The private space company SpaceX has launched its largest rocket yet Tuesday, sending a cherry red Tesla Roadster into an elliptical Earth-Mars orbit.

The Falcon Heavy rocket lifted off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center on the same launch pad from which NASA’s Apollo 11 lifted off in 1969 on the first mission that landed astronauts on the moon.

SpaceX CEO Elon Musk told reporters before the launch Tuesday he “would consider it a win if it just clears the pad and doesn’t blow the pad to smithereens.”

The rocket is equipped with three boosters and 27 engines designed to provide more than 2 million kilograms of thrust. If successful, it will be the most powerful rocket in use today, and the most powerful used since NASA’s Saturn 5 rockets last carried astronauts to the moon 45 years ago.

The Falcon Heavy was first designed to send humans to the moon or Mars, but Musk said Monday it is now being considered as a carrier of equipment and supplies to deep space destinations.

​While such test rockets usually use items like steel or concrete slabs as payload, but the Tesla Roadster made by another company owned by Musk, carried a mannequin “Starman” sitting at the wheel and the radio set to play David Bowie’s classic hit Space Oddity on a loop.

In a tweet last month, Musk said he loves the thought of a car driving -apparently endlessly through space and, perhaps being discovered by an alien race millions of years in the future.
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Somewhere in Boise, the 500-year-old skeletons of two Native Americans found last year when a badger apparently unearthed them from their resting place in Idaho’s high desert sagebrush steppe are being stored as three tribes seek to claim them as their own and anthropologists who study Native Americans lament what they say is a lost research opportunity.

U.S. officials won’t say where the bones of the young adult and a child are being kept as they assess claims for them made to the U.S. Bureau of Land Management by the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes in eastern Idaho, Shoshone-Paiute Tribes in southern Idaho and northern Nevada and the Nez Perce Tribe in northern Idaho.

The federal agency considers its negotiations with the tribes about the bones sensitive government-to-government communications, and only confirmed the discussions after The Associated Press filed a Freedom of Information Act request.

The skeletons were found in such good condition last April that Idaho authorities initially treated the southwestern Snake River Plain site as a possible crime scene. Authorities said they were either dealing with a double homicide that had happened in recent decades, bones from pioneers who died in the 19th century while traveling along the nearby Oregon Trail or the remains of Native Americans from that era or earlier.

But carbon dating tests from a lab in Florida found the young adult and the child or teen lived sometime during the 1400s to 1600s. Elmore County investigators were so surprised that they sent bone samples to be checked at another lab in Arizona, which returned similar results.

The Bureau of Land Management is using a process in the Native American Graves Protection and Repatriation Act to return the skeletons. A decision is possible this spring, said agency spokesman Michael Williamson.

“We’re giving it the time it needs and looking forward to having a decision made where all parties are satisfied,” he said.

For the tribes, it’s a matter of recovering two of their own who were among the nomadic Native Americans who experts say spent winters near Snake River Canyon and summers at higher elevation prairies — eating native plants and hunting mostly deer and rabbits but occasionally elk and bison.

“We’ve always pointed out that we’ve been here for thousands of years,” Shoshone-Paiute Tribes Chairman Ted Howard said after the age of the bones was disclosed. “For our tribe and the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes, those are the remains of our people, our ancestors.”

Kayeloni Scott, communications director for the Nez Perce Tribe, said her tribe has historically been present in the area where the skeletons were found.

“That’s why we’re speaking on behalf of the bones,” she said in a voicemail. “Also, the primary reason was just to make sure someone was taking care of them, and they weren’t just being left alone.”

The land management bureau confirmed that the Shoshone-Bannock Tribes is the third with a claim for the bones. Tribe spokeswoman Randy’L Teton did not return a telephone message seeking comment.

The tribes don’t let researchers conduct tests on remains of ancestors and anthropologists say the unique nature of the find means that experts are losing an opportunity to learn more about how Native Americans lived in a place where the first documented visit by outsiders was in 1805.

The skeletons were discovered by an Idaho Department of Fish and Game worker checking ground squirrel hunters’ licenses about 5 miles (8 kilometers) from the small city of Mountain Home. A badger digging into the ground squirrels’ burrows apparently exposed some of them.

Law enforcement authorities who treated the find as a crime scene reported finding no prehistoric items with the bones — such as stone tools or beads.

But anthropologists say evidence of how the two had lived might have been found by trained experts if the area had also been treated from the onset as a possible anthropological site. There are fewer than a dozen known Native American burial sites on the Snake River Plain, and this site was unique because none of the other sites have had the remains of more than one person.

“If there had been any indication at the outset that this was a prehistoric internment, a much more systematic process would have been conducted,” said Mark Plew, an anthropology professor at Boise State University. “These inadvertent discoveries often go into a black hole.”

Law enforcement officials after finding out the approximate age of the bones had no more testing conducted because it is costly and can involve destruction of bone material.

But Plew said a more thorough examination of the bones with isotope analysis and by anthropologists could reveal the gender of the two, what they ate, whether they had survived periods of famine and possibly their cause or causes of death.

“The opportunities are rare,” he said. “As these go away, the opportunity to do that kind of research is lost.”

For the tribes, trying to recover the remains “is a very emotional process,” said Pei-Lin Yu, a Boise State anthropology assistant professor who previously worked as a federal government official on projects to return Native American bones to tribes. The age of the bones doesn’t matter to them, she said.

“Time doesn’t actually figure into their feelings of association and responsibility as stewards of their ancestors,” Yu said.
…

The maker of the Taser says the electroshock weapon is the safest tool on a police officer’s belt – with a few caveats.

In pages of warnings, Axon Enterprise Inc advises police to beware that some people are at higher risk of death or serious injury from the weapons. Pregnant women. Young children. Old people. Frail people. People with heart conditions. People on drugs or alcohol. The list goes on.

Taken together, the tally of people particularly susceptible to harm from a Taser’s powerful shock covers nearly a third of the U.S. population, a Reuters analysis of demographic and health data found. Yet police have repeatedly used Tasers on people who fall into the very groups the company warns about.

Dailene Rosario was one of them. Last winter, a New York City police officer fired his Taser’s electrified barbs into the rib cage of Rosario, 17, as she screamed she was pregnant. Thanks to a viral video taken by a bystander, the world watched as Rosario, 14 weeks into her term, crumpled to the ground, wailing.

What happened afterward has not been told.

Rosario’s daughter Raileey survived. But the baby is not faring well. In September, Rosario said, the two-month-old was rushed to the hospital, struggling to breathe after developing tremors and coughing fits. Raileey spent nearly all of November at Children’s Hospital at Montefiore in the Bronx, undergoing tests for a possible seizure disorder.

“Now it happens so frequently,” Rosario said of the tremors. “We can only just monitor her and try to keep her relaxed.”

Her lawyer, Scott Rynecki, said he plans to make the baby’s health a central issue in a $5 million legal claim she has filed against the New York Police Department. The NYPD said the incident remains under investigation and declined to comment further.

There’s no telling how often police use Tasers on pregnant women and the other “higher-risk populations” the manufacturer warns about: The stun guns are unregulated as police weapons, and there is no national tracking of their use.

Yet people in those groups account for more than half of the 1,028 cases identified by Reuters in which people died after being shocked by Tasers, often along with other force. Such people, Axon’s warnings say, should be targeted “only if the situation justifies an increased risk” of injury or death.

Particularly vexing for police is the difficulty of determining which potential Taser targets belong to population cohorts deemed to be at increased risk.

Some fatalities examined by Reuters involved people who obviously fell into a higher-risk category. Four, for instance, involved people over 75.

Yet many others involved vulnerabilities difficult to spot, particularly in the chaos of confrontation. Some 245 had a heart condition. And 643 people were drunk or high on drugs – a state often, but not always, easy to identify.

“People don’t walk around with signs” listing their medical conditions, said James Ginger, a former Evansville, Indiana, policeman now working as a consultant and court-appointed monitor of police compliance with judicial orders. The Taser is an important police tool, Ginger said. But if officers avoided anyone who potentially has a higher-risk condition, “you couldn’t use it.”

Axon calls Tasers the “safest force option available to law enforcement.”

The company told Reuters its warnings and training “do not identify any population group as ‘high risk,’ rather, they recognize that certain people may be at increased risk during encounters requiring force, regardless of the force option chosen.”

But the warnings issued to police by Axon, formerly known as Taser International Inc, note explicitly that “some individuals may be particularly susceptible to the effects” of its weapons. They identify an array of “higher-risk populations” and other vulnerable groups.

Law enforcement began embracing Tasers in the early 2000s. The manufacturer began listing higher-risk populations in 2009, when it also warned of possible cardiac effects from shocks to the chest. The list grew in the next few years.

Many in the police community say Tasers nevertheless offer a valuable option for controlling combative subjects without resorting to firearms. “There have been instances where we have saved a person’s life by using this piece of equipment,” said Virginia Beach Police Chief James Cervera. But as warnings on the weapons’ risks have evolved, he added, the department has “tightened up” on their use.

Axon’s warnings and guidelines are not binding on police departments, and while more than 90 percent of police agencies deploy Tasers, there are no universal standards for usage.

The uncertainty raises a challenge, some in law enforcement say. If large swaths of people are potentially at higher risk of death or serious injury from a Taser, how can police ever be sure the weapons are safe to use?

Nearly 80 percent of the population could fit into one of the higher risk groups identified by Taser’s maker, Reuters’ analysis shows. For example, any woman of childbearing age – about 20 percent of the population – could be pregnant. Any adult male could have impaired heart function, another third of the populace.

Police often have mere seconds to weigh such factors, said Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, a think tank that advises police on policy issues, including use-of-force. As a result, he said, “the Taser may be the most complicated weapon that a police officer wears today.”

A big heart

Michael Mears, 39, was found on the floor in a hallway at his Los Angeles apartment complex on Christmas Eve 2014, bloodied and crying: “Help me. Help me.”

The police called to help the disabled veteran shocked him repeatedly with a Taser.

Mears had a vulnerability the officers couldn’t see: an enlarged heart.

In 2009, the manufacturer introduced the possibility that Taser shocks could affect the heart. By Christmas 2014, it had warned that “serious complications could also arise in those with impaired heart function.”

That didn’t protect Mears, nor many others like him. Of the 750 Taser-involved deaths in which Reuters obtained autopsy information, 245 involved people with pre-existing heart problems. And of the 159 cases in which coroners ruled the Taser shock caused or contributed to the death, 68, or 43 percent, involved cardiac conditions.

Mears grew up in Florida and joined the Marines after high school. At 19, he helped evacuate United Nations troops from Somalia in 1995.

He injured his back in a shipboard fall two years later, said his mother, Joanna Wysocki. Surgery to repair his spine instead left him unable to walk. After years of rehabilitation, he had begun to walk again. But he often lost feeling in his weakened legs and needed a walker or wheelchair.

Wysocki said she talked to her son by phone the morning of his death, and he was excited about having friends over for Christmas Eve dinner. But that afternoon, he began acting strangely, court records show.

He rolled a candlestick across the floor as if he were throwing a grenade, and then ran out of the apartment. A neighbor peeked through a door and saw him lying on the floor, crying for help, she told detectives. Mears was covered in blood from rolling in shards of glass from a broken fire extinguisher case.

“He has PTSD,” a friend told the paramedics who arrived. Several LAPD officers followed. The first two hit Mears with pepper spray and batons because, the autopsy report said, he appeared combative.

The Taser’s log shows Mears was shocked six times totaling 53 seconds over three minutes. The longest: 32 seconds. Taser guidelines advise officers to avoid “repeated, prolonged or continuous” shocks, noting that safety testing typically involved no more than 15 seconds of exposure.

The officer who stunned Mears testified he believed he was applying 5-second shocks and had no idea his Taser delivered electricity for as long as he held the trigger. The LAPD declined to discuss the case or make the officer available for comment.

The Los Angeles County Medical Examiner-Coroner ruled Mears’ death a homicide, concluding that cocaine and police efforts to restrain him, including the Taser shocks, were too much for his heart.

His parents sued the city. Jurors blamed the city for being “deliberately indifferent” to officer training and awarded them $5.5 million.

Mears died Christmas morning, while his mother was flying from Florida. “I’ll never get to say goodbye,” she said.

Nursing home tragedy

Sometimes, the vulnerabilities are more obvious.

There was no mistaking Stanley Downen was elderly when Columbia Falls police answered a call from the Montana Veterans’ Home for help with a wandering resident in June 2012. Downen, 77 with advanced Alzheimer’s, was just outside the gate, circled by several staffers urging him to come back inside.

A retired ironworker and Navy vet, Downen had scooped up landscaping rocks, one as big as a softball, and was threatening to throw them at anyone who came near. Officers Mike Johnson and Gary Stanberry approached, asking him to put down the rocks.

Downen cursed at the officers and said he wanted to go home.

They tried again; same response.

Johnson drew his Taser and fired. He later testified that Downen had reared back as if to throw one of the rocks. “I believed that I was going to be physically harmed.”

Paralyzed by the Taser’s electrified darts, Downen’s body seized and he fell forward, his head smacking the pavement. Handcuffed, he continued cursing and struggling.

Downen was taken to a nearby hospital, but his dementia worsened. He died there three weeks later.

Axon has warned since 2008 about using its weapons on “elderly” people and advises that doing so “could increase the risk of death or serious injury.” A model Taser policy from the Police Executive Research Forum includes similar warnings.

But neither designates an age threshold for “elderly,” and dozens of police department policies reviewed by Reuters specify no age limit.

Reuters identified 13 cases in which people 65 and older – the eligibility age for Medicare – died after being stunned by police with Tasers. All but two occurred well after the manufacturer’s first warnings.

By the time Columbia Falls police confronted Stanley Downen in 2012, the warnings had been in place for years. Officer Johnson later testified he never saw them.

In depositions and court records from a lawsuit filed by Tamara Downen, Stanley’s granddaughter, Johnson and the police department acknowledged he had not been trained or certified on Taser use since 2006 – two years before the manufacturer first warned against shocking the elderly. Officers are supposed to be re-trained and certified on the weapons annually, according to guidelines from the manufacturer and independent law enforcement groups.

The department also had no formal policy on Taser use, court records show, and its procedures manual never mentioned the weapon.

Tamara Downen sued the state-run nursing home and city police, alleging unsafe practices and improper Taser use in her grandfather’s death. “It just wasn’t right, what he went through,” she said. The city settled for $150,000; the state for $20,000.

Columbia Falls later hired a new police chief, Clint Peters. Citing the litigation, he declined to comment on the case or make the officers available for interviews. But he said the force now has a Taser policy based on guidelines from national law enforcement groups.

‘Totally intoxicated’

Axon has warned since 2005 that people agitated or intoxicated by drugs may face higher risks of medical consequences from Tasers’ electrical current. Data collected by Reuters underline that risk: More than 60 percent of 1,028 people who died in police confrontations involving Tasers were either drunk or on drugs.

Some who died were unmistakably intoxicated – like Doug Wiggington.

In Greenfield, Indiana, last May 12, Wiggington stumbled out of the local Elks Lodge just after 6 p.m., falling as he walked near a two-lane highway. James Fornoff, 74, called police. “He had no clue what he was doing,” Fornoff said.

When the first officer arrived at 6:27 p.m., Wiggington, 48, was lying in the grass, wiggling his feet, police dash-cam videos showed. “What have you taken?” Officer Dillon Silver asked.

As officer Rodney Vawter joined him, Silver rolled Wiggington onto his side, patting him down. Silver began to pull him onto his back but Wiggington stiffened. Silver grabbed his arm, saying, “Do not tense up on me.” Wiggington, 6 feet and 230 pounds, rolled onto his stomach.

“Tase him,” said Silver. Vawter pulled the trigger and the barbs struck Wiggington’s back. He writhed and grunted. “I’m going to do it again if you don’t listen!” Vawter said. The struggle continued. Vawter fired again.

When the officers turned him over, Wiggington was unconscious. They gave him two shots of Narcan, an overdose antidote for opioids, and started CPR. When the ambulance arrived, Wiggington had no pulse. Thirty minutes later, he was pronounced dead.

The autopsy said Wiggington died from “acute cocaine and methamphetamine intoxication.” The Taser was listed first among contributing factors.

“We have a lot of unanswered questions,” said Wiggington’s daughter, Brittany, 30, who has filed legal notice of her intent to sue the department.

By the time Wiggington was shocked, the company’s training materials had noted explicitly for years that Tasers cause “physiologic and/or metabolic effects that may increase the risk of death or serious injury” – and drug users “may be particularly susceptible.”

None of that language appeared in the Greenfield Police Department’s Taser policy at the time. The officer who shocked Wigginton, Vawter, hadn’t been re-certified on the Taser in more than three years.

Greenfield Police Chief Jeff Rasche said the two officers did not violate department policy and were cleared by an internal investigation and a separate state probe. Axon, he added, does not explicitly bar using the weapon on people under the influence of drugs or alcohol, but instead warns of the risks.

Rasche, chief since last January, said he had ordered his 42 officers to undergo a six-hour Taser re-certification class before the death. At the time of the incident, nine had completed it. Vawter wasn’t among them.

Since the death, Rasche has ordered all officers to undergo “crisis intervention training,” emphasizing de-escalation strategies in lieu of using force such as Tasers.

“We can’t just do the same thing we’ve been doing forever because it’s not working,” the chief said. “People are unfortunately dying and officers are having to use lethal force when they, you know, probably shouldn’t be.”

The pregnancy problem

At any given time, 6 percent of women of childbearing age are pregnant. But, in the early stages, the signs of pregnancy are rarely obvious.

Since 2003, Axon has warned that pregnant women are at particular risk of injury from falls after being shocked. Still, the company suggested then that the weapons’ electrical charge posed no other special risks to women or fetuses. In 2004, it cited lab tests in which an electric charge was delivered to the abdomens of pregnant pigs with “no adverse effect on fetuses.”

In 2009, Axon identified pregnant women as a “higher risk population.” By 2011, news reports described nearly a dozen women who had suffered miscarriages or other pregnancy complications after stun-gun shocks.

Definitively measuring the risks of shocking a pregnant woman is impossible: There has never been a controlled study of the Taser’s effects on pregnant women. Such tests, by their nature, are too risky to undertake.

Yet since electricity is a known cardiac hazard, doctors theorize it poses some risk.

“There may be an instantaneous fetal effect when the Taser discharges, but you may not know about that until when he is a small child,” said Michael Cackovic, an obstetrician who heads the maternal cardiac disease program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

Cackovic said risks from a Taser shock include disrupting the flow of oxygen from the mother, potential fatal cardiac arrhythmia, damage affecting the brain and other problems that may emerge years after birth.

No government authorities track miscarriages or other problems linked to pregnant women stunned by Tasers. A Reuters review of court filings and news articles found 19 incidents of women stunned while pregnant, at least 11 of which were followed by a miscarriage, since 2001.

One such case played out on a hot August morning in Lima, Ohio, in 2016. Brittany Osberry, 24, stumbled into a crime scene as she pulled into her friend’s driveway to pick up her nieces and nephews. Police were monitoring the home because they mistakenly thought a suspect in a shooting may be inside. Within seconds, three officers swarmed her car.

“You need to leave!” officer Mark Frysinger shouted, gun drawn, the altercation captured on a neighbor’s cellphone. “This is a crime scene.”

When she asked why, Frysinger accused her of disorderly conduct and told her to leave again. She protested: She wanted first to pick up the children. The officers moved in. “Show me your hands,” Frysinger yelled, pulling her from the car. Three officers pushed her up against the door.

“You all better know I’m pregnant,” she shouted. “You all better know that.”

One officer put her in a choke-hold and lifted the 104-pound woman back so high the tips of her toes touched the driveway. Another officer, Zane Slusher, drove a Taser into her abdomen. “Oh my God!” she screamed.

In an incident report, police said Osberry was combative and struck an officer – assertions a federal judge said were “not conclusively” borne out by the video. Osberry was arrested for obstructing official business, resisting arrest, disorderly conduct and assault. The charges were later dismissed. No official reason was given.

Within hours, she said, she felt stomach cramps. A month later, ultrasounds couldn’t detect the baby’s heartbeat. Other tests found a beating heart, but her doctors identified another problem: Osberry was suffering from preeclampsia, a dangerous spike in blood pressure during pregnancy that can interfere with blood flow to the placenta and fetus.

She underwent tests twice a week. The fetus wasn’t gaining weight.

Then, that New Year’s Eve, with Osberry 30 weeks pregnant, her doctor said the baby was coming. Contractions began and the baby’s heartbeat plunged, she said. On the way to the hospital, she wept, “not knowing if I would lose him.”

Kannon was born at 2 pounds, 2 ounces and stayed at the hospital nearly two months. Today, he’s generally healthy but struggles to use his left leg; doctors aren’t sure if he’ll face long-term developmental problems.

In February, Osberry filed suit against Lima Police and the officers involved. The department said it had “probable cause” to arrest her and cited “qualified immunity,” a concept providing legal protection to officers unless police violate “clearly established’’ legal principles.

In November, a federal judge rejected the department’s attempt to have the case dismissed. Lima Police have appealed the ruling.

“Given the factual allegations, I am hard-pressed to imagine a scenario less deserving of qualified immunity,” wrote U.S. District Judge James Carr. A “reasonable officer,” he said, should know not to use a Taser on a “non-resisting pregnant woman.”

 
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The director general of the World Health Organization, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said he is establishing what he calls a health reserve army to tackle emergencies and newly emerging diseases.

Ghebreyesus said he has been spending the past seven months working on a strategic plan to reform and improve the World Health Organization. He said a major focus of this plan is on implementing swifter, more effective emergency response measures.

Tedros noted this year marks the 100th anniversary of the Spanish flu, which killed up to 100 million people, far more than were killed during World War I. He said the world remains extremely vulnerable to potential pandemics and newly emerging diseases, and it must be prepared to respond to them quickly.

He told VOA it is crucial to work with countries on prevention in tackling these looming threats.

“If anything happens, no country can do it alone,” he said. “So, we need to have a health reserve force, or, if you like, a health reserve army in different locations so countries who are better off can help other countries.”

What he envisions, he said, is the commitment of 50 countries that will have thousands of trained health workers on hand, ready to respond rapidly to medical emergencies wherever they occur. He said he expects countries to cover their own expenses and help those that are unable to do so.

Tedros, a former Ethiopian health minister and the first African to head the WHO, took office on July 1. Back in October, he appointed then-Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe as a WHO goodwill ambassador — a move that sparked an international outcry and nearly derailed his nascent administration. Mugabe had faced U.S. sanctions over his government’s human rights abuses. The appointment was quickly rescinded.

The WHO chief said the appointment was made in good faith, but he acknowledged the impact it had on the organization and voiced regret. He added it is time to put the controversy behind him, however, and get on with the urgent health issues at hand.
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The world’s first space sports car is cruising toward the asteroid belt, well beyond Mars.

SpaceX chief Elon Musk confirmed the new, more distant route for his rocketing Tesla Roadster, which was launched aboard the company’s Falcon Heavy from Florida.

The Heavy became the most powerful rocket flying today with Tuesday’s inaugural test flight.

Musk says the final firing of the upper stage put his red convertible into a solar orbit that stretches all the way to the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The original plan had the car traveling no farther than Mars.

In the driver seat of the Tesla is a space-suited mannequin nicknamed “Starman.” Musk doesn’t plan to fly people on the Heavy, but is working on an even bigger rocket for deep-space crews.
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A fake doctor treating poor villagers in northern India for colds, coughs and diarrhea has infected at least 21 of them with HIV by using contaminated syringes and needles, a health official said Tuesday.

 

Sushil Choudhury, the official, said police were looking for Rajendra Yadav, who fled Bangarmau, a small town in Uttar Pradesh state, after the HIV infections were detected in December last year.

 

The villagers said they rarely saw Yadav changing the needles. Choudhury said that probably led to the spread of HIV.

 

With India’s health care system facing a massive shortage of doctors and hospitals, millions of poor people seek fake doctors for cheap treatment.

 

India had 2.1 million people living with HIV at the end of 2016, according to a UNAIDS report. Of those, 9,100 were children under age 15. India has registered a 20 percent annual decline in new infections over the past few years, according to the report.

 

Yadav would visit villages on his bicycle and treat patients outdoors. Villagers complained that he would give injections for almost all ailments for meager payments, Choudhury said.

 

A sudden spurt in HIV cases in and around Bangarmau detected in December last year alerted state authorities. “An investigation showed that almost all of them had taken injections from one person,” Choudhury said. “This was an important lead. We set up special medical camps in villages in the area and checked 566 people, and 21 were found to be HIV positive.”

 

Mehtab Alam, a project manager for Raza Hussain Memorial Charitable Trust, said that fake doctors do not use disposable syringes, instead using glass syringes and one needle to inject hundreds of patients. The group works with HIV and AIDS patients in the region.

 

“Villagers are ignorant about hygiene,” he said.

 

HIV — or the human immunodeficiency virus — is transmitted through blood transfusion, use of infected needles and syringes, unprotected sex, or from mother to child. It weakens the body’s immune system, making it susceptible to various infections. Over time, an HIV infection can develop into AIDS, a progressive failure of the immune system that leaves the body open to life-threatening infections and cancers.

 

 
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Malawi farmers are under attack by armyworms, and government-provided pesticides are not effective. So farmers are fighting back with home-made concoctions. Faith Lapidus reports.
…

There are nearly 44 million people suffering from Alzheimer’s disease. But a highly experimental new treatment may slow the advance of the disease. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

SpaceX is bucking decades of launch tradition for the first test flight of its new megarocket.

 

The Falcon Heavy is set to become the world’s most powerful rocket in use Tuesday when it blasts off from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. None of the usual, no-big-deal-if-it’s-destroyed launch ballast — like steel or concrete slabs, or mundane experiments — for this curtain raiser.

 

Instead, the rocket will be hauling a red sports convertible with a space-suited dummy at the wheel and David Bowie’s “Space Oddity” on the soundtrack. It’s the inspiration of Elon Musk, the high-tech, science fiction-loving maverick who heads SpaceX and electric carmaker Tesla.

 

On the eve of the launch, Musk said he’s at peace with whatever happens, be it a successful test flight or an explosive failure.

 

“It’s guaranteed to be exciting, one way or another,” Musk said Monday in a phone conference with reporters.

 

Musk said he normally feels “super stressed out” the day before a launch. “This time I don’t, so that may be a bad sign.”

 

The hope is that any failure comes far enough into the flight “so we at least learn as much as possible along the way.”

 

More about Tuesday afternoon’s planned launch:

 

Rocket Stats:

 

The Falcon Heavy has three first-stage boosters, strapped together with 27 engines in all. Stretching 40 feet (12 meters) at the base and standing 230 feet (70 meters) tall, the Heavy is a triple dose of the Falcon 9, the company’s frequent flyer with just a single booster. At liftoff, the Heavy packs about 5 million pounds of thrust. That’s more liftoff punch than any other rocket currently operating in the world — by a factor of two — but less than NASA’s old space shuttles and Saturn V moon rockets. Two of the Heavy’s boosters are recycled; they have flown on previous Falcon 9 launches. Once spent, they will aim for side-by-side vertical touchdowns at Cape Canaveral. The brand new, center core will attempt to land on an ocean barge.

 

Car Stats:

SpaceX’s Elon Musk also runs the electric carmaker Tesla. So in a bit of cross-marketing, he’s put his own cherry-red Tesla Roadster on the Heavy’s inaugural flight. It is one of the car company’s original Roadsters.

No car has ever rocketed into space before, if you don’t count NASA’s Apollo-era moon buggies, still parked on the lunar surface. The Federal Aviation Administration had to sign off on the Heavy-Tesla combo. It’s at the top of the rocket, enclosed for liftoff. The protective cover will drop away, allowing the car to travel on its way. Three cameras are mounted on the Roadster that should provide “some epic views if they work and everything goes well,” Musk said.

 

Destination:

SpaceX is targeting a long, oval orbit around the sun for the Roadster that will take the car as far out as Mars, and have it making laps for a billion years. If the convertible makes it into space in one piece, it still must endure several hours of deep-space coasting through the high-energy Van Allen radiation belts encircling Earth. Musk said Monday that the car could come fairly close to Mars and that there’s an “extremely tiny” chance it could crash into the planet. But he quickly added, “I wouldn’t hold your breath.” Musk’ intent on establishing a city on the red planet, with hordes of Earthlings and building materials flying there on a super-extra-mega SpaceX rocket that is still in development.

 

Historic Departure Point: 

The Falcon Heavy is flying from the same launch pad used by NASA to send men to the moon. SpaceX leases Launch Complex 39A from NASA. Not only did LC-39A, as it’s known, serve as the departure point for all the Apollo moonshots from 1968 to 1972, it was the scene for most of the space shuttle liftoffs. It’s location at Kennedy Space Center keeps people at least three miles away, a distance determined by NASA in the 1960s to be safe just in case the Saturn V exploded on the pad.

 

Competition: 

Blue Origin, an aerospace company run by another billionaire, is developing a large orbital-class rocket that promises to give Heavy an out-of-this-world run for its money. Amazon’s Jeff Bezos, the force behind Blue Origin, offered Musk “best of luck” Monday. “Hoping for a beautiful, nominal flight!” Bezos wrote via Twitter. In the language of rocket scientists, “nominal” means the rocket behaves and the cargo reaches its target. NASA, meanwhile, is sinking billions of dollars into a massive new rocket called the Space Launch System, or SLS, that’s meant to return astronauts to the moon and also get them one day to Mars.

 

Future Flights: 

SpaceX already has customers lined up for the Falcon Heavy. The rocket is designed to hoist supersize satellites as well as equipment to the moon, Mars or other far-flung points. The private company’s online flight manifest shows the U.S. Air Force as already signed up. SpaceX has changed its mind about carrying people on the Heavy, Musk said, preferring to use the super-duper rocket under development.
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If you are not a fan of spiders, you may not like the creepy little arachnid scientists found entombed in chunks of amber from northern Myanmar. Unlike its spider cousins alive today, this guy had a tail.

Scientists on Monday described four specimens of the arachnid, called Chimerarachne yingi, that inhabited a Cretaceous Period tropical forest about 100 million years ago during the dinosaur age. Alongside modern spider traits such as a silk-producing structure called a spinneret, it possessed a remarkably primitive feature: a whip-like tail covered in short hairs that it may have used for sensing predators and prey.

“It is a key fossil for understanding spider origins,” said paleontologist Bo Wang of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. “Our new fossil most likely represents the earliest branch of spiders, and implies that there was a lineage of tailed spiders that presumably originated in the Paleozoic (the geological era that ended 251 million years ago) and survived at least into the Cretaceous of Southeast Asia.”

Despite its fearsome appearance, the fanged Chimerarachne was only about three-tenths of an inch (7.5 mm) long, more than half of which was its tail.

University of Kansas paleontologist Paul Selden said Chimerarachne represents “a kind of missing link” between true spiders and earlier spider forerunners that had tails but lacked spinnerets.

“Chimerarachne could be considered as a spider. It all depends on where we decide to draw the line,” Selden said. “I am sure arachnophobes would not like this animal, except that it is only a few millimeters long, so it would be living almost unseen by them.”

The earliest arachnids, a group including spiders, scorpions, mites, ticks and others, dates to about 420 million years ago. The oldest-known true spiders lived about 315 millions year ago.

Numerous animals and plants have been found beautifully preserved inside amber, which is fossilized tree resin. Many important amber finds have been made in Myanmar. Chimerarachne may have lived under bark or in the moss at the foot of a tree.

“All four specimens are adult males, which would have been roving around looking for females at this point in their lives,” Selden said.

“Chimerarachne most likely wove a sheet web, and possibly a burrow lined with silk. Spiders use silk for a great many purposes, of which prey-capture webs is just one. Egg-wrapping is a vital function for spider silk, as well as laying a trail to find its way back home.”

The research was published in the journal “Nature Ecology & Evolution.”
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Three quarters of women among India’s Dawoodi Bohra sect have undergone female genital mutilation (FGM), according to a study published on Monday which comes just weeks after government officials said there was no data to support its existence.

Campaigners hope the survey – the largest of its kind – will bolster calls for a law to ban the secretive ritual which they say causes physical, emotional and sexual harm.

One mother told how she feared her daughter would bleed to death after she was cut. A third of women believed the procedure had damaged their sex lives. Others spoke of emotional trauma.

Traditional circumcisers told researchers they had cut thousands of girls.

Masooma Ranalvi, founder of campaign group WeSpeakOut which commissioned the study, said the stories were “heartwrenching”.

“This report not only proves FGM does exist in India, but also shows how harmful it is,” Ranalvi told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “Children are still being cut today. This must end.”

The year-long study – published on the eve of International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM – includes 94 interviews with supporters and opponents of the practice.

The Dawoodi Bohra, a Shi‘ite Muslim sect thought to number up to 2 million worldwide, considers the ritual, known as khafd, a religious obligation although it is not mentioned in the Koran.

The procedure, which entails cutting the clitoral hood, is performed around the age of seven.

India’s Supreme Court is considering a petition to ban FGM. Campaigners were shocked in December when the women’s ministry told the court there was no official data or study supporting its existence.

FGM is more commonly linked to a swathe of African countries where cutters may remove all external genitalia.

Supporters of khafd told the Thomson Reuters Foundation that the ritual was a “harmless” cultural and religious practice.

The Dawoodi Bohra Women’s Association for Religious Freedom said the study did not represent the views of most Bohra women.

A spokeswoman said in an email that khafd and FGM were “entirely different” practices, and that there was “no place for any kind of mutilation” in the Bohra culture.

But the World Health Organization says FGM includes any injury to the genitalia.

One gynaecologist told researchers it would be easy to damage the clitoris if a girl struggled during the procedure which is done without anaesthesia.

Ranalvi said khafd was rooted in beliefs a woman’s sexual desire must be curbed, but it was “mired in secrecy” and few women dared speak out for fear of ostracisation.

The practice made headlines in 2015 when three members of the Bohra diaspora in Australia were convicted of FGM-related offences. Bohras in the United States face similar charges.

Respondents to the survey said Bohra girls from diaspora communities were now travelling to India to be cut.
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The #MeToo campaign against sexual abuse should include the stories of survivors of female genital mutilation (FGM), activists said ahead of a global day on Tuesday to raise awareness about the internationally condemned ritual.

Leyla Hussein, one of the first FGM survivors to come forward in Britain, urged people to use the #MeToo hashtag when posting about the practice on social media on Feb 6, the annual International Day of Zero Tolerance for FGM.

“It’s a shame the #MeToo campaign doesn’t include FGM,” said Hussein, founder of the London-based Dahlia Project, which provides counseling for women who have been cut.

“FGM is a form of sexual abuse, but yet again we’ve been left out,” she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

At least 200 million women and girls globally have undergone FGM, U.N. data shows. The ritual, involving the partial or total removal of the external genitalia, is practiced in about 30 African countries and parts of Asia and the Middle East.

Campaigners say the tradition – often justified for cultural or religious reasons – is underpinned by the desire to control female sexuality. It can cause serious health problems.

Hibo Wardere, a British activist who was cut as a child in Somalia, said both the #MeToo campaign and the global drive to end FGM were about “women having ownership of their bodies”.

Countless women and girls have taken to social media in recent months using the #MeToo hashtag to talk about their experiences of sexual harassment, abuse and rape.

The campaign was sparked last year after a slew of sexual harassment and assault allegations against Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein. The scandal has since engulfed many other celebrity figures across various industries.

”FGM is a form of sexual violence – of course it should be part of #MeToo,“ Wardere said. ”Being attacked because of our gender unites us.

“FGM is a way of controlling our sexuality, our bodies, our thoughts,” she added. “It’s a way to make you feel like nothing but a commodity that belongs to a man … That’s what we’re all fighting against.”

Some campaigners said conflating FGM with the sexual abuse highlighted by the #MeToo campaign could wrongly imply there was sexual gratification involved with the ritual.

They said FGM should be seen as child abuse, not sex abuse.

But Hussein said sexual assault was not about gratification.

“It’s about having power over someone,” she said. “When someone does FGM, it’s all about power.”
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Working for long hours as an IT consultant, Daniel Turissini used to always feel tired by the middle of his workday. He asked other business professionals around him about what they do and where they go to re-energize. The answers varied, from having a nap in their cars in the garages or a nearest hotel lobby, to just falling asleep at their work desk. Seeing a need and an opportunity he founded recharj, a place where professionals can go to take a quick rest. 

Need to Recharge?

Washington DC, the nation’s capital, is home to government agencies, financial institutions and all kinds of firms and corporations.

In the heart of this busy city, where people work for long hours, recharj opened a few months ago. People drop by from around the city for a break. 

After turning off all electronic devices, customers go to any of the sleep “cocoons,” separated by white curtains hanging from the ceiling. Inside these pods, bean bag beds, blankets and lavender scented eye-masks allow them to fall asleep to soft music. 

After a 20-minute nap, they’re awakened and go back to work refreshed.

recharj founder, Daniel Turissini, says his place offers the answer to our fast-paced lifestyle; an opportunity to slow down. 

“Some of the distractions that we’re facing today we’ve never seen before, like the smartphones tethered to our belts 24/7 so your boss can contact you at all hours at night or when you’re on vacation,” he says. “There is a challenge we really never had a generation ago. There’s a load of other challenges we’re facing today that wellness and life style changes, habit changes are critical to a sustainable life, to a long happy life.”

Sounds Invite Relaxation

To help clients improve their physical and mental wellness, recharj also offers guided sessions on meditation and mindfulness. Senior teacher, Page Lichens, uses different tools to help her students stay mindful of the moment.

“Listening to relaxing sounds allows them to step into a place of putting away other thoughts and lay back and listen,” she explains. “The sounds specifically have different areas where they’re working into different vibrations on the person’s body. So beyond that a lot of them would end up talking about the experience of lightness or floating. They were uncertain where they were, but they just relaxed deeper than having just to lay down, trying to sleep.”

The rejuvenating experience keeps customers coming back. Connor Garitty, an IT consultant, says he comes to recharge almost every day.

“I feel, I guess, like the day is just beginning instead of (thinking) ‘Oh my God how am I going to get through the rest of the day?’ I come here a lot at the middle of the day and after work. And even that is just as helpful because you’re energized,” he says.

Mari Aponte, a lawyer, says she feels tired and stressed out after hours of sitting down working. “What I like most about coming here is that I can breathe, whereas my morning is very crazy. I drink a lot of coffee and I’m like moving too much, too fast. So, I come here, it helps stop time and just balance my day.” Guided meditations help Aponte relieve her physical tension as well.

“A lot of the things that they do includes a full body scan,” she says. “So, you can check and see which areas you’re carrying more stress, and which areas you can soften. My problem is usually here, in my jaws. This is where I hold my tension. So, it helps me loosen this area.”

Recharging Workplace 

recharj’s experts also offer wellness workshops at workplace. 

“The companies now are understanding that not only is there so much goodwill involved in treating your employees and educating them on health and wellness and lifestyle, but also there is a bottom line to it, there is a return on investment that the companies get from ensuring and promoting health, wellness activities with in organizations,” recharj’s Turissini says. “So, we teach them different tools that are attainable in an office environment so that they can find a little of calm in the middle of the day, but more than that, they can learn to manage their angry thoughts and they can actually be more productive.”

As the trend of promoting wellness and healthy habits continues, the business of midday breaks is expected to grow and thrive. Daniel Turissini, recharj founder, is proud to be one of the pioneers.
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To mark World Cancer Day, the World Health Organization urges the adoption of healthy life styles as a way to lower cancer risks. WHO also emphasizes that early diagnosis and treatment for cancer can save many lives.

Much progress has been made in the diagnosis and treatment of cancer. But, the statistics regarding this disease remain terrible. Cancer is the second leading cause of death globally, killing nearly nine million people yearly, with about 14 million new cases being diagnosed.

The most common causes of cancer death include lung, liver, colorectal, stomach and breast cancers. The World Health Organization reports tobacco use is the most important risk factor, followed by alcohol use, unhealthy diet and lack of physical activity.

WHO technical officer for cancer control, Andre Ilbawi says approximately 70 percent of cancer deaths are in low-and middle-income countries, while the number of cases in these countries is increasing at a fast and worrying rate.

He agrees this is a cause of concern, but tells VOA simple actions can be taken even by the poorest countries to address this issue.

“First and foremost, the greatest priority is to diagnose cancer early.This is a more significant intervention than, as you mentioned, the advanced technologies and the expensive medicines that can be prohibitive in low-income countries.Identifying cancer early is the most effective way to treat it and by offering that population basic treatment, you can, in fact, save a large percentage of cancer patients even with minimal resources,” he said.

Ilbawi says important actions that developing countries can take to improve cancer outcomes include improving community awareness of the disease, early detection through better diagnosis in primary health care and accessing affordable treatment.

The World Health Organization also stresses the importance of a healthy lifestyle. It says eating more fruits and vegetables, regular exercise, no tobacco use and moderate alcohol intake can cut cancer deaths by one third.
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Finding a cure for Alzheimer’s is an extremely complex task. Scientists still do not know what causes the disease. Once the symptoms appear, the gradual memory loss is inevitable and available drugs can only slow down the process. Researchers, however, believe the disease develops slowly, over years, so detecting it before the symptoms appear may give the patients a better chance of a longer life. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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Researchers using a high-tech aerial mapping scanner have discovered the ruins of tens of thousands of ancient Mayan structures that have been hidden and preserved for centuries under northern Guatemala’s thick jungle.  

The 60,000 newly discovered structures include raised highways, urban centers with sidewalks, homes, terraces, industrial-sized agricultural fields, irrigation canals, ceremonial centers, a 30-meter high pyramid, fortresses and moats.

Stephen Houston, professor of archaeology and anthropology at Brown University, told the BBC that the revelation of the sprawling Central American civilization was “breathtaking.”  He said, “I know it sounds hyperbolic, but . . . it did bring tears to my eyes.”  

An alliance of U.S., European and Guatemalan archaeologists worked with Guatemala’s Mayan Heritage and Nature Foundation on the project over the past two years.  

The Mayan culture was at its peak about 1,500 years ago in what is present day southern Mexico, Guatemala and parts of Belize, El Salvador and Honduras.  

Marcello Canuto, a Tulane University archaeologist and one of the project’s top investigators, said the discoveries are a “revolution in  Maya archeology.”

The new information suggests that millions more people lived in what is now Guatemala’s Petan region than previously thought.

Researchers say they now believe that instead of five million that as many as 10 to 15 million people lived in the region.  

The researchers used a remote sensing method known as LiDAR (Light Detection and Ranging) to discover the hidden treasures of a civilization that National Geographic now compares to ancient Greece or China.  

LiDAR  bounced pulsed laser light off the ground, revealing contours hidden by dense foliage in the 2,100-square-kilometer mapped area.

“Now it is no longer necessary to cut through the jungle to see what’s under it,” said Canuto.   

“We’ve had this western conceit that complex civilizations can’t flourish in the tropics, that the tropics are where civilizations go to die,” Canuto told National Geographic.  “But,with the new LiDAR-based evidence from Central America and [Cambodia’s] Angkor Wat, we now have to consider that complex societies may have formed in the tropics and made their way outward from there.”
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A rare glimpse inside the everyday lives of polar bears may give scientists clues about their decline.

With bear-cams and activity trackers around the necks of nine polar bears, researchers monitored more than a week of their daily activity during peak hunting season in the Beaufort Sea above Alaska.

Five of the nine bears lost weight over that time, burning far more calories during their hunt than they were catching.

The study, published in the journal Science, raises questions about the top predators’ future. As climate change melts their prime hunting grounds, scientists expect polar bears will have a harder time finding prey.

Seal, a meal

The bears spend much of their time on sea ice, where it’s easiest to catch their favorite meals: fatty, energy-rich seals.

But sea ice is shrinking by 14 percent per decade as the planet warms. In addition, the ice is breaking up earlier in the spring and freezing later in the fall.

Polar bear numbers are declining. They are not endangered, but they are vulnerable, as defined by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. That means their population is expected to drop by 30 percent or more within three polar bear generations.

But it’s not clear if that’s because the bears are not catching enough seals, or if they are having to work harder and travel farther to find them.

Biologist Anthony Pagano with the U.S. Geological Survey and colleagues went out on the ice-covered Beaufort Sea and captured nine polar bears with tranquilizer darts.

They weighed the bears and took blood samples to measure their metabolism. And they fitted each bear with a collar equipped with a camera, GPS and motion tracker.

They recaptured each bear about 10 days later, took measurements and retrieved the cameras.

Watching the video “was really quite fascinating,” Pagano said. Polar bears spend most of their lives in very remote areas, so researchers don’t often get a chance to see their daily lives.

Pagano’s team did. They watched bears hunt. They watched them court and mate.

But mostly, they watched them sit.

“These bears are active about 35 percent of the time. Which means they’re resting about 65 percent of the time,” Pagano said. “Which means if you’re watching video of bears and trying to document their behaviors, you’re spending a good portion of your time watching them rest.”

Crash diet

One of the most surprising findings was how much the bears’ weight changed in the short time scientists watched them.

Five of the bears didn’t catch anything while they were monitored. Four lost about 10 percent of their body weight.

For a 180-kilogram bear, Pagano said, “you’re talking about 18 to 20 kilograms that they’re losing over the course of 10 days. Which is a pretty remarkable amount of mass to lose over such a short amount of time.”

They studied the bears in March and April, before the sea ice began to break up. “This is really the beginning of the time when they’re supposed to be putting on a lot of body mass to sustain them for most of the rest of the year,” he added.

The scientists also found that the bears’ metabolism was more than one-and-a-half times as high as previous estimates.

“Polar bears need to be catching a lot of seals,” Pagano explained. As sea ice continues to decline and break up earlier, he added, it’s likely going to get harder for them.

Pagano noted that polar bears in other parts of the Arctic spend more time on land than do the bears he studied on the Beaufort Sea. If the sea ice melts completely in the summer, as it is expected to, many of them will likely move onto land.

But how well the land can sustain them is “a big unknown,” Pagano added.
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Egypt’s Antiquities Ministry says archaeologists are starting radar scans of the tomb of famed pharaoh Tutankhamun in the southern city of Luxor.

 

The ministry said Thursday the scans will be carried out over a week to check for the existence of any hidden chambers behind the tomb.

 

Egypt carried out previous scans as part of the quest but the findings were inconclusive.

The tomb of King Tut, who ruled Egypt more than 3,000 years ago, was discovered in 1922 in the Valley of the Kings, located on the west bank of the Nile river in Luxor.

For many, Tut embodies ancient Egypt’s glory because his tomb was packed with the glittering wealth of the rich 18th Dynasty from 1569 to 1315 B.C.

 
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NASA has transformed selfies taken by its Mars rover Curiosity into a stunning self-portrait.

Released this week, the photo shows Curiosity in the middle of the dusty, red Martian terrain, with Mount Sharp in the background. The rim of Gale Crater is also visible.

A small, self-focusing camera on the end of Curiosity’s arm took the selfies. Dozens of pictures, all snapped Jan. 23, were used to create the mosaic.

Curiosity has been roaming Mars since 2012. Its next stop is the slope shown in the self-portrait, where it will probe what’s believed to be clay-rich soil.

NASA is getting ready to put another lander on Mars, a robotic geologist named InSight. Liftoff is targeted for May from California.
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Save your life but harm your heart? Health experts are sounding a warning as potential side effects of a growing number of breast cancer treatments come to light.

In its first statement on the topic, the American Heart Association on Thursday said women should consider carefully the risks and benefits of any therapies that may hurt hearts. Not all treatments carry these risks, and there may be ways to minimize or avoid some.

“We want patients to get the best treatment for their breast cancer,” said Dr. Laxmi Mehta, a women’s heart health expert at Ohio State University who led the panel that wrote the statement. “Everyone should have a conversation with their doctor about what are the side effects.”

There are more than 3 million breast cancer survivors and nearly 48 million women with heart disease in the United States.

“Most people with breast cancer fear death from breast cancer. Even after they survive that, they still fear it,” but heart disease is more likely to kill them, especially after age 65, Mehta said.

Some treatments for other types of cancer may pose heart risks, but they are growing more common for breast cancer patients and the statement addressed only that form of the disease.

Here are some questions and answers:

Q: What are the problems and which treatments can cause them?

A: Side effects can include abnormal rhythms, valve problems or heart failure, where the heart slowly weakens and can’t pump effectively. Symptoms may not appear until long after treatment ends.

Herceptin and similar drugs for a specific type of breast cancer can cause heart failure. Sometimes it’s temporary and goes away if treatment is stopped, but it can be permanent.

Radiation can affect arteries and spur narrowing or blockages. Other drugs can lead to abnormal heart rhythms or artery spasms, which can cause chest pain and possibly lead to a heart attack. Still others can damage DNA.

Some research suggests that powerful new drugs that harness the immune system to fight cancer may, in rare cases, cause heart damage, especially when used together.

“The problem is, no one has this on their radar,” so patients are not routinely checked for it, Dr. Javid Moslehi, head of a Vanderbilt University clinic specializing in heart risks from cancer therapies, said when a study reported this problem about a year ago.

Q: What can be done to avoid harm?

A: If heart failure develops early during breast cancer treatment, sometimes therapy can be slowed down or altered.

Certain chemotherapies such as doxorubicin, sold as Adriamycin and in generic form, might be less risky if given more slowly, rather than all at once. Some research suggests that a drug called dexrazoxane may minimize damage if given to women with advanced breast cancer who are getting high doses of doxorubicin.

Q: What can patients do?

A: Women should make sure doctors are monitoring their heart before, during and after breast cancer treatment.

The diseases share many common risk factors such as obesity, smoking and too little exercise, so reducing these can help.

“Make sure you’re working on your diet, exercise, managing your weight, following up with your doctor on your blood pressure and cholesterol,” Mehta said.
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American-style football’s championship game, the Super Bowl, is being held in Minneapolis, Minnesota, Sunday. It’s the biggest football event of the year. Millions of people will watch it on TV, but up to a million more across the nation are expected to attend Super Bowl-related events in person. With widespread flu throughout the U.S., some are wondering if the Super Bowl is a perfect event to spread the flu. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
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The Environmental Protection Agency is putting a two-year hold on an Obama-era clean-water rule to give the Trump administration more time to come up with a replacement.

The EPA decision, announced Wednesday, came a week after the Supreme Court said the rule, which had been blocked since 2015, could be implemented.

The rule changes the legal definitions of wetlands and small waterways under the Clean Water Act, expanding the areas that are protected. Supporters said the objective of the changes was to protect sources of drinking water for millions of Americans from industrial pollution.

But EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt said the rules were confusing, especially for farmers and ranchers.

Environmentalists said putting the rule on hold for two years was giving industry a permit to pollute.

A U.S. appeals court blocked the 2015 rule from taking effect, and a Trump executive order called for it to be reviewed. 

But the Supreme Court said last week that the appeals court did not have jurisdiction to hear challenges to the clean-water rule.
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Vaccines. Popular sports drinks. Computers.

They share one quality: They were invented by researchers working at a college or university.

Victoria McGovern says research leads to greater discovery and better education.

McGovern is a senior program officer with the Burroughs Wellcome Fund, an organization that supports medical research in the United States and Canada.

“It’s a very good idea to connect the discovery of new things to the teaching of new students,” she told VOA, “because you don’t want people who come out of their education thinking that the world around them is full of solved problems. You want people to come out of an education excited about solving problems themselves.”

Research, however, costs money and most colleges have limited budgets, as well as competing goals and needs.

A large part of being a researcher at a college or university involves applying for grant money, McGovern says, such as to private companies and organizations like hers, or local and national governments.

The National Institutes of Health, or NIH, is an example. The NIH is the U.S. government agency that supports medical and public health research, distributing about $32 billion a year.

Increasingly complex process

The application process for grant money is highly competitive, McGovern says. It can be challenging for researchers who are less skilled at writing.

Kristine Kulage argues that it is more difficult than ever for university researchers to secure funding. Kulage is the director of research and scholarly development at Columbia University School of Nursing in New York City.

Kulage says that in the 20 years she has been working in university research, the grant application process has become longer and more complex.

“Researchers don’t have time to conduct their research, write their grants and learn how to use all of these new systems through which they have to submit their grants, and all of the ways in which they have to be compliant with regulations,” Kulage told VOA.

“There are so many rules now … it takes individuals who are now trained as research administrators to know what those rules are … and know whether or not the rules are being followed.”

Investing in help

Kulage says schools must do more to support their researchers in gaining grant money. Last November, she published a study that looked at how the nursing school invested $127,000 to create a support system between 2012 and 2016. This system employed administrators to complete grant applications, freeing researchers to spend more time on their work.

Administrators and other researchers met with the grant writers to review the applications. The team was expected to defend its proposal.

Kulage says that over those five years, proposals that went through review were almost twice as likely to be accepted. That $127,000 investment led to Columbia’s School of Nursing earning $3 million in outside funding.

McGovern and Kulage say applying for research funding is very difficult. Having one other person read a proposal and provide feedback is essential.

Large companies often conduct much research and development, but it is typically limited to their industries. University researchers have the freedom to take risks on less popular ideas.

And those risks can lead to important discoveries that colleges and universities have a responsibility to share with the world, she says.

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