YCLOAK

From the three-light traffic signal, refrigerated trucks, automatic elevator doors, color monitors for desktop computers, to the shape of the modern ironing board, the clothes wringer, blood banks, laser treatment for cataracts, home security systems and the super-soaker children’s toy, many objects and services Americans use every day were invented by Black men and women.

These innovators were recognized for their inventions, but countless other inventors of color have gone largely unrecognized. Others are completely lost to history.

“There were some instances where Black inventors would compete with Alexander Graham Bell, with Thomas Edison, where their inventions were really just as good and just as transformative, but they just did not have access to the capital,” says Shontavia Johnson, an entrepreneur and associate vice president for entrepreneurship and innovation at Clemson University in South Carolina. “They did not have access to all these different systems that the United States puts in place to support inventors.”

Thomas Edison is credited with inventing the lightbulb, but it was Lewis Latimer, the son of formerly enslaved people, who patented a new filament that extended the lifespan of lightbulbs so they wouldn’t die out after a few days. Latimer got a patent for his invention in 1882, something countless Black innovators in the generations before him were unable to do.

Free Black citizens could obtain patents from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, but enslaved Black people could not. Slavery wasn’t abolished until 1865, with the adoption of the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Prior to that, the inventions of Black innovators were often claimed by their enslavers or other white people.

Modern-day research suggests that was the case with the technology behind the cotton gin — a device that separated cotton seeds from their fibers. It was largely innovated by enslaved Black people, but a white man named Eli Whitney obtained the patent for the invention.

“We often count our country as being this place where innovation and entrepreneurship thrive,” Johnson says. “But when you completely exclude a group of people from access to the patent system, … exploiting their invention, then the natural result of that is, you look at the most important inventors and innovators in American history … and they pretty much are your stereotypical white male inventor, not because other people have not been innovative, too, it’s just these folks have been excluded from the patent system.”

This deliberate early exclusion of Black inventors from the patent system and, in large part, the pantheon of great American inventors, was rooted in racist assumptions about the intellectual inferiority of Black people, according to Rayvon Fouché, a professor of American studies at Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana.

“Invention was seen as this God-given ability. So, as you can imagine, all the perceptions, ideas about masculinity, maleness, power [and] authority are all wrapped into this vision of inventiveness,” says Fouché, who also leads the National Science Foundation’s Social and Economic Sciences Division. “The inherent understanding of what an inventor is and was and could be — the framing of that term — eliminated the possibility for all Black folks and all marginalized people.”

Other barriers Black inventors historically faced included less access to equal education, systematic exclusion from professional scientific and engineering

societies, limited access to wealthy investors and mainstream banks for start-up capital to commercialize their inventions, and racial violence.

Black inventors were also less involved in patenting activity between 1870 and 1940, during times of lynchings, race riots and segregation laws in the United States.

There were also the Black creators who came up with innovations that didn’t necessarily fit the traditional ideas of inventiveness.

“For much of our history, when we think about the word ‘invention,’ it’s sort of freighted with these white, Eurocentric notions of what that means,” says Eric Hintz, a historian with the Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History. “Often, the traditional definition of ‘invention’ is something like a machine that saves human labor or animal labor, that does some task more efficiently.”

That kept certain innovations by Black people from being recognized by the patent system.

“[The patent system] is built on this model that basically assumes innovation is desirable when it’s tied to commercial benefit. But if it is rooted in community survival or the needs of society, that is not worthy of protection, and we see that in the law,” Johnson says. “There are certain types of things that are patentable, and certain things that are not patentable, and that is a distinction that I do think leaves a lot of people out of the ecosystem.”

A New York DJ known as Grandmaster Flash pioneered the use of record turntables as an instrument by using his fingers to manipulate the sounds backward and forward or to slow it down. He had an innovative style of mixing records and blending beats that pioneered the art of deejaying, but he holds no patents.

“Black people have been doing lots of creative, innovative things,” Fouché says. “We can think about all kinds of technological creative things within the context of hip-hop and music production and art in other ways. But of course, the patent office is driven by techno-scientific innovation. And I think part of it is, for me, to open up the conversation of what inventiveness is and can be.”

Museum collections have historically excluded the contributions of marginalized people, a failing the Smithsonian’s Lemelson Center readily acknowledges.

“Definitely the Smithsonian and other libraries and museums have been complicit over the decades, over the centuries, of privileging white inventors in the things that we collect,” says Hintz. “We have a ton of stuff on Edison and Tesla [electricity] and Steve Jobs [innovator of Apple products and devices] and whomever, but it’s incumbent on us now to make sure that we’re preserving the stories of Madam C.J. Walker, Grandmaster Flash, Lonnie Johnson — who invented the Super Soaker, of Patricia Bath, an ophthalmologist who invented a way of eradicating cataracts.”

Walker, America’s first self-made female millionaire, built her fortune with a line of hair care products for Black women. Black people also invented the clothes dryer, the automatic gear shift in vehicles, the modern toilet, lawn sprinkler, peanut butter and potato chips.

But the innovation gap persists. African Americans and women still participate at each stage of the innovation process at lower rates than their male and white counterparts.

“How do you get more Black kids, girls [and] marginalized people into these pathways that have been traditionally white, middle class and male?” Fouché says, emphasizing the importance of sparking children’s imaginations, despite any obstacles.

“I’m more interested in saying, ‘Well, what do you want to do? How do you want to change the world? What are the things that are meaningful to you?’ and just impressing upon people the limitless opportunities. … So, don’t limit the possibilities.”
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Chinese health authorities reported nearly 3,400 COVID-19 cases on Sunday, double the previous day, forcing lockdowns on virus hotspots as the country contends with its gravest outbreak in two years.

A nationwide surge in cases has seen authorities close schools in Shanghai and lock down several northeastern cities, as almost 19 provinces battle clusters of the omicron and delta variants.

The city of Jilin has been partially locked down, with hundreds of neighborhoods sealed up, an official announced Sunday, while Yanji, an urban area of nearly 700,000 bordering North Korea, was fully closed off.

China, where the virus was first detected in late 2019, has maintained a strict ‘zero-COVID’ policy enforced by swift lockdowns, travel restrictions and mass testing when clusters have emerged.

But the latest flare-up, driven by the highly transmissible omicron variant and a spike in asymptomatic cases, is challenging that approach.

Zhang Yan, an official with the Jilin provincial health commission, admitted Sunday that local authorities’ virus response so far had been lacking.

“The emergency response mechanism in some areas is not robust enough, there is insufficient understanding of the characteristics of the omicron variant… and judgment has been inaccurate,” he said at a government press briefing.

Residents of Jilin have completed six rounds of mass testing, local officials said. On Sunday the city reported over 500 cases of the omicron variant.

The neighboring city of Changchun — an industrial base of 9 million people — was locked down Friday.

The smaller cities of Siping and Dunhua, both in Jilin province, were locked down Thursday and Friday, according to official announcements.

The mayor of Jilin and the head of the Changchun health commission were dismissed from their jobs Saturday, state media reported, in a sign of the political imperative placed on local authorities to squash virus clusters.

COVID-zero?

But fatigue with the strict approach has been showing in China, with officials increasingly urging softer and more targeted measures to contain the virus, while economists warn that tough clampdowns are hurting the economy.

As cases have climbed since late February, the response in different parts of the country has been generally softer and more targeted compared to December, when the city of Xi’an and its 13 million people were locked down for two weeks.

In China’s biggest city, Shanghai, authorities have increasingly moved to temporarily lock down individual schools, businesses, restaurants and malls over close-contact fears rather than mass quarantines.

Long lines have been seen outside hospitals in the city as people rush to obtain a negative COVID test.

As cases rise, the country’s National Health Commission announced Friday that they would introduce the use of rapid antigen tests.

The kits will now be available online or at pharmacies for clinics and ordinary citizens to buy for “self-testing,” the health commission said.

Although nucleic acid tests will continue to be the main method of testing, the move suggests China may be anticipating that official efforts will not be able to contain the virus.

Last week, a top Chinese scientist said the country should aim to co-exist with the virus, like other nations, where omicron has spread like wildfire.

But the government has also made clear that mass lockdowns remain an option.

Chinese Vice Premier Sun Chunlan, who frequently telegraphs top-level thinking on the pandemic response, on Saturday urged regions to quickly pounce on and clear outbreaks. 
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Western sanctions against Russia could cause the International Space Station to crash, the head of Russian space agency Roscosmos warned Saturday, calling for the punitive measures to be lifted.

According to Dmitry Rogozin, the sanctions, some of which predate Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, could disrupt the operation of Russian spacecraft servicing the ISS.

As a result, the Russian segment of the station — which helps correct its orbit — could be affected, causing the 500-ton structure to “fall down into the sea or onto land,” the Roscosmos chief wrote on Telegram.

“The Russian segment ensures that the station’s orbit is corrected (on average 11 times a year), including to avoid space debris,” said Rogozin, who regularly expresses his support for the Russian army in Ukraine on social networks.

Publishing a map of the locations where the ISS could possibly come down, he pointed out that it was unlikely to be in Russia.

“But the populations of other countries, especially those led by the ‘dogs of war’, should think about the price of the sanctions against Roscosmos,” he continued, describing the countries who imposed sanctions as “crazy.”

Rogozin similarly raised the threat of the space station falling to earth last month while blasting Western sanctions on Twitter.

On March 1, NASA said it was trying to find a solution to keep the ISS in orbit without Russia’s help.

Crews and supplies are transported to the Russian segment by Soyuz spacecraft.

But Rogozin said the launcher used for take-off had been “under U.S. sanctions since 2021 and under EU and Canadian sanctions since 2022.”

Roscosmos said it had appealed to NASA, the Canadian Space Agency and the European Space Agency, “demanding the lifting of illegal sanctions against our companies.”

Space is one of the last remaining areas where the United States and Russia continue to cooperate.

At the beginning of March, Roscosmos announced its intention to prioritize the construction of military satellites as Russia finds itself increasingly isolated as a result of the war in Ukraine.

Rogozin also announced that Moscow would no longer supply the engines for the U.S. Atlas and Antares rockets.

“Let them soar into space on their broomsticks,” he wrote.

On March 30, U.S. astronaut, Mark Vande Hei, and two cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, are scheduled to return to Earth from the ISS onboard a Soyuz spacecraft.
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The Texas Supreme Court on Friday dealt essentially a final blow to abortion clinics’ best hopes of stopping a restrictive law that has sharply curtailed the number of abortions in the state since September and will now fully stay in place for the foreseeable future.

The ruling by the all-Republican court was not unexpected, but it slammed the door on what little path forward the U.S. Supreme Court had allowed Texas clinics after having twice declined to stop a ban on abortions after roughly six weeks of pregnancy.

It spells the coming end to a federal lawsuit that abortion clinics filed even before the restrictions took effect in September — and were then rejected at nearly every turn, and in nearly every court, for six months.

“There is nothing left, this case is effectively over with respect to our challenge to the abortion ban,” said Marc Hearron, attorney for the Center for Reproductive Rights, which led the challenge against the Texas law known as Senate Bill 8.

Although Texas abortion clinics are not dropping the lawsuit, they now expect it will be dismissed in the coming weeks or months.

It is likely to further embolden other Republican-controlled states that are now pressing forward with similar laws, including neighboring Oklahoma, where many Texas women have crossed state lines to get an abortion for the past six months. The Republican-controlled Oklahoma Senate on Thursday approved a half-dozen anti-abortion measures, including a Texas-style ban.

Texas’ law leaves enforcement up to private citizens, who are entitled to collect what critics call a bounty of $10,000 if they bring a successful lawsuit against a provider or anyone who helps a patient obtain an abortion.

The Texas law bans abortion after roughly six weeks of pregnancy and makes no exceptions in cases of rape or incest. Abortions in Texas have plummeted by about 50% since the law took effect, while the number of Texans going to clinics out of state and requesting abortion pills online has gone up.

In December, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to keep the law in place and allowed only a narrow challenge against the restrictions to proceed. The decision by the Texas Supreme Court turned on whether medical licensing officials had an enforcement role under the law, and therefore, could be sued by clinics that are reaching for any possible way to halt the restrictions.

But writing for the court, Justice Jeffrey Boyd said those state officials have no enforcement authority, “either directly or indirectly.”

Even though the Texas law is more restrictive than any in the country, the future of abortion rights in the U.S. is likely to come down to a Supreme Court decision later this year over a separate case out of Mississippi. That one amounts to a direct challenge of Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 case that affirmed the constitutional right to an abortion.

In December, the court’s conservative majority signaled a willingness to roll back abortion rights across the country, which clinics fear could allow Texas and other GOP-controlled states to ban abortion outright.

The number of abortions in September and October in Texas fell by about 50% compared to the same months a year earlier, from 4,511 in September 2020 to 2,197 in September 2021, and from 4,650 in October 2020 to 2,251 in October 2021, according to state health figures.

But that data only tells part of the story. Researchers say the number of Texas women going to clinics in neighboring states and going online to get abortion pills by mail has risen sharply since the law took effect.

A study released this month showed that from September to December, nearly 1,400 Texans a month were going to neighboring states for abortions. The study from the University of Texas at Austin’s Texas Policy Evaluation Project collected data from 34 of 44 open clinics in Arkansas, Colorado, Kansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Oklahoma.

It found that about 5,600 Texans went to the clinics in nearby states over those months compared with just more than 500 for the same period in 2019.

Another study led by a University of Texas researcher found an increase in the number of Texans requesting abortion pills from the overseas nonprofit Aid Access. The study, published in the medical journal JAMA Network Open, found that during the first week of September, requests per day jumped to about 138 compared to a previous average of 11. Over the subsequent weeks in September, requests averaged 37 a day. Then, through December, the average was 30 per day. Researchers noted they didn’t know if all requests resulted in abortions. 
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Thousands of refugees in Indonesia are finding themselves shut out of public services including travel and shopping because of a bureaucratic glitch that prevents them from proving they have been vaccinated against COVID-19.

Indonesia is a transit country for 13,175 refugees, more than half of whom are from Afghanistan. Unlike some countries where refugees are kept In camps, refugees in Indonesia can roam freely and use public facilities. Most live around the Jakarta greater metropolitan area.

In 2020, the country launched “Peduli Lindungi,” a digital COVID-19 contact-tracing app giving vaccinated residents access to public facilities and mass transit. The program, however, requires people to upload their 16-digit government-issued civil registry number before they are vaccinated. Only citizens, permanent residents and foreigners with work visas have the number; refugees – more than 56% of whom have been vaccinated — do not.

The U.N. Refugee Agency, UNHCR, with the support of Indonesian state-owned pharmaceutical company Bio Farma, developed a system to generate a different registration number to allow refugees to register in the app. However, the Jakarta Health Agency, which oversees the public plan, does not have the authority to generate the new numbers. The issue is now under discussion among the Health and Foreign ministries and the UNHCR.

Therefore, the refugees who received their vaccinations at local health clinics under the public vaccination plan did not receive an electronic vaccine certificate that would otherwise be uploaded to the Peduli Lindungi app. They also have no proof of vaccination other than a handwritten slip.

Somali refugee Ahmed Sheikh described the problem he faced when stopped by security guards asking for proof of vaccination at public transportation facilities or shopping malls.

“When we show them a handwritten slip issued by health workers at the public health clinic, they don’t believe it. …. It’s hard to explain to them when they don’t speak English too,” he told VOA.

Dr. Ngabila Salama, the head of the Jakarta Health Agency acknowledged the administrative hurdle, telling VOA the agency is limited by legal uncertainty; it does not have the legal authority to generate a useable civil registration number.

“We need to be accountable for every vaccine that we give out. It’s a shame if we cannot register all the vaccine recipients onto the Peduli Lindungi app. Imagine if we give out over 5,000 vaccines to refugees that are not registered on the Peduli Lindungi app. How can we be accountable for every vaccine, when we must undergo an audit by the Financial Audit Board? They may think we wasted a lot of the vaccines.” she said.

Some refugees are considering postponing getting their first vaccinations or second doses until this administrative problem is solved.

Although Sheikh is already vaccinated, he doubts he will let his wife be vaccinated soon, considering the circumstances.

“I don’t think I’m going to bring my wife to a Puskesmas [local health clinic] to get vaccinated because even if they give her the vaccine, they won’t enable the Peduli Lindungi app for her and can’t give her the electronic vaccine certificate she needs. I don’t want her to get the vaccine if we can’t get an [electronic] vaccine certificate. That’s what all refugees want.”

The UNHCR and nongovernmental organizations are trying to draw attention to the issue.

Zico Pestalozzi, campaign and advocacy coordinator at Suaka, an NGO that handles refugee issues, said “the Refugee Task Force under the Ministry of Political, Security and Legal Affairs should better coordinate [with relevant stakeholders] and ensure inclusive access to the Peduli Lindungi App.

“The UNHCR and NGOs are nongovernmental bodies, so it is up to the government to take charge of this issue and not simply divert responsibility back to the UNHCR,” he said.

Dicky Budiman, an Indonesian epidemiologist at Griffith University in Australia warns that “If we don’t protect this vulnerable population fast enough. We will be keeping a possible ‘pocket of infection.’ It will become a big problem because then it could produce a new variant or at least a new cluster among the refugee community.”

Pestalozzi agreed with Budiman, saying that if this problem lingers, it could turn into a public health risk and set back all the positive initiatives from the Indonesian government to improve refugees’ lives, including providing free vaccines, establishing learning centers and access to vocational learning. 
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An American private spaceflight company mocks the head of Russia’s space program following a war or words on Twitter. Plus, teams find an early explorer’s ship at the bottom of the sea, and NASA’s photos from the moon command cash at an auction. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.
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Researchers have discovered the remarkably well-preserved wreck of polar explorer Ernest Shackleton’s ship, Endurance, in 10,000 feet of icy water, a century after it was swallowed up by Antarctic ice during what proved to be one of the most heroic expeditions in history.

A team of marine archaeologists, engineers and other scientists used an icebreaker ship and underwater drones to locate the wreck at the bottom of the Weddell Sea, near the Antarctica Peninsula.

The Falklands Maritime Heritage Trust’s search expedition Endurance22 announced the discovery on Wednesday.

Images and video of the wreck show the three-masted wooden ship in pristine condition, with gold-leaf letters reading “Endurance” still affixed to the stern and the ship’s lacquered wooden helm still standing upright, as if the captain may return to steer it at any time.

“This is by far the finest wooden shipwreck I have ever seen,” said Mensun Bound, the director of the exploration. Bound noted the wreck is still upright, clear of the seabed “and in a brilliant state of preservation.”

The discovery is “a titantic find” in “one of the world’s most challenging environments,” said maritime historian Steven Schwankert, who was not involved in the expedition.

The combination of deep, dark waters — no sunlight penetrates to 10,000 feet — frigid temperatures and sea ice have frustrated past efforts to find Endurance, but also explain why the wreck is in such good condition.

The bottom of the Weddell Sea is “a very inhospitable environment for just about everything — especially the kind of bacteria, mites and wood-eating worms that would otherwise enjoy munching on a wooden shipwreck,” Schwankert said.

The expedition Endurance22 embarked from Cape Town, South Africa, in early February in a ship capable of breaking through 1-meter-thick ice. 

The team, which included more than 100 researchers and crew members, deployed underwater drones that combed the seafloor for two weeks in the area where the ship was recorded to have sunk in 1915. 

“We have made polar history with the discovery of Endurance, and successfully completed the world’s most challenging shipwreck search,” said expedition leader John Shears. 

The British explorer Shackleton never achieved his ambition to become the first person to cross Antarctica via the South Pole. In fact, he never set foot on the continent. 

“Despite being designed to resist collision with ice floes and to break through pack ice, Endurance could not withstand being crushed by heavy sea ice,” said Ann Coats, a maritime historian at the University of Portsmouth. 

Shackleton himself noted the difficulty of the endeavor in his diary. 

“The end came at last about 5 p.m.,” he wrote. “She was doomed, no ship built by human hands could have withstood the strain.” 

Before the ship disappeared 3,000 meters below icy waters, Shackleton’s crew loaded food and other provisions into three lifeboats to escape and set up camp on ice floes, where they used sled dogs to carry their provisions, according to Shackleton’s diary. 

Shackleton and his captain, Frank Worsley, then sailed across 1,287 kilometers of treacherous icy waters in a 7-meter ship to the island of South Georgia, a remote whaling community, to get help. That successful trip is considered a heroic feat of fortitude, and Shackleton’s decisive response to imminent tragedy is still held up today as a model of how to lead in difficult circumstances. 

“Shackleton was a very good planner and a good improviser — I have a feeling that the polar explorers of today would not survive the same kinds of things he endured,” said Anna Wahlin, a polar researcher at the University of Gothenburg, who just returned from a two-month mission studying ice shelves and warming ocean currents in Antartica. 

In Antartica, “everything is gray or white,” and after only a few weeks, explorers “start to miss smelling Earth, walking in the forest, hearing birds chirp, seeing things that are green,” she said. 

The expedition to find Endurance comes a century after Shackleton’s death in 1922. British historian and broadcaster Dan Snow, who accompanied the researchers, tweeted that the wreck’s discovery on Saturday happened “100 years to the day since Shackleton was buried.” 

The ship is protected as a historic monument under the 6-decade-old Antarctic Treaty that is intended to protect the region’s environment. 

Researchers filmed the wreck, but nothing was recovered or disturbed. Instead, expedition organizers say they want to use laser scans to create a 3-D model of the ship that can be displayed in both traveling exhibits and a permanent museum exhibit. 

“Shackleton, we like to think, would have been proud of us,” the expedition’s Bound wrote in a blog post. 
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The World Health Organization expressed concern Wednesday that many countries are drastically reducing COVID-19 testing, inhibiting the ability of public health professionals to monitor where the coronavirus is, how it’s spreading and how it’s evolving.

During a briefing at agency headquarters in Geneva, WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said that while cases and deaths were declining globally and many countries had lifted restrictions, the pandemic was far from over, “and it will not be over anywhere until it’s over everywhere.”

Tedros said the WHO on Wednesday published new guidelines on self-testing for COVID-19 and recommended that self-tests be offered in addition to professionally administered testing services. He said evidence showed that users can reliably and accurately self-test, and that self-testing may reduce inequalities in testing access.

The WHO chief said he hoped the new guidance would also help increase access to testing, which is too expensive for many low-income countries, where those tools could play an important role in expanding testing.

Tedros also said the agency and its partners in the ACT Accelerator grouping — part of the WHO’s COVAX initiative, which has focused on equitable access to vaccines globally — were seeking to raise funds “to ensure that all countries that need self-tests will be able to receive them as quickly as possible.”

Regarding the situation in Ukraine, Tedros said the WHO had so far delivered 81 tons of supplies to the country and was establishing a pipeline of supplies for health facilities throughout Ukraine.

He said Tuesday that the agency had delivered five tons of medical supplies to Kyiv to support surgical care for 150 trauma patients, and other supplies to manage a range of health conditions for 45,000 people for a month.

Tedros said the WHO “continues to call on the Russian Federation to commit to a peaceful resolution to this crisis, and to allow safe, unimpeded access to humanitarian assistance for those in need.”
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A man who received the first heart transplant from a pig two months ago has died, the University of Maryland Medical Center said Wednesday. 

Doctors did not say the specific reason David Bennett, 57, died Tuesday, only saying his condition had been worsening over the past several days. 

“We are grateful for every innovative moment, every crazy dream, every sleepless night that went into this historic effort,” Bennett’s son, David Bennett Jr., said in a statement released by the University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We hope this story can be the beginning of hope and not the end.” 

Prior to the January 7 transplant, Bennett had been in poor health and was ineligible for a human heart. 

Organ transplants from animals — xenotransplantation — have largely failed because the human body rejects them almost immediately, but in this case, the pig had been genetically modified with human genes in the hope of delaying rejection.  

At first, things seemed to be going well for Bennett, and last month, the hospital released a video of him watching the Super Bowl from his hospital bed. 

“We are devastated by the loss of Mr. Bennett. He proved to be a brave and noble patient who fought all the way to the end,” Dr. Bartley Griffith, who performed the surgery at the Baltimore hospital, said in a statement. 

Bennett lived longer than one notable case in 1984 when a baboon heart was transplanted to a baby. The baby lived 21 days. 

“We have gained invaluable insights learning that the genetically modified pig heart can function well within the human body while the immune system is adequately suppressed,” said Dr. Muhammad M. Mohiuddin, professor of surgery and scientific director of the Cardiac Xenotransplantation Program at University of Maryland School of Medicine. “We remain optimistic and plan on continuing our work in future clinical trials.”

More than 106,000 people are on the organ donation waiting list in the United States. Last year, more than 41,000 transplants were performed, and of those, 3,800 were heart transplants. 

Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. 

 
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Ahead of World Tuberculosis Day (March 24), the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria is calling for governments to renew the fight against the respiratory illness, which kills over one million people each year. In South Africa, a hotspot for TB, a mobile screening team is trying to make up for disruptions from the COVID-19 pandemic. Linda Givetash reports from Johannesburg.
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An expert group convened by the World Health Organization said Tuesday it “strongly supports urgent and broad access” to booster doses, in a reversal of the U.N. agency’s previous insistence that boosters weren’t necessary and contributed to vaccine inequity.

In a statement, WHO said its expert group concluded that immunization with authorized COVID-19 vaccines provide high levels of protection against severe disease and death amid the global circulation of the hugely contagious omicron variant.

It said vaccination, including the use of boosters, was especially important for people at risk of severe disease.

Last year, WHO’s director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus called for a moratorium on booster doses while dozens of countries embarked on administering the doses, saying rich countries should immediately donate those vaccines to poor countries instead. WHO scientists said at the time they would continue to evaluate incoming data.

Numerous scientific studies have since proven that booster doses of authorized vaccines help restore waning immunity and protect against serious COVID-19. Booster programs in rich countries including Britain, Canada and the U.S. have been credited with preventing the surge in omicron infections from spilling over into hospitals and cemeteries.

WHO said it is continuing to monitor the global spread of omicron, including a “stealth” version known as BA.2, which has been documented to have re-infected some people after an initial case of omicron. There’s mixed research on whether it causes more severe disease, but vaccines appear just as effective against it.

WHO noted that the current authorized COVID-19 vaccines are all based on the strain that was first detected in Wuhan, China more than three years ago.

“Since then, there has been continuous and substantial virus evolution and it is likely that this evolution will continue, resulting in the emergence of new variants,” the agency said. It added that coronavirus vaccines would likely need to be updated.
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COVID-19 can cause the brain to shrink, reduce grey matter in the regions that control emotion and memory, and damage areas that control the sense of smell, an Oxford University study has found.

The scientists said that the effects were even seen in people who had not been hospitalized with COVID, and whether the impact could be partially reversed or if they would persist in the long term needed further investigation.

“There is strong evidence for brain-related abnormalities in COVID-19,” the researchers said in their study, which was released on Monday.

Even in mild cases, participants in the research showed “a worsening of executive function” responsible for focus and organizing, and on an average brain sizes shrank between 0.2% and 2%.

The peer-reviewed study, published in the Nature journal, investigated brain changes in 785 participants aged 51–81 whose brains were scanned twice, including 401 people who caught COVID between their two scans. The second scan was done on average 141 days after the first scan.

The study was conducted when the Alpha variant was dominant in Britain and is unlikely to include anyone infected with the Delta variant.

Studies have found some people who had COVID suffered from “brain fog” or mental cloudiness that included impairment to attention, concentration, speed of information processing and memory. Read full story

The researchers did not say if vaccination against COVID had any impact on the condition but the UK Health Security Agency said last month that a review of 15 studies found that vaccinated people were about half as likely to develop symptoms of long COVID compared with the unvaccinated.
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Chocolate makers are expected to raise prices this year due to higher costs of cocoa from exporters like Ivory Coast, the world’s largest cocoa producer.

Hershey, the largest producer of chocolate products in the United States, said last month it will raise prices on its products across the board due to the rising cost of ingredients.   

Meanwhile, chocolate makers like Dana Mroueh said they are seeing cocoa prices rise in Ivory Coast, the world’s biggest cocoa producer.  

“We’ve noticed the price of cocoa is going up these few years, especially organic cocoa. So, from the beginning to today, those five years, we can say the price has risen 20 percent,” Mroueh said.  

Demand for chocolate in America increased during the COVID-19 pandemic, and cocoa producers in Ivory Coast are struggling to keep up with that demand.   

Experts say one reason is the impact of climate change.  

Harvard University says that by 2030, parts of West Africa will be too hot and dry to adequately produce cocoa. The West African countries of Ghana and Ivory Coast alone produce 70 percent of global supply.  

Cocoa farmer Raphael Konan Kouassi took VOA to his plantation, a shady orchard where fat green and yellow cocoa pods hung from tree trunks. He said trees are yielding less due to rising temperatures and poor rains.  

“Almost all of the young plants die in the high season. If you have not been able to get water to them, you have no cocoa,” he said.  

Kouassi receives government assistance in the form of cocoa trees, which are more resilient to the fluctuations of climate change, but he said government distributions happen at the wrong time of year for the saplings to survive.  

Christian Bunn of the Consortium of International Agricultural Research Centers, a global scientific organization, said information about how the climate is changing can inform farmers on how to better nurture their crops.  

“What we’re seeing is that the onset of both dry and wet season can change. It’s less reliable. During the season, there may be breaks in terms of rain during the dry season, or there’s a dry spell during the wet season, and the overall distribution or amounts of rainfall they’re receiving may change,” Bunn said.  

The data shows it may be better for farmers to stop producing cocoa and diversify into other crops, he said.   

However, Olga Yenou, the CEO of an Ivorian company that supplies The Hershey Company, said higher prices for cocoa could be welcomed by farmers.  

“My opinion is that these farmers should have better prices, should earn more, because they work hard. Most are poor,” Yenou said.  

Her wish appears to be coming true. As climate change continues to bite, prices continue to surge.  

 
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Hammered by climate change and relentless deforestation, the Amazon rainforest is losing its capacity to recover and could irretrievably transition into savannah, with dire consequences for the region and the world, according to a study published Monday.   

Researchers warned that the findings mean the Amazon could be approaching a so-called tipping point faster than previously understood.    

Analyzing 25 years of satellite data, researchers measured for the first time the Amazon’s resilience against shocks such as droughts and fires, a key indicator of overall health. 

Resilience has declined across more than three-quarters of the Amazon basin, home to half the world’s rainforest, the researchers reported in the journal Nature Climate Change. 

In areas hit hardest by destruction or drought, the forest’s ability to bounce back was reduced by approximately half, co-author Tim Lenton, director of the University of Exeter’s Global Systems Institute, told AFP. 

“Our resilience measure changed by more than a factor of two in the places nearer to human activity and in places that are driest,” he said in an interview.   

Climate models have suggested that global heating – which has on average warmed Earth’s surface 1.1 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels – could by itself push the Amazon past a point of no return into a far drier savannah-like state. 

If carbon pollution continues unabated, that scenario could be locked in by mid-century, according to some models. 

“But, of course, it’s not just climate change – people are busy chopping or burning the forest down, which is a second pressure point,” Lenton said. 

“Those two things interact, so there are concerns the transition could happen even earlier.” 

Besides the Amazon, ice sheets on Greenland and the West Antarctic, Siberian permafrost loaded with CO2 and methane, monsoon rains in South Asia, coral reef ecosystems, and the Atlantic Ocean current are all are vulnerable to tipping points that could radically alter the world as we know it. 

Global fallout 

Deforestation in Brazil has surged since far-right President Jair Bolsonaro took office in 2019, hitting a 15-year high last year. 

Scientists reported recently that Brazil’s rainforest – 60% of the Amazon basin’s total – has shifted from a “sink” to a “source” of CO2, releasing 20% more of the greenhouse gas into the atmosphere over the past decade than it absorbed. 

Terrestrial ecosystems worldwide have been a crucial ally as the world struggles to curb CO2 emissions. Vegetation and soil globally have consistently absorbed about 30% of carbon pollution since 1960, even as emissions increased by half.  

“Savannification” of the Amazon would be hugely disruptive, in South America and across the globe.  

More than 90 billion tons of CO2 stored in its rainforest – twice worldwide annual emissions from all sources – could be released into the atmosphere, pushing global temperatures up even faster. 

Regionally, “it’s not just the forests that take a hit,” said Lenton. “If you lose the recycling of rainfall from the Amazon, you get knock-on effects in central Brazil, the country’s agricultural heartland.” 

Ominously, the new findings marshal data pointing in the same direction. 

“Many researchers have theorized that a tipping point could be reached,” said co-author Niklas Boers, a professor at the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research in Germany.  

“Our study provides vital empirical evidence that we are approaching that threshold.” 

‘Saving grace’ 

To assess change in the resilience of the rainforest, Lenton, Boers and lead author Chris Boulton from Exeter University analyzed two satellite data sets, one measuring biomass and the other the “greenness” of the canopy.   

“If too much resilience is lost, dieback may become inevitable – but that won’t become obvious until the major event that tips the system is over,” said Boers. 

There may be a “saving grace” that could pull the Amazon back from the brink. 

“The rainforest naturally has a lot of resilience – this is a biome that weathered the ice ages, after all,” said Lenton. 

“If you could bring the temperature back down again even after passing the tipping point, you might be able to rescue the situation.” 

“But that still puts you in the realm of massive carbon dioxide removal, or geoengineering, which has its own risks.” 

Just under 20% of the Amazon rainforest – straddling nine nations and covering more than 5 million square kilometers (2 million square miles) – has been destroyed or degraded since 1970, mostly for the production of lumber, soy, palm oil, biofuels and beef. 
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Duke University doctors say a baby is thriving after a first-of-its-kind heart transplant — one that came with a bonus technique to try to help prevent rejection of the new organ.

The thymus plays a critical role in building the immune system. Doctors have wondered if implanting some thymus tissue that matched a donated organ might help it survive without the recipient needing toxic anti-rejection medicines.

Easton Sinnamon of Asheboro, North Carolina, received his unique transplant last summer when he was 6 months old. But Duke waited to announce it until Monday after doctors learned the specially processed thymus implants appear to be functioning like they’d hoped — producing immune cells that don’t treat the tot’s new heart like foreign tissue.

Doctors eventually will try weaning Easton off the immune-suppressing drugs required after a transplant, said Dr. Joseph Turek, Duke’s chief of pediatric cardiac surgery.

The research is in very early stages and just one possible method scientists are testing in hopes of inducing what’s called immune tolerance to a transplant.

But Turek says if it works, it could be attempted with other organ transplants, not just the heart.

Easton was a candidate for the experimental transplant because he had two separate health problems. He was born with some heart defects that surgeries right after birth failed to solve. And he suffered recurrent infections that doctors eventually realized meant his own thymus wasn’t working properly.

Some babies are born without a thymus, which stimulates development of part of the immune system known as T cells. Separately, Duke researchers had been working with Enzyvant Therapeutics to develop lab-grown implants of donated thymus tissue to treat that rare disorder.

Easton got a combination of the two procedures. First surgeons implanted his new heart while the donated thymus was sent to a lab. About two weeks later, he had a second operation to implant the processed thymus tissue. His own partially working thymus was removed, to clear the way for new immune cells to take hold.

About six months later, testing shows the thymus tissue is building Easton well-functioning new T cells, said Turek.
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