Of the 30 U.S. children who have died from the flu this season, some 85 percent likely will not have been vaccinated, said Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, who urged Americans to get flu shots amid one of the most severe flu seasons in years.

“My message is, if you haven’t gotten a vaccine, please get a vaccine. Also, please get your children vaccinated,” said Fitzgerald, who is urging citizens “to take every advantage that you can to protect yourself.”

The dominant strain during this flu season is an especially nasty type called influenza A (H3N2) that in seasons past has been linked with severe disease and death, especially in the elderly and young. This year’s seasonal flu epidemic is especially severe.

In past flu seasons, between 80 and 85 percent of children who have died from the flu had not gotten a flu vaccine that season, the agency said in an email.

In its latest report, the CDC said the virus is present in every state, with 32 states reporting severe flu activity.

Although the vaccine is only estimated to be about 30 percent effective against the H3N2 strain, it has been shown in studies to reduce severity and duration if people do become infected, said Dr. Dan Jernigan, director of the influenza division at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Fitzgerald conceded in a telephone interview that reports that the flu vaccine in Australia was only 10 percent effective may have caused people to think the vaccine would not be worth the trouble.

Fitzgerald said the agency’s flu division has been on the job during the three-day federal government shutdown. Senators on Monday reached a deal to keep the government funded through Feb. 8.

Studies have shown that even a vaccine that has lower overall effectiveness can decrease the number of days spent in hospital, duration of the flu and the degree of symptoms.

“That helps support the point of getting a vaccine,” Jernigan said.

Fitzgerald said the flu vaccine and antiviral drugs used to fight the flu are widely available across the country, noting that people can go to the CDC website and enter their zip code to find the nearest flu clinics with vaccines. 

Fitzgerald also recommended that people frequently wash their hands or use hand sanitizer, avoid those who are sick or coughing, and carry disinfectant wipes.

The CDC does not have numbers for adult deaths from the flu because adult flu is not a reportable disease in all U.S. states. But she said North Carolina, which collects such data, has reported 42 adult flu deaths this season.

Official estimates from the CDC are expected at the end of the current season, based on a calculation from hospitals and states reporting data to the agency.

In the 2014/2015 flu season, in which the H3N2 strain was also the leading strain, there were an estimated 35.6 million cases, 710,000 hospitalizations and 56,000 deaths. At this point, it is not clear whether the current flu season will surpass those estimates, Jernigan said.
…

Spacewalking astronauts gave a hand to the International Space Station’s big robot arm Tuesday.

As the federal government geared back up 250 miles below, NASA astronauts Mark Vande Hei and Scott Tingle successfully installed the new mechanical gripper.

Because of the lingering effects of the government shutdown, the spacewalk got started in the morning without coverage on NASA TV. An on-air message simply stated: “We regret the inconvenience.” Nearly an hour into the spacewalk, however, NASA TV came alive and began broadcasting the event with typical blow-by-blow commentary.

Space station operations were largely unaffected by the three-day shutdown. Considered essential personnel, Mission Control kept watch as usual at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

Vande Hei performed a similar spacewalk last October, when he replaced the first of two original hands on the Canadian-built arm. This second new hand will go on the opposite end of the 58-foot arm, able to move like an inchworm by grabbing hold of special fixtures.

The bulky bundle of latches — more than 3 feet, or a meter, long and weighing more than 440 pounds, or 200 kilograms — needed to be replaced because of wear and tear. It’s been in orbit, grabbing cargo capsules and performing other chores, since 2001.

Tingle had to use extra muscle to release a stubborn bolt securing the spare mechanical arm.

“Nice work,” Vande Hei said. “And the crowd goes wild,” chimed in Mission Control.

Next, the spacewalkers wrested the old, degraded hand from the robot arm. Once the new hand was in place, a software issue cropped up briefly. Six hours into the spacewalk, NASA declared victory. The spacewalk lasted 7 1/2 hours.

It was the first spacewalk for Tingle, who arrived last month, and the third for Vande Hei.

“Make us proud out there,” astronaut Joe Acaba told the spacewalkers from inside. “We’ll have hot chow for you when you get back.”

Vande Hei will go back out Monday with another astronaut to finish the job. Then the two Russians on board will conduct a spacewalk Feb. 2 to install a new antenna on their country’s side of the outpost.

The space station is home to three Americans, two Russians and one Japanese.
…

Uganda’s cancer patients can finally breathe a sigh of relief after the country got a new cobalt-60 radiation treatment machine. But, health officials say this may not be enough because of an ever increasing number of cancer cases in the country. Halima Athumani reports for VOA from Kampala.
…

The number of confirmed cases of yellow fever outbreak in Brazil has tripled in recent weeks, with 20 deaths since July, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Monday.

Of 35 confirmed cases, 20 were in Sao Paulo state, which includes South America’s largest city, Sao Paulo. Earlier this month, a case of the disease was confirmed in the Netherlands for a traveler who had recently been in that state.

The WHO recommended last week that foreign travelers get vaccinated before visiting.

But Brazil’s Health Ministry has said the recommendation, coming just weeks before Carnival, a holiday event in which tens of thousands of tourists descend on Brazil, would not cause it to change its advisory that only travelers going to rural areas be vaccinated.

Last week, Brazilians lined up for hours to get yellow fever vaccinations in the country’s largest states, alarmed by the increase in the number of fatal cases of infection and a warning from the WHO to tourists visiting parts of the country.

Yellow fever is a viral disease transmitted by mosquitoes in tropical regions and is still a major killer in Africa. It had largely been brought under control in the Americas.

The first sign that the fever was back in Brazil was the death last year of hundreds of monkeys in the Atlantic rain forest in the states of Rio de Janeiro, Espirito Santo and Sao Paulo.
…

A device that heats tobacco without burning it reduces some of the harmful chemicals in traditional cigarettes, but government scientists say it’s unclear if that translates into lower rates of disease for smokers who switch.

U.S. regulators published a mixed review Monday of the closely watched cigarette alternative from Philip Morris International. The company hopes to market the electronic device as the first “reduced-risk” tobacco product ever sanctioned by the U.S. government.

Philip Morris’ pen-like device, called iQOS, is already sold in more than 30 countries, including Canada, Japan and the United Kingdom. But Philip Morris and its U.S. partner, Altria, need the permission of the Food and Drug Administration to sell it in the U.S.

iQOS heats strips of Marlboro-branded tobacco but stops short of burning them, producing a tobacco vapor that includes nicotine. This is different from e-cigarettes, which don’t use tobacco at all but instead vaporize liquid usually containing nicotine. Nicotine is what makes cigarettes addictive.

Philip Morris believes its product is closer to the taste and experience of traditional cigarettes, making it more attractive to smokers and reducing their contact with tar and other toxic byproducts of burning cigarettes.

Company scientists will present their studies and marketing plan to a panel of FDA advisers this week. The panel’s recommendation, expected Thursday, is non-binding: The FDA will make the ultimate decision on the device later this year.

A green light from FDA would mark a major milestone in efforts by both the industry and government to provide less harmful tobacco products to smokers who can’t or won’t quit cigarettes. Despite decades of tax hikes, smoking bans and campaigns, about 15 percent of U.S. adults smoke.

The FDA review paints a mixed picture of the potential benefits of the iQOS “heat-not-burn” approach.

Levels of certain harmful chemicals were between 55 and 99 percent lower in the vapor produced by iQOS than in cigarette smoke. But animal and laboratory studies submitted by the company also suggested the chemicals could still be toxic and contribute to precancerous growths. A company study in mice could help clarify the cancer risk, but the FDA said the results would not be available until later this year.

FDA requirements

Under a 2009 law, the FDA gained authority to regulate a number of aspects of the tobacco industry. The same law allows the agency to scientifically review and permit sales of new products shown to be less dangerous than what’s currently available. But the FDA has not yet allowed any company to advertise a “reduced-risk” tobacco product.

To meet FDA requirements, a company must show that the product will improve the health of individual users and the overall population. Additionally, the product should not appeal to non-smokers or interfere with smokers looking to quit.

The FDA review said some non-smokers, including young people, would likely experiment with iQOS. Reviewers also questioned if smokers would completely switch to iQOS from cigarettes. In company studies, less than 20 percent of U.S. users switched completely to iQOS over six weeks.

Philip Morris and other global tobacco companies are diversifying their products beyond traditional cigarettes, making investments in e-cigarettes, heated tobacco products and chewable tobacco pouches, among other alternatives. While cigarettes remain enormously profitable, the global market continues to contract amid worldwide campaigns to discourage smoking.

The FDA itself has signaled its intention to begin pushing U.S. consumers away from traditional cigarettes toward alternative products. As part of the effort, FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb wants to drastically cut nicotine levels in traditional cigarettes to help smokers quit.
…

 Scientists are reporting progress on a blood test to detect many types of cancer at an early stage, including some of the most deadly ones that lack screening tools now. 

Many groups are working on liquid biopsy tests, which look for DNA and other things that tumors shed into blood, to try to find cancer before it spreads, when chances of cure are best. 

In a study Thursday in the journal Science, Johns Hopkins University scientists looked to see how well their experimental test detected cancer in people already known to have the disease. The blood tests found about 70 percent of eight common types of cancer in the 1,005 patients. The rates varied depending on the type — lower for breast tumors but high for ovarian, liver and pancreatic ones. 

In many cases, the test narrowed the possible origin of the cancer to one or two places, such as colon or lung, important for limiting how much follow-up testing a patient might need. It gave only seven false alarms when tried on 812 others without cancer.

The test is nowhere near ready for use yet; it needs to be validated in a larger study already underway in a general population, rather than cancer patients, to see if it truly works and helps save lives — the best measure of a screening test’s value.

“We’re very, very excited and see this as a first step,” said Nickolas Papadopoulos, one of the Hopkins study leaders. “But we don’t want people calling up” and asking for the test now, because it’s not available, he said.

Some independent experts saw great promise.

“It’s such a good first set of results” that it gives hope this approach will pan out, said Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who consults for a gene testing company. “Anything close to 50 percent or 40 percent detection is pretty exciting stuff,” and this one did better than that, he said.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, was encouraged that the test did well on cancers that lack screening tests now. If a blood test could find 98 percent of ovarian cancers at an early stage, as these early results suggest, “that would be a significant advance,” he said.

But he cautioned: “We have a long way to go to demonstrate its effectiveness as a screening test.”

Testing the test

The test detects mutations in 16 genes tied to cancer and measures eight proteins that often are elevated when cancer is present.

It covers breast, colon and lung and five kinds that don’t have screening tests for people at average risk: ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal. Prostate cancer is not included. A blood test already is widely used — the PSA test — but its value for screening is controversial.   

Researchers tried the new test on people whose cancers were still confined to where it started or had spread a little but not widely throughout the body. It detected 33 percent of breast cancers, about 60 percent of colon or lung cancers and nearly all of the ovarian and liver ones.  It did better when tumors were larger or had spread. It did less well at the very earliest stage. 

Caveats and next steps

The test probably will not work as well when tested in a general population rather than those already known to have cancer, researchers say. Hopkins and Geisinger Health System in Pennsylvania have started a study of it in 10,000 Geisinger patients who will be tracked for at least five years. 

The work was financed by many foundations, the Mayo Clinic, the National Institutes of Health and Howard Hughes Medical Institute, which provides The Associated Press with funding for health and science coverage. Many study leaders have financial ties to gene testing companies, and some get royalties for patents on cancer detection methods.

Researchers say the test could cost around $500 based on current materials and methods, but the ultimate goal is to commercialize it, so what a company would charge is unknown.  

Other liquid biopsy news

Also this week, Taiwan-based CellMax Life gave results on its liquid biopsy test, which looks for whole tumor cells shed into blood, at an American Society of Clinical Oncology conference.

Researchers tested 620 people getting colonoscopies or with confirmed colon cancer at a hospital in Taiwan. The company said its test had an overall accuracy of 84 to 88 percent for detecting cancer or precancerous growths and a false alarm rate around 3 percent.

The company’s chief executive, Atul Sharan, said U.S. studies should start this year. The test is sold now in Taiwan for $500, but should cost around $150 in the U.S., he said.

Dr. Richard Schilsky, chief medical officer of the oncology society, said results are encouraging, but the test needs more study, especially to see if it gives too many false alarms.

“The last thing you’d want is a test that tells you you might have cancer if you don’t,” he said.

 

                  
…

The World Health Organization’s director general is calling on the agency’s 192 member states to adopt universal health care as the best way of guaranteeing health for all.

This is the first time Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has addressed the 34-member executive board since assuming his post in July as the first African head of the World Health Organization. And the former Ethiopian health minister was not shy about touting his accomplishments during his first six months in office.

He said a plan to transform the WHO into a stronger, more relevant organization has been developed. Tedros proudly noted he had achieved gender parity in the WHO’s top ranks, with women outnumbering men.

Tedros said the WHO has built strong political momentum on non-communicable diseases and tuberculosis, and that a new initiative to combat the health effects of climate change in small island developing states has been launched. He appeared most enthusiastic about his vision to achieve health for all.

“At least half the world’s population still lacks access to essential health services. And almost 100 million people are pushed into extreme poverty every year because of out-of-pocket health spending. This must end,” he said.

Tedros said recent visits to Kenya, Madagascar and Rwanda convinced him that universal health coverage is not a pipe dream. He said all three countries are creating affordable health care systems.

“I am more convinced than ever that UHC [universal health care] is not only the best investment in a healthier world, it is also the best investment in a safer world. As you have heard me say, universal health coverage and health security are two sides of the same coin,” he said.

The WHO chief said he hoped to advance this issue at the World Health Assembly in May. He said he would ask as many countries as possible to make commitments at the WHA regarding the action they will take toward achieving universal health coverage at home.
…

Some New Caledonian crows craft hooked tools out of branched twigs, and Scottish biologists have discovered why – the birds can extract food from cracks and crevises several times faster than by using straight twigs.

“It is a painstaking sequence of behaviors,” explains Professor James St. Clair, from the University of St. Andrews, the lead author of the new study in the current issue of Nature Ecology & Evolution.  “Crows seek out particular plant species, harvest a forked twig, and then, firmly holding it underfoot, carve, nibble and peel its tip, until it has a neat little hook.”

Watch a New Caledonian crow make and use a hooked tool (Credit Rutz Group)

The Scottish team conducted experiments to record how long wild-caught crows took to extract food from a range of naturalistic tasks, using either hooked or non-hooked tool designs.  Depending on the task, they found that hooked tools were between two and 10 times more efficient than non-hooked tools.

Although it takes the crow a while to create the hook, getting food more quickly means it has more time and energy for reproduction and avoiding predators.  The researchers do not know whether the hook-making know-how is inherited or learned by observation, but because hooked-tool users will live longer and leave more offspring, the skill is expected to spread.

 
…

Malawi is once again grappling with an invasion of fall armyworms, which ravaged crops across parts of Africa in 2016 and 2017 and aggravated food insecurity. Amid a shortage of pesticides in Malawi, some farmers are turning to homemade concoctions. Lameck Masina reports for VOA from one of the hardest hit areas, the Mulanje district in southern Malawi.
…

Once a hugely productive gold mine in the western state of South Dakota, it is now being used as an underground research lab where scientists are trying to learn more about the universe. VOA’s Lesya Bakalets and Serge Sokolov went to the former mine to report on what is now a world class research lab that attracts scientists from across the globe.
…

Rough estimates say about 2 of every 100 people around the world have or need replacement joints. Now, some Polish doctors are using stem cell technology to rebuild worn out cartilage, instead of replacing it with metal. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

A U.S.-based center says in a new report the eradication of the painful Guinea worm disease could be in sight.

The Carter Center, leader of the campaign to eliminate the disease, says there were only 30 identified cases of Guinea worm disease in isolated areas last year in Chad and Ethiopia – 15 in each country.

All the cases in Ethiopia occurred in migrant workers in the Oromia region who drank unfiltered water from a contaminated pond on an industrial farm.

Mali has not reported any cases of the disease in 25 months, while South Sudan, has not reported any cases in 13 months.  The Carter Center labels those achievements by the two African countries as “major accomplishments.”

There is no known vaccine or medicine to control Guinea worm disease.  It is eradicated by educating people on how to filter and drink clean water.

People with Guinea worm disease have no symptoms for about one year, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control says.  Then, a meter-long worm begins to emerge painfully and slowly from a blister that can form anywhere on the body. In 80 to 90 percent of the cases, the blister forms on lower body parts.

“It was more painful than giving birth,” a South Sudan woman told the Associated Press last year.  “Childbirth ends, but this pain persists.”

If the worm breaks during removal, it can cause intense inflammation as the remaining part of the worm degrades in the body.

The worm removal and recovery can disable people, sometimes permanently.

The Carter Center, founded by former U.S. president Jimmy Carter and his wife Rosalynn, reports that in 1986 Guinea worm disease affected an estimated 3.5 million people in 21 countries in Africa and Asia.  The incidence of the disease has now been reduced by more than 99.999 percent “thanks to the work of strong partnerships, including the countries themselves,” the center said.
…

Heart disease kills more than 17 million people around the world every year. It’s the world’s leading cause of death. Scientists are now using artificial intelligence to help them diagnose this deadly disease. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The flu season in the U.S. is getting worse.

Health officials last week said flu was blanketing the country, but they thought there was a good chance the season was peaking. But the newest numbers out Friday show it grew even more intense.

“This is a season that has a lot more steam than we thought,” said Dr. Dan Jernigan of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

One measure of the season is how many doctor or hospital visits are because of a high fever, cough and other flu symptoms. Thirty-two states reported high patient traffic last week, up from 26 the previous week. Overall, it was the busiest week for flu symptoms in nine years.

Hawaii is the only state that doesn’t have widespread illnesses.

This year’s flu season got off to an early start, and it’s been driven by a nasty type of flu that tends to put more people in the hospital and cause more deaths than other common flu bugs. In New York, state officials say a drastic rise in flu cases hospitalized more than 1,600 this past week.

The flu became intense last month in the U.S. The last two weekly report show flu widespread over the entire continental United States, which is unusual.

Usually, flu seasons start to wane after so much activity, but “it’s difficult to predict,” Jernigan said.

Flu is a contagious respiratory illness, spread by a virus. It can cause a miserable but relatively mild illness in many people but a more severe illness in others. Young children and the elderly are at greatest risk from flu and its complications. In a bad season, there are as many as 56,000 deaths connected to the flu. In the U.S., annual flu shots are recommended for everyone age 6 months or older.

In Oklahoma and Texas, some school districts canceled classes this week because so many students and teachers were sick with the flu and other illnesses. In Mississippi, flu outbreaks have hit more than 100 nursing homes and other long-term care places, resulting in some restricting visitors.
…

Christa McAuliffe’s lost lessons are finally getting taught in space.

Thirty-two years after the Challenger disaster, a pair of teachers-turned-astronauts will pay tribute to McAuliffe by carrying out her science classes on the International Space Station.

As NASA’s first designated teacher in space, McAuliffe was going to experiment with fluids and demonstrate Newton’s laws of motion for schoolchildren. She never made it to orbit: She and six crewmates were killed during liftoff of space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986.

Astronauts Joe Acaba and Ricky Arnold will perform some of McAuliffe’s lessons over the next several months. Acaba planned to share the news during a TV linkup Friday with students at her alma mater, Framingham State University near Boston.

Four lessons — on effervescence or bubbles, chromatography, liquids and Newton’s laws — will be filmed by Acaba and Arnold, then posted online by the Challenger Center, a not-for-profit organization supporting science, technology, engineering and math education.

The center’s president, Lance Bush, said he’s thrilled “to bring Christa’s lessons to life.”

“We are honored to have the opportunity to complete Christa’s lessons and share them with students and teachers around the world,” Bush said in a statement.

NASA’s associate administrator for education, Mike Kincaid, said the lessons are “an incredible way to honor and remember” McAuliffe as well as the entire Challenger crew.

Four of the six lessons that McAuliffe planned to videotape during her space flight will be done. A few will be altered to take advantage of what’s available aboard the space station.

The lessons should be available online beginning this spring.

Acaba returns to Earth at the end of February. Arnold flies up in March. NASA is billing their back-to-back missions as “A Year of Education on Station.”

The two were teaching middle school math and science on opposite sides of the world — Acaba in Florida and Arnold in Romania — when NASA picked them as educator-astronauts in 2004. The idea to complete McAuliffe’s lesson plans came about last year.

“As former teachers, Ricky and Joe wanted to honor Christa McAuliffe,” said Challenger Center spokeswoman Lisa Vernal.

McAuliffe was teaching history, law and economics at Concord High School in New Hampshire when she was selected as the primary candidate for NASA’s teacher-in-space project in 1985.

Her backup, Barbara Morgan, is on the Challenger Center’s board of directors. Morgan was NASA’s first educator-astronaut, flying on shuttle Endeavour in 2007 and helping to build the space station.
…

Fighting the flu usually consists of using predictive research to create a vaccine that fights the strains of the disease most likely to show up. But scientists around the world are closing in on a universal vaccine that takes the guesswork out of the fight. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The 45th annual March for Life rally takes place Friday in Washington. President Trump says he will speak at the anti-abortion event from the White House. The rally also coincides with the 45th anniversary of Roe vs. Wade, a Supreme Court ruling that legalized abortion in the United States. Pro-choice supporters favor the law, while anti-abortionists want the decision reversed. VOA’s Deborah Block looks at the debate over the issue.
…

Scientists are reporting progress on a blood test to detect many types of cancer at an early stage, including some of the most deadly ones that lack screening tools now.

Many groups are working on liquid biopsy tests, which look for DNA and other things that tumors shed into blood, to try to find cancer before it spreads, when chances of cure are best.

In a study Thursday in the journal Science, Johns Hopkins University scientists looked to see how well their experimental test detected cancer in people already known to have the disease. The blood tests found about 70 percent of eight common types of cancer in the 1,005 patients. The rates varied depending on the type, lower for breast tumors but high for ovarian, liver and pancreatic ones.

In many cases, the test narrowed the possible origin of the cancer to one or two places, such as colon or lung, important for limiting how much follow-up testing a patient might need. It gave only seven false alarms when tried on 812 others without cancer.

Not ready for use yet

The test is nowhere near ready for use yet; it needs to be validated in a larger study underway in a general population, rather than cancer patients, to see if it truly works and helps save lives, the best measure of a screening test’s value.

“We’re very, very excited and see this as a first step,” said Nickolas Papadopoulos, one of the Hopkins study leaders. “But we don’t want people calling up” and asking for the test now, because it’s not available, he said.

Some independent experts saw great promise.

“It’s such a good first set of results” that it gives hope this approach will pan out, said Dr. Peter Bach, a health policy expert at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center who consults for a gene testing company. “Anything close to 50 percent or 40 percent detection is pretty exciting stuff,” and this one did better than that, he said.

Dr. Len Lichtenfeld, deputy chief medical officer of the American Cancer Society, was encouraged that the test did well on cancers that lack screening tests now. If a blood test could find 98 percent of ovarian cancers at an early stage, as these early results suggest, “that would be a significant advance,” he said.

But he cautioned: “We have a long way to go to demonstrate its effectiveness as a screening test.”

Testing the test

The test detects mutations in 16 genes tied to cancer and measures eight proteins that often are elevated when cancer is present.

It covers breast, colon and lung and five kinds that don’t have screening tests for people at average risk: ovarian, liver, stomach, pancreatic and esophageal. Prostate cancer is not included. A blood test is widely used, the PSA test, but its value for screening is controversial. 

Researchers tried the new test on people whose cancers were still confined to where it started or had spread a little but not widely throughout the body. It detected 33 percent of breast cancers, about 60 percent of colon or lung cancers and nearly all of the ovarian and liver ones. It did better when tumors were larger or had spread. It did less well at the very earliest stage.
…

Earth last year wasn’t quite as hot as 2016’s record-shattering mark, but it ranked second or third, depending on who was counting.

Either way, scientists say it showed a clear signal of man-made global warming because it was the hottest year they’ve seen without an El Nino boosting temperatures naturally.   

 

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the United Kingdom’s meteorological office on Thursday announced that 2017 was the third hottest year on record. At the same time, NASA and researchers from a nonprofit in Berkeley, California, called it the second.

 

The agencies slightly differ because of how much they count an overheating Arctic, where there are gaps in the data.   

 

The global average temperature in 2017 was 14.7 degrees Celsius (58.51 degrees Fahrenheit), which is 0.84 Celsius (1.51 degrees Fahrenheit) above the 20th century average and just behind 2016 and 2015, NOAA said.  Other agencies’ figures were close but not quite the same.

 

Earlier, European forecasters called 2017 the second hottest year, while the Japanese Meteorological Agency called it the third hottest. Two other scientific groups that use satellite, not ground, measurements split on 2017 being second or third hottest. With four teams calling it the second hottest year and four teams calling it third, the United Nations’ World Meteorological Organization termed 2017 a tie for second with 2015.  

“This is human-caused climate change in action,” said Nobel Prize winning chemist Mario Molina of the University of California San Diego, who wasn’t part of any of the measuring teams. “Climate is not weather, [which] can go up and down from year to year. What counts is the longer-term change, which is clearly upwards.”

Which year is first, second or third doesn’t really matter much, said Princeton University climate scientist Gabriel Vecchi. What really matters is the clear warming trend, he said.

 

NOAA’s five hottest years have been from 2010 on.

 

During an El Nino year – when a warming of the central Pacific changes weather worldwide – the globe’s annual temperature can spike, naturally, by a tenth or two of a degree, scientists said.  There was a strong El Nino during 2015 and 2016.

But 2017 finished with a La Nina, the cousin of El Nino that lowers temperatures. Had there been no man-made warming, 2017 would have been average or slightly cooler than normal, said National Center for Atmospheric Research climate scientist Ben Sanderson.

 

On the other hand, NASA calculated if the temperature contributions of El Nino and El Nina were removed from the global data through the years, 2017 would go down as the hottest year on record, NASA chief climate scientist Gavin Schmidt said.

 

Carbon pollution is like putting the Earth on an escalator of rising temperatures, with natural variation such as El Nino or the cooling effect of volcanoes like hopping up or down a step or two on that escalator, scientists said. Not every year will be warmer than the last because of natural variations, but the trend over years will be rising temperatures, they said.

 

The observed warming has been predicted within a few tenths of a degree in computer simulations going back to the 1970s and 1980s, several scientists said.

 

It has been 33 years since the last month that the globe was cooler than normal, according to NOAA.

 

Northern Illinois University climate scientist Victor Gensini has never lived through a month or year that wasn’t hotter than normal.

“I look at pictures of the great winters of the late `70s from my parents and wonder if I’ll ever experience anything like that in my lifetime,” said Gebsini, who’s 31.

 
…

Zambia says it has made progress in containing a cholera outbreak that has killed about 70 people in the southern African nation since October.

Health Minister Chitalu Chilufya this week said there had been a “drastic reduction” in the number of new cases in the outbreak, which has mostly affected the capital, Lusaka. He says the provision of fresh water and other preventive measures are being taken.

 

The World Health Organization is assisting with the vaccination of Lusaka residents against cholera.

 

Last week, the military moved in after some residents in a densely populated Lusaka slum rioted over the removal of market vendors, a measure designed to curb the disease.

 

Cholera is caused by ingestion of contaminated food or water and can kill within hours if untreated.

 

 
…

Every year there are an estimated 78,000 new cases of brain cancer diagnosed in the United States, and nearly 400,000 worldwide. It is a particularly challenging cancer and very seldom are patients ever “cured.” But there are new therapies that are helping patients lead longer, more normal lives. Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Britain has appointed a minister of loneliness to combat social isolation experienced by one in 10 Britons. 

Sports Minister Tracey Crouch will add the job to her existing portfolio to advance the work of slain lawmaker Jo Cox, who set up the Commission on Loneliness in 2016.

“For far too many people, loneliness is the sad reality of modern life,” Prime Minister Theresa May said Wednesday. “I want to confront this challenge for our society and for all of us to take action to address the loneliness endured by the elderly, by carers, by those who have lost loved ones — people who have no one to talk to or share their thoughts and experiences with.”

The British Red Cross says more than 9 million Britons describe themselves as being always or often lonely, out of a population of 65.6 million.

Most people over age 75 in Britain live alone, and about 200,000 older people have not had a conversation with a friend or relative in more than a month, government data show.

“We know that there is a real impact of social isolation and loneliness on people, on their physical and mental well-being but also on other aspects in society, and we want to tackle this challenge,” Crouch told the BBC. 
…

A prestigious scientific panel is recommending that states significantly lower their drunken driving thresholds as part of a blueprint to eliminate the “entirely preventable” 10,000 alcohol-impaired driving deaths in the United States each year.

The U.S. government-commissioned, 489-page report by a panel of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine released Wednesday throws the weight of the scientific body behind lowering the blood-alcohol concentration threshold from 0.08 to 0.05. All states have 0.08 thresholds. A Utah law passed last year that lowers the state’s threshold to 0.05 doesn’t go into effect until December 30.

The amount of alcohol required to reach 0.05 would depend on several factors, including the person’s size and whether the person has recently eaten. A 150-pound man might be over the 0.05 limit after two beers, while a 120-pound woman could exceed it after a single drink, according to the American Beverage Institute, a national restaurant group.

 

The panel also recommended that states significantly increase alcohol taxes and make alcohol less conveniently available, including reducing the hours and days alcohol is sold in stores, bars and restaurants. Research suggests a doubling of alcohol taxes could lead to an 11 percent reduction in traffic crash deaths, the report said.

 

It also calls for cracking down on sales to people under 21 or who are already intoxicated to discourage binge drinking, and putting limits on alcohol marketing while funding anti-alcohol campaigns similar to those against smoking.

 

All the proposals are likely to draw fierce opposition from the alcohol and restaurant industries. The beverage institute took out full-page newspaper ads opposing Utah’s new law that featured a fake mugshot under a large headline reading, “Utah: Come for vacation, leave on probation.”

 

The recommendation in the academies’ report for lowering the BAC threshold would “do nothing to deter” repeat offenders and high BAC drivers, who represent the “vast majority” of alcohol-impaired driving deaths, the Distilled Spirits Council said in a statement. The council said it also doesn’t support the report’s recommendations for “tax increases and advertising bans, which will have little or no impact on traffic safety.”

 

‘Deadliest and costliest danger on US roads’

The report points out that “alcohol-impaired driving remains the deadliest and costliest danger on U.S. roads,” accounting for 28 percent of traffic deaths. Each day, 29 people in the U.S. die in alcohol-related crashes and many more are injured. Forty percent of those killed are people other than the drunken driver.

 

Rural areas are disproportionately affected. In 2015, 48 percent of drunken driving fatalities occurred in rural areas.

 

The report says many strategies have been effective to prevent drunken driving, but “a coordinated multilevel approach across multiple sectors will be required to accelerate change.”

 

“The problem isn’t intractable,” the report said.

 

From the early 1980s to the early 2000s, there was significant progress as the result of an increase in the drinking age to 21, decreases in the blood-alcohol threshold, and other measures, the report said. But since then, progress has stagnated and recently has begun to reverse.

 

Action to address drunken driving can’t wait for the advent of self-driving cars immune to the lures of a cold beer or a fine wine – it will take too long for autonomous vehicles to replace all the human-driven machines on the road, said the panel’s chairman, Steven Teutsch, a senior fellow for health policy and economics at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles.

 

“In the meantime, we have 10,000 people a year dying and we ought to do something about it,” he said.

 

The report cites studies that show the United States lags behind other high-income countries in preventing drunken driving fatalities. More than 100 countries have adopted the 0.05 threshold lower. In Europe, the share of traffic deaths attributable to drunken driving was reduced by more than half within 10 years after the standard was dropped, the National Transportation Safety Board said in 2013. The safety board has also recommended the 0.05 threshold.

 

Alcoholic beverages have changed significantly over the past 25 years. “They are more affordable, of far greater variety, and more widely advertised and promoted than in earlier periods,” the report said. The lack of consistency in serving sizes and the combination of alcohol with caffeine and energy drinks make it harder for drinkers to estimate their level of impairment.

 

The report was commissioned by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, which asked the academies to determine which strategies for reducing drunken driving have been proven effective.

 
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The descriptions are haunting.

Some victims felt fine in the morning and were dead by night. Faces turned blue as patients coughed up blood. Stacked bodies outnumbered coffins.

A century after one of history’s most catastrophic disease outbreaks, scientists are rethinking how to guard against another super-flu like the 1918 influenza that killed tens of millions as it swept the globe.

There’s no way to predict what strain of the shape-shifting flu virus could trigger another pandemic or, given modern medical tools, how bad it might be.

But researchers hope they’re finally closing in on stronger flu shots, ways to boost much-needed protection against ordinary winter influenza and guard against future pandemics at the same time.

“We have to do better and by better, we mean a universal flu vaccine. A vaccine that is going to protect you against essentially all, or most, strains of flu,” said Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health.

Labs around the country are hunting for a super-shot that could eliminate the annual fall vaccination in favor of one every five years or 10 years, or maybe, eventually, a childhood immunization that could last for life.

Fauci is designating a universal flu vaccine a top priority for NIH’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases. Last summer, he brought together more than 150 leading researchers to map a path. A few attempts are entering first-stage human safety testing.

Still, it’s a tall order. Despite 100 years of science, the flu virus too often beats our best defenses because it constantly mutates.

Among the new strategies: Researchers are dissecting the cloak that disguises influenza as it sneaks past the immune system, and finding some rare targets that stay the same from strain to strain, year to year.

“We’ve made some serious inroads into understanding how we can better protect ourselves. Now we have to put that into fruition,” said well-known flu biologist Ian Wilson of The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California.

The somber centennial highlights the need. 

Back then, there was no flu vaccine. It wouldn’t arrive for decades. Today vaccination is the best protection, and Fauci never skips his. But at best, the seasonal vaccine is 60 percent effective. Protection dropped to 19 percent a few years ago when the vaccine didn’t match an evolving virus.

If a never-before-seen flu strain erupts, it takes months to brew a new vaccine. Doses arrived too late for the last, fortunately mild, pandemic in 2009.

Lacking a better option, Fauci said the nation is “chasing” animal flu strains that might become the next human threat. Today’s top concern is a lethal bird flu that jumped from poultry to more than 1,500 people in China since 2013. Last year it mutated, meaning millions of just-in-case vaccine doses in a U.S. stockpile no longer match.

‘Mother of all pandemics’

The NIH’s Dr. Jeffery Taubenberger calls the 1918 flu the mother of all pandemics.

He should know.

While working as a pathologist for the military, he led the team that identified and reconstructed the extinct 1918 virus, using traces unearthed in autopsy samples from World War I soldiers and from a victim buried in the Alaskan permafrost.

That misnamed Spanish flu “made all the world a killing zone,” wrote John M. Barry in The Great Influenza: The Story of the Deadliest Pandemic in History.

Historians think it started in Kansas in early 1918. By winter 1919, the virus had infected one-third of the global population and killed at least 50 million people, including 675,000 Americans. By comparison, the AIDS virus has claimed 35 million lives over four decades.

Three more flu pandemics have struck since, in 1957, 1968 and 2009, spreading widely but nowhere near as deadly. Taubenberger’s research shows the family tree, each subsequent pandemic a result of flu viruses carried by birds or pigs mixing with 1918 flu genes.

“This 100-year timeline of information about how the virus adapted to us and how we adapt to the new viruses, it teaches us that we can’t keep designing vaccines based on the past,” said Dr. Barney Graham, deputy director of NIH’s Vaccine Research Center.

Two proteins

The new vaccine quest starts with two proteins, hemagglutinin and neuraminidase, that coat flu’s surface. The “H” allows flu to latch onto respiratory cells and infect them. Afterward, the “N” helps the virus spread.

They also form the names of influenza A viruses, the most dangerous flu family. With 18 hemagglutinin varieties and 11 types of neuraminidase — most carried by birds — there are lots of potential combinations. That virulent 1918 virus was the H1N1 subtype; milder H1N1 strains still circulate. This winter H3N2, a descendent of the 1968 pandemic, is causing most of the misery.

Think of hemagglutinin as a miniature broccoli stalk. Its flower-like head attracts the immune system, which produces infection-blocking antibodies if the top is similar enough to a previous infection or that year’s vaccination.

But that head also is where mutations pile up.

A turning point toward better vaccines was a 2009 discovery that, sometimes, people make a small number of antibodies that instead target spots on the hemagglutinin stem that don’t mutate. Even better, “these antibodies were much broader than anything we’ve seen,” capable of blocking multiple subtypes of flu, said Scripps’ Wilson.

Scientists are trying different tricks to spur production of those antibodies.

In a lab at NIH’s Vaccine Research Center, “we think taking the head off will solve the problem,” Graham said. His team brews vaccine from the stems and attaches them to ball-shaped nanoparticles easily spotted by the immune system.

In New York, pioneering flu microbiologist Peter Palese at Mount Sinai’s Icahn School of Medicine uses “chimeric” viruses — the hemagglutinin head comes from bird flu, the stem from common human flu viruses — to redirect the immune system.

“We have made the head so that the immune system really doesn’t recognize it,” Palese explained. GlaxoSmithKline and the Gates Foundation are funding initial safety tests.

In addition to working with Janssen Pharmaceuticals on a stem vaccine, Wilson’s team also is exploring how to turn flu-fighting antibodies into an oral drug. “Say a pandemic came along and you didn’t have time to make vaccine. You’d want something to block infection if possible,” he said.

NIH’s Taubenberger is taking a completely different approach. He’s brewing a vaccine cocktail that combines particles of four different hemagglutinins that in turn trigger protection against other related strains.

Obstacles to research

Yet lingering mysteries hamper the research.

Scientists now think people respond differently to vaccination based on their flu history. “Perhaps we recognize best the first flu we ever see,” said NIH immunologist Adrian McDermott.

The idea is that your immune system is imprinted with that first strain and may not respond as well to a vaccine against another.

“The vision of the field is that ultimately if you get the really good universal flu vaccine, it’s going to work best when you give it to a child,” Fauci said.

Still, no one knows the ultimate origin of that terrifying 1918 flu. But key to its lethality was bird-like hemagglutinin.

That Chinese H7N9 bird flu “worries me a lot,” Taubenberger said. “For a virus like influenza that is a master at adapting and mutating and evolving to meet new circumstances, it’s crucially important to understand how these processes occur in nature. How does an avian virus become adapted to a mammal?”

While scientists hunt those answers, “it’s folly to predict” what a next pandemic might bring, Fauci said. “We just need to be prepared.”
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