasses on the glacier.

However, Loso’s research indicates human waste never reaches the bottom of the glacier, will never be exposed to extreme temperatures and disintegrate, and likely will reappear downstream as stains on Kahiltna Glacier’s surface where melting exceeds annual snowfall.

Park Service officials say the dumping of human waste that does not decompose is not a practice they want to continue in a national park and a wilderness area.

“These changes are in direct response to the research,” Chris Erickson, a mountain ranger, said by phone from nearby Talkeetna.

The proposed regulations would allow mountaineers to drop waste in only one crevasse at high elevation. They would have to carry out the rest.

Human waste is a concern on most mountains that attract multitudes of climbers, and the issue of poop littering the routes up Mount Everest in Nepal is well-documented. Some mountains are trying to minimize the human waste problem. In Japan, bio-toilets have been set up along the route to Mount Fuji’s summit, and incinerator toilets are at the top. In Tanzania, latrines have been built for climbers making their way to Kilimanjaro’s summit.

The waste can be more than just bothersome. Climbers on Denali, the centerpiece of sprawling Denali National Park, get all their drinking water by melting snow. And snow contaminated by human excrement can spread dangerous bacteria such as E. coli, causing climbers intestinal distress and diarrhea leading to dehydration, a life-threatening condition at high altitude.

Each year about 1,100 people try to reach Denali’s summit at 20,310 feet (6,190 meters). More than 90 percent use a route that starts from a landing strip for small airplanes on Kahiltna Glacier.

Starting in 2007, the Park Service required that human waste be collected in “Clean Mountain Cans,” a portable toilet invented by a Denali park ranger that looks like an extended coffee can. Under current rules, climbers between the base camp and 15,000 feet (4,572 meters) are allowed to toss filled liners into crevasses. Rangers even marked safe places to do so.

Loso for more than a decade has studied Denali human waste management to determine whether feces broke down, and if not, where it went. He buried human waste, dug it up after a year and found it remained at temperatures just below freezing, without undergoing temperature extremes or ultraviolet light that kills bacteria.

“For most bacteria, that’s a really comfortable place to be,” Loso said.

He forecasts that poop could emerge soon on the glacier surface 7 miles (11 kilometers) below the base camp, where the surface melts faster than snow accumulates.

The area is so remote, future visitors are unlikely to see the emerging waste, but Loso’s findings motivated the Park Service to re-examine its rules. The agency also doesn’t want pollution reaching the Kahiltna River, which flows from the glacier.

Under proposed rules, all Denali dung must be deposited in one of two places: the ranger station at Talkeetna or in a crevasse at “Camp Four,” a campsite at 14,200 feet (4,330 meters). Waste dumped there tumbles down a huge ice cliff and is likely to be pulverized and rendered inert, said Erickson, the mountain ranger.

Tom Kirby, a guide for American Alpine Institute, said his company supports any effort to get the waste problem under control.

“I think that’s a pretty reasonable thing to do to promote cleanliness and to keep water coming out of Kahiltna Glacier reasonably clean,” he said.

Colby Coombs, owner of Alaska Mountaineering School, which guides visitors on Denali, said he fully supports the Park Service balancing the safety of climbers, who want to move quickly through dangerous terrain without extra weight, while protecting a wilderness area within a national park.

“Who would like to see a big pile of human waste?” he asked. “That’s disgusting.
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If microbes can live in the most extreme regions on Earth, scientists say it is quite possible they can live on other celestial bodies.

In a recently published study, researchers from Washington State University say bacteria, found in the hyper-arid soil of Chile’s Atacama Desert, can live dormant for decades, patiently waiting for very rare rainfalls.

Once the rain arrives, they quickly reanimate and produce offspring. Since Mars once had flowing water, scientists say it is possible that similar microorganisms may be waiting there for the next opportunity to continue life.

But other celestial bodies within our solar system, such as Saturn’s icy moon Enceladus, have water now, so they too may harbor extraterrestrial life.

Studying life around deep-sea hydrothermal vents near Japan’s island of Okinawa, microbiologists led by a team from the University of Vienna found that certain microbes thrive in conditions similar to those on Enceladus.

The hardiest of the microbes were able to reproduce even in the presence of extremely unfriendly chemicals, such as ammonia and carbon monoxide.
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Three astronauts returned from the International Space Station to the snowy, bitingly cold flat lands of Central Asia, ending a 5½-month mission highlighted by robotic renovations, schoolteacher pep talks and heavenly greetings from Pope Francis.

The two Americans and one Russian landed in a Soyuz capsule shortly after sunrise Wednesday, local time, in Kazakhstan, where the temperature was below freezing. Flight controllers feared snow and freezing rain might hamper recovery efforts, but NASA said the weather wasn’t nearly as bad as had been feared and the pickup teams got to where they needed to be.

NASA’s Joe Acaba and Mark Vande Hei, and Russia’s Alexander Misurkin emerged from the capsule one by one, smiling, waving and pumping their fists in the air as they were carried to outdoor chairs. Medical staff wrapped them in thick blankets, while taking their pulse and making sure they were fine.

The astronauts checked out of the space station just a few hours earlier, hugging the three men remaining behind.

“We’re already missing you,” radioed station commander Anton Shkaplerov as the capsule backed away.

McAuliffe experiments

In handing over the skipper’s job to Shkaplerov, Misurkin joked that at least he and his two crewmates didn’t break anything and hopefully accomplished some good science. They’d lived on the space station since September.

Acaba is the first astronaut of Puerto Rican heritage and a former schoolteacher. He teamed up with another educator-astronaut, Ricky Arnold, who’s launching in three weeks, to perform the science lessons prepared by Christa McAuliffe 32 years ago. She died in the shuttle Challenger launch disaster.

During a series of spacewalks spanning months, Acaba and Vande Hei helped replace the aging mechanical hands of the station’s big robot arm. And last fall, they had a chance to chat with Pope Francis, discussing the beauty and fragility of the home planet.

As is customary, NASA planned to hustle Acaba and Vande Hei back to Houston, with Misurkin heading to cosmonaut headquarters at Star City, Russia.

A replacement crew, including former teacher Arnold, will lift off from Kazakhstan on March 21 and bring the space station back up to a full crew of six.
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U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announced a new initiative Tuesday that will target painkiller manufacturers and distributors who overprescribe and allow the misuse of prescription drugs by addicts.  The initiative, Sessions said, will tackle the opioid crisis “at its root.” 

The Prescription Interdiction and Litigation (PIL) Task Force will “use criminal and civil actions” to ensure that prescription painkiller manufacturers and distributors adhere to Drug Enforcement Administration rules against diversion and over-prescription of pain drugs.

The task force will use the False Claims Act to target pain management clinics, drug testing facilities and doctors who improperly prescribe opioids, the Justice Department said. 

“Over the past year, the Department has vigorously fought the prescription opioid crisis, and we are determined to continue making progress,” Sessions said at a press conference in Washington. “Today, we are opening a new front in the war on the opioid crisis by bringing all of our anti-opioid efforts under one banner. We have no time to waste.”

Over-prescription of painkillers

Rampant over-prescription of painkillers have long been seen as a driving force of the opioid crisis in the United States. The vast majority of opioid addicts start off with prescription painkillers before switching to heroin, the synthetic opioid fentanyl and other more potent drugs.

The United States, which represents less than five percent of the global population, consumed more than 30 percent of the world’s opioid supply in 2015, according to the International Narcotics Control Board.

“It is estimated that we use many times more opioids than is medically necessary for a population our size,” Sessions said.

In 2016, a record 64,000 Americans died of drug overdoses, most of them from opioid painkillers, according to the Centers for Disease Control. Preliminary data indicate 2017 “was even worse, albeit with a much smaller increase,” Sessions said.

Leading cause of death

Amid the opioid epidemic, drug overdose has become the leading cause of death for Americans under the age of 50. 

“These are not acceptable trends, and this new task force will make us more effective in reversing them and saving Americans from the scourge of opioid addiction,” Sessions said.

The attorney general said the newly created task force of senior officials from across the Justice Department will also review pending state and local lawsuits against opioid manufacturers and distributors to determine what support the Justice Department can lend to those legal efforts.

To that end, the Justice Department plans to file a “statement of interest” in support of hundreds of lawsuits brought against opioid manufacturers and distributors, Sessions said.

The lawsuits, filed by a number of cities, municipalities and medical institutions, seek to recover the costs associated with providing treatment and public safety measures instituted in response to the drug crisis.

Medicare pays for opioids

The Department of Justice will argue that federal agencies have borne substantial costs as a result of the opioid crisis and seek reimbursement.

In 2016, the federally funded Medicare prescription drug program paid more than $4 billion for opioids, according to Sessions.

The attorney general described the creation of the task force as the latest in a series of steps the justice Department has taken to combat an epidemic that is showing few signs of letting up.

Last month, Sessions announced a 45-day surge of DEA agents to focus on pharmacies and prescribers who were dispensing an unusual or disproportionate amount of drugs.

Last year, President Donald Trump declared the opioid epidemic a “public health emergency,” but critics say the declaration was not followed by the deployment of additional resources to tackle the crisis.

Sessions, however, defended the administration’s commitment to combating the epidemic, saying the Justice Department has taken “historic new actions to reverse the rising tide of addiction and death.”

Among the steps, he cited the indictment of more than 120 defendants, including doctors, the takedown of a Dark Net drug bazaar and the creation of a unit to detect evidence of overprescription and opioid-related health fraud.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports it is teaming up with national and international health agencies to tackle what appears to be the largest outbreak of Lassa fever in Nigeria. The Latest figures show 1,081 suspected cases of the disease, including 90 deaths.

The WHO reports 317 of more than 1,000 suspected cases of Lassa fever have been confirmed during the past eight weeks.  It says the number is more than the 305 cases reported all of last year, making this the biggest Lassa fever outbreak to date.

While the disease is present in 17 Nigerian states, the WHO reports it is largely concentrated in the three southern states of Edo, Ondo and Ebonyi. Lassa fever is endemic in Nigeria, as it is in a number of West African States. WHO spokesman Tarek Jasarevic says investigations have been undertaken to find out why this year’s outbreak is so extensive.

“[The] WHO is helping to coordinate health actors and is joining rapid risk assessment teams traveling to hot spots to investigate the outbreak. [The] WHO is supporting the Lassa fever Emergency Operations Center that is led by the Nigeria Center for Disease Control to revise the Lassa fever incident Action Plan, and to strengthen surveillance, infection prevention control and treatment, as well as better coordination and conducting Lassa fever research and development,” Jasarevic said.

Lassa fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic illness that occurs in West Africa. The virus is transmitted to humans via contact with food or household items contaminated with rodent urine or feces. Jasarevic told VOA the virus also can be spread between humans.

“Once a person is infected, it can infect other people just like Ebola was through the body fluid. So, mainly that would be the health care workers who are not properly trained and who are not properly equipped who may then get infected inside the health care facilities,” Jasarevic said.  

The incubation period of Lassa fever ranges from six to 21 days. The WHO says the best way to prevent the disease is by promoting good community hygiene to discourage rodents that spread the disease from entering homes. Besides storing grain and other foodstuffs in rodent-proof containers, the WHO suggests keeping cats in the home is a good idea.
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Only days after the spectacular liftoff of what is currently the heaviest space rocket, the privately-built Falcon Heavy, NASA announced the next launch will carry a specially built atomic clock. The new device, much smaller and sturdier than earth-bound atomic clocks, will help future astronauts navigate in deep space. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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 A cavernous bunker on a remote island above the Arctic Circle, where polar bears roam, holds the key to 12,000 years of agriculture but also to food supplies for future generations with countries urged to deposit seed samples there.

Welcome to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault, which turned 10 on Monday. It holds nearly one million seed samples from the world’s gene banks – an agricultural back-up in the event of disasters ranging from nuclear war to climate change.

“It’s fair to say that agriculture has never, ever faced bigger challenges than today,” Marie Haga, executive director of The Crop Trust, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The Crop Trust, an international group working to protect crop diversity, runs the vault in collaboration with the Norwegian government and the Nordic Genetic Resource Center

(NordGen).

Among the challenges facing agriculture, experts have said, are rising hunger, population growth and greater climate pressures.

That means the world needs to produce more food that is more nutritious, and to do so “on less land, with less water, less pesticides, less fertilizer to keep within what the planet can stand”, Haga said.

The answer could lie in a modest room in the vault, measuring 12 meters (40 ft) by 27 metres, where nations have deposited seed samples of food crops for safekeeping, she said.

Shelves of boxes, stacked in neat rows at minus 18 degrees Celsius (0F), hold seeds from the United States and Russia, Australia and North Korea, and Nigeria and Colombia to name just a few.

In the decade since the vault was founded, 73 institutions have deposited crop-seeds at this so-called Bank of Last Resort.

The Crop Trust is urging other gene banks around the world to follow suit. China is the notable omission, it said, although discussions are ongoing.

Haga’s concerns are echoed by Carly Fowler, a renowned American agriculturalist who helped to found the seed vault.

“Agriculture faces a historically unprecedented combination of challenges. At the top of the list is climate change,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We’re looking at climates in the near future that haven’t existed in the entire history of agriculture … We have to be proactive to make sure that agriculture does get ready for climate change.”

‘The Bank of Last Resort’

To do that the world needs a diverse sets of crops in its arsenal, but that is exactly what it has been losing, experts said.

“Our food system is extremely vulnerable. We are basing ourselves now on 12 plants and five animal species for 75 percent of the food we eat,” said Haga, a former Norwegian politician.

Historically, farmers cultivated at least 7,000 different plants to eat. Today, 60 percent of global calorie intake comes from wheat, rice and maize, said Haga.

This loss is partly due to a focus on “productivity, appearance and taste” at the expense of other aspects such as nutrition, said Kent Nnadozie at the United Nations’ Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO).

Nnadozie, who is secretary of the FAO’s International Treaty on Plant Genetic Resources for Food and Agriculture, said one consequence is that a major disease or virus “could wipe out the entire crop.”

To combat that risk, the Treaty – which was brokered by the United Nations – facilitates seed exchanges between global gene banks to research and develop new crop varieties. Currently, 144 countries have ratified the Treaty.

Worldwide, the FAO said, more than 1,700 gene banks of varying sizes hold collections of food crops.

But many are exposed to disasters and conflict; some have to deal with more mundane problems such as a lack of funding, poor management, malfunctioning equipment or erratic power supplies. 

The loss of a crop variety is irreversible.

Ahmed Amri, from Morocco’s International Center for Agricultural Research in the Dry Areas (ICARDA), knows those threats well.

In October 2015, ICARDA became the first to withdraw seeds from Svalbard after Syria’s civil war had damaged a seed bank near the city of Aleppo.

The gene bank was relocated to Morocco and Lebanon, the seeds have been grown, and re-depositing began last year. On Monday, ICARDA deposited more than 8,600 seed samples. It was one of 23 institutions to hand over 77,000 samples on the day.

“These samples include wheat, barley, durum wheat and bread wheat, lentils, chickpeas, fava beans and wild relatives of these species … So this is a big achievement,” Amri told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

The FAO’s Nnadozie said the Syria example showed how well the vault could work.

“It’s almost like you put your money in a long-term savings account. Once you are in a desperate situation and you need to, (you) take some money, and then you can put it back again.”

“This is the final backup, should anything go wrong – natural disasters, crisis, war, nuclear, whatever – you can always go back there.”

Climate pressures

The Svalbard archipelago, the furthest north reachable on a scheduled flight, was chosen for the vault’s location because it is remote, there are no volcanoes or earthquakes, and the permafrost keeps the seeds in deep-freeze.

Yet the vault, built 120 meters (400 feet) into the rock, is facing its own climate pressures.

An unexpected thaw of permafrost meant water flowed into the entrance of the vault’s tunnel in late 2016. The seeds were not in danger, but Norway said on Friday it would spend 100 million krone ($13 million) to upgrade the vault.

“When I came up here the first time in 1985 … there was always ice on the fjord. Now you never see complete ice on the fjord,” Haga said.

Scientists have warned that the Arctic Ocean could be ice-free much sooner than previous predictions, which forecast sea ice would first disappear completely during summer months between 2040 and 2050.

Fowler said he was confident the seeds were safe, but welcomed Norway’s decision to strengthen the vault.

“We’ll be tight and dry and we’ll deal with whatever climate change gives us,” he said.
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When Angela was born without lower legs, her father believed she was an evil spirit and should be taken to a “concoction man” — a traditional herbalist who would kill the baby and bury her.

But Angela survived after a midwife put her mother in touch with charity worker Joseph Asakibeem, who has devoted his life to saving Ghana’s “spirit children.”

In parts of northern Ghana, babies born with disabilities are traditionally seen as bringers of bad luck, said Asakibeem, who on Monday won the Bond Humanitarian Award that recognizes hidden “superheroes” for his work with the charity AfriKids. Until recently, many spirit children were taken to a concoction man who would lock them in a room after administering a poisonous potion.

“The local belief is that if you survive, it’s proof you are not a spirit, but if you die, it’s confirmation that you are a spirit,” said Asakibeem, a project manager at AfriKids.

“Unfortunately, most times the child dies. They then bury the child in an isolated place away from the village.”

Babies whose mothers die in childbirth, or who are born after something bad has happened to the family, also risk being labelled spirit children.

Smart girl

Angela, now a bright seven-year-old, is one of 110 children rescued by Asakibeem and his team at AfriKids.

She has learned to walk with prosthetic limbs, helps her mother with chores, and is thriving at school. Angela’s parents separated after her birth but her father has begged for a reconciliation after seeing her progress, AfriKids said.

“She’s a very strong girl, she’s smart and a fast learner,” Asakibeem told Reuters by Skype.  “My hope is one day she will become a nurse or teacher and serve as a role model to the community.”

Asakibeem, 41, grew up in the Kassena Nankana region in northern Ghana, where the belief in kinkirigo, or spirit children, was deeply embedded.

In 2005, up to 15 percent of babies who died were thought to have been killed as spirit children, according to AfriKids.

Asakibeem began talking to parents, village elders and concoction men to change mindsets and dispel superstitions by informing them about the medical reasons for disabilities and promoting health care.

Asakibeem said many disabilities in the region were linked to poor nutrition and health care during pregnancy, and a lack of access to medical help during labor complications.

AfriKids has set up a center in Asakibeem’s home village, Sirigu, and another in nearby Bongo district, providing help for disabled children, a support group for their mothers and antenatal care for pregnant women.

It gives small loans for businesses like basketry, pottery and poultry farming to help mothers support their families.

Reaching concoction men

One challenge was persuading the concoction men to stop.

AfriKids provided livestock and loans to kickstart businesses.

It also takes them to areas where children with disabilities flourish and some of those who once made a living from killing children have become advocates to protect them, Asakibeem said.

No child killings have been reported in Kassena Nankana for 10 years, but Asakibeem said they continue elsewhere.

“We’re now expanding our work to the whole of northern Ghana. My dream is that in 15 years I can stop this practice.”
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The most comprehensive elephant genome study ever conducted, covering seven living and extinct species, is offering some surprises about the family tree of the world’s largest land animal while also settling a debate about Africa’s elephants.

Researchers said on Monday their research confirmed that the two types of African elephants, those inhabiting forests and those roaming savannas, are separate species that have lived in nearly complete isolation from one another for the past half million years despite their close proximity.

They join the Asian elephant as the world’s three existing elephant species.

The scientists sequenced the genomes of two African savanna elephants, two African forest elephants, two Asian elephants, two extinct so-called straight-tusked elephants, four extinct woolly mammoths, including two from North America and two from Siberia, one extinct Columbian mammoth and two extinct American mastodons. Mastodons are not classified as members of the elephant lineage but are cousins.

“I hope that this study can create an appreciation for the rich evolutionary history of elephants and emphasize the need for protecting the only three elephant species that still walk the planet today, who are all under imminent risk of extinction from poaching and habitat loss,” said Harvard Medical School geneticist Eleftheria Palkopoulou, one of the researchers.

The research found multiple instances of gene flow — interbreeding — between different extinct elephant species, though this has virtually stopped among today’s elephants.

The straight-tusked elephants that once inhabited Europe and Asia — the largest of the species studied at up to 13 feet tall (4 meters) and 15 tons — are a case in point. The species turns out to be a hybrid with portions of its genome arising from an ancient African elephant, the woolly mammoth and the African forest elephants still alive today.

Straight-tusked elephants were traditionally thought to be most closely related to Asian elephants due to similarities in their skulls and teeth. One of the two straight-tusked elephants studied lived 120,000 years ago and provided one of the oldest high-quality genomes for any extinct species.

The scientists also found fresh evidence of interbreeding among the Ice Age Columbian and woolly mammoths, which crossed paths in locations where the more temperate regions of North America met the glaciers that then covered large parts of the continent.

The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
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The World Health Organization warned on Monday that a cholera epidemic in Yemen that killed more than 2,000 people could flare up again in the rainy season.

WHO Deputy Director General for Emergency Preparedness and Response Peter Salama said the number of cholera infections had been in decline in Yemen over the past 20 weeks after it hit the 1 million mark of suspected cases.

“However, the real problem is we’re entering another phase of rainy seasons,” Salama told Reuters on the sidelines of an international aid conference in Riyadh.

“Usually cholera cases increase corresponding to those rainy seasons. So we expect one surge in April, and another potential surge in August.”

A proxy war between Iran-aligned Houthis and the internationally recognized government of President Abd-Rabbu Mansour Hadi, which is backed by a Saudi-led alliance, has killed more than 10,000 people since 2015, displaced more than 2 million and destroyed much of the country’s infrastructure, including the health system.

Yemen relies heavily on food imports and is on the brink of famine. The United Nations says more than 22 million of Yemen’s 25 million population need humanitarian assistance, including 11.3 million who are in acute need.

Salama said the country had also had an outbreak of diphtheria, a vaccine-preventable disease that usually affects children and which has largely been eliminated in developed countries.

Both cholera and diphtheria outbreaks are a product of the damage to the health system in the country, he said, adding that less than half of Yemen’s health facilities are fully functioning.

“We’re very concerned we’re going to go from a failing health system to a failed one that’s going to spawn more infectious diseases and more suffering,” Salama said.

However, Salama said that despite more than 2,000 deaths from cholera, the fatality rate has been low, at around 0.2 to 0.3 percent.

The WHO has approval from the government for vaccination campaigns and is working on ensuring all parties to the conflict implement the plan, he added.
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