At their low point in the late 1980s, there were 22 California condors left in the world. But in 1992, after dedicated efforts to save them, the condors began rebounding. Today, these magnificent raptors are coming back. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

In a landmark deal, HIV patients in Africa will now have access to the latest drugs for $75 a year. The arrangement is a major victory for the poorest nations fighting AIDS, a health epidemic with unrestrained global reach.
…

From deadly droughts and destroyed crops to shrinking water sources, communities across sub-Saharan Africa are struggling to withstand the onslaught of global record-breaking temperatures.

But the dangers do not end there. Rising heat poses another threat, one that is far less known and studied but could spark disease epidemics across the continent, scientists say.

Mosquitoes are the menace, and the risk goes beyond malaria.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito, which spreads debilitating and potentially deadly viruses, from Zika and dengue to chikungunya, thrives in warmer climates than its malaria-carrying cousin, known as Anopheles, say researchers at Stanford University.

In sub-Saharan Africa, this means malaria rates could rise in cooler areas as they heat up, but fall in hotter places that now battle the disease. In those areas, malaria, one of the continent’s biggest killers, may be rivaled by other vector-borne diseases as major health crises.

“As temperatures go past 25 degrees Celsius (77 degrees Fahrenheit), you move away from the peak transmission window for malaria, and towards that of diseases such as dengue,” said Erin Mordecai, an assistant professor at Stanford.

“We have this intriguing prospect of the threat of malaria declining in Africa, while Zika, dengue and chikungunya become more of a danger,” she said. 

Besides a warming planet, scientists fear growing urbanization across Africa could also fuel the transmission of diseases carried by the Aedes aegypti mosquito, which flourishes in cities and slums, the opposite of the country-loving Anopheles.

Half of Africans are expected to live in cities by 2030, up from 36 percent in 2010, according to World Bank data.

A soaring number may become prey to vector-borne viruses like dengue, which have struck Africa at a record pace in recent years, fuelled by urbanization, population growth, poor sanitation and global warming, the World Health Organization (WHO) says.

“We see poorly planned development in Africa, not just with megacities but smaller settlements … which often lack proper water and sanitation,” said Marianne Comparet, director of the International Society for Neglected Tropical Diseases.

“Climate change, disease and the interaction between man and habitat — it is a crisis going under the radar … a time bomb for public health problems,” she added.

Neglected diseases

Last year was the hottest on record, for the third year in a row, with global temperature rise edging nearer a ceiling set by some 200 nations for limiting global warming, according to the European Union’s climate change service.

Parts of Africa were among the regions suffering from unusual heat.

As temperatures keep rising, mosquitoes in low-latitude regions in East African countries are finding new habitats in higher altitude areas, yet malaria rates are falling in warmer regions, such as northern Senegal in the Sahel, studies show.

So as cooler parts of sub-Saharan Africa gear up for the spread of malaria, hotter areas should prepare for future epidemics like chikungunya and dengue, experts say.

While not as lethal as malaria, chikungunya lasts longer and can lead to people developing long-term joint pain. Dengue causes flulike symptoms and can develop into a deadly hemorrhagic fever.

There is a danger that the global drive to end malaria, which absorbed $2.9 billion in international investment in 2015, has left African countries ill-prepared to deal with other vector-borne diseases, said Larry Slutsker of the international health organization PATH.

“Diseases such as dengue and chikungunya have been neglected and under-funded,” said Slutsker, the leader of PATH’s malaria and neglected tropical diseases programs. “There needs to be much better surveillance and understanding.”

Malaria kills around 430,000 people a year, about 90 percent of them young African children.

Dengue, the world’s fastest-spreading tropical disease, infects about 390 million annually but is often badly recorded and misdiagnosed, health experts say.

Some experts believe the global alarm triggered by Zika, which can cause birth defects such as small brain size, may see more money pumped into fighting neglected tropical diseases in sub-Saharan Africa, especially after outbreaks in Angola, Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau in the last year.

Although 26 African nations, almost half of the continent, have strategies in place to fight vector-borne diseases, most of them only target malaria, according to data from the WHO.

Malaria rates have been slashed in recent decades through the use of bed nets, indoor spraying and drugs. But there are no dedicated treatments or vaccines for chikungunya and dengue.

“The most important preventive and control intervention is vector management, particularly through community engagement,” said Magaran Bagayoko, a team leader for the WHO in Africa.

Disentangling data

However, efforts to beat back mosquitoes are hampered by a lack of quality and affordable climate data that could help predict outbreaks and indicate risks, said Madeleine Thomson of the International Research Institute for Climate and Society.

“What countries really want to know is what they can do to improve their programs, as well as the capacity of their health workers,” said the scientist at the Columbia University-based institute.

But to do that, “climate information must be put into practice,” Thomson added.

African nations also must improve coordination between their health ministries and meteorological agencies, said the Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC), a new continentwide public health agency launched this year by the African Union.

“They are not linked, or talking to each other,” said Sheila Shawa, a project officer at the Africa CDC headquarters in Ethiopia. “There needs to be better communication in order to model neglected diseases, such as chikungunya, across Africa.”

Yet climate scientists and health experts warn of the difficulty of analyzing the impact of rising temperature on mosquito-borne diseases without looking at other factors.

“We have a major challenge of isolating effects of rising temperatures — which are really variable — from all the other aspects like rainfall patterns, humidity, mobility and migration, as well as socioeconomic factors,” said Stanford’s Mordecai.

“They are all changing at the same time, making individual drivers very difficult to isolate and disentangle for analysis.”
…

Even a jellyfish — one of Earth’s first and most ancient animals — needs its sleep.

Scientists said on Thursday they have demonstrated that a primitive type of jellyfish called Cassiopea goes to sleep nightly. While sleep has been confirmed in other invertebrates such as worms and fruit flies, the jellyfish is the most evolutionarily ancient animal that has been shown to slumber.

“These results suggest that even those animals that lack a centralized nervous system require sleep, which means that sleep is one of the most ancient behavioral states, deeply rooted within the animal lineage,” California Institute of Technology biologist Ravi Nath said.

Jellyfish have thrived in the seas for at least 600 million years, longer than nearly any other animal. By comparison, dinosaurs appeared roughly 230 million years ago and humans appeared roughly 300,000 years ago. The findings involving such a primordial creature raise fresh questions about sleep’s origin and purpose.

“We do not know if sleep is limited to just animals,” said Nath, who helped lead the study published in the journal Current Biology.

“Sleep is a genetically encoded behavioral state. Genes and neural circuits interact to generate the sleep state,” Nath added. “I think it would be hard to demonstrate a sleep state in an organism that is not an animal, but I think the sleep state that we know may have been co-opted from periods of quiescence in organisms as diverse as plants, bacteria and fungi.”

Jellyfish are among the first animals to have developed neurons — nerve cells — though they lack a brain, spine or central nervous system.

Cassiopea jellyfish live in clear, shallow, tropical waters of the Pacific and western Atlantic oceans, eating plankton.

Measuring about 1-2 inches (2.5-5 cm) in diameter, they are dubbed the “upside-down jellyfish” because they lie on the seafloor inverted in the water with their tentacles upward.

Through lab experiments, the researchers determined Cassiopea met three important sleep criteria: periods of decreased activity known as behavioral quiescence; a decreased response to stimuli; and an increased sleep drive after being sleep deprived.

The jellyfish were found to display periods of inactivity at night, pulsing their bodies 30 percent less often than during daytime. When a platform underneath them was removed, they took up to 5 seconds to “wake up” and reorient themselves. And when deprived of nighttime sleep by being nudged with a squirt of water, they became more likely to sleep during the day.

The researchers did not examine whether jellyfish dream.
…

What Christian Clot remembers most vividly from his days in Iran’s boiling Dasht-e Lut desert was having to stay completely still for 12 hours a day — or die.

“It was so hot I had to lie down behind some rocks between 8 a.m. and 8 p.m. Staying in a tent was too dangerous as it would have instantly overheated,” he recalled.

Clot, a French-Swiss explorer, is testing the limits of human endurance, including to worsening temperature extremes.

In the Iranian desert and on three other 30-day expeditions alone in the world’s harshest climates, he has explored what impacts extreme weather might have on people, both physically and mentally.

“Most studies on the human body have been done in labs rather than in real settings,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. “I wanted to experience what you can’t find in scientific journals.”

If planet-warming emissions continue to rise at their current pace, three in four people in the world will face deadly heat by the turn of the century, according to a study published in the journal Nature Climate Change in June.

Emily Y.Y. Chan, a professor of public health at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, expects heatwaves to become not just more frequent but also longer by the end of the century.

That could lead to a range of worsening health problems — including some unexpected ones, such as more malnutrition.

Ability to keep cool

For his experiment with heat, Clot chose Iran’s Dasht-e Lut desert, where the daytime temperature can reach nearly 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit).

“I knew I could die within hours of exposure to such high temperatures,” he admitted. Each day, Clot collected data, including his heart rate and body temperature, and carried out tests to assess the heat’s impact on his mental abilities, including his decision-making and memory.

Although his scientific team are still analyzing the results, Clot said the biggest challenge was extreme physical and mental tiredness.

“Every movement I made was slower and demanded more effort,” he explained. “I was conscious of the threat surrounding me but found it extremely challenging to stay attentive at all times.”

Georges Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Association, thinks Clot’s struggle with excessive heat is hardly unique.

“The average human doesn’t tolerate heat well,” he said — but some can cope better than others.

“The human body functions like the radiator of your car: your ability to cool yourself down depends on a range of factors like your age, your capacity to sweat, whether or not you’re taking any medication,” he said.

For those unable to regulate their body temperature effectively, the spectrum of heat-related illness ranges from simple sunburn to severe dehydration and heatstroke, which can be life-threatening, he added.

Pressure on hospitals

Another study, published in the journal Science Advances in June, found that expected future increases in temperatures globally could result in a “drastic” hike in deaths in India and other developing countries.

Separately, Chan and her team identified temperature thresholds beyond which deaths and hospital admission rates start to rise in Hong Kong.

“We found that daily mortality increases by 1.8 percent for every degree above the threshold of 28.2 degrees Celsius, while daily hospitalization — for respiratory and infectious diseases, for example — increases by 4.5 percent for every degree above the threshold of 29 degrees Celsius,” she said.

That suggests increasingly hot temperatures could leave health systems overwhelmed by surging demand, she added.

She worries that governments and the public are ill-prepared to deal with rising temperatures because of a general lack of awareness about how heat can impact people’s health.

Benjamin of the American Public Health Association agrees.

“Human beings are terrible at evaluating risk in a pro-active way. We rationalize why not to do things,” he said.

Being prepared is key

To limit deaths, governments should try to understand better where the most heat-vulnerable people, such as the elderly, live so they can swiftly open emergency cooling centers nearby and boost electricity supplies when it gets too hot, Benjamin said.

In rural areas, ensuring that people have access to enough water and shelter in times of extreme heat is crucial, he said.

Chan said extreme weather warnings that take into account people’s age and literacy level can help reach and protect the most vulnerable groups.

Other ways to cope with heat include adjusting the schedules of outdoor workers based on temperature, she said.

Clot said getting people to listen to, and take into account health warnings can be tough.

“We tend to think we’re stronger than nature,” he said. “But we’re not.”

He plans to repeat his desert heat expedition next year, this time with a group of 10 men and 10 women. The aim is to assess how climate extremes affect group dynamics, something he hopes will help people “better adapt to weather extremes and other environmental challenges that might come our way.”

 
…

Immunotherapy is one of the newer ways the medical community is trying to fight cancer. Immunotherapy is a way to get the body’s natural defenses to fight cancer. It has great promise, and has documented results, but it is not for everyone. VOA’s Kevin Enochs explains.
…

Sea turtles are lumbering back from the brink of extinction, a new study says.

Scientists found more populations of the large turtles improving than declining when they looked at nearly 60 regions across the globe. That’s a big change from a decade or two ago, experts said.

Long-living sea turtles have been pushed to endangered levels by hunting, accidentally being caught in fishing nets, habitat loss, plastics pollution and climate change, experts say.

But massive efforts to save the egg-laying turtles by changing fishing nets and creating protected and darkened beaches are working, said study lead author Antonios Mazaris, an ecology professor at Aristotle University of Thessaloniki in Greece.

 

“There’s a positive sign at the end of the story,” Mazaris said. “We should be more optimistic about our efforts in society.”

Seven species of sea turtles

The research was published Wednesday in the journal Science Advances.

 

There are seven different species of sea turtles, all but one endangered. The slow creatures live for several decades with some species weighing about 100 pounds and others well over 1,000 pounds.

Mazaris pointed to Hawaiian green sea turtles, once in trouble 40 years ago, as story of success. Maybe too much success.

“They have more turtles than they know what to do with,” said Roderic Mast, a sea turtle advisory group co-chairman at the International Union for Conservation of Nature, which determines the global list of endangered species.

‘Good problem to have’

“Tourists seeking sea turtles create traffic problems and fishermen complain the creatures get in the way, said Mast, who wasn’t part of the study and is president of the Oceanic Society advocacy group. He added: “It’s a good problem to have.”

Mazaris and colleagues looked at 299 sets of turtle populations over different lengths of time around the globe, finding 95 of them increased, while 35 went down. The rest didn’t change or there wasn’t enough data.

 

 There were increases in North and South America on the Atlantic coast but setbacks in the Asia Pacific region.

 “The evidence is widespread and convincing,” said Selina Heppell, head of Oregon State University’s department of fisheries and wildlife, who wasn’t part of the study.

Changes in laws make difference

Mast pointed to Kemp’s ridley sea turtles as a good example of what’s happening, especially in the United States.  In the 1940s, there about 40,000 of them, mostly in the southern U.S. and Mexico. By the 70s, there were only 1,200 left.

The U.S. and Mexican governments changed laws, fishing practices and set aside dark, quiet areas for turtles to nest. That population is increasing by about 10 to 15 percent annually, Mast said. That’s good, but he said they remain critically endangered.

“Sea turtles are bellwethers. They’re flagships that we use to tell the story of what’s going on in the oceans,” Mast said. “And that’s why people should care about turtles.”

 
…

British scientists have used a genome editing tool known as CRISPR/Cas9 to knock out a gene in embryos just a few days old, testing the technique’s ability to decipher key gene functions in early human development.

The researchers said their experiments, using a technology that is the subject of fierce international debate because of fears that it could be used to create babies to order, will deepen understanding of the biology of early human development.

CRISPR/Cas9 can enable scientists to find and modify or replace genetic defects. Many describe it as game changing.

Role of key gene

“One way to find out what a gene does in the developing embryo is to see what happens when it isn’t working,” said Kathy Niakan, a stem cell scientists who led the research at Britain’s Francis Crick Institute. “Now we have demonstrated an efficient way of doing this, we hope that other scientists will use it to find out the roles of other genes.”

She said her hope was for scientists to decipher the roles of all the key genes embryos need to develop successfully. This could then improve IVF treatments for infertile couples and also help doctors understand why so many pregnancies fail.

“It may take many years to achieve such an understanding, our study is just the first step,” Niakan said.

No gene, no protein

Niakan’s team decided to use it to stop a key gene from producing a protein called OCT4, which normally becomes active in the first few days of human embryo development.

They spent more than a year optimizing their various techniques using mouse embryos and human embryonic stem cells in lab dishes, before starting work on human embryos.

To inactivate OCT4, they used CRISPR/Cas9 to change the DNA of 41 human embryos. After seven days, embryo development was stopped and the embryos were analyzed.

After an egg is fertilized, it divides for about seven days when it forms a ball of around 200 cells called a blastocyst, Niakan explained in a briefing about her work.

Her results, published in the journal Nature on Wednesday, found that human embryos need OCT4 to form a blastocyst. Without it, the blastocyst cannot form or develop normally.

US research

The British team’s work comes on the heels of milestone science in the United States, where scientists said in July they had succeeded in altering the genes of a human embryo to correct a disease-causing mutation.

Rob Buckle, chief science officer at Britain’s Medical Research Council, praised Niakan’s research and findings: “Genome editing technologies — particularly CRISPR-Cas9 used in this study — are having a game-changing effect on our ability to understand the function of critical human genes,” he said.

 
…

Whether children live in Baltimore, Beijing, Nairobi or New Delhi, by the time they are 15, boys are told to go outside and have adventures, while girls are told to stay indoors and do housework. Furthermore, most girls are told that if they are raped or have sex, they are the ones at fault.

A new study by adolescent-health specialists interviewed 450 poor children and their parents about gender expectations in a total of 15 high-, low- and middle-income countries. The children included in the study, the first of its kind, were between the ages of 10 and 14.

“When we started this work, there was no research at all, no understanding at all of young adolescents,” said Robert Blum, director of the Global Early Adolescent Study at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland. “There was an assumption that these were young children, and they aren’t cued into gender-based violence, gender messages, rape and things of that nature.

“What we see is that around the world, young people have keen awareness, and they’re very cued in to what’s going on.”

The key finding was that rigidly held and enforced gender expectations are linked to increased lifelong health risks — everything from HIV and depression to violence and suicide.

Messages internalized

“We found children at a very early age, from the most conservative to the most liberal societies, quickly internalize this myth that girls are vulnerable and boys are strong and independent,” Blum told VOA. “And this message is being constantly reinforced at almost every turn, by siblings, classmates, teachers, parents, guardians, relatives, clergy and coaches.”

The researchers found that in most cultures, by the time girls are 10 years old, they have been taught that their key asset is their physical appearance.

Lead researcher Kristin Mmari said no matter where they are, girls are concerned about their bodies, and others’ attitudes to them. “In New Delhi, the girls talked about their bodies as a big risk that needs to be covered up, while in Baltimore, girls told us their primary asset was their bodies and they need to look appealing, but not too appealing.”

Venkatraman Chandra-Mouli of the World Health Organization said violence against women is so pervasive that one in three women experience violence from their husbands or other sexual partners. “Social norms accept that a woman has to be beaten,” Chandra-Mouli said.

He and other researchers involved in the study of adolescents’ gender norms discussed their findings at the National Press Club in Washington.

Pressure on boys

The researchers found that boys do not emerge unscathed from gender expectations. They found that the pressure boys face to become physically strong and independent make them more likely to be victims of physical violence and homicide, and more likely to take up unhealthy habits like tobacco, drug and alcohol use.

The study was a collaboration between the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and the World Health Organization. The Journal of Adolescent Health has published a supplement to its October issue incorporating a number of articles on the subject, along with commentaries by Blum, Chandra-Mouli and others.

Adolescents are torn between opposing expectations, the study showed, especially girls.

In Shanghai, for example, girls are told they should be economically independent, and that they should not rely on men for financial support. At the same time, girls are told their husbands will divorce them if they don’t do housework.

The goal was to understand the factors in early adolescence that predispose young people to subsequent sexual health risks and promote healthy sexuality.

The conclusion was that societies wishing to have healthier adolescents and young adults, free of gender stereotypes, must intervene, where necessary, before children reach age 10. Chandra-Mouli said WHO hopes to use the data from the study to shape programs to change misunderstandings about gender norms.

Blum said the researchers will measure changes in their subjects three times over five years to see how perceptions of gender affect individuals’ lives and how programs change the outcome.
…

In a remote, rugged valley overlooking the Pacific Ocean, researchers closely monitor an endangered icon: the California condor.

 

The giant vultures flap their wings and circle the sky before perching on branches and observing their observers.

Wildlife biologist Amy List uses a handheld antenna to track the birds, which wear radio transmitters and numbered tags.

“If we don’t know what they’re doing, we don’t know what’s going wrong,” said List, who works for the Ventana Wildlife Society, which manages the condor sanctuary in Big Sur.

 

Three decades after being pushed to the brink of extinction, the California condor is making a comeback in the wild, but constant vigilance is needed to ensure the endangered bird doesn’t reverse course.

One of the world’s largest birds with a wingspan up to 10 feet, the condor once patrolled the sky from Mexico to British Columbia. But its population plummeted in the 20th century due to lead poisoning, hunting and habitat destruction.

 

In 1987, wildlife officials captured the last remaining 22 condors and took them to the San Diego and Los Angeles zoos to be protected and bred in captivity.

 

Those efforts have led to a slow but steady recovery for a species that reproduces slowly compared with other birds. There are now roughly 450 condors, including about 270 in the wild in California, Arizona, Utah and northeastern Mexico.

Plans also are underway to release some captive-bred condors in Redwood National Park in 2019 to establish a population near the California-Oregon border.

 

Federal officials said in August that for the first time in nearly 40 years, condors were roosting in the Blue Ridge National Wildlife Refuge, expanding to their historical range in the southern Sierra Nevada.

 

Another milestone was reached this summer: the first “third generation” condor was born in the wild in California since the 1980s.

 

“We’re seeing very encouraging results that the condors can become self-sustaining again,” said Kelly Sorenson, who heads the conservation group.

 

While condors still face threats from exposure to mercury and the pesticide DDT, biologists say the biggest danger is lead ammunition, which can poison the scavengers when they eat dead animals shot with lead bullets. California banned the use of lead ammunition near condor feeding grounds in 2008 and will be the first state to ban lead bullets in all hunting in 2019.

“We’re already starting to see fewer lead deaths. The condors are surviving longer. Their blood-lead levels are coming down,” Sorenson said.

Some gun owners complain that copper bullets are more expensive and less effective than lead and point to other possible sources of lead, such as paint and metal garbage.

 

“Condors are getting lead poisoning. The question is, are they getting it from lead ammunition?” said Chuck Michel, president of the California Pistol and Rifle Association.

 

Meanwhile, the San Diego Zoo celebrated the birth of its 200th condor this year.

 

“While we were caring for the birds, trying to protect them and provide sanctuary, we were literally writing the book how you propagate a species, how you genetically manage it and prepare it for release back in the wild,” Michael Mace, the zoo’s birds curator.

 

After up to a year at the zoo, chicks are taken to a release site such as the Big Sur sanctuary, where a flock has grown to about 90 condors that travel between Big Sur and Pinnacles National Park. They scavenge, breed and raise chicks on their own, under the close watch of List, the wildlife biologist, and her colleagues.

 

“I hope that I’m out of a job soon because condors don’t need to be managed in the future,” she said. “I hope that they’re self-sustaining and wild and free, and nobody needs to trap or tag or monitor them at all.”
…

Employing an array of giant telescopes positioned in the New Mexico desert, astronomers have started a massive surveying project aimed at producing the most detailed view ever made of such a large portion of space using radio waves emitted from throughout the Milky Way and beyond.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory announced the project this week, saying the Very Large Array will make three scans of the sky that’s visible from the scrubland of the San Augustin Plains. It is one of the best spots on the planet to scan space, with 80 percent of the Earth’s sky visible from the location.

The array works like a camera. But instead of collecting light waves to make images, the telescopes that look like big satellite dishes receive radio waves emitted by cosmic explosions and other interstellar phenomenon.

Astronomers expect the images gathered by the array will allow them to detect in finer detail gamma ray bursts, supernovas and other cosmic events that visible-light telescopes cannot see due to dust present throughout the universe. For example, the array can peer through the thick clouds of dust and gas where stars are born.

Scientists involved in the project say the results will provide valuable information for astrophysics researchers.

“In addition to what we think [the survey] will discover, we undoubtedly will be surprised by discoveries we aren’t anticipating now,” project director Claire Chandler said in a statement. “That is the lesson of scientific history and perhaps the most exciting part of a project like this.”

The survey is possible because of a major technological upgrade at the Very Large Array, which was initially conceived in the 1960s and built in the 1970s. The antennas relied on their original electronics and processing systems for years until a recent overhaul made the system capable of producing much higher resolution images.

The work done at the Very Large Array is similar to that of the Hubble Space Telescope — making high-quality images so scientists can better study objects in the universe and the physics of how they work.

Research efforts elsewhere search the galaxy for signals or evidence of extraterrestrials, but the New Mexico operation would almost certainly get involved if signals are received, said Very Large Array spokesman Dave Finley.

“I do think when the time comes that they find a signal that they think is the real thing, the first phone call they will make will be to us. They’ll want an image of that region,” Finley said.

Astronomers using the array also expect to see more examples of powerful jets of superfast particles propelled by the energy of massive black holes at the center of galaxies. This could help in understanding how galaxies grow over time.

The National Radio Astronomy Observatory in 2013 invited astronomers from around the world to submit ideas and suggestions for the survey. Based on the recommendations, scientists and engineers designed the survey and ran a test in 2016. Approval for the full survey was granted this year.

The survey will involve about 5,500 hours of observing time. Data from the three separate scans will be combined to produce the radio images.

The scanning began Sept. 7 and the raw data will be available to researchers as quickly as the observations are made.

The seven-year project will not come at an additional financial cost because the array already has a $15 million annual budget for making observations 24 hours a day for various scientific requests. More of that time will now be dedicated to the project.
…

The World Health Organization reports some progress is being made in reducing premature deaths from non-communicable diseases.  But it says much more needs to be done to save the lives of nearly 40 million people who die every year from preventable causes.

In this latest global assessment, the World Health Organization reports cardiovascular and chronic respiratory diseases, cancers and diabetes continue to be the world’s biggest killers.  Every year, it says 15 million adults in the most productive period of their lives, between the age of 30 and 70, will die prematurely.  

The biggest risk factors are tobacco, the harmful use of alcohol, unhealthy diets and lack of physical activity.  WHO director for the prevention of non-communicable diseases, Douglas Bettcher, said the world is not on track to meet the Sustainable Development Goal of cutting premature NCD deaths by one third by 2030.   

“The window of opportunity to save lives is closing.  This is playing out before our eyes in many ways, including increasing numbers of people, particularly children and adolescents suffering from obesity, overweight and diabetes.  If we do not take action now to protect people from NCDs, we will condemn today’s and tomorrow’s youth to lives of ill health and reduced economic opportunities,”  Bettcher said.

Despite common perceptions, Bettcher told VOA premature deaths from non-communicable diseases are not just a rich country problem.

“Eighty percent of the deaths are in countries that are already often stressed, their health systems are stressed with the usual, the conventional burdens of disease, communicable diseases, maternal-child health problems.  And, then this is an added, extremely large burden for the health system,” Bettcher said.

WHO reports Costa Rica and Iran lead the 10 best performing countries in reducing deaths from non-communicable diseases.  It says six countries have achieved no progress at all.  Five are in Africa: Angola, Equatorial Guinea, Guinea Bissau, Sao Tome Principe and South Sudan.  The sixth country is Micronesia in the western Pacific.
…

An emergency vaccination campaign is getting under way in northeastern Nigeria to prevent a deadly cholera outbreak from spreading to other countries.

The World Health Organization reports the potentially devastating cholera situation is emerging in Borno State in northeastern Nigeria. During the past few months, it says 2,600 suspected cases of this fatal disease, including 48 deaths, have occurred in this former stronghold of Boko Haram. The militant group has been waging war to establish an Islamic state in northeast Nigeria.

Dominique Legros is cholera coordinator for WHO’s department for pandemic and epidemic diseases. He says the outbreak, which is centered in camps for internally displaced people, is spreading to other areas of northeastern Nigeria, toward Chad and northern Cameroon.

He says 900,000 people in the state will receive the oral cholera vaccine to quickly contain the spread of the disease.

“Once it is out of the box, once it has spread, it is very, very difficult to contain and we have a huge number of cases and deaths,” he said. “So, this outbreak in Nigeria, hopefully, will not reach Chad, because in Chad already, we have an alert in the eastern part of the country towards the border with Sudan, 344 cases, 49 deaths.”

Legros says this comes to a 14 percent case fatality. He notes this is very high for a cholera outbreak, which usually has a case fatality rate of less than one percent.

WHO estimates the global cholera disease burden at around 2.9 million suspected cases, including 95,000 deaths. It reports Yemen has the world’s worst cholera epidemic, with nearly 690,000 suspected cases and more than 2,000 deaths.

The agency expresses concern about the situation in Africa, where it reports tens of thousands of suspected cases and thousands of deaths in, among others; Somalia, South Sudan, Sudan, eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Kenya and Tanzania.

 

 

 
…

U.S. researchers have identified a genetic difference between dogs and their wild cousins, wolves, that could explain why dogs are so friendly. Faith Lapidus reports.
…

Six NASA-backed research subjects who have been cooped up in a Mars-like habitat on a remote Hawaii volcano since January emerged from isolation Sunday. They devoured fresh-picked tropical fruits, vegetables and a fluffy egg strata after eating mostly freeze-dried food during their isolation.

 

The crew of four men and two women are part of a study designed to better understand the psychological impacts a long-term space mission would have on astronauts.

 

The data they produced will help NASA select individuals and groups with the right mix of traits to best cope with the stress, isolation and danger of a two-to-three year trip to Mars. The U.S. space agency hopes to send humans to the red planet by the 2030s.

The crew was quarantined for eight months on a vast plain below the summit of the Big Island’s Mauna Loa, the world’s largest active volcano. After finishing their stint, they feasted on pineapple, mango and papaya.

 

While isolated, the crew members wore space suits and traveled in teams whenever they left their small dome living structure. They ate mostly freeze-dried or canned food on their simulated voyage to Mars.

 

All of their communications with the outside world were subjected to a 20-minute delay — the time it takes for signals to get from Mars to Earth. The crew was tasked with conducting geological surveys, mapping studies and maintaining their self-sufficient habitat as if they were actually living on Mars.

The team’s information technology specialist, Laura Lark, thinks a manned voyage to Mars is a reasonable goal for NASA. The project is the fifth in a series of six NASA-funded studies at the University of Hawaii facility called the Hawaii Space Exploration Analog and Simulation, or HI-SEAS. NASA has dedicated about $2.5 million for research at the facility.

 

“There are certainly human factors to be figured out, that’s part of what HI-SEAS is for,” Lark said in a video message recorded within the dome. “But I think that overcoming those challenges is just a matter of effort. We are absolutely capable of it.”

 

The crew played games designed to measure their compatibility and stress levels and maintained logs about how they were feeling.

 

To gauge their moods they also wore specially-designed sensors that measured voice levels and proximity to other people in the, 1,200 square-foot (111-square meter) living space.

 

The devices could sense if people were avoiding one another, or if they were “toe-to-toe” in an argument, said the project’s lead investigator, University of Hawaii professor Kim Binsted.

 

“We’ve learned, for one thing, that conflict, even in the best of teams, is going to arise,” Binsted said. “So what’s really important is to have a crew that, both as individuals and a group, is really resilient, is able to look at that conflict and come back from it.”

 

The study also tested ways to help the crew cope with stress. When they became overwhelmed, they could use virtual reality devices to take them away to a tropical beach or other familiar landscapes.

Other Mars simulation projects exist around the world, but Hawaii researchers say one of the chief advantages of their project is the area’s rugged, Mars-like landscape, on a rocky, red plain below the summit of Mauna Loa.

 

The crew’s vinyl-covered shelter is about the size of a small two-bedroom home, has small sleeping quarters for each member plus a kitchen, laboratory and bathroom. The group shared one shower and has two composting toilets.
…

The mass of warm water known as “the blob” that heated up the North Pacific Ocean has dissipated, but scientists are still seeing the lingering effects of those unusually warm sea surface temperatures on Pacific Northwest salmon and steelhead.

 

Federal research surveys this summer caught among the lowest numbers of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon in 20 years, suggesting that many fish did not survive their first months at sea. Scientists warn that salmon fisheries may face hard times in the next few years.

 

Fisheries managers also worry about below average runs of steelhead returning to the Columbia River now. Returns of adult steelhead that went to sea as juveniles a year ago so far rank among the lowest in 50 years.

 

Scientists believe poor ocean conditions are likely to blame: Cold-water salmon and steelhead are confronting an ocean ecosystem that has been shaken up in recent years.

 

“The blob’s fairly well dissipated and gone. But all these indirect effects that it facilitated are still there,” Brian Burke, a research fisheries biologist with the Northwest Fisheries Science Center.

 

Marine creatures found farther south and in warmer waters have turned up in abundance along the coasts of Washington and Oregon, some for the first time.

 

“That’s going to have a really big impact on the dynamics in the ecosystem,” Burke said. “They’re all these new players that are normally not part of the system.”

 

Researchers with NOAA Fisheries and Oregon State University Cooperative Institute for Marine Resources Studies have been surveying off the Pacific Northwest for 20 years to study juvenile salmon survival.

In June, they caught record numbers of warm-water fish such as Pacific pompano and jack mackerel, a potential salmon predator. But the catch of juvenile coho and Chinook salmon during the June survey — which has been tied to adult returns — was among the three lowest in 20 years.

 

Burke and other scientists warned in a memo to National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration fisheries administrators last month that poor ocean conditions may mean poor salmon returns to the Columbia River system over the next few years.

“There was hardly any salmon out there,” Burke said. “Something is eating them and we don’t know what and we don’t know precisely where,” he added.

 

Seabirds such as common murres could be the culprits. Researchers caught fewer forage fish, such as herring, anchovy and smelt.

 

When forage fish are low, avian predators may be forced to eat more juvenile salmon. Seabirds near the mouth of the Columbia River may have feasted on more juvenile salmon as they entered the ocean.

 

The North Pacific Ocean had been unusually warm since the fall of 2013 with “the blob,” but sea surface temperatures have recently cooled to average or slightly warmer than average conditions. Changes in the marine ecosystem are likely to be seen for a while.

 

The research surveys also pulled up weird new creatures that had not been netted before. Researchers have caught tens of thousands of tube-shaped, jelly-like pyrosomes, which are generally found in tropical waters. Their impact on the marine food web isn’t yet clear.

 

Fisheries managers are also seeing lower runs of steelhead to the Columbia River system this year.

 

Joe DuPont, a regional fisheries manager with Idaho Fish and Game, blames poor feeding conditions when juvenile steelhead went out to the Pacific Ocean last year.

 

Warm waters brought less nutrient-rich copepods, tiny crustaceans at the base of the food chain. Meanwhile, northern copepods richer in lipids, that young steelhead eat, were less abundant.

 

It’s the second year of consecutive low steelhead runs, said Tucker Jones, ocean salmon and Columbia river program manager with the Oregon Department of Fish and Wildlife.

 

“There’s a lot of circumstantial evidence to point to an unhappy river experience and meeting ocean conditions that were far from hospitable,” Jones said. “The ‘blob’ especially changed the zooplankton food web structure that was out there,” he added.

 

Fisheries managers have put some fishing restrictions in place due to low forecast of steelhead expected back this season.

 

While the mechanisms for steelhead and salmon may be different, “large scale changes to the ocean are driving all of it,” said Burke.
…

In Greek, “Pneuma” means breath and spirit. That’s the core philosophy of a program in Baltimore, Maryland, with the same name. Pneuma combines exercise, yoga and leadership training. Behind this program is a near-death experience that made a young man bitter and angry, then led him to become forgiving and proactive. As Faiza Elmasry reports, Damion Cooper founded Project Pneuma to teach boys how to control their anger and inspire them to achieve their dreams. Faith Lapidus narrates.
…

Scientists say bionic eyes are not too far away, but, until they become widely available, many people around the world will have to continue living with prosthetic eyes. Still, highly trained technicians called ocularists can manufacture prosthetic eyes hardly distinguishable from normal ones, making the lives of their patients much more pleasant. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

Hurricane season roared on Saturday as Jose threatened heavy surf along the U.S. East Coast, Tropical Storm Norma edged toward Mexico’s resort-studded Baja California Peninsula, and Tropical Storm Maria formed in the Atlantic and was expected to strengthen into a hurricane, taking aim at some already battered Caribbean islands.

Meanwhile, Tropical Storm Lee formed in the Atlantic far from land.

A tropical storm warning was in effect for the southern tip of the Baja California Peninsula because of Norma, which the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported had weakened into a tropical storm on Saturday, with maximum sustained winds of 100 kph (65 mph).

Norma was 355 kilometers (220 miles) south of Cabo San Lucas and moving north at 4 kph (2 mph), with forecasters saying it could approach waters southwest of the peninsula late Sunday or early Monday.

The peninsular region that’s home to the twin resort cities of Cabo San Lucas and San Jose del Cabo was hit about two weeks ago by Tropical Storm Lidia, which flooded streets and homes and killed at least four people.

The Baja California Sur government readied storm shelters and canceled classes for Monday as well as a planned military parade in the state capital, La Paz, amid Mexican Independence Day celebrations.

In the Atlantic, Hurricane Jose was far from land but generating powerful swells that the center said were affecting coastal areas in Bermuda, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola and the U.S. Southeast.

East Coast cautioned

The center added that tropical storm watches were possible for the U.S. East Coast later in the day and advised people from North Carolina to New England to monitor Jose’s progress.

The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of 130 kph (80 mph). It was located about 775 kilometers (485 miles) south-southeast of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina, and was heading north at 9 kph (6 mph).

Also Saturday, Tropical Storm Lee formed in the eastern Atlantic with sustained winds of 65 kph (40 mph). The storm was about 1,160 kilometers (720 miles) west-southwest of the Cape Verde Islands and posed no immediate threat to land.

To the west, Tropical Storm Maria formed and is expected to strengthen, prompting hurricane watches for Antigua, Barbuda, St. Kitts, Nevis, and Montserrat — some of which were devastated by Hurricane Irma.

The hurricane center said Maria was about 1,000 km (620 miles)  east-southeast of the Lesser Antilles. It had maximum sustained winds of 85 kph (50 mph) and was heading west at 31 kph (20 mph). It should approach the Leeward Islands on Tuesday.

The death toll from Irma in the Caribbean was 38.
…

The European Union’s top energy official says the United States has signaled that it may be willing to re-engage in the Paris climate pact, despite President Donald Trump’s announcement in June that the U.S. would withdraw in order to renegotiate the deal.

Miguel Arias Canete, European commissioner for climate action and energy, said Saturday that the shift came during a meeting in Montreal of more than 30 ministers, led by Canada, China and the European Union.

The Montreal meeting took place in preparation for the annual U.N. General Assembly, the main events of which begin Tuesday.

“The U.S. has stated that they will not renegotiate the Paris accord, but they will try to review the terms on which they could be engaged under this agreement,” Canete said after the meeting.

Stance ‘has not changed’

However, White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders tweeted a different message shortly after Canete’s statement was released. “Our position on the Paris agreement has not changed.,” she said. “@POTUS has been clear, US withdrawing unless we get pro-America terms.”

Trump drew international criticism when he declared the U.S. would pull out of the Paris Agreement and seek a renegotiation.

The Paris Agreement is a U.N.-negotiated deal signed in 2015 by every nation except Syria and Nicaragua. A withdrawal by the United States is seen as a possible catalyst for withdrawals by other nations.

The agreement seeks a global response to curb carbon dioxide emissions.

The United States produces the world’s second-highest level of greenhouse gas emissions, next to China.
…

From tears and hugs to big smiles, the end Sept. 15 of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini was emotional for scientists and engineers. Mission team members say the end of Cassini marks the beginning of a new chapter in planetary exploration and the search for life. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory near Los Angeles.
…

Tears, hugs and celebrations Friday marked the end of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini.

In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Cassini program manager Earl Maize’s voice was heard loud and clear: “The signal from the spacecraft is gone, and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft.”

WATCH: Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere Ending 20 Year Journey

At a news conference afterward, Maize paid tribute to Cassini.

“This morning, a lone explorer, a machine made by humankind, finished its mission 900 million miles away. The nearest observer wouldn’t even know until 84 minutes later that Cassini was gone. To the very end, the spacecraft did everything we asked,” he said.

Launched in 1997, Cassini’s trip to Saturn took seven years.

“When I look back at the Cassini mission, I see a mission that was running a 13-year marathon of scientific discovery, and this last orbit was just the last lap,” Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker said.

Saturn and its moons

Cassini has been exploring Saturn and some of its moons, making discoveries along the way.

“The discoveries that Cassini has made over the last 13 years in orbit have rewritten the textbooks of Saturn, have discovered worlds that could be habitable and have guaranteed that we’ll return to that ringed world,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Michael Watkins said.

Cassini discovered ocean worlds on the Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. It also detected strong evidence of hydrothermal vents at the base of Enceladus’ ocean.

These discoveries prompted the decision to destroy Cassini as it ran out of fuel, so there would be no risk of contaminating these moons with bacteria from Earth.

In its last hours, Cassini took final images, including Enceladus setting behind Saturn; Saturn’s rings; Titan’s lakes and seas; and an infrared view of Saturn.

As Cassini plunged into Saturn, its sensors experienced the first taste of the planet’s atmosphere, sending critical information to Earth until it disintegrated.

“It just really tells us about how Saturn formed and the processes going on and really how all the planetary bodies in our solar system have formed,” said Nora Alonge, Cassini project science and system engineer.

Bittersweet moments

The final moments of the spacecraft’s journey were bittersweet for Alonge, who has been working on the Cassini mission for more than a decade.

“I’m feeling so many emotions. I’m very proud and I’m honored to be part of such an amazing mission, such a fruitful scientific mission, an engineering feat for a robust spacecraft that has lasted for so long, and of course I’m sad,” she said. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend. We’ve been talking to Cassini for years. We check on the health and safety. It talks back to us and gives us data. That’ll be missed. It’ll be a big change for many of us.”

“This, this has truly been beyond my wildest dreams,” said Julie Webster, Cassini’s spacecraft operations manager. She was with this mission from the time Cassini was built.

The members of the Cassini mission team said the end of the spacecraft was picture perfect.

“We found the best possible solution to get scientific data that would have been too risky to take at any other time by diving between the planet and the rings. We’re going into a region we could have never explored before. Cassini is becoming now a part of Saturn, and it’s the perfect ending point,” Alonge said.

IN PHOTOS: Cassini’s Amazing Pictures of Saturn, Rings & Moons

Scientists said the end of Cassini also marked the beginning of other planetary explorations and more discoveries as scientists continue to analyze the unprecedented data on Saturn collected by Cassini.
…

After the last space shuttle mission ended in July 2011, the activity at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seemed to be waning. NASA’s next launch vehicle was still in the early stages of design, so launch activity was transferred to the Russian space center in Baikonur. But this opened new opportunities for the space center, and today it is booming with private business activity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

A new forensic lab launched in central Somalia could transform how the Puntland state government handles cases of rape and gender-based violence, and possibly create a model for the rest of the country to follow.

The Puntland Forensic Center, funded by the Swedish government and supported by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), was opened September 6. It brings advanced DNA testing capabilities to a country still lacking in paved roads and reliable electricity.

The lab opened less than a year after Puntland enacted its Sexual Offenses Act, the first law in Somalia to criminalize sexual offenses and impose harsh penalties, including jail time, fines and public lashing, on the perpetrators.

The lab was designed to provide critical scientific evidence to the police and officials investigating and prosecuting crimes under this new law.

“As we were helping [the Puntland government] develop that piece of legislation, the question came of, ‘How do we enforce that legislation when it is finally approved?'” said Nikolai Botev, UNFPA’s Somalia representative.

“This is when the realization came that there are actually no forensic facilities within Somalia.”

Culture of silence

Rape and sexual assault are pervasive in Somalia, where decades of conflict have created persistent instability and crippled the institutions meant to uphold the law.

Thirty-year-old Fatima was collecting firewood outside her family’s home in a camp for displaced people in Puntland when she was attacked by three strangers. The men gang-raped her so violently that it caused Fatima, who was pregnant, to miscarry.

“After I came home, I started to bleed the next night. After three to four days, I lost my four-month-old baby,” Fatima told VOA in an interview at a women’s health clinic in Garowe.

Like many women in this conservative country, Fatima preferred to stay silent rather than endure the stigma of her community. The blame and shame survivors face deters many women from reporting rapes and assaults, creating a culture of silence.

“I was shy and said to myself, ‘Don’t tell your story to anyone because it is shameful,'” Fatima said. She was dressed in a full black niqab that revealed nothing but her eyes through a small slit.

Although statistics on the numbers of sexual crimes are largely unavailable, Somalia has been ranked as one of the worst countries to be a woman, and stories like Fatima’s are alarmingly common. 

UNFPA says reports of rape and sexual assault have increased this year, after a devastating drought pushed women like Fatima into displacement camps where they become even more vulnerable.

“We’re seeing a significant increase of sexual violence, particularly targeting internally displaced people,” Botev said. “The whole idea of the forensic center was born out of a bigger idea of how to address gender-based violence, sexual violence in the context of Somalia.” 

A broken system

Somalia’s government, even at the state level, has yet to recover from decades of war. Many Somali women do not bother to report crimes because they lack faith that the system can, or wants to, help them get justice.

Officer Kis Shamis Kabdi Bile stands out in her bright orange sneakers, blue hijab and mirrored sunglasses. As the only woman in Garowe’s Criminal Investigation Division, she handles every case of rape and gender-based violence because, she says, most male officers don’t even consider them to be crimes.

“There are some police officers who say rape is not a big deal and consider it a minor thing,” she told VOA in an interview at the police station. “They say that it is nothing new.”

Bile hasn’t been paid in over a year, and conducts her investigations on foot, as the police department doesn’t have a car. She says the police need resources and specialized training in how to handle sexual crimes. 

Many of Bile’s cases are taken over by community elders, who settle disputes through Somalia’s traditional herr system. Often the rapist’s family pays a fine of camels or goats to the survivor’s family, or the survivors are forced to marry their attackers.

It’s frustrating, Bile said. “As you are in the middle of the case, those elders will come and say, ‘We are going to negotiate before you finish the case.'”

During our interview, a young girl, no older than 15, came to plead for Bile’s help. The male police officer assigned to her rape case was insisting she lacked the evidence to go to court, she said, and was encouraging her to resolve her case through the community elders. Bile called the officer in for a strong scolding, and then took over the case.

Changing times

There are promising signs that Puntland’s efforts are already helping more rape survivors to hold their attackers accountable.

Data from Puntland’s attorney general shows that of the 108 rapes reported in Puntland in 2016, only 14, or 12 percent, resulted in convictions. Almost a third were dropped due to lack of evidence.

But since the Sexual Offenses Act was implemented this year, the conviction rate has risen to 27 percent, while the number of cases thrown out for insufficient evidence has dropped to 21 percent.

The trend is encouraging to local politicians, who hope the forensic laboratory will build upon the law’s early success by providing authorities with stronger evidence in a shorter time so they can investigate and prosecute more cases that will stand up in a court of law.

“We used to send DNA from here to Nairobi or from here to South Africa,” said Salah Habib Haaji Hama, Puntland’s Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs. “So those restraints now are easy. We can manage this and get answers within a timely period. Within hours, within minutes, when we used to have days, sometimes months, to receive those.”

An important component to the lab’s success is providing education, both to the survivors and the wider community, about how DNA testing works and why it’s so important. 

“There’s a limited time that they have to report or the results of the lab will not be successful. So we will try to educate them,” said Maryan Ahmed Ali, Puntland’s Minister of Women. “What is the time limit? What do they have to do? Do they have to take a shower? Do they have to change or wash their clothes?”

Understanding the implications of DNA testing could deter potential attackers from committing crimes for fear of being caught. It could also be a game changer for women like Fatima, who said she didn’t report the crime because she didn’t know her attackers’ names.

“Who am I going to accuse? I can only accuse a person I know. I can’t catch someone who I only saw in the jungle. I can barely remember the faces,” she said.

A multitude of challenges, including poor infrastructure, potential security threats and lack of qualified technicians, could impede the lab’s success, said UNFPA’s Botev. Somalia lacks advanced universities and hospitals, so the technicians overseeing the facility all studied abroad. They hope to make the lab a training ground for aspiring Somali scientists.

But the greater hope is that more successful convictions will foster increased confidence in Puntland’s new system, and encourage more women to report. Ultimately, Ali said, this will help reduce the social stigma and break the culture of silence surrounding rape and sexual assault.

“There will not be a stigma. There will not be a discussion about who did this, who did the crime, who did the rape. So it’s a big encouragement,” Ali said.
…