When astronomers look for life, they generally look for water. The saying goes that where there is water, there is life. But some NASA researchers think we may be able to expand that saying to include any liquid, even the methane lakes on Saturn’s moon, Titan. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Many summer camps in the U.S. focus on a single activity – baseball, computers. Many target specific groups – Jewish or Christian camps. Some are available for children with physical disabilities. According to the VOA’s Faith Lapidus, a camp in California is serving a growing population: transgender children, aged four to twelve-years-old.
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President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that the U.S. would “win” the battle against the heroin and opioid plague, but he stopped short of declaring a national emergency as his handpicked commission had recommended.

Trump spoke at an event he had billed as a “major briefing” on the opioid crisis during a two-week “working vacation” at his private golf club in New Jersey. Health and Human Services Secretary Tom Price, senior counselor Kellyanne Conway, senior adviser Jared Kushner and first lady Melania Trump were among the attendees.

“The best way to prevent drug addiction and overdose is to prevent people from abusing drugs in the first place,” the president said at his golf club in Bedminster. “I’m confident that by working with our health care and law enforcement experts, we will fight this deadly epidemic and the United States will win.”

He said federal drug prosecutions had dropped but promised he would “be bringing them up rapidly.”

Last week, the presidential opioid commission, chaired by New Jersey Governor Chris Christie, urged Trump to “declare a national emergency” and noted that “America is enduring a death toll equal to September 11th every three weeks.”

It recommended, among other things, expanding treatment facilities across the country, educating and equipping doctors about the proper way to prescribe pain medication, and equipping all police officers with the anti-overdose remedy Naloxone.

Trump did not address any of the recommendations. Instead, the president repeated that his administration was “very, very tough on the Southern border, where much of this comes in.”

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, opioids were involved in more than 33,000 U.S. deaths in 2015, the latest year for which data are available, and estimates show the death rate has continued rising.

But a new University of Virginia study released Monday concluded the mortality rates were 24 percent higher for opioids and 22 percent higher for heroin than had been previously reported.

Some information for this report came from AP.
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A call by Republican Governor John Kasich for scientific breakthroughs to help solve the opioid crisis is drawing interest from dozens of groups with ideas including remote-controlled medication dispensers, monitoring devices for addicts, mobile apps and pain-relieving massage gloves.

The state has received project ideas from 44 hospitals, universities and various medical device, software and pharmaceutical developers that plan to apply for up to $12 million in competitive research-and-development grants. The grant money is being combined with $8 million for an Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge, a competition similar to one spearheaded by the National Football League to address concussions.

Research grant-seekers in Ohio, which leads the nation in opioid-related overdose deaths, proposed solutions aimed at before or after an overdose.

Tactus Therapeutics, for example, seeks $2.2 million to develop an improved tamper-resistant opioid, while other applicants seek money to pursue technological advances in the administration of naloxone, a drug used as an overdose antidote. One is a “rescue mask.”

Other grant-seekers propose migrating away from pills altogether to find new ways of fighting pain.

In the Ohio city known for innovations in rubber and plastics, the University of Akron is looking to polymers. It seeks $2 million to advance development of implantable therapeutic meshes loaded with non-opioid pain medications capable of alleviating postsurgical pain for up to 96 hours.

Another company, Cleveland-based Innovative Medical Equipment, seeks $810,000 to make engineering improvements to a medical apparatus that uses heat to fight head pain, headaches, muscle and joint pain, and pain after surgery.

Neural therapies, virtual reality

Additional proposals look to neural therapies, electrical impulses, even virtual reality as ways to overcome or outwit pain. Osteopath Benjamin Bring, of suburban Columbus, seeks $75,000 to develop a prototype of a special glove that helps relieve chronic muscle pain through massage therapy.

Some proposals are specific to particular medical issues, such as chronic low back pain or amputations; others are focused on specific groups, including mothers, children, veterans and dental patients.

Many applicants propose ways of using smart technology to prevent overdose deaths by approaching the problem through the patient, doctor or community.

Ideas include apps for better coordinating medical treatment or addiction care and wearable devices that would speed help in cases of a potential overdose by linking people at risk of addiction with family, emergency workers and other caregivers.

Ascend Innovations seeks $1.5 million to develop an app and sensor system using technology contributed by the U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory. The app would allow patients to regularly report their medications, pain levels and states of mind, while the sensor would be gathering health indicators, including respiration, heart rate, eye tracking and pupil dilation, and sending them to a central location.

Another firm, iMed MD, seeks $150,000 to continue development of a secure, programmable medication dispensing system that allows doctors or hospitals to remotely limit the amount of medication a patient can receive at any one time.

The Third Frontier Commission selected NineSigma on Tuesday to manage the technology challenge. The Cleveland firm has managed similar competitions at the federal level for NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.
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The U.S. State Department is advising its diplomats to sidestep questions from foreign governments about the Trump administration’s stance on the Paris climate deal.

The Reuters news agency reported Tuesday that a cable sent Friday to U.S. embassies by Secretary of State Rex Tillerson provided prospective questions foreign government officials could ask diplomats and suggested answers.

For example, according to Reuters, if asked, “What is the process for consideration of re-engagement in the Paris Agreement?,” the diplomat should give a generalized response, such as, “We are considering a number of factors. I do not have any information to share on the nature or timing of the process.”

Tillerson’s cable came a little more than two months after Trump announced that the U.S. would withdraw from the landmark Paris climate deal and on the day that the administration was reviewing a climate change report prepared by 13 federal agencies, the conclusions of which conflict with administration perspectives.

The document, which was leaked ahead of publication and reported by The New York Times on Tuesday, said Americans were seeing more heat waves and rainfall as a result of climate change.

The report found human activity was “extremely likely” the cause of more than half the Earth’s temperature increase since 1951, a position at odds with the administration’s belief that the cause of global warming is uncertain.

The report said human impact caused an increase in the global temperature of 0.6 degree to 0.7 degree Celsius between 1951 to 2010 and that heat-trapping greenhouse gas emissions led the way as the primary contributor.

‘No alternative explanations’

“There are no alternative explanations, and no natural cycles are found in the observational record that can explain the observed changes in climate,” said the study, the Climate Science Special Report.

The Trump administration received a copy of the most recent draft of the report several weeks ago, senior administration officials said. It was unclear whether the administration, which announced in June it would withdraw from the Paris accord, would approve the report. The study will be included in the National Climate Assessment, which is mandated by Congress every four years.

Some scientists were concerned that the administration could amend or suppress the report. Conversely, skeptics of human-caused climate change were equally concerned that the report would be publicly released, along with the more comprehensive National Climate Assessment.

The report concluded that if humans immediately halted greenhouse gas emissions, global temperatures would still rise an additional 0.3 degree Celsius this century, compared with the actual projected increase of 2 degrees Celsius.

Small increases in global temperatures can significantly affect the climate. For example, a global temperature rise of 1.5 degrees to 2 degrees Celsius could cause more intense rainstorms, longer heat waves and lead to more rapid deterioration of coral reefs, scientists say.

Policy recommendations were not included in the study, but it emphasized the need to stabilize the global mean temperature increase to 2 degrees Celsius by significantly cutting carbon dioxide levels. An increase above 2 degrees Celsius would push the global environment closer to catastrophic changes, scientists have said.

The Paris climate accord, in which nearly 200 countries participate, includes an agreement to cut or limit fossil fuel emissions. The report said meeting the emissions goals would be a significant step toward managing global warming.
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Hot on the heels of its proposal to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans on Tuesday for an education campaign to discourage use of electronic cigarettes among youth.

The plan follows the agency’s proposal last month to both lower nicotine in combustible cigarettes and extend by four years the date by which e-cigarette manufacturers will be required to apply for authorization to sell their products.

Its new policy “aims to strike a careful balance between the regulation of all tobacco products, and the opportunity to encourage development of innovative tobacco products that may be less dangerous than combustible cigarettes,” FDA Commissioner Scott Gottlieb said in a statement.

Gottlieb is walking a tightrope between satisfying the interests of tobacco control advocates, who like the idea of lowering nicotine levels in cigarettes, and e-cigarette companies that have been lobbying for a lighter regulatory hand.

But while they welcomed the proposal to lower nicotine content in conventional cigarettes, public health experts disapprove of the proposal to extend the deadlines by which e-cigarette companies will be required to seek authorization for new and existing products.

The plan means products with flavors that appeal to children will be available longer than they would have been without the extension. The new education campaign could go some way towards mitigating those concerns.

More than 2 million middle- and high-school students in the United States were current users of e-cigarettes and other vaping devices in 2016 and half of all middle and high school students who used a tobacco product of some sort used two or more, the FDA said.

Gottlieb said the figures reflect “the troubling reality that they are the most commonly-used tobacco product among youth.”

The education campaign will be part of the agency’s “The Real Cost” campaign to discourage cigarette use and will begin this fall. A full-scale campaign will be launched in 2018. It will start by releasing new digital material to educate youth about the potential for nicotine to rewire a teen’s brain and create cravings that can lead to addiction.

The FDA said it estimates “The Real Cost” campaign to have prevented nearly 350,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 from starting to smoke from 2014 to 2016.
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The penguins at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California have something in common with Sara Mandel’s cats.

“I had actually purchased this game in the app store for my cats,” said Mandel, birdkeeper at the Aquarium of the Pacific.

She wanted to see if these penguins would like the game as much as her cats did and asked her boss.

“He laughed at me. He kind of was like, ‘Well, you can try this if you want. Are you sure you want to give them your iPad? Go for it, but I’m not expecting a big result with it.’” Mandel continued, “I showed him, and he was pretty shocked.”

The tablet computer with the cat game intrigued the penguins right away, said Mandel.

WATCH: Animals like video games too!

Exercise for animals’ brains

The game has the option of a mouse, butterfly, or laser that moves around the screen. When an animal paws or pecks at the object, it scores points and the tablet makes a sound.

Mandel said the penguins enjoy playing with the tablet as much as people do. It is an enrichment exercise for the animals’ brains as well as their bodies.

“While they’re kind of hanging out there, I can look at their flippers. I can make sure everything is good and healthy, and I can even sneak a scale right underneath where Lily’s standing, so I can get a weight on her,” Mandel said as she pointed at Lily the penguin.

Penguins are among the many animals playing with touch screens. Orangutans, gorillas and sun bears at Zoo Atlanta have also worked with this technology.

Tortoise faster than dog

In Britain, the University of Lincoln’s Anna Wilkinson and her fellow researchers at other academic institutions have presented parrots and tortoises with touch screens.

A tortoise’s neck length is an indication of whether it is comfortable with its surroundings.  While working with the screen, Wilkinson described the tortoise’s neck as “nice and long doing this, which is good.”

“Everyone thought it would take a really long time to train the tortoises to use the touch screen, but I’ve used the same setup with dogs and the tortoises actually learned to use it much faster than the dogs did,” said Wilkinson.

The touch screen helped researchers study how tortoises learn to navigate around space.

Removing ‘humans from equation’

With the parrots, researchers used the screen to see how the birds explore and approach something new.

“The touch screens are fantastic because they give you lots of flexibility. You can present animals with all sorts of different stimuli. You can present videos. You can present moving things that they have to track. They are also incredibly good because you can remove humans from the equation,” said Wilkinson.

She said a human can be a distraction and less reliable than a computer when providing positive feedback, such as consistent timing when giving the animals food, as they respond a certain way in an experiment.   

 

“We’re seeing how they can see in a visual way that we aren’t able to see before,” said Mandel. “We’re not so different from them. We both like our touch screens too, but I do think in the future this could help do some research on how these animals function.”

Researchers said the animals have a short attention span and become tired after a period of time. Like humans, Mandel said the younger penguins are more fascinated in the game on the tablet. The older penguins lose interest.

 
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It’s not just people who like playing computer games. Animals of different species also seem to be fascinated with video games and touch screens, as researchers and zoos try this technology on animals. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.
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Facebook, Twitter, Instagram allow us to share aspects of our lives with our friends, family and the world. But what does what we are sharing say about our state of mind? Some new research suggests that it may be telling the world a lot more than we think. Kevin Enochs reports.
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Rocket Lab, a Silicon Valley-funded space launch company, said a contractor’s error was to blame for its maiden flight failing to reach orbit in May, but that the problem had been fixed ahead of another planned launch in the next two months.

The Los Angeles and Auckland-based firm, which is aiming to build to weekly commercial launches, had to terminate its first flight four minutes in when equipment on the ground lost contact with the rocket, the firm said in a statement late on Monday.

After trawling through thousands of pieces of data, Rocket Lab said in an emailed statement that an unnamed contractor’s equipment had a glitch that stopped it conveying important information from the battery-powered rocket to safety officials monitoring the launch.

“It was disappointing to see the flight terminated in essence due to an incorrect tick box,” said Rocket Lab chief executive Peter Beck in the statement, adding that the rocket’s failure to reach orbit had nothing to do with the rocket itself.

The successful launch of a low-cost rocket is an important step in the commercial race to bring down financial and logistical barriers to space while also making New Zealand an unlikely space hub.

The rocket had soared 224 km (139 miles) high, reaching space, before Rocket Lab ended the flight and the vehicle burnt up when re-entering the earth’s atmosphere.

Rocket Lab said the equipment problem had been fixed and it was preparing for its second of three test launches before starting commercial operations at the beginning of 2018.
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The Interior Department on Monday unveiled a plan to protect the threatened sage grouse that gives Western states greater flexibility to allow mining, logging and other economic development where it now is prohibited.

 

Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke announced the strategy for the ground-dwelling bird that has suffered a dramatic population decline across its 11-state range. Zinke insisted that the federal government and the states can work together to protect the sage grouse and its habitat while not slowing economic growth and job creation.

 

While the federal government has a responsibility under the Endangered Species Act to protect the bird, officials also have an obligation “to be a good neighbor and a good partner,” Zinke said. The new plan ensures that conservation efforts “do not impede local economic opportunities,” he said.

 

The plan comes after a 60-day review Zinke ordered in June of a 2015 plan imposed by the Obama administration. The plan set land-use policies across the popular game-bird’s 11-state range that were intended to keep it off the federal endangered species list.

 

Mining companies, ranchers and governors in some Western states — especially Utah, Idaho and Nevada — said the plan ordered by former Interior Secretary Sally Jewell would impede oil and gas drilling and other economic activity.

 

Environmental groups said Jewell’s plan did not do enough to protect the sage grouse from extinction.

 

The ground-dwelling sage grouse, long associated with the American West, has long pointed tail feathers and is known for the male’s elaborate courtship display in which air sacs in the neck are inflated to make a popping sound.

 

Millions of sage grouse once roamed the West but development, livestock grazing and an invasive grass that encourages wildfires has reduced the bird’s population to fewer than 500,000 across 11 states from California to the Dakotas.

 

Zinke said in June that “state agencies are really at the forefront of efforts to maintain healthy fish and wildlife populations” across the country, adding that the Trump administration is committed to ensuring that state voices are heard in decisions affecting land use and wildlife management.

 

In particular, Zinke said he has received complaints from several Western governors that Jewell ignored or minimized their concerns as the 2015 sage-grouse plan was developed. Republican governors in Idaho, Utah and Nevada all want more flexibility and say the conservation efforts should rely less on land-use restrictions “and more on numbers” of birds in a particular state, Zinke said.

 

The new plan is intended to provide flexibility to states instead of a “one-size-fits-all solution,” he said.

 

On the other side, Democratic Gov. John Hickenlooper of Colorado and Republican Gov. Matt Mead of Wyoming told Zinke earlier this year they opposed any changes that would move “from a habitat-management model to one that sets population objectives for the states.”

 

Hickenlooper and Mead co-chair a federal-state sage grouse task force that worked to develop the 2015 plan, which was backed by more than $750 million in commitments from the government and outside groups to conserve land and restore the bird’s historic range.

 

Nada Culver, a senior policy official at The Wilderness Society, denounced the new plan as an attempt to “abandon habitat protection for unfettered oil and gas development” in the West that “puts the entire landscape at risk.”

 

The 60-day review “shows a callous disregard for nearly a decade of research and collaborative work by states and agencies, while ignoring the western communities who weighed in with millions of comments and who simply want to see the [Obama-era] plans left to work as intended,” Culver said.

 

States affected by the plan are California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
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Researchers have turned skin cells into blood vessel tissue to save a mouse’s wounded leg. They were able to do that simply by tapping the wound with a chip that uses nanotechnology to inject new DNA into the cells.

This step follows a number of significant advances in techniques to turn one type of cell into another. Scientists hope this so-called cell reprogramming can one day be used to regenerate damaged tissue, or cure conditions such as Parkinson’s disease.

The research, published Monday in Nature Nanotechnology, combines existing biotechnology and nanotechnology to create a new technique called tissue nano-transfection.  The researchers turned skin cells into brain cells, in addition to demonstrating the therapeutic benefit of turning them into vascular cells.

Maintaining blood flow to deliver nutrients around a wound is critical for recovery, so by making more blood vessel cells, researchers found that a mouse’s wounded limb was more likely to survive.

A brief electric current causes the chip to eject DNA fragments that reprogram the cells. The particles only enter the very top layer of cells, so L. James Lee, a biomolecular engineer at Ohio State University and study co-author, said he was surprised to find reprogrammed cells deep within the tissue.

“Within 24 hours after the transfection, we actually observed the propagation of the biological functions deep inside the skin,” Lee told VOA. “So we were very surprised that it actually works for tissue.” Lee said it wasn’t yet entirely clear why this was possible.

Masato Nakafuku, who studies cell reprogramming at the University of Cincinnati and was not associated with the research, told VOA that he, too, was surprised “to see very efficient generation of the [vascular] cells.”

Nakafuku added a cautionary note: It is not clear that that tissue nano-transfection will work on animals as large as humans, since the treatment would have to reprogram cells much deeper in the tissue in order to be effective. 

Lee told VOA he is hopeful that upcoming human trials will prove the real-world effectiveness of tissue nano-transfection.

In theory, tissue nano-transfection should be able to turn any cell in the body into any other cell type. That could make therapeutic applications of cell reprogramming easier and safer, because cells would stay in the body during reprogramming. If cells are removed from the body, reprogrammed and then returned, they could be attacked by the immune system.
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A midday nap is very much part of the Spanish traditional life style. However, having a public place in which to do so is new. Siesta & Go is the first nap bar in Madrid according to reporter Faiza Elmasry. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
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A fossil found in northeastern Nevada shows a newly discovered fish species that scientists believe looked, and ate, like a shark.

 

The fossil is what remains of a bony, sharp-toothed fish that would have been about six-feet-long (1.83 meters) with long jaws and layers of sharp teeth.

 

The type of jaw and teeth on the fish suggest it would have chomped down on its prey before swallowing it whole, like a shark, the Reno Gazette-Journal reported.

 

“The surprising find from Elko County in northeastern Nevada is one of the most completely preserved vertebrate remains from this time-period ever discovered in the United States,” said Carlo Romano of the University of Zurich, lead author of a Journal of Paleontology article about the find.

The fish, which researchers called Birgeria americana, predates Nevada’s most famous fossil, the Ichthyosaur, by more than 30 million years. The Ichthyosaur was a 55-foot-long (16.76 meters) reptile. One of the largest concentrations of Ichthyosaur fossils was found near Berlin, Nevada. The find led to the Ichthyosaur becoming Nevada’s state fossil.

The Birgeria americana fossil finding is important because it sheds light on how quickly large, predator species evolved following the Earth’s third mass extinction that preceded the Triassic period about 250 million years ago.

 

The evidence shows the fish was alive and well about 1 million years after mass extinction 66 million years ago wiped out an estimated 90 percent of marine species.

 

It also shows a large fish was surviving in water previously thought to be too warm to support such life.

 

At the time, water near the equator, which is where land that became Nevada was positioned about 250 million years ago, could have been warmer than 96 degrees. “The eggs of today’s bony fish can no longer develop normally” at such a high temperature, researcher said.

 

Researchers learned of the fossil about five years ago after fossil collector Jim Jenks of West Jordan, Utah, stumbled upon it near Winecup Ranch north of Wells.

 

“It was just a very lucky find,” said Jenks, who was credited among the paper’s authors. “I happen to notice the teeth glinting in the sun. That is what caught my attention.”

 

Jenks turned the fish over to the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, which has a large collection of fossils and connections with leading researchers.
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For more than a decade, Shamil Zhumatov has photographed spacecraft taking off from Kazakhstan’s Baikonur cosmodrome. After dozens of launches, he says the challenge is to find new and better ways of taking pictures.

The Soyuz spacecraft which blasted off on July 28 carried NASA astronaut Randy Bresnik, Russia’s Sergey Ryazanskiy, and Italy’s Paolo Nespoli to the International Space Station.

“Most launches lately have taken place in during the daytime, and this one was special, happening on the edge of day and night, about 20 minutes after sunset,” Shamil said.

It was already dark on the ground, but the upper layers of the atmosphere were still lit by sun, which created an unusual contrast — and additional technical difficulties.

“I had to change my camera settings from night-time to daylight ones quickly as I shifted from shooting the launch pad to the flying spacecraft,” Shamil says.

Photographers don’t have a choice of location at Baikonur — everyone shoots from the same position, about 1 km (mile) from the launch pad. Only remotely controlled cameras can shoot from closer distances — and Shamil’s routinely gets damaged by rocks which fly in all directions during blast-off.  

After the rocket lifts off, photographers keep tracking it until it disappears from sight. A few minutes into the flight, the rocket sheds its four boosters as they exhaust their liquid fuel and can no longer propel the craft.

In daytime, they can be only seen as four tiny dots.

But on July 28, because the unusual lighting made Soyuz’s condensation trail — clouds formed by engine exhaust — very bright, it was easy to see the cross-shaped pattern formed by the discarded boosters.

“I snapped the picture after the boosters separated,” Shamil says. “From the earth, it looks like a rather slow process.”

Soyuz’s contrail and further stage separations that day could be seen for hundreds of kilometers and sparked rumors and speculation on social media, especially among UFO enthusiasts.

Shamil says he cannot remember exactly how many launches he has photographed, but reckons he has seen at least 50 crews off from Baikonur or met them as they returned to earth.
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The World Health Organization reports that there are 2 to 3 million cases of melanoma skin cancer reported every year. Sunscreen is a big part of preventing these cancers, but chemical laden sunscreens have their drawbacks. That’s why scientists are scouring the natural world to understand how plants protect themselves from damaging ultraviolet rays. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Around the world, large cities generate huge amounts of unusable food and other organic waste. While some is recycled into compost, most goes into landfills, and that is wasting a potential source of energy. A pilot project started about three years ago in New York City is adding food scraps to the existing wastewater treatment plant to be turned into biogas, and residents have embraced it with enthusiasm. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The United States has officially informed the United Nations that it intends to pull out of the Paris climate agreement, but it left open the possibility of re-engaging if terms of the deal become more favorable.

The State Department said Friday that it would continue to participate in international climate change negotiations during the withdrawal process, which is expected to take at least three years.

It said in a statement that U.S. participation in the negotiations would “protect U.S. interests and ensure all future policy options remain open to the administration.”

“The United States supports a balanced approach to climate policy that lowers emissions while promoting economic growth and ensuring energy security,” it said.

The department said President Donald Trump was “open to re-engaging in the Paris Agreement if the United States can identify terms that are more favorable to it, its businesses, its workers, its people and its taxpayers.”

‘Very unfair’

Trump announced his decision to withdraw from the climate accord in June, saying the deal was “very unfair at the highest level to the American people.” He argued the deal would have cost trillions of dollars as well as hurt American businesses and jobs in the energy and manufacturing sectors.

News of the decision was greeted with strong protests from the environmental community, and the mayors of some of the largest U.S. cities vowed to remain faithful to the accord, regardless of what the Trump administration did.

The United States agreed to the 2015 climate agreement under former President Barack Obama. Under the deal, the United States pledged to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 26 to 28 percent below 2005 levels by 2025.
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The World Health Organization reports it has provided anti-malaria drugs to nearly 900,000 children in areas in northeast Nigeria formerly held by Boko Haram militants.

The effort is part of a new strategy to tackle malaria, a major killer of children younger than 5 years old. The director of WHO’s Global Malaria Program, Pedro Alonso, tells VOA the agency has completed the first round of an emergency approach to stop the disease.

Alonso estimates about 10,000 lives will be saved by providing anti-malaria drugs to the same 900,000 children every month until November, when the period of high transmission will be over.

He says the drug clears the parasites that might already have invaded a child’s system and provides protection for three to four weeks.

“By repeating this operation to the same children every month over the next four or five months, which is the high transmission area,” Alonso said, “we may potentially — unfortunately, it will not be perfect and therefore we will not be able to stop all deaths — but, we should be able to have a massive impact in terms of prevention of disease and death in that specific population group, which is the highest risk group and where mortality concentrates.”

WHO estimates there are more than 8,000 cases of malaria every week, including seven deaths, among northeastern Nigeria’s population of 3.7 million people. There are an estimated 1.1 million children aged three months to five years in the region.
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Myanmar’s government has repeatedly appealed for calm in recent weeks as the death toll from an outbreak of swine flu, or H1N1 influenza, has risen to 14 since the first cases were reported last month.

Officials have pointed to the fact that the strain of the virus, which was part of a global pandemic in 2009 that originated in pigs, is now considered a normal seasonal flu, and infections – if not deaths – have occurred in the country as recently as last year.

But a lack of faith in the Myanmar government’s ability to handle a health crisis and a seemingly slow initial response have nevertheless created a disconnect, allowing an atmosphere of mistrust to prevail and pushing many to take matters into their own hands.

Companies have given surgical face masks to employees, while some entrepreneurs are even selling them on the internet.

Educating the public

Activist Thet Swe Win was one of many volunteers to take part in an awareness effort over the weekend on the streets of Yangon that consisted informing members of the public to wash their hands and wear masks when outdoors.

“The reason for doing this campaign is that our government is not announcing any accurate information about this and people are afraid,” he said.

The government, however, disputes allegations of passivity and obfuscation.

Dr. Than Htun Aung, the deputy director of the public health department with Myanmar’s Ministry of Health and Sports, said the government has made announcements and continued to share protection methods while collaborating with the World Health Organization.

“We did risk assessments about this, and responded rapidly to the patients, whether they were severely diagnosed or not,” he said. “We have to wait and see to tell whether it will get larger or disappear.”

The government has also recommended avoiding crowded places, hand washing and recognizing tell-tale symptoms as some of the first lines of defense rather than emphasize the use of face masks, which have not proven to be an always reliable safeguard against the virus.

Dr. Than Htun Aung said that people don’t understand how influenza is spread, and they panicked because “they didn’t get correct information about this.”

He did not specify what details were wrong or where they were being disseminated, except to say that “social media and media are responsible for providing correct information to people.”

Response to outbreak

The ministry says in the last 10 days of July there were 62 confirmed cases of H1N1, with 12 deaths. The heightened sense of alert led the city of Mandalay to cancel an annual spirit festival that was supposed to start a few days ago. Local media reported a 14th fatality this week and a slight uptick in infections. Adding to some of the confusion there was a separate outbreak of bird flu on a farm in southern Myanmar late last month.

But the disconnect in information and urgency surrounding H1N1 is understandable, perhaps even expected.

Myanmar’s health system was neglected for decades under military rule, and some services today, from ambulance drivers to burials, rely on an army of volunteers or NGOs to make up for a lack of human resources and emergency response.

Anthony Quick, an executive advisor to M-EMS, a company that works on pre-hospital care and training in Myanmar, said in an email that “as is the case with almost any type of outbreak or disease in Myanmar, the current health facilities are not yet fully adequate to meet the demands of the general population,” which could cause some “difficulties and mistrust.”

“This is not to say that the current providers we have now are not doing their job to the best of their ability,” he said, adding that they can feel overwhelmed.

Dr. Amaya Maw Naing, a public health specialist and one of the advisers to the Myanmar Red Cross Society, said that uncertainty around government awareness efforts is common in similar circumstances.

“In every country we are very worried that people will also think there is something they [the government] are hiding and they are not telling us,” she said.

She described the government’s activity as proactive, citing knowledge of cross-coordination efforts in Yangon and other states and divisions.

“So if these kind of measures continue I think that we will be able to overcome higher numbers of deaths,” she said.
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According to the Pacific Institute, more than 2 million tons of all kinds of waste are poured into the world’s waters every day. Scientists have gotten good at detecting it, but not so good at finding where it’s coming from. Swiss researchers are working on a solution to that problem: a swimming robot that can patrol waterways 24-7 and locate pollution at its source. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Today’s children are tomorrow’s leaders. Cultivating curiosity and recognizing its value in those kids might be what cures today’s incurable diseases in the future, or prevents them altogether. So what drives and inspires a 12-year-old to think about researching a cure for cancer when he’s picking a science fair project? Bronwyn Benito has the story.
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While President Donald Trump has thrust transgender people back into the conflict between conservative and liberal values in the United States, geneticists are quietly working on a major research effort to unlock the secrets of gender identity.

A consortium of five research institutions in Europe and the United States, including Vanderbilt University Medical Center, George Washington University and Boston Children’s Hospital, is looking to the genome, a person’s complete set of DNA, for clues about whether transgender people are born that way.

Two decades of brain research have provided hints of a biological origin to being transgender, but no irrefutable conclusions.

Now scientists in the consortium have embarked on what they call the largest  study of its kind, searching for a genetic component to explain why people assigned one gender at birth so persistently identify as the other, often from very early childhood.

Researchers have extracted DNA from the blood samples of 10,000 people, 3,000 of them transgender and the rest cisgender (people whose gender identity matches the sex that they were assigned at birth). The project is awaiting grant funding to begin the next phase: testing about 3 million markers, or variations, across the genome for all of the samples.

Knowing what variations transgender people have in common, and comparing those patterns to those of cisgender people in the study, may help investigators understand what role the genome plays in everyone’s gender identity.

“If the trait is strongly genetic, then people who identify as trans will share more of their genome, not because they are related in nuclear families but because they are more anciently related,” said Lea Davis, leader of the study and an assistant professor of medicine at the Vanderbilt Genetics Institute.

Political arena

The search for the biological underpinnings is taking on new relevance as the battle for transgender rights plays out in the U.S. political arena.

One of the Trump administration’s first acts was to revoke Obama-era guidelines directing public schools to allow transgender students to use bathrooms of their choice.

Last week, the president announced on Twitter he intends to ban transgender people from serving in the military.

Texas lawmakers are debating a bathroom bill that would require people to use the bathroom of the sex listed on their birth certificate. North Carolina in March repealed a similar law after a national boycott cost the state hundreds of millions of dollars in lost business.

Currently, the only way to determine whether people are transgender is for them to self-identify as such. While civil rights activists contend that should be sufficient, scientists have taken their search to the lab.

That quest has made some transgender people nervous. If a “cause” is found, it could posit a “cure,” potentially opening the door to so-called reparative therapies similar to those that attempt to turn gay people straight, advocates say. Others raise concerns about the rights of those who may identify as trans but lack biological “proof.”

“It’s an idea that can be wielded against us, depending on the ideology of the user,” said Kale Edmiston, a transgender man and postdoctoral scholar at the University of Pittsburgh specializing in neuroimaging.

Dana Bevan, a transgender woman, psychologist and author of three books on transgender topics, acknowledged the potential manipulation of research was a concern but said, “I don’t believe that science can or should hold back from trying to understand what’s going on.”

No genetic test sought

Davis stressed that her study does not seek to produce a genetic test for being transgender, nor would it be able to.

Instead, she said, she hopes the data will lead to better care for transgender people, who experience wide health disparities compared with the general population.

One-third of transgender people reported a negative health care experience in the previous year, such as verbal harassment, refusal of treatment or the need to teach their doctors about transgender care, according to a landmark survey of nearly 28,000 people released last year by the National Center for Transgender Equality.

About 40 percent have attempted suicide, almost nine times the rate for the general population.

“We can use this information to help train doctors and nurses to provide better care to trans patients and to also develop amicus briefs to support equal rights legislation,” said Davis, who is also director of research for Vanderbilt’s gender health clinic.

The Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee has one of the world’s largest DNA data banks. It also has emerged as a leader in transgender health care with initiatives such as the Trans Buddy Program, which pairs every transgender patient with a volunteer to help guide the person through a health care visits.

The study has applied for a grant from the National Institutes of Health and is exploring other financial sources to provide the $1 million needed to complete the genotyping, expected to take a year to 18 months. Analysis of the data would take about another six months and require more funding, Davis said.

The other consortium members are Vrije University in Amsterdam and the FIMABIS institute in Malaga, Spain.

Probing the brain

Until now, the bulk of research into the origins of being transgender has looked at the brain.

Neurologists have spotted clues in the brain structure and activity of transgender people that distinguish them from cisgender subjects.

A seminal 1995 study was led by Dutch neurobiologist Dick Swaab, who was also among the first scientists to discover structural differences between male and female brains. Looking at postmortem brain tissue of transgender subjects, he found that male-to-female transsexuals had clusters of cells, or nuclei, that more closely resembled those of a typical female brain, and vice versa.

Swaab’s body of work on postmortem samples was based on just 12 transgender brains that he spent 25 years collecting. But it gave rise to a whole new field of inquiry that today is being explored with advanced brain scan technology on living transgender volunteers.

Among the leaders in brain scan research is Ivanka Savic, a professor of neurology with Sweden’s Karolinska Institute and visiting professor at the University of California-Los Angeles.

Her studies suggest that transgender men have a weakened connection between the two areas of the brain that process the perception of self and one’s own body. Savic said those connections seem to improve after the person receives cross-hormone treatment.

Her work has been published more than 100 times on various topics in peer-reviewed journals, but she still cannot conclude whether people are born transgender.

“I think that, but I have to prove that,” Savic said.

A number of other researchers, including both geneticists and neurologists, presume a biological component that is also influenced by upbringing.

But Paul McHugh, a professor of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, has emerged as the leading voice challenging the “born-this-way” hypothesis.

He encourages psychiatric therapy for transgender people, especially children, so that they accept the gender assigned to them at birth.

McHugh has gained a following among social conservatives, while incensing LGBT advocates with comments such as calling transgender people “counterfeit.”

Last year he co-authored a review of the scientific literature published in The New Atlantis journal, asserting there was scant evidence to suggest sexual orientation and gender identity were biologically determined.

The article drew a rebuke from nearly 600 academics and clinicians who called it misleading.

McHugh told Reuters he was “unmoved” by his critics and said he doubted additional research would reveal a biological cause.

“If it were obvious,” he said, “they would have found it long ago.”
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New climate models show that parts of South Asia will become uninhabitable by 2100 if greenhouse gas emissions are not dramatically reduced.

Under a high emissions scenario, where little action is taken to stop climate change, “the heat wave intensity will reach magnitudes that have not been observed before,” Elfatih Eltahir told VOA. Eltahir is a hydro-climatologist at MIT who co-wrote the report published Wednesday in the open-access journal Science Advances.

Ironically, the water that attracted humans to these regions will be what makes the environment intolerable. These won’t be the hottest places in the world, but the heat, humidity, high population density and poverty combined will make them some of the places with the highest risk for deadly heatwaves.

The researchers wanted their analysis to take both heat and humidity into consideration, so that it would be more relevant to human health. They modeled the so-called “wet bulb temperature,” which takes the actual temperature and subtracts the cooling one could hope to achieve though evaporation.

If the wet bulb temperature rises about 35°C (95°F), just below normal human body temperature, a person has no hope of dissipating heat. Under these conditions, even the healthiest individual in the shade, with water, will die after a few hours.

According to the heat index, a heat-humidity metric often used in weather reports, which adds humidity on top of temperature, a wet bulb temperature of 35°C would “feel like” 72°C (161°F).

The models showed that under the high emissions scenario, these temperatures would likely be met sometime during the last three decades of the century in the Ganges River valley, northeastern India, Bangladesh, the eastern coast of India, the Chota Nagpur Plateau, northern Sri Lanka, and the Indus valley of Pakistan.

That doesn’t mean the heat would regularly surpass these temperatures. “If the wet bulb temperature goes above 35 (Celsius), then everybody that’s outside basically dies so it’s a one-off sort of event that’s pretty terrible,” Alexis Berg, a hydro-climatologist at Princeton University, who was not associated with the study, told VOA.

The report did say that under the high emissions scenario, called RCP 8.5, approximately 30 percent of the world’s population would be regularly exposed to extremely dangerous wet bulb temperatures of 31°C (88°F). Under a lower emissions scenario, only 2 percent of the globe would be regularly exposed to those highs.

“RCP 8.5 is a death sentence for a large fraction of the world. It should be avoided at all costs,” said Matthew Huber, a climate scientist at Purdue University. “It does not require impossible effort to avoid RCP 8.5. The choice is very much ours to make.”

He noted that the study, which he was not associated with, is a much more thorough analysis than previous work. He told VOA via email, “This study explores multiple global climate models, multiple climate change trajectories, and also contains a much finer resolved depiction of the underlying physics.”

Everyone with whom VOA spoke emphasized that this future is very avoidable, but Berg also cautions, it could get worse. “Things don’t stop magically in 2100,” he said. “The world keeps warming.”
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