YCLOAK

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer.

A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year.

That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science.

“We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved in the study.

“If you can still see the dimmest stars, you are in a very dark place. But if you see only the brightest ones, you are in a very light-polluted place,” he said.

As cities expand and put up more lights, “skyglow” or “artificial twilight,” as the study authors call it, becomes more intense.

The 10% annual change “is a lot bigger than I expected — something you’ll notice clearly within a lifetime,” said Christopher Kyba, a study co-author and physicist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam.

Kyba and his colleagues gave this example: A child is born where 250 stars are visible on a clear night. By the time that child turns 18, only 100 stars are still visible.

“This is real pollution, affecting people and wildlife,” said Kyba, who said he hoped that policymakers would do more to curb light pollution. Some localities have set limits.

The study data from amateur stargazers in the nonprofit Globe at Night project was collected in a similar fashion. Volunteers look for the constellation Orion — remember the three stars of his belt — and match what they see in the night sky to a series of charts showing an increasing number of surrounding stars.

Prior studies of artificial lighting, which used satellite images of the Earth at night, had estimated the annual increase in sky brightness to be about 2% a year.

But the satellites used aren’t able to detect light with wavelengths toward the blue end of the spectrum — including the light emitted by energy-efficient LED bulbs.

More than half of the new outdoor lights installed in the United States in the past decade have been LED lights, according to the researchers.

The satellites are also better at detecting light that scatters upward, like a spotlight, than light that scatters horizontally, like the glow of an illuminated billboard at night, said Kyba.

Skyglow disrupts human circadian rhythms, as well as other forms of life, said Georgetown biologist Emily Williams, who was not part of the study.

“Migratory songbirds normally use starlight to orient where they are in the sky at night,” she said. “And when sea turtle babies hatch, they use light to orient toward the ocean — light pollution is a huge deal for them.”

Part of what’s being lost is a universal human experience, said Falchi, the physicist at University of Santiago de Compostela.

“The night sky has been, for all the generations before ours, a source of inspiration for art, science, literature,” he said.
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As the coronavirus pandemic enters its fourth year, the United States is grappling with a new subvariant of COVID-19 called XBB.1.5, and China is reporting a spike in cases following the dismantling of its zero-COVID policy. VOA’s Laurel Bowman reports.
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Environmental activist Greta Thunberg is set to meet International Energy Agency executive director Fatih Birol in Davos on Thursday, organizers of a fringe round-table event at the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting told Reuters.

Thunberg is to meet Birol along with fellow campaigners Helena Gualinga, Vanessa Nakate and Luisa Neubauer, the organizers said in a statement.

The IEA, which makes policy recommendations on global energy, had no immediate comment.

Thunberg was released by police on Tuesday after being detained alongside other climate activists during protests in Germany.

“Yesterday I was part of a group that peacefully protested the expansion of a coal mine in Germany. We were kettled by police and then detained but were let go later that evening,” she tweeted, adding: “Climate protection is not a crime.”

‘We are not winning’

Former United States Vice President Al Gore said in Davos that he agreed with Thunberg’s efforts in Germany and that the climate crisis was getting worse faster than the world was tackling it.

“We are not winning. The crisis is still getting worse faster than we are deploying these solutions,” Gore told a WEF panel, highlighting a growing gap between those “old enough to be in positions in power and the young people of this world.”

Thunberg, whose current whereabouts are not clear, attended the WEF meeting in Davos in January 2020, when she challenged world leaders, including former U.S. President Donald Trump, to act on climate change, saying that “our house is still on fire.”

She has also participated in previous protests on the fringes of the gathering, which brings business and political leaders together in the Swiss ski resort for a dialogue on topical issues.

Activists protest oil firms’ role

Climate change is one of the main items on the agenda for this year’s meeting, which has already seen protests against the role of big oil firms, with activists saying they are hijacking the debate over how to address global warming.

Representatives of major energy firms including BP, Chevron, Occidental Petroleum Corp., and Saudi Aramco are among 1,500 business leaders gathered there.

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres on Wednesday called on the WEF attendees to make “credible,” accountable net-zero pledges.

A social media campaign this week added to pressure on oil and gas companies, promoting a “cease and desist” notice sponsored by Thunberg, Nakate, Neubauer and Gualinga through the non-profit website Avaaz.

The call, which has garnered more than 850,000 signatures, demands that energy company CEOs “immediately stop opening any new oil, gas, or coal extraction sites, and stop blocking the clean energy transition we all so urgently need.”

It threatens legal action and more protests if they fail to comply.

The oil and gas industry has said that it needs to be part of the energy transition as fossil fuels will continue to play a major role in the world’s energy mix as countries shift to low- economies.
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The impact of Russia’s war in Ukraine is being felt as far away as Indian-administered Kashmir, where ornithologists see the conflict as contributing to a shortage of migratory birds which make their way each winter from Europe to the wetlands of the Kashmir Valley.

Every February, the wildlife protection department conducts a census of migratory birds in Kashmir. The department says that more than 1.1 million birds of 39 species visited the region in 2021. The census estimated 810,000 birds in 2020 and 950,000 in 2019.

The department has not yet begun this year’s count but the wildlife warden of wetlands, Ifshan Dewan, told VOA, “I am getting reports from various wetlands on low arrival of migratory birds compared to the last year.”

Experts believe that the nearly year-old war between Russia and Ukraine could be one reason for the reduced size of this year’s migratory flocks, both in Kashmir and elsewhere in the region.

Irfan Jeelani, founder of the birding club Birds of Kashmir, told VOA that birds from China, Siberia, central Asia and Europe visit Kashmir every winter. “Birds from Europe could be affected due to the war and have altered their flyway to reach here; however, weak ones couldn’t reach their destinations,” Jeelani suggested.

A similar pattern has been noted in the neighboring Jammu region, where Parmil Kumar, the head of the department of statistics at the University of Jammu, said the war in Ukraine could have been responsible for some species arriving almost two weeks later than usual.

“There is also a reduction of about 15% in the number of birds visiting this winter to Jammu region,” said Kumar, who is a birder himself.

Bird migration expert Andrew Farnsworth agreed that the Ukraine-Russia war could be a factor affecting the number of migratory birds visiting the Kashmir region this winter but noted that birds come to the valley from many regions besides Europe.

“Maybe slightly, but there are so many other factors and so many more birds arriving from more easterly locations to Kashmir, in addition to ongoing military and industrial activities in and around Kashmir for years,” said Farnsworth, a senior research associate at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.

“War can and certainly does affect the movements of birds, whether by habitat destruction, increased hunting pressure during long conflicts, or destruction by military actions.”

Wildlife experts are looking to see if this year’s census bears out observations seeming to show significantly reduced populations of bird species that make the trip from Europe, such as the black stork, great white pelican and purple heron.

Wildlife experts in Ukraine say there is no doubt that the war is endangering a wide variety of creatures there.

The conflict has “threatened not only Ukraine’s population but also biodiversity, including a significant number of rare and globally vulnerable bird species,” said a recent article by Oleg Dudkin, CEO of the Ukrainian Society for the Protection of Birds and Martin Harper, regional director at BirdLife Europe & Central Asia.

Asad R. Rahmani, a member of the governing body of Wetlands International South Asia, said another likely explanation for the declining migratory bird population in Kashmir is the destruction of wetlands that provide a winter home for the birds.

“Most birds that come to India belong to the Central Asian Flyway and Ukraine does not fall in this flyway,” he told VOA. “There is always a movement from Europe of some birds. Still, the bulk of the migratory birds come from central Russia, Mongolia, northern China, Tibet, and some countries of central Asia.”

If adequately protected, Kashmir’s wetlands could become a major tourist attraction, he added.

Rashid Naqash, the regional wildlife warden for the Kashmir region, said in an interview that his department is trying its best to protect the region’s wetlands. His department manages eight main wetlands where migratory birds congregate in huge droves during winter.

Regarding the war in Ukraine, Naqash said the migratory birds instinctively avoid places with a lot of activity and instead take safer routes to get to their wintering grounds. But he said, “It is hard, dangerous, and stressful for migratory birds to find other ways to get to where they spend the winter.”
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Campaigners have welcomed a decision to remove the skeleton of an 18th century man with gigantism from public display at a London museum.

The remains of Charles Byrne, who was 2.31 meters (7ft 7in), had been on show at the Hunterian Museum at the Royal College of Surgeons of England in central London.

But the museum has said the self-styled “Irish Giant” will not be part of the collection when it reopens in March after a five-year, £4.6-million ($5.7-million) refurbishment.

Thomas Muinzer, a senior law lecturer at Aberdeen University in Scotland, called the decision “wonderful news”.

But he said the development was only a “partial success”, as Byrne himself wanted to be buried at sea, to prevent anatomists using him for study.

In 2011, Muinzer and Len Doyal, a medical ethicist, published a paper in the British Medical Journal, calling for Byrne’s final wishes to be respected.

“Byrne’s remains ought to be buried at sea or at least be withdrawn from public display,” they wrote.

The British writer Hilary Mantel, who died last year and wrote a 1998 fictionalized portrait of Byrne called “The Giant”, had also backed the campaign.

RCS England said last week that trustees of the collection had discussed the “sensitivities” of keeping and displaying Byrne’s skeleton during the closure.

The skeleton was acquired after Byrne’s death aged 22 in 1783 by the eminent surgeon and anatomist John Hunter.

Before he could be buried, Hunter paid Byrne’s friends £500 — the equivalent of £60,000 today — for his body.

The decision comes as museums in the UK and around the world are reassessing the provenance of their collections.

The Hunterian is due to begin a new program later this year “to promote new research and explore issues around the display of human remains and the acquisition of specimens” during the British colonial period.

Hunter and others in the 18th and 19th century “acquired many specimens in ways we would not consider ethical today”, it added.

A decision has been made to only make the skeleton only available for “bona fide medical research” into gigantism.

Muinzer said it had already been extensively studied and its complete DNA extracted, but scientific understanding of the condition remains limited and people still suffer from it today.

As a result, Byrne’s last wishes — which RCS England said are well-documented but anecdotal — should be respected, he added.

“We don’t have to worry about the resurrectionists and grave robbers now thank goodness,” he added.
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People in Somalia are highly traumatized due to political instability, prolonged violence and humanitarian crisis, a new health study said.

The joint study by the United Nations, Somalia’s health ministry and the country’s national university found that mental disorder is prevalent across the country. It said that cases are about 77 percent higher than a previous study by the World Health Organization (WHO), which suggested that nearly 40% of the population in Somalia had a mental or psychological disorder.

The study further said that the prevalence of mental disorders among the young is significantly higher than previously reported.

“There is a high prevalence and wide range of the various mental disorders (76.9%), substance abuse disorders (lifetime, 53.3%; current, 50.6%) and poor quality of life in both non-clinical and clinical populations,” the study said.

The study obtained by VOA Somali Service was conducted between October 25 and November 15 2021. The data was collected from 713 participants in the towns of Baidoa, Kismayo and Dolow. The majority of the participants (68.1%) were younger than 35 years and 58.5% were males.

All three towns host internally displaced persons who have been impacted by conflicts, and droughts which forced the pastoral communities to migrate to urban locations in search of food, water, and safety.

“Conflicts and clashes have brought about mental illness because we face many of these challenges in our country,” a young person in Kismayo who was interviewed for the study told the researchers. “For example, explosions occur, and the witness might live with the shock and trauma that can affect their state of mind and even cause mental illness. Stress caused by joblessness also leads to mental health issues.”

The study is a collaboration between the WHO, the United Nations Peacebuilding Fund, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), the International Organization for Migration (IOM), the Federal Ministry of Health and the Somali National University (SNU).

According to the WHO, which led the research, this is the first-ever epidemiological study on mental health in Somalia.

“The study findings clearly indicate the prevalence of mental health disorders is higher in the younger population than we initially used to think or assume through various estimates,” said Dr. Mamunur Rahman Malik, WHO Country Representative.

“Our earlier WHO study suggested that only 40% of the population in Somalia might have a mental or psychological disorder. But what we have seen now is 76%, which is a high prevalence rate,” Malik told VOA.

Somalia Minister of Health Dr. Ali Haji Adam agrees that mental health situation among the population is “very poor.”

“There has been armed conflict, poverty, fear, instability, and unemployment for a long time; this is causing mental wounds,” Adam said. “They cannot cope with what is happening in front of them; mothers and children are being killed in front of them and that is damaging their mental health.”

Malik said a worrying finding is that the most common mental health illness among this population is panic disorder and post-traumatic disorder.

“Panic disorder, 39%, and post-traumatic disorder at 37%. And this is amongst the young age group,” Malik said.

He said if untreated, this might lead to suicidal tendencies. He said in previous estimates WHO saw the suicide rate among the young population in Somalia as one of the highest in the world, 14 to 15 per 100,000 population. This new study finds that the risk of committing suicide among young people in Somalia is 22 per 100,000.

The authors of the study said this is surprising for a community where Islam is the predominant religion, and where teaching prohibits suicide. They urged clinicians to consult with their patients about suicidal thoughts during evaluation, regardless of religious beliefs or practices.

Substance abuse

The other discovery of the study is the high degree of prevalence of substance abuse among the young population.

Adam said that the younger generation who are the most affected by mental health illnesses are turning to drug abuse.

“A young person with an ambition, and a future when they cannot realize their ambition and aspiration, cannot find a job they face mental pressure,” Adam told VOA. “It’s likely they turn to drug abuse.”

Malik agrees that the hopeless situation and lack of sufficient access to mental health facilities are driving the mentally ill to resort to the abuse use of prohibited substances.

“These are coping mechanisms, but this is self-destruction, that’s the most worrying factor for me,” he said.

The most common substance used was tobacco, 38%, followed by sedatives which is 37%, and these are not regulated in the country, Malik said.

He said Somalia is the only country that has not ratified the WHO’s global convention on Tobacco Control. He urged the Somali government to ratify and commit to controlling substance abuse of tobacco and sedatives.

“We are actually at risk of losing a whole generation because these young people have no hopes for the future and they comprise 70% of the people in this country,” Malik said. “Instead of using them as human assets we are at risk of losing them because there is a high burden of mental health and substance abuse, and this is making them non-productive and they’re becoming a huge economic burden.”

The increased mental illnesses can be seen in mental health care clinics.

Dr. Liban Mohamed Omar opened a mental health clinic eight months ago after he returned from Europe. He says his polyclinic and psychiatric center receives dozens of patients every week.

“Of the patients I receive, two to three out of every four persons have got mental health issues,” Omar told VOA.

In addition to the political and social upheavals in the country, women face specific challenges that exacerbate their mental health situation.

“Women face many [cases of] abuse, such as rape,” Omar said.

Omar cited a lack of awareness and a shortage of skilled mental health workers and services which forces many to resort to substance abuse and to even contemplate ending their life.

Peace building

The researchers see improving mental health as an integral part of peace-building in Somalia, a country where there has been civil strife since the collapse of the state in 1991.

Malik said in conflict-affected countries the burden of mental health is high.

“These young people who were carrying a huge burden of mental health can be an easy target for radical forces because these are disillusioned young people,” Malik said.

“Our assumption is if these people can be socially integrated after addressing their mental health condition, social cohesion, and community reconciliation may increase and that can lead to peace-building in a way that these mentally ill young people may not be the targets of radical forces so they can contribute to the society.”

Malik said only 5 to 10 percent of the primary healthcare centers in Somalia currently can offer mental health services, far less than what is needed.

“The total number of mental health professionals in Somalia is 82 in a population of over 15 million,” Malik said. “And if you compare it in terms of mental health professionals, 100,000 population it is less than one. So, the future lies in investing in mental health services at the primary health care level.

The study recommended training of frontline health care workers, increased awareness, and routine screening of mental disorders at the primary health care level.
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There was visible excitement among students when schools reopened Tuesday in Malawi’s two biggest cities, Lilongwe and Blantyre, after a two-week suspension caused by a cholera outbreak. 

The bacterial illness has killed close to 800 people, more than 100 of them children, and affected more than 25,000. 

Malawi’s government announced measures to prevent cholera from spreading in schools but warned it will shut down the schools again if needed.  

To many students, especially those who are preparing to take national examinations this year, the closure doomed their hope of passing the exams.

Ronnie Lutepo, a teenaged student at Michiru View secondary school in Blantyre, said returning to the school was the best thing he hoped for.

“Yes, as I was at home my mum was telling me to study, but being in an examination class affected me badly,” he said. “We are all supposed to be here and ready for the exams and if we are not ready, we are not going to get good grades.”

The reopening comes after the government announced that it has put into place preventive measures against the spread of cholera, which is transmitted mainly through dirty water. 

These include fixing broken boreholes and water taps in the schools and banning the sale of cooked food around school premises.

Malawi is battling its worst cholera outbreak in a decade. Government statistics show that as of Monday it had registered 25,458 cases since the start of the outbreak last March, with 550 cases reported on Monday alone.

The disease has so far killed more than 800 people with around 1,000 hospitalizations as of Tuesday.  

Justin Rice Phiri, the deputy head teacher at Michiru View secondary school, told VOA that the school has put in place measures to prevent students from contracting the disease.

“At the same time our support staff; the cleaners and the cooks have been trained on how best to prevent the cholera and also giving them the protective wear; the gloves, the work suits and the like,” he said.

On Tuesday, the U.N.’s children’s agency, UNICEF, started distributing anti-cholera supplies in schools in areas most affected by the outbreak.

Government authorities, however, have warned that they may close the schools again should the outbreak spread among students at an unmanageable level.
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Nearly two thirds of the sharks and rays that live among the world’s corals are threatened with extinction, according to new research published Tuesday, with a warning this could further imperil precious reefs.

Coral reefs, which harbor at least a quarter of all marine animals and plants, are gravely menaced by an array of human threats, including overfishing, pollution and climate change.

Shark and ray species — from apex predators to filter feeders — play an important role in these delicate ecosystems that “cannot be filled by other species”, said Samantha Sherman, of Simon Fraser University in Canada and the wildlife group TRAFFIC International.

But they are under grave threat globally, according to the study in the journal Nature Communications, which assessed extinction vulnerability data from the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) to look at 134 species of sharks and rays linked to reefs.

The authors found 59 percent of coral reef shark and ray species are threatened with extinction, an extinction risk almost double that of sharks and rays in general.

Among these, five shark species are listed as critically endangered, as well as nine ray species, all so-called “rhino rays” that look more like sharks than stingrays.

Keeping reefs healthier

“It was a bit surprising just how high the threat level is for these species,” Sherman told AFP. 

“Many species that we thought of as common are declining at alarming rates and becoming more difficult to find in some places.”

Sherman said the biggest threat to these species by far is overfishing.

Sharks are under most threat in the Western Atlantic and parts of the Indian Ocean, whereas the Indian Ocean and Southeast Asia are the highest risks for rays.

These regions are heavily fished and do not currently have management in place to reduce the impact on these species, said Sherman.

Coral reef fisheries directly support the livelihoods and food security of over half a billion people, but this crucial ecosystem is facing an existential threat.

Human-driven climate change has spurred mass coral bleaching as the world’s oceans get warmer.

Modelling research has shown that even if the Paris climate goal of holding global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius is reached, 99 percent of the world’s coral reefs will not be able to recover.

At two degrees of warming, the number rose to 100 percent.

“We know coral reef health is declining, largely due to climate change, however, coral reef sharks and rays can help keep reefs healthier for longer,” said Sherman. 

The study was carried out by an international team of experts from universities, government and regional oceanic and fishery organizations as well as non-governmental organizations across the world.
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Jill Biden’ s advocacy for curing cancer didn’t start with her son’s death in 2015 from brain cancer. It began decades earlier, long before she came into the national spotlight, and could now be further energized by her own brush with a common form of skin cancer.

The first lady often says the worst three words anyone will ever hear are, “You have cancer.” She heard a version of that phrase for herself this past week.

A lesion that doctors had found above her right eye during a routine screening late last year was removed on Wednesday and confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma — a highly treatable form of skin cancer. While Biden was being prepped to remove the lesion, doctors found and removed another one from the left side of her chest, also confirmed to be basal cell carcinoma. A third lesion from her left eyelid was being examined.

While it’s too early to know when and how Biden might address her situation publicly, her experience could inject new purpose into what has become part of her life’s work highlighting research into curing cancer and urging people to get regular screenings.

Personal experiences can add potency to a public figure’s advocacy.

“Nothing like ‘I’ve been there, done that’ and being personally involved,” said Myra Gutin, a first lady scholar at Rider University.

Biden’s spokesperson, Vanessa Valdivia, said “the first lady’s fight against cancer has always been personal. She knows that cancer touches us all.”

Biden’s advocacy dates to 1993, when four girlfriends were diagnosed with breast cancer, including her pal Winnie, who succumbed to the disease. She said last year in a speech that “Winnie inspired me to take up the cause of prevention and education.”

That experience led her to create the Biden Breast Health Initiative, one of the first breast health programs in the United States, to teach 16-to 18-year-old girls about caring for their breasts. Biden was among staffers who went into Delaware’s high schools to conduct lectures and demonstrations.

Her mother, Bonny Jean Jacobs, and father, Donald Jacobs, died of cancer, in 2008 and 1999, respectively. A few years ago, one of her four sisters needed an auto-stem cell transplant to treat her cancer.

In May 2015, Beau Biden, President Joe Biden’s son with his late first wife, died of a rare and aggressive brain cancer, leaving behind a wife and two young kids. Joe Biden was vice president at the time and the blow from Beau’s loss led him to decide against running for president in 2016. Jill Biden, who had helped raise Beau from a young age after she married his dad, was convinced he would survive the disease and later described feeling “blinded by the darkness” when he died.

After their son’s death, the Bidens helped push for a national commitment to “end cancer as we know it.” Then-President Barack Obama — Biden’s boss — put the vice president in charge of what the White House named the Cancer Moonshot.

The Bidens resurrected the initiative after Joe Biden became president and added a new goal of cutting cancer death rates by at least 50% over the next 25 years, and improving the experience of living with and surviving cancer for patients and their families.

“We’re ensuring that all of our government is ready to get to work,” Jill Biden said at the relaunch announcement at the White House last February. “We’re going to break down the walls that hold research back. We’re going to bring the best of our nation together — patients, survivors, caregivers, researchers, doctors, and advocates — all of you — so that we can get this done.”

In the years between Biden serving as vice president and running for president, the Bidens headed up the Biden Cancer Initiative, a charity.

Jill Biden, 71, has been using her first lady platform to highlight research into a cancer cure, along with other issues she has long championed, including education and military families.

Her first trip outside of Washington after the January 2021 inauguration was to Virginia Commonwealth University’s Massey Cancer Center in Richmond to call for an end to disparities in health care that she said have hurt communities of color.

She has toured cancer centers, including those for children, in New York City, South Carolina, Tennessee, Costa Rica, San Francisco and Florida, among others. She joined the Philadelphia Eagles and Phillies — two of her favorite professional sports teams — for events, including during the World Series, to highlight efforts to fight cancer through early detection and to honor patients.

For Breast Cancer Awareness Month last October, Jill Biden hosted a White House event with the American Cancer Society and singer Mary J. Blige, who became an advocate for cancer screening after losing aunts and other relatives to various forms of cancer.

The first lady also partnered with the Lifetime cable channel to encourage women to get mammograms. A Democrat, she gave an interview last year to Newsmax, the conservative cable news channel, to discuss the federal investment in accelerating the cancer fight.

She regularly encourages audiences to schedule cancer screening appointments they skipped during the pandemic out of fear of visiting doctor’s offices.

Asked on Friday how the first lady was doing, the president flashed a thumbs-up to reporters.

Basal cell carcinoma, for which the first lady was treated with the procedure known as Mohs surgery, is the most common type of skin cancer, but also the most curable form. It’s considered highly treatable, especially when caught early. It is a slow-growing cancer that doesn’t usually spread and seldom causes serious complications or becomes life-threatening.

The Skin Cancer Foundation says the delicate skin around the eyes is especially vulnerable to damage from the sun’s ultraviolet rays, which makes basal cell carcinoma on and around the eyelids particularly common.
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When Benjamin Franklin fashioned the first lightning rod in the 1750s following his famous experiment flying a kite with a key attached during a thunderstorm, the American inventor had no way of knowing this would remain the state of the art for centuries.

Scientists now are moving to improve on that 18th-century innovation with 21st-century technology — a system employing a high-powered laser that may revolutionize lightning protection. Researchers said on Monday they succeeded in using a laser aimed at the sky from atop Mount Santis in northeastern Switzerland to divert lightning strikes.

With further development, this Laser Lightning Rod could safeguard critical infrastructure including power stations, airports, wind farms and launchpads. Lightning inflicts billions of dollars in damage on buildings, communication systems, power lines and electrical equipment annually while also killing thousands of people.

The equipment was hauled to the mountaintop at an altitude of about 8,200 feet (2,500 meters), some parts using a gondola and others by helicopter, and was focused on the sky above a 400-foot-tall (124-meter-tall) transmission tower belonging to telecommunications provider Swisscom SCMN.S, one of Europe’s structures most affected by lightning.

In experiments during two months in 2021, intense laser pulses — 1,000 times per second — were emitted to redirect lightning strikes. All four strikes while the system was active were successfully intercepted. In the first instance, the researchers used two high-speed cameras to record the redirection of the lightning’s path by more than 160 feet (50 meters). Three others were documented with different data.

“We demonstrate for the first time that a laser can be used to guide natural lightning,” said physicist Aurelien Houard of Ecole Polytechnique’s Laboratory of Applied Optics in France, coordinator of the Laser Lightning Rod project and lead author of the research published in the journal Nature Photonics.

Lightning is a high-voltage electrical discharge between a cloud and the ground, within a cloud or between clouds.

“An intense laser can generate on its path long columns of plasmas in the atmosphere with electrons, ions and hot air molecules,” Houard said, referring to positively charged particles called ions and negatively charged particles called electrons.

“We have shown here that these plasma columns can act as a guide for lightning,” Houard added. “It is important because it is the first step toward a laser-based lightning protection that could virtually reach a height of hundreds of meters [yards] or a kilometer [0.6 mile] with sufficient laser energy.”

The laser device is the size of a large car and weighs more than 3 tons. It uses lasers from German industrial machine manufacturing company Trumpf Group. With University of Geneva scientists also playing a key role, the experiments were conducted in collaboration with aerospace company ArianeGroup, a European joint venture between Airbus SE AIR.PA and Safran SA SAF.PA.

This concept, first proposed in the 1970s, has worked in laboratory conditions, but until now not in the field.

Lightning rods, dating back to Franklin’s time, are metal rods atop buildings, connected to the ground with a wire, that conduct electric charges lightning strikes harmlessly into the ground. Their limitations include protecting only a small area.

Houard anticipated that 10 to 15 years more work would be needed before the Laser Lightning Rod can enter common use. One concern is avoiding interference with airplanes in flight. In fact, air traffic in the area was halted when the researchers used the laser.

“Indeed, there is a potential issue using the system with air traffic in the area because the laser could harm the eyes of the pilot if he crosses the laser beam and looks down,” Houard said. 
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Pakistan Monday launched its first nationwide anti-polio campaign of the year to immunize children under the age of five against the crippling disease. The move follows a surge in new infections in 2022.

While no new case has been reported in Pakistan so far this year, the highly infectious wild poliovirus paralyzed 20 children last year. That compares to just one infection reported in 2021.

National eradication program officials said that more than 360,000 health workers would deliver polio drops to at least 44.2 million children across 156 districts during the five-day campaign. They noted that children would also be administered an additional vitamin A supplement to boost their immunity against infectious diseases.

The 20 polio cases in Pakistan in 2022 were reported in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, mostly in its violence-hit North Waziristan district on the Afghan border.

An official statement quoted Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif as saying on Sunday the resurgence of cases has raised concerns among Pakistan’s global partners, including the World Health Organization and other stakeholders.

The previous nationwide polio campaign in Pakistan was organized last August but was disrupted by catastrophic floods triggered by erratic summer monsoon rains. Authorities later carried out special polio drives in flood-affected districts and vaccinated children against the virus there.

Pakistan has repeatedly come close to eradicating polio but long-running propaganda in conservative rural areas that the vaccines cause sterility in children, coupled with deadly militant attacks on vaccinators, have set back the mission.

The latest militant attack on a polio team took place earlier this month in Dera Ismail Khan district in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, wounding four policemen escorting health workers.

Officials also blame the 2011 killing of al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden by the United States military in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad for dealing a serious blow to national polio eradication efforts.

A Pakistani doctor organized a fake vaccination campaign to help the U.S. troops locate the hideout of the fugitive terror leader and kill him. Pakistani authorities later arrested the doctor and a court subsequently sentenced him to 23 years in prison.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only countries where polio continues to cripple children. Afghan officials detected two cases in 2022 and have reported no new ones this year.

The global polio eradication program has identified Pakistan, Afghanistan, parts of Somalia and Yemen as areas where outbreaks are very difficult to control, according to Hamid Jafari, the director of polio eradication for WHO’s eastern Mediterranean region.

“These are countries, and in fact some national areas, that are prone to be affected by repeated polio outbreaks., and these are usually complex countries, countries that have fragile health systems, conflicts, other complex challenges,” Jafari explained in a video statement tweeted Monday.

“Moreover, these countries export polio virus. So, when there is an outbreak in these countries, the neighboring countries are affected because of international spread but also distant international spread,” he added.
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Pakistan launched its first anti-polio campaign of the year Sunday, targeting 44.2 million children under the age of five.

Pakistan and Afghanistan are the only two countries in the world where polio continues to threaten the health and well-being of children. Polio affects the nervous system of children and ultimately leads to paralysis.

Prime Minister Shahbaz Sharif kicked off the nationwide drive by administering polio drops to children in the capital, Islamabad, saying Pakistan was unfortunately among the few countries that still suffered from the disease.

Twenty cases were reported in the tribal North Waziristan area last year, though the disease was contained among other children through immunization, Sharif said.

Around 44 million children in 156 districts will be immunized.

This includes 22.54 million children in Punjab, 10.1 million in Sindh and 7.4 million in the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa provinces.

Sharif said his government along with other stakeholders, including U.S. billionaire Bill Gates and the World Health Organization, were effectively contributing to polio eradication in Pakistan.

He gave out appreciation certificates at the launch to front-line polio workers and praised their “invaluable sacrifices.”

Pakistan has witnessed frequent attacks on polio teams and police officers deployed to protect them. Militants falsely claim that vaccination campaigns are a Western conspiracy to sterilize children. 
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The U.S. has now collected 510 reports of unidentified flying objects, many of which are flying in sensitive military airspace. While there’s no evidence of extraterrestrials, they still pose a threat, the government said in a declassified report summary released Thursday.

Last year the Pentagon opened an office, the All-domain Anomaly Resolution Office, solely focused on receiving and analyzing all of those reports of unidentified phenomena, many of which have been reported by military pilots. It works with the intelligence agencies to further assess those incidents.

The events “continue to occur in restricted or sensitive airspace, highlighting possible concerns for safety of flight or adversary collection activity,” the Office of the Director of National Intelligence said in its 2022 report.

The classified version of the report addresses how many of those objects were found near locations where nuclear power plants operate or nuclear weapons are stored.

The 510 objects include 144 objects previously reported and 366 new reports. In both the old and new cases, after analysis, the majority have been determined to exhibit “unremarkable characteristics,” and could be characterized as unmanned aircraft systems, or balloon-like objects, the report said.

But the office is also tasked with reporting any movements or reports of objects that may indicate that a potential adversary has a new technology or capability.

The Pentagon’s anomaly office is also to include any unidentified objects moving underwater, in the air, or in space, or something that moves between those domains, which could pose a new threat.

ODNI said in its report that efforts to destigmatize reporting and emphasize that the objects may pose a threat likely contributed to the additional reports.
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Astronomers have detected in the stellar halo that represents the Milky Way’s outer limits a group of stars more distant from Earth than any known within our own galaxy – almost halfway to a neighboring galaxy.

The researchers said these 208 stars inhabit the most remote reaches of the Milky Way’s halo, a spherical stellar cloud dominated by the mysterious invisible substance called dark matter that makes itself known only through its gravitational influence. The furthest of them is 1.08 million light years from Earth. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 9.5 trillion km (5.9 trillion miles).

These stars, spotted using the Canada-France-Hawaii Telescope on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea mountain, are part of a category of stars called RR Lyrae that are relatively low mass and typically have low abundances of elements heavier than hydrogen and helium. The most distant one appears to have a mass about 70% that of our sun. No other Milky Way stars have been confidently measured farther away than these.

The stars that populate the outskirts of the galactic halo can be viewed as stellar orphans, probably originating in smaller galaxies that later collided with the larger Milky Way.

“Our interpretation about the origin of these distant stars is that they are most likely born in the halos of dwarf galaxies and star clusters which were later merged – or more straightforwardly, cannibalized – by the Milky Way,” said Yuting Feng, an astronomy doctoral student at the University of California, Santa Cruz, who led the study, presented this week at an American Astronomical Society meeting in Seattle.

“Their host galaxies have been gravitationally shredded and digested, but these stars are left at that large distance as debris of the merger event,” Feng added.

The Milky Way has grown over time through such calamities.

“The larger galaxy grows by eating smaller galaxies – by eating its own kind,” said study co-author Raja GuhaThakurta, UC Santa Cruz’s chair of astronomy and astrophysics.

Containing an inner and outer layer, the Milky Way’s halo is vastly larger than the galaxy’s main disk and central bulge that are teeming with stars. The galaxy, with a supermassive black hole at its center about 26,000 light years from Earth, contains perhaps 100 billion–400 billion stars including our sun, which resides in one of the four primary spiral arms that make up the Milky Way’s disk. The halo contains about 5% of the galaxy’s stars.

Dark matter, which dominates the halo, makes up most of the universe’s mass and is thought to be responsible for its basic structure, with its gravity influencing visible matter to come together and form stars and galaxies.

The halo’s remote outer edge is a poorly understood region of the galaxy. These newly identified stars are almost half the distance to the Milky Way’s neighboring Andromeda galaxy.

“We can see that the suburbs of the Andromeda halo and the Milky Way halo are really extended – and are almost ‘back-to-back,'” Feng said.

The search for life beyond the Earth focuses on rocky planets akin to Earth orbiting in what is called the “habitable zone” around stars. More than 5,000 planets beyond our solar system, called exoplanets, already have been discovered.

“We don’t know for sure, but each of these outer halo stars should be about as likely to have planets orbiting them as the sun and other sun-like stars in the Milky Way,” GuhaThakurta said.
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