YCLOAK

Scott Judd trained his camera lens on the white dot in the distance. As he moved up the Lake Michigan shoreline, the speck on a breakwater came into view and took his breath away: it was a snowy owl, thousands of miles from its Arctic home.

“It was an amazing sight,” said Judd, a Chicago IT consultant. “It’s almost like they’re from another world. They captivate people in a way that other birds don’t.”

The large white raptors have descended on the Great Lakes region and northeastern U.S. in huge numbers in recent weeks, hanging out at airports, in farm fields, on light poles and along beaches, to the delight of bird lovers.

But for researchers, this winter’s mass migration of the owls from their breeding grounds above the Arctic Circle is serious business.

It’s a chance to trap and fit some of the visitors with tiny transmitters to help track them around the globe and study a long-misunderstood species whose numbers likely are far fewer than previously thought, researchers say.

“There is still a lot that we don’t know about them … but we aim to answer the questions in the next few years,” said Canadian biologist Jean-Francois Therrien, a senior researcher at Hawk Mountain Sanctuary in Pennsylvania.

The solar-powered transmitters can last for years, collecting information such as latitude, longitude, flight speed and air temperature that is downloaded to a server when the birds fly into range of a cell tower.

The use of transmitters, which intensified during the last North American mass migration in winter 2013-14, already has yielded big surprises.

Instead of 300,000 snowy owls worldwide, as long believed, researchers say the population likely is closer to 30,000 or fewer. The previous estimate was based on how many might be able to breed in a given area.

That calculation was made assuming snowy owls acted like other birds, favoring fixed nesting and wintering sites. But researchers discovered the owls are nomads, often nesting or wintering thousands of miles from previous locations.

The miscalculation doesn’t necessarily mean snowy owls, which can grow to about 2 feet long (60 centimeters long) with 5-foot (1.5-meter) wingspans, are in decline. Scientists simply don’t know because they never had an accurate starting point.

This month, snowy owls were listed as vulnerable — one step away from endangered — by the International Union for Conservation of Nature. They’re protected in the U.S. under the Migratory Bird Act.

This year’s mass migration is a bit of good news. Researchers once thought these so-called “irruptions” signaled a lack of prey in the Arctic, but now believe the opposite: Breeding owls feed on lemmings, a rodent that lives under Arctic snowpack and whose population surges about every three or four years. More lemmings means the owl population explodes— and that more birds than usual will winter in places people can see them.

But researchers worry that climate change will affect the owl population because lemmings are exceptionally sensitive to even small temperature changes.

Lemmings “depend on deep, fluffy, thick layers of insulating snow” to breed successfully, said Scott Weidensaul, director at Project SNOWstorm, an owl-tracking group whose volunteers have put transmitters on more than 50 snowy owls in the past four years .

The snowy owl population collapsed in Norway and Sweden in the mid-1990s, all but vanishing there for almost two decades before reappearing at lower numbers, experts said. In Greenland, where the population collapsed in the late 1990s, researchers found a few nests in 2011 and 2012 after six years with no recorded nests, but owls didn’t come back in 2016 or 2017, when lemmings should have been peaking.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reported this month that the far northern Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe.

But it’s tough to assess lemming population trends in remote areas. Although researchers hope to enlist native villagers to help, it’s mostly up to owls with transmitters for now.

Snowy owls somehow seem to find lemmings even if they are thousands of miles from where their population last peaked, Therrien said.

“They look around the Arctic,” he said. “The movement is amazing to watch on a map: There are no straight lines. They’re zigzagging.”

Norman Smith, a snowy owl expert with Mass Audubon in Massachusetts, said he’s heartened that many independent researchers worldwide joined forces to share information on snowy owls.

“It’s amazing what we’ve learned, but we need a bigger database of birds,” said Smith, who has been trapping owls at Boston’s Logan International Airport for more than 35 years and fits them with a leg band or transmitter before letting them go. He put a satellite tracker on an owl for the first time in 2000, proving that they could make it back to the Arctic.

Last week, Smith released a young female on a barrier beach along the Atlantic Ocean. It flew south, then circled back and flew overhead. As he drove over a bridge to the mainland, the owl was sitting on a post, surveying its new winter home.
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In a remarkably strong show of consumer demand, nearly 9 million people signed up for “Obamacare” next year, as government numbers out Thursday proved predictions of its collapse wrong yet again.

 

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services said more than 8.8 million people have signed up in the 39 states served by the federal HealthCare.gov website.

 

That compares to 9.2 million last year in the same states – or 96 percent of the previous total.

 

The level exceeds what experts thought was possible after another year of political battles over the Affordable Care Act, not to mention market problems like rising premiums and insurer exits. On top of that, the Trump administration cut enrollment season in half, slashed the ad budget, terminated major payments to insurers, and scaled back grants for consumer counselors.

 

“This level of enrollment is truly remarkable, especially given the headwinds faced by the program,” said Larry Levitt of the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation.

 

President Donald Trump insistently predicted “Obamacare” would implode as he pursued unsuccessful efforts to repeal it in Congress. This week he incorrectly declared the GOP tax bill had essentially repealed it.

 

Despite all that, more than 1 million new customers signed up last week, ahead of a December 15 deadline for HealthCare.gov. That’s a sign of solid interest in the program, which offers subsidized private health insurance to people who don’t have access to job-based coverage.

 

It’s possible that final HealthCare.gov numbers could end up somewhat higher than reported Thursday, partly because late sign-ups in the Midwest and the West have yet to be added in.

 

The nationwide enrollment total won’t be known for weeks, since some states running their own health insurance markets – or exchanges – continue signing up customers through January.

 

Total national enrollment could wind up near last year’s final number of 12.2 million.

 

“We know anecdotally that many state exchanges are running ahead of last year, (and) we could actually make up the national enrollment deficit with higher state-run exchange enrollment,” said Chris Sloan of the consulting firm Avalere Health.

 

Among the HealthCare.gov states, Florida led in enrollments, with 1.7 million people so far. Texas was next, with 1.1 million. Sign-ups for those states could rise, since a deadline extension is available for people in hurricane-affected areas.

 

In Austin, Texas, a nonprofit group that helps low-income working people surpassed its enrollments for last year, and then some. Foundation Communities signed up 5,323 people this year, or about 20 percent more than last year.

 

‘Obamacare is working’

Health insurance program director Elizabeth Colvin credited squads of volunteers who helped steer consumers through a sign-up process that includes having to estimate their income for next year and other challenges.

 

“The number that came out today proves that Obamacare is working,” said Colvin.

 

Lori Lodes, a former Obama administration official who once helped direct the enrollment campaign, said it’s likely that last week saw the biggest number of sign-ups in the program’s history.

 

That’s certain to lead to more criticism of the Trump administration for shortening open enrollment and other actions that Democrats call “sabotage.”

 

“The American people surged to defend this historic law from the cruelty of Trumpcare, and they enrolled at a record pace in quality, affordable health coverage on HealthCare.gov,” said House Democratic leader Nancy Pelosi of California.

 

However, the administration also took other less noticed steps to facilitate enrollment, such as creating an easier path for insurers and brokers to sign up customers.

 

The strong numbers for HealthCare.gov came a day after Trump proclaimed that the GOP tax bill “essentially repealed Obamacare.”

 

But the tax overhaul only repealed the health law’s fines on people who don’t carry health insurance, starting in 2019. Other major elements of former president Barack Obama’s law remain in place, including its Medicaid expansion tailored to low-income adults, protections for people with pre-existing medical conditions, subsidies to help consumers pay their premiums, and requirements that insurers cover “essential” health benefits.

 

First word of the enrollment numbers came via Twitter from Seema Verma, head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services.

 

She struck an upbeat tone:

 

“We take pride in providing great customer service,” she wrote, congratulating her agency on “the smoothest experience for consumers to date.”

 

In an interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Kentucky, indicated he’s skeptical at best about revisiting botched efforts to dismantle the health care law.

 

Bipartisan legislation to shore up insurance markets is pending before the Senate, but its fate is also uncertain.

 
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While progress has been made against malaria, the mosquito-borne disease kills more than 420,000 people each year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa. Now, drug-resistant malaria strains in Southeast Asia could threaten the global fight against the disease. VOA’s Faith Lapidus reports.
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U.S. deaths from drug overdoses skyrocketed 21 percent last year, and for the second straight year dragged down how long Americans are expected to live.

The government figures released Thursday put drug deaths at 63,600, up from about 52,000 in 2015. For the first time, the powerful painkiller fentanyl and its close opioid cousins played a bigger role in the deaths than any other legal or illegal drug, surpassing prescription pain pills and heroin.

“This is urgent and deadly,” said Dr. Brenda Fitzgerald, director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The opioid epidemic “clearly has a huge impact on our entire society.”

​Opioids behind two-thirds of deaths

Two-thirds of last year’s drug deaths, about 42,000, involved opioids, a category that includes heroin, methadone, prescription pain pills like OxyContin, and fentanyl. Fatal overdoses that involved fentanyl and fentanyl-like drugs doubled in one year, to more than 19,000, mostly from illegally made pills or powder, which is often mixed with heroin or other drugs.

Heroin was tied to 15,500 deaths and prescription painkillers to 14,500 deaths. The balance of the overdose deaths involved sedatives, cocaine and methamphetamines. More than one drug is often involved in an overdose death.

The highest drug death rates were in ages 25 to 54.

Preliminary 2017 figures show the rise in overdose deaths continuing.

​Life expectancy 78 years, 7 months

The drug deaths weigh into CDC’s annual calculation of the average time a person is expected to live. The life expectancy figure is based on the year of their birth, current death trends and other factors. For decades, it was on the upswing, rising a few months nearly every year. But last year marked the first time in more than a half century that U.S. life expectancy fell two consecutive years.

A baby born last year in the U.S. is expected to live about 78 years and 7 months, on average, the CDC said. An American born in 2015 was expected to live about a month longer and one born in 2014 about two months longer than that.

The dip in 2015 was blamed on drug deaths and an unusual upturn in the death rate for the nation’s leading killer, heart disease. Typically, life expectancy goes back up after a one-year decline, said Robert Anderson, who oversees the CDC’s death statistics. The last time there was a two-year drop was 1962-1963. It also happened twice in the 1920s.

“If we don’t get a handle on this,” he said, “we could very well see a third year in a row. With no end in sight.”

Flu pandemic

A three-year decline happened in 1916, 1917 and 1918, which included the worst flu pandemic in modern history.

Overall, there were more than 2.7 million U.S. deaths in 2016, or about 32,000 more than the previous year. It was the most deaths in a single year since the government has been counting. That partly reflects the nation’s growing and aging population. But death rates last year continued to go down for people who are 65 and older while going up for all younger adults, those most affected by the opioid epidemic.

The CDC also reported:

• West Virginia continued to be the state with highest drug overdose death rate, with a rate of 52 deaths per 100,000 state residents in 2016. Ohio and New Hampshire were next, both at about 39 per 100,000.

• Life expectancy for men decreased, but it held steady for women. That increased the gender gap to five years; about 76 for men and 81 for women.

• U.S. death rates decreased for seven of the 10 leading causes of death, but rose for suicide, Alzheimer’s disease and for a category called unintentional injuries, which includes drug overdoses.

• Accidental injuries displaced chronic lower respiratory diseases to become the nation’s third leading cause of death. Contributing were increases in deaths from car crashes and falls.

• Gun deaths rose for a second year, to nearly 39,000. They had been hovering around 33,500 deaths a few years ago.

The United States ranks below dozens of other high-income countries in life expectancy, according to the World Bank. Highest is Japan, at nearly 84 years.

“The fact that U.S. has basically stagnated over the past seven years, and now we’re seeing small declines, is a real sign that the U.S. is doing badly,” said Jessica Ho, a University of Southern California researcher who studies death trends.
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Scientists warn a campaign to eradicate polio in central Africa is falling short because of upheaval in the Lake Chad Basin area, where the Boko Haram militant group remains active.  On the positive side, on country – Gabon – has been declared polio-free.

Professor Rose Leke, who heads the Africa Regional Certification Commission for polio eradication, says Central Africa has seen no cases of polio in the past 15 months.  But, she adds, scientists cannot be sure the polio virus has been eradicated in the region.

Leke says medical teams find it difficult getting access to conflict zones in Mali, the Central African Republic, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and parts of Cameroon, Chad, Niger and Nigeria affected by the Boko Haram insurgency.

“DRC has circulating polio viruses, so many of them.  We are worried about the country and so we have specific recommendations also for DRC and for all the others. We are still very concerned about the Lake Chad basin area, the Borno [state in Nigeria] area where we do not know what is happening there.  I think that is a concern for the entire world,” she said.

Leke says polio cases have decreased by more than 99 percent in the past 30 years, from an estimated 350,000 per year to just 37 reported cases in 2016.

She says as a result of the global effort to eradicate the disease, more than 16 million people have been saved from paralysis.

According to the United Nations, once a case of polio is recorded, it takes three years of no other case to declare the zone polio-free.  Gabon recently reached that goal.

Gabon’s neighbor Cameroon has attained the status of “non-polio exporting country,” but is still considered a high-risk nation like other African states with an influx of refugees from conflict zones that health care workers mostly avoid.

But Alim Hayatou, Cameroon’s secretary of state in the ministry of health, says the country is also on track to be polio-free.

He says they have prepared an ambitious plan to make sure Cameroon eliminates polio by 2019.

Central African states have organized numerous inoculation campaigns, but more than 15 percent of children in the region remain unvaccinated due to cultural resistance, conflicts and illiteracy.
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A survey by the U.N. refugee agency reveals heightened worries by the Rohingya refugee population in Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh over their health and safety.

It has been nearly four months since the mass exodus of Rohingya refugees began from Myanmar into Cox’s Bazar, Bangladesh. More than 645,000 Rohingya who escaped violence and persecution in Myanmar are living in squalid, overcrowded settlements.  

A survey by the U.N. refugee agency and 13 other organizations finds the refugees have developed strong support networks to help them cope with their difficulties.

UNHCR spokesman Andrej Mahecic says the refugees have many worries. They express concern about their safety, considering their weak shelter accommodations and poor lighting at night.

“Access to sanitation is still insufficient, leading sometimes to long queues for latrines,” said Mahecic. “Women and girls are anxious about the shortage of private bathing spaces, forcing some to wash outside their shelters in early morning hours.”

The survey finds some children have to walk long distances to fetch water and firewood, a situation that can put them at risk. Mahecic says both parents and children want access to education and more safe places for children to play. He says health services also are a major concern.

“Increased mental health support for those who have witnessed the killings or suffered torture or rape remains crucially needed,” said Mahecic. “Refugees cite continued feelings of depression and rejection, especially among the elderly and disabled. Many young people are worried about their uncertain future.” 

Mahecic says the UNHCR will use the survey findings to improve its protection and assistance programs for the Rohingya in the coming year. He says the agency already has begun providing alternatives to firewood to address child labor and environmental concerns.

He says efforts also are under way to improve the hygiene and sanitary conditions for women and girls and to provide more child-friendly spaces where boys and girls can play in safety. Children account for more than half of the refugee population.

Health officials say the refugees are extremely vulnerable to diseases as they have low vaccination coverage and are living in congested, unsanitary settlements that are breeding grounds for infectious diseases.

 
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The World Meteorological Organization reports 2017 is on track to be among the three hottest years on record, just behind the two preceding years.

While 2017 may only emerge as the third warmest year on record, scientists predict it will beat out the competition for warmest year without a warming El Nino. These record setting years concern those who see this as a sure sign that climate change is happening at a quickened pace.

The WMO says the overall long-term warming trend since the late 1970s is worrying and cannot be ignored. The United Nations agency says rising temperatures are ushering in more extreme weather with huge socioeconomic impact.

WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis says the warming conditions prevailing over both the Arctic and the Antarctic are very alarming. She says the Arctic is warming at about twice the rate of the global temperature increase.

“We are very, very concerned about the rate of warming in the Arctic,” she said. “There was an Arctic Report Card released last week. It said while 2017 saw fewer records shattered than in 2016, the Arctic shows no sign of returning to the reliably frozen region it was decades ago.”

​The Arctic Report Card is a peer-reviewed report that brings together the work of 85 scientists from 12 nations.

WMO notes warmer than average temperatures dominated across much of the world’s land and ocean surfaces during November. It says the most notable temperature rises were across the Northern Hemisphere.

For example, it reports temperatures in northern Canada and northwestern Alaska were two degrees centigrade above the average, indicating a very pronounced warming at the Arctic.

 

 

 
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The Environmental Protection Agency says an internal task force appointed to revamp how the nation’s most polluted sites are cleaned up generated no record of its deliberations.

EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt in May announced the creation of a Superfund Task Force that he said would reprioritize and streamline procedures for remediating more than 1,300 sites. Pruitt, the former attorney general of Oklahoma, appointed a political supporter from his home state with no experience in pollution cleanups to lead the group.

The task force in June issued a nearly three-dozen page report containing 42 detailed recommendations, all of which Pruitt immediately adopted. The advocacy group Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility, known as PEER, quickly filed a Freedom of Information Act request seeking a long list of documents related to the development of Pruitt’s plan.

After EPA didn’t immediately release any records, PEER sued.

Now, nearly six months after the task force released its report, a lawyer for EPA has written PEER to say that the task force had no agenda for its meetings, kept no minutes and used no reference materials.

Further, there was no written criteria for selecting the 107 EPA employees the agency says served on the task force or background materials distributed to them during the deliberative process for creating the recommendations.

According to EPA, the task force also created no work product other than its final report.

“Pruitt’s plan for cleaning up toxic sites was apparently immaculately conceived, without the usual trappings of human parentage,” said Jeff Ruch, the executive direction of PEER. “It stretches credulity that 107 EPA staff members with no agenda or reference materials somehow wrote an intricate plan in 30 days.”

The task force was led by Albert “Kell” Kelly, whom Pruitt hired at EPA as a senior adviser. Kelly was previously the chairman of Tulsa-based SpiritBank, where he worked as an executive for 34 years.

The Associated Press reported in August that Kelly was barred by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation from working for any U.S. financial institution after officials determined he violated laws or regulations, leading to a financial loss for his bank. The FDIC’s order didn’t detail what Kelly is alleged to have done. Without admitting wrongdoing, he agreed to pay a $125,000 penalty.
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In the universe, particularly in our galaxy, there are a great number of multiple-stellar systems where two or more stars rotate around each other. In many of these systems, the stars collide – a phenomenon that has been familiar to astronomers for a long time. But scientists say a collision that happened almost two thousand years ago will soon be able to be seen with the naked eye. VOA’s Aram Vanetsyan has more.
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“Music hath charms,” the saying goes, and it does have power, to make us happy, sad, or even ignite social change. But it also has healing powers, and researchers want to know how that works. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A new study has dashed hopes that people may be able to protect themselves from dementia through medicine, diet or exercise.

“To put it simply, all evidence indicates that there is no magic bullet,” Dr. Eric Larson wrote in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The study outlined in the medical journal looked at four types of intervention to try to prevent dementia — prescription drugs, exercise, cognitive training, and nonprescription vitamins and supplements.

Researchers found none worked.

The Lancet, a British medical journal, ​reported earlier this year that about one-third of dementia cases could be linked to such conditions as cigarette smoking, high blood pressure, obesity, a lack of exercise and depression.

While Larson said there was no simple answer to the prevention of dementia, he highly recommended a commonsense, healthful lifestyle that may help delay the disease. It would involve exercising regularly, refraining from smoking, eating a healthful diet and taking part in activities that stimulate the brain.
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Like a friendly Pied Piper, the violinist keeps up a toe-tapping beat as dancers weave through busy hospital hallways and into the chemotherapy unit, patients looking up in surprised delight. Upstairs, a cellist plays an Irish folk tune for a patient in intensive care.

Music increasingly is becoming a part of patient care, although it’s still pretty unusual to see roving performers captivating entire wards, as they did at MedStar Georgetown University Hospital one recent fall morning.

“It takes them away for just a few minutes to some other place where they don’t have to think about what’s going on,” said cellist Martha Vance after playing for a patient isolated to avoid spreading infection.

The challenge: harnessing music to do more than comfort the sick. Now, moving beyond programs like Georgetown’s, the National Institutes of Health is bringing together musicians, music therapists and neuroscientists to tap into the brain’s circuitry and figure out how.

“The brain is able to compensate for other deficits sometimes by using music to communicate,” said NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins, a geneticist who also plays a mean guitar.

To turn that ability into a successful therapy, “it would be a really good thing to know which parts of the brain are still intact to be called into action — to know the circuits well enough to know the backup plan,” Collins added.

Scientists aren’t starting from scratch. Learning to play an instrument, for example, sharpens how the brain processes sound and can improve children’s reading and other school skills. Stroke survivors who can’t speak sometimes can sing, and music therapy can help them retrain brain pathways to communicate. Similarly, Parkinson’s patients sometimes walk better to the right beat.

Scientific explanation

But what’s missing is rigorous science to better understand how either listening to or creating music might improve health in a range of other ways — research into how the brain processes music that NIH is beginning to fund.

“The water is wide, I cannot cross over,” well-known soprano Renee Fleming belted out, not from a concert stage but from inside an MRI machine at the NIH campus.

The opera star, who partnered with Collins to start the Sound Health initiative, spent two hours in the scanner to help researchers tease out what brain activity is key for singing. How? First, Fleming spoke the lyrics. Then she sang them. Finally, she imagined singing them.

“We’re trying to understand the brain not just so we can address mental disorders or diseases or injuries, but also so we can understand what happens when a brain’s working right and what happens when it’s performing at a really high level,” said NIH researcher David Jangraw, who shared the MRI data with The Associated Press.

To Jangraw’s surprise, several brain regions were more active when Fleming imagined singing than when she actually sang, including the brain’s emotion center and areas involved with motion and vision. One theory: It took more mental effort to keep track of where she was in the song, and to maintain its emotion, without auditory feedback.

Fleming put it more simply: “I’m skilled at singing so I didn’t have to think about it quite so much,” she told a spring workshop at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, where she is an artistic adviser.

Indeed, Jangraw notes a saying in neuroscience: Neurons that fire together, wire together. Brain cells communicate by firing messages to each other through junctions called synapses. Cells that regularly connect — for example, when a musician practices — strengthen bonds into circuitry that forms an efficient network for, in Fleming’s case, singing.

But that’s a healthy brain. In North Carolina, a neuroscientist and a dance professor are starting an improvisational dance class for Alzheimer’s to tell whether music and movement enhance a diseased brain’s neural networks.

Well before memory loss becomes severe, Alzheimer’s patients can experience apathy, depression, and gait and balance problems as the brain’s synaptic connections begin to falter. The NIH-funded study at Wake Forest University will randomly assign such patients to the improvisation class — to dance playfully without having to remember choreography — or to other interventions.

What will scans show?

The test: If quality-of-life symptoms improve, will MRI scans show correlating strengthening of neural networks that govern gait or social engagement?

With senior centers increasingly touting arts programs, “having a deeper understanding of how these things are affecting our biology can help us understand how to leverage resources already in our community,” noted Wake Forest lead researcher Christina Hugenschmidt.

Proof may be tough. An international music therapy study failed to significantly help children with autism, the Journal of the American Medical Association recently reported, contradicting earlier promising findings. But experts cited challenges with the study and called for additional research.

Unlike music therapy, which works one on one toward individual outcomes, the arts and humanities program at Georgetown Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center lets musicians-in-residence play throughout the hospital. Palliative care nurses often seek Vance, the cellist, for patients anxious or in pain. She may watch monitors, matching a tune’s tempo to heart rate and then gradually slowing. Sometimes she plays for the dying, choosing a gently arrhythmic background and never a song that might be familiar.

Julia Langley, who directs Georgetown’s program, wants research into the type and dose of music for different health situations: “If we can study the arts in the same way that science studies medication and other therapeutics, I think we will be doing so much good.”
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