YCLOAK

President Donald Trump vowed Tuesday that the U.S. would “win” the battle against the heroin and opioid plague, but he stopped short of declaring a national emergency as his handpicked commission had recommended.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Some information for this report came from AP.
…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Neural therapies, virtual reality

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Third Frontier Commission selected NineSigma on Tuesday to manage the technology challenge. The Cleveland firm has managed similar competitions at the federal level for NASA and the Department of Homeland Security.
…

The U.S. State Department is advising its diplomats to sidestep questions from foreign governments about the Trump administration’s stance on the Paris climate deal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘No alternative explanations’

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Paris climate accord, in which nearly 200 countries participate, includes an agreement to cut or limit fossil fuel emissions. The report said meeting the emissions goals would be a significant step toward managing global warming.
…

Hot on the heels of its proposal to lower nicotine levels in cigarettes, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced plans on Tuesday for an education campaign to discourage use of electronic cigarettes among youth.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The FDA said it estimates “The Real Cost” campaign to have prevented nearly 350,000 young people between the ages of 11 and 18 from starting to smoke from 2014 to 2016.
…

The penguins at the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California have something in common with Sara Mandel’s cats.

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

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

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

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

WATCH: Animals like video games too!

Exercise for animals’ brains

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

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

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

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

Tortoise faster than dog

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

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

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

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

Removing ‘humans from equation’

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

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

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

 

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

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

 
…

It’s not just people who like playing computer games. Animals of different species also seem to be fascinated with video games and touch screens, as researchers and zoos try this technology on animals. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee reports from the Aquarium of the Pacific in Long Beach, California.
…

Facebook, Twitter, Instagram allow us to share aspects of our lives with our friends, family and the world. But what does what we are sharing say about our state of mind? Some new research suggests that it may be telling the world a lot more than we think. Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Rocket Lab, a Silicon Valley-funded space launch company, said a contractor’s error was to blame for its maiden flight failing to reach orbit in May, but that the problem had been fixed ahead of another planned launch in the next two months.

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

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

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

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

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

Rocket Lab said the equipment problem had been fixed and it was preparing for its second of three test launches before starting commercial operations at the beginning of 2018.
…

The Interior Department on Monday unveiled a plan to protect the threatened sage grouse that gives Western states greater flexibility to allow mining, logging and other economic development where it now is prohibited.

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

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

 

States affected by the plan are California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, Oregon, South Dakota, Utah, Washington and Wyoming.
…

Researchers have turned skin cells into blood vessel tissue to save a mouse’s wounded leg. They were able to do that simply by tapping the wound with a chip that uses nanotechnology to inject new DNA into the cells.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

In theory, tissue nano-transfection should be able to turn any cell in the body into any other cell type. That could make therapeutic applications of cell reprogramming easier and safer, because cells would stay in the body during reprogramming. If cells are removed from the body, reprogrammed and then returned, they could be attacked by the immune system.
…

A midday nap is very much part of the Spanish traditional life style. However, having a public place in which to do so is new. Siesta & Go is the first nap bar in Madrid according to reporter Faiza Elmasry. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates.
…