YCLOAK

A blood bank in the Pacific Northwest has developed a kit for transfusions in remote places that it says “takes the banking out of blood banking.”

A blood transfusion can often be the difference between life and death. Hospitals have stored blood on hand for people gravely injured in car accidents, and new mothers suffering from potentially fatal postpartum hemorrhaging. In areas far from hospitals and blood banks – like battlefields – medics have trained to do a procedure sometimes called a buddy transfusion. They rapidly collect and transfuse blood on scene after making a match between donor and patient.

Now the technique is bleeding over into the civilian world where it could save tens of thousands of lives every year.

Linda Barnes, chief operating officer at Bloodworks Northwest in Seattle, says the military was the model for what is, essentially, a walking blood bank. “Blood banking of stored blood certainly is not going away anytime soon. But in low resource settings, having banked blood available — and the logistics and the refrigeration required — simply isn’t feasible in the near term.”

Barnes has done a lot of international consulting about strengthening blood systems in places such as Ivory Coast, Kenya, Ukraine and the Caribbean islands. One thing from those trips that nagged her was how many patients in the developing world die each year for lack of blood, especially women giving birth. According to the World Health Organization, nearly 100,000 new mothers perish from profuse bleeding after childbirth each year.

Barnes and a colleague challenged themselves to build a simple, self-contained blood transfusion kit in a shoebox. The off-the-shelf components they assembled didn’t quite fit into a shoebox, so the Bloodpak expanded to backpack size.

It contains everything caregivers at remote rural clinics need to collect and transfuse blood: from alcohol wipes and bandages to blood typing and disease testing test kits to sterile catheters and needles. There are enough supplies to collect blood from six donors.

No refrigeration is needed for any of this because the blood goes directly from the donor to the recipient. The Bloodpak comes with step-by-step guidance on an app clinic workers can install on their smartphones. That app could also be used to send a mass text to registered villagers to come to their clinic to give blood in an emergency — in theory.

Putting it into practice

Recently, Bloodworks Northwest demonstrated its prototype to a Seattle company called Remote Medical International. The fast-growing company supplies medical personnel and support for isolated work places. Clinical Operations Director Loreen Lock foresees a variety of applications for the BloodPak, in oil and gas exploration for example, or mining, construction and by military contractors.

One thing she brought up was informed consent and the advance legwork that might be needed to deploy this in a civilian setting. “Part of the discussion evolved into how to do that in the developing world where there are social concerns, religious concerns. What does the local medicine man, if you will, think of the whole concept? Are they willing to sign off on it or not?”

Although it is not their primary market, Lock says there is undoubtedly great need in sub-Saharan Africa for a portable blood transfusion kit to address postpartum hemorrhaging.

Bloodworks Northwest just learned it is in line for a roughly $500,000 grant from the British foreign aid department. That will launch the next phase of product development: feasibility and acceptability testing at four rural clinics in western Kenya, beginning early next year.

Barnes estimated the Bloodpak would cost around $300 once in mass production. The company has identified clinics and partners for further field testing in Nepal and Uganda. After the validation phase, she said Bloodworks Northwest would likely partner with a medical supply chain company to commercialize the portable transfusion kit.

 
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Celebrity physicist Stephen Hawking says humans should return to the Moon by 2020 and Mars by 2025 in order to unite humanity in the shared purpose of spreading out beyond Earth.

“Spreading out into space will completely change the future of humanity,” the Cambridge professor said at the Starmus Festival in Trondheim, Norway. “I hope it would unite competitive nations in a single goal, to face the common challenge for us all.”

He added that reaching to the Moon, Mars and beyond would also get younger people interested in science such as astrophysics and cosmology.

Hawking said leaving Earth is essential as the planet faces climate change and stresses on natural resources.

“We are running out of space and the only places to go to are other worlds. It is time to explore other solar systems. Spreading out may be the only thing that saves us from ourselves. I am convinced that humans need to leave Earth,” he said. “If humanity is to continue for another million years, our future lies in boldly going where no one else has gone before.”

Hawking said making the first moves into space would “elevate humanity” because it would have to involve many countries.

“Whenever we make a great new leap, such as the Moon landings, we bring people and nations together, usher in new discoveries, and new technologies,” he continued. “To leave Earth demands a concerted global approach, everyone should join in. We need to rekindle the excitement of the early days of space travel in the sixties.”

So far, the European Space Agency has announced a plan to create a “Moon Village” after the International Space Station is decommissioned in 2024. China is also reportedly interested in sending an astronaut to the Moon.

The U.S. space agency, NASA, is instead focusing on manned missions to Mars, something it hopes to do by the 2030s.
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To judge by their popularity in online videos, cats rule the pet kingdom. In fact, there are more pet cats in the United States than dogs, in part because most cat households are home to multiple cats. Some new DNA evidence suggests that long before they began showing up on our daily Facebook feed, cats were part of our lives. VOA’s Kevin Enochs explains.
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The World Meteorological Organization (WMO) reports the planet Earth is experiencing another exceptionally warm year with record-breaking temperatures occurring in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa and the United States.

At least 60 people have been killed in the devastating forest fires in central Portugal. The World Meteorological Organization says one of the factors contributing to these run-away wildfires are very high temperatures that have exceeded 40 degrees Celsius.

Extremely high temperatures also have been recorded in Spain and in France, which issued an Amber alert, the second highest alert level on Tuesday.  WMO reports near record heat is also being reported in California and in the Nevada deserts.

Meteorologists report North Africa and the Middle East are experiencing extremely hot weather with temperatures topping 50 degrees Celsius.  But WMO spokeswoman Claire Nullis says the hottest place on Earth appears to be the town of Turbat in southwestern Pakistan, which reported a temperature of 54 degrees Celsius in May.

“It seems like this is a new temperature record for Asia.  If it is verified, it will equal a record … which was set in Kuwait last July. So, we will now set up an investigation committee to see if that indeed is a new temperature record for the region,” Nullis said.

WMO Senior Scientist Omar Baddour says the world heat record of 56 degrees Celsius was recorded in Death Valley in the United States in 1913.  

“It is very difficult to break a world record because it is not easy to have all the conditions in terms of pressure, invasion of air together at one place.  So, the concern now is we are close to cross that record.  We are now 54.  We are not that far.”  

The WMO says it expects global heat waves will likely trigger more deadly wildfires.  If necessary precautions are not taken, it warns many people will die from the heat, as happened in 2003, when heat waves across Europe killed 70,000 people.

Scientists predict climate change will cause heat waves to become more intense, more frequent and longer.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports the cholera outbreak in Yemen has spread to practically every part of the war-torn country.  Suspected cases of cholera and acute watery diarrhea now top 170,000, with 1,170 deaths.

WHO reports cholera has spread to 20 of Yemen’s 22 governorates in just two months. Spokesman Tarik Jasarevic says aid agencies are scaling up their operation and refining their response.  

He says it is not possible to cover the country at all times, so WHO and the United Nations Childrens Fund (UNICEF)  workers are going to so-called hotspots – the most affected areas – to treat cholera victims who are most at risk.

He calls the situation a very challenging one.

“If you look at the numbers, we are talking close to 2,000 suspected cases a day.  Cholera is endemic in Yemen.  It is currently the largest cholera outbreak that we have in the world,” Jasarevic said.

Cholera can be easily treated by replacing lost fluids right away.  But patients can die within hours if the disease is left untreated. Jasarevic says cholera is being transmitted through contaminated water so it is critical to provide people with a clean water supply.

“It is difficult in a situation where a country has a health system that is collapsing.  There is simply no money in the budget and health facilities are not having money to run their daily operations.  There is also the issue of waste collection that obviously affects the quality of water and access to clean water,” he said.

Jasarevic says the WHO and UNICEF are providing water purification tablets and are chlorinating water in an effort to keep contaminated water sources at a minimum.  He says both agencies also are providing money to health workers as an incentive to have them treat cholera patients.  He notes health workers have not received a salary in six months.
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Scientists said on Monday they had pinpointed a particular type of immune system cell that could predict more precisely if cancer patients are likely to respond to modern immunotherapy medicines.

The discovery, reported in the journal Nature Immunology, suggests doctors and drug developers will need to get smarter in zeroing in on those people who stand to benefit from the expensive new drugs, which are revolutionizing cancer care.

Drugs such as Merck’s Keytruda, Bristol-Myers Squibb’s Opdivo, Roche’s Tecentriq and AstraZeneca’s Imfinzi can boost the immune system’s ability to fight tumors, but they only work for some patients.

The current widely used benchmark when giving cancer immunotherapy is a protein called PDL-1. However, many experts view PDL-1 as a “blunt instrument”, since it does not match precisely to drug response, leading to the consideration of other measures, such as the level of mutation in tumors.

The latest research adds a further twist by highlighting therole of so-called tissue-resident memory T-cells.

Researchers from the University of Southampton and La Jolla Institute for Allergy and Immunology found that lung cancer patients with lots of this cell type in their tumors were 34 percent less likely to die than others.

“Having made the first baby steps with PDL-1 testing, we need to be smarter by using new tests,” said Christian Ottensmeier, a Cancer Research UK scientist who worked on the study.

“PDL-1 testing is a little bit like saying ‘you’ve got a Ferrari because it is red.’ Many Ferraris are red and many tumors that are PDL-1 positive will respond to immunotherapy, but on its own that is not sufficient.”

Ottensmeier and colleagues now plan further clinical trials to see how well their biological predictor can pick out patients who will benefit from taking Opdivo.

Industry analysts expect the new generation of cancer immunotherapy drugs to generate tens of billions of dollars in annual sales by early next decade, with lung cancer the biggest single market.
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Artificial intelligence is turning out to be a useful tool for doctors who are increasingly using complex algorithms to help them diagnose disease, and even create new drugs. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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A mass bleaching of coral reefs worldwide is finally easing after three years, U.S. scientists announced Monday.

About three-quarters of the world’s delicate coral reefs were damaged or killed by hot water in what scientists say was the largest coral catastrophe.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced a global bleaching event in May 2014. It was worse than previous global bleaching events in 1998 and 2010.

The forecast damage doesn’t look widespread in the Indian Ocean, so the event loses its global scope. Bleaching will still be bad in the Caribbean and Pacific, but it’ll be less severe than recent years, said NOAA coral reef watch coordinator C. Mark Eakin.

Places like Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, northwest Hawaii, Guam and parts of the Caribbean have been hit with back-to-back-to-back destruction, Eakin said.

University of Victoria, British Columbia, coral reef scientist Julia Baum plans to travel to Christmas Island in the Pacific where the coral reefs have looked like ghost towns in recent years.

“This is really good news,” Baum said. “We’ve been totally focused on coming out of the carnage of the 2015-2016 El Nino.”

While conditions are improving, it’s too early to celebrate, said Eakin, adding that the world may be at a new normal where reefs are barely able to survive during good conditions.

Eakin said coral have difficulty surviving water already getting warmer by man-made climate change. Extra heating of the water from a natural El Nino nudges coral conditions over the edge.

About one billion people use coral reefs for fisheries or tourism. Scientists have said that coral reefs are one of the first and most prominent indicators of global warming.

“I don’t see how they can take one more hit at this point,” Baum said. “They need a reprieve.”
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Long before cats became the darlings of Facebook and YouTube, they spread through the ancient human world.

A DNA study reached back thousands of years to track that conquest and found evidence of two major dispersals from the Middle East, in which people evidently took cats with them. Genetic signatures the felines had on those journeys are still seen in most modern-day breeds.

Researchers analyzed DNA from 209 ancient cats as old as 9,000 years from Europe, Africa and Asia, including some ancient Egyptian cat mummies.

“They are direct witnesses of the situation in the past,” said Eva-Maria Geigl of the Jacques Monod Institute in Paris. She and colleagues also looked at 28 modern feral cats from Bulgaria and east Africa.

It’s the latest glimpse into the complicated story of domesticated cats. They are descendants of wild ancestors that learned to live with people and became relatively tame – though some cat owners would say that nowadays, they don’t always seem enthusiastic about our company.

The domestication process may have begun around 10,000 years ago when people settled in the Fertile Crescent, the arch-shaped region that includes the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea and land around the Tigris and Euphrates rivers. They stored grain, which drew rodents, which in turn attracted wild cats. Animal remains in trash heaps might have attracted them too. Over time, these wild felines adapted to this man-made environment and got used to hanging around people.

Previous study had found a cat buried alongside a human some 9,500 years ago in Cyprus, an island without any native population of felines. That indicates the cat was brought by boat and it had some special relationship to that person, researchers say.

Cats were clearly tame by about 3,500 years ago in Egypt, where paintings often placed them beneath chairs. That shows by that time, “the cat makes its way to the household,” said Geigl.

But the overall domestication process has been hard for scientists to track, in part because fossils skeletons don’t reveal whether a cat was wild or domesticated.

It’s easier to distinguish dogs, our first domesticated animal, from their wolf ancestors. Dogs evolved from wolves that had begun to associate with people even before farming began, perhaps drawn by the food the humans left behind.

The new study tracked the spread of specific cat DNA markers over long distances through time, a sign that people had taken cats with them. Results were released Monday by the journal Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The study “strengthens and refines previous work,” said Carlos Driscoll of the Wildlife Institute of India. The extensive sampling of cat DNA going back so far in time is unprecedented, he said.

Researchers also looked for a genetic variant that produces the blotchy coat pattern typical of modern-day domestic cats, rather than the tiger-like stripes seen in their wild cousins.  It showed up more often in samples from after the year 1300 than earlier ones, which fits with other evidence that the tabby cat markings became common by the 1700s and that people started breeding cats for their appearance in the 1800s. 

That’s late in the domestication of cats, in contrast to horses, which were bred for their appearance early on, Geigl said. 

Most of the study focused on the ancient dispersals of cats. In the DNA samples analyzed, one genetic signature found first in the Asian portion of Turkey – and perhaps once carried by some Fertile Crescent cats – showed up more than 6,000 years ago in Bulgaria.

That indicates cats had been taken there by boat with the first farmers colonizing Europe, Geigl said. It also appeared more than 5,000 years ago in Romania, as well as around 3,000 years ago in Greece.

A second genetic signature, first seen in Egypt, had reached Europe between the first and fifth centuries, as shown by a sample from Bulgaria. It was found in a seventh-century sample from a Viking trading port in northern Europe, and an eighth-century sample from Iran.

The dispersal of the cats across the Mediterranean was probably encouraged by their usefulness in controlling rodents and other pests on ships, the researchers said.
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Killer heat is getting worse, a new study shows.

Deadly heat waves like the one now broiling the American West are bigger killers than previously thought and they are going to grow more frequent, according to a new comprehensive study of fatal heat conditions. Still, those stretches may be less lethal in the future, as people become accustomed to them.

A team of researchers examined 1,949 deadly heat waves from around the world since 1980 to look for trends, define when heat is so severe it kills and forecast the future. They found that nearly one in three people now experience 20 days a year when the heat reaches deadly levels. But the study predicts that up to three in four people worldwide will endure that kind of heat by the end of the century, if global warming continues unabated.

“The United States is going to be an oven,” said Camilo Mora of the University of Hawaii, lead author of a study published Monday in the journal Nature Climate Change.

The study comes as much of the U.S. swelters through extended triple-digit heat. Temperatures hit records of 106, 105 and 103 in Santa Rosa, Livermore and San Jose, California on Sunday, as a heat wave was forecast to continue through midweek. In late May, temperatures in Turbat, Pakistan, climbed to about 128 degrees (53.5 degrees Celsius); if confirmed, that could be among the five hottest temperatures reliably measured on Earth, said Jeff Masters, meteorology director of Weather Underground.

Last year 22 countries or territories set or tied records for their hottest temperatures on record, said Masters, who wasn’t part of the study. So far this year, seven have done so.

“This is already bad. We already know it,” Mora said.  “The empirical data suggest it’s getting much worse.”

Mora and colleagues created an interactive global map with past heat waves and computer simulations to determine how much more frequent they will become under different carbon dioxide pollution scenarios. The map shows that under the current pollution projections, the entire eastern United States will have a significant number of killer heat days. Even higher numbers are predicted for the Southeast U.S., much of Central and South America, central Africa, India, Pakistan, much of Asia and Australia.

Mora and outside climate scientists said the study and map underestimate past heat waves in many poorer hot areas where record-keeping is weak. It’s more accurate when it comes to richer areas like the United States and Europe.

If pollution continues as it has, Mora said, by the end of the century the southern United States will have entire summers of what he called lethal heat conditions.

A hotter world doesn’t necessarily mean more deaths in all locales, Mora said. That’s because he found over time the same blistering conditions _ heat and humidity _ killed fewer people than in the past, mostly because of air conditioning and governments doing a better job keeping people from dying in the heat. So while heat kills and temperatures are rising, people are adapting, though mostly in countries that can afford it. And those that can’t afford it are likely to get worse heat in the future.

“This work confirms the alarming projections of increasing hot days over coming decades – hot enough to threaten lives on a very large scale,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, a University of Washington environmental health professor who wasn’t part of the study.

Mora documented more than 100,000 deaths since 1980, but said there are likely far more because of areas that didn’t have good data. Not all of them were caused by man-made climate change.

Just one heat wave – in Europe in 2003 – killed more than 70,000 people.
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