YCLOAK

Scientists have developed a quick test —using a smartphone app — that a man can use in the privacy of his home to determine whether he is fertile. The sperm test could help millions of couples around the world that have tried unsuccessfully to conceive a child.

The new rapid, automated test can show within a matter of seconds whether the man’s sperm count is too low to conceive or if there are problems with motility of the sperm so the reproductive cells have trouble fertilizing a female egg.

The fertility test is an inexpensive smartphone attachment that the scientists said is made of materials which cost around $4.50. It was developed by researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in the U.S. state of Utah and at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.

95 percent accurate

John Petrozza is director of Massachusetts General’s fertility center, which used the sperm app to analyze 350 samples. The experimental test proved to be greater than 95 percent accurate in detecting problems with a man’s sperm.

Petrozza said many women wonder why they have trouble getting pregnant after months or years of trying to conceive with their partner.

“Now we have something that can screen their partner and do it reliably.  And if there’s something there, they’ll get them in to see the fertility doctor or gynecologists much sooner and I think that’s always a good thing,” he said.

The test is designed to be used at home, rather than at a clinic, in a growing field of what is known as point of care medicine.

After placing a semen sample on a slide, the user inserts it into the attachment placed on the phone, using the device’s optics to analyze the semen. The smartphone’s powerful camera is able to take both still and moving pictures of the sperm sample.

Volunteers confirm simplicity  

The app guides users through a series of simple steps for analyzing the semen. Total sperm count is measured by a miniaturized weight scale that transmits the information wirelessly to the phone.  

Researchers gave the device to 10 untrained volunteers from the Boston clinic to confirm that it is simple to use.  In that test, researchers say it correctly classified 100 semen samples for fertility.  

The male fertility analyzer was described in the journal Science Translational Medicine.

Others uses for app

Petrozza says the smartphone attachment could also be used as a follow-up test for men who’ve had vasectomies,  voluntary operations to surgically interrupt a man’s sperm flow for birth control.  

At the same time, Petrozza envisions using the device to test for venereal diseases such as gonorrhea.  And scientists are now trying to perfect the point-of-care device to test for Zika virus in sperm, which has been shown to be a reservoir for the pathogen.

An analysis of the semen’s quality and concentration, said Petrozza, is based on parameters for fertility established by the World Health Organization.

He said the American Society for Reproductive Medicine has been in contact with the world body.

“And I know that recently they’ve worked with the World Health Organization in trying to look at global infertility and trying to see how can we can bring treatment, how can we bring diagnostic tests to resource-limited countries.  And this could be a potential way to do semen analysis in a very cost-effective way,” said Petrozza.

Millions of couples struggle with fertility

An estimated 45 million couples around the world struggle with fertility.  Forty percent of the time, say experts, infertility is due to abnormal sperm.

Petrozza and colleagues are aiming to get the male sperm analyzer on the market in the next 18 to 24 months, to be sold alongside pregnancy tests.

He says they’re hoping to keep the cost of the device to anywhere from $30 to $45.
…

One in four children — 600 million in total — may live in areas with severely limited water resources by 2040, putting them at risk of deadly diseases like cholera and diarrhea, the U.N. children’s agency UNICEF said on Wednesday.

Already some 500 million children live in areas with limited water supplies, and the demand for water today far exceeds available resources in 36 countries, UNICEF said.

Supplies are expected to shrink further due to droughts, rising temperatures, flooding, population growth and urbanization, the U.N. agency said in a report.

If no action is taken to clean up and conserve water supplies, more children will be forced to drink potentially unsafe water as a result, UNICEF said.

Climate change plays a part

“Around the world, millions of children lack access to safe water — endangering their lives, undermining their health, and jeopardizing their futures,” said UNICEF executive director Anthony Lake.

“This crisis will only grow unless we take collective action now” he added in a statement.

Climate change is one of the reasons behind reduced water sources in the future, impacting “the quality and quantity of the water,” Cecilia Scharp, a senior water advisor at UNICEF, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

Flooding, which is expected to increase due to rising sea levels and changing weather patterns, can pollute water supplies and spread unsafe water across wide areas. Droughts are also expected to increase in frequency and severity.

More work for women, girls

Women and girls now spend 200 million hours a day collecting water, and this will rise if they are forced to travel further to reach water sources, making them vulnerable to attack in some countries, UNICEF said.

UNICEF’s projections are based on models assuming no action is taken to conserve water and tackle pollution, Scharp said. But governments, industries, agricultural businesses and communities can help diminish the impact of climate change on children in countries pressed for water resources, the agency said.

Governments should plan for risks to water supplies from drought, rising temperatures, flooding, population growth and urbanization, Scharp said.

Reusing waste water

Businesses should ensure they are conserving as much water as possible, and reusing waste water whenever they can, UNICEF said.

“You can use economic incentives so people don’t overuse [water],” Scharp said of local governments. “You can put restrictions on … personal use of water in urban areas where a lot of water is used for lifestyle activities, more than [for] consumption.”

Poorer children will be hurt the most by a depletion of water sources in the future. This “should come as no surprise,” UNICEF said.
…

Led by cutbacks in China and India, construction of new coal-fired power plants is falling worldwide, improving chances climate goals can be met despite earlier pessimism, three environmental groups said Wednesday.

A joint report by the groups CoalSwarm, the Sierra Club and Greenpeace follows a warning this week by two international agencies that the world needs to shift quickly away from fossil fuels to curb global warming. Environmentalists were dismayed by President Donald Trump’s U.S. government budget proposal last week that would cut spending on renewable energy.

Construction starts for coal-fired plants in China and India were down by 62 percent in January from a year earlier while new facilities starting operation declined 29 percent, according to the report. It said older plants in the United States and Europe are being retired at a record pace.

‘Global climate goals’

The latest developments “appear to have brought global climate goals within feasible reach, raising the prospect that the worst levels of climate change might be avoided,” said the report.

It acknowledged “the margin for error is tight” and said sustained progress will require China and India to scrap more than 100 coal plants on which construction has been suspended. And it warned that countries, including South Korea and Indonesia, are failing to develop renewables, which could increase their need for coal power.

In a separate report, the U.S.-based Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis said falling power demand in Japan means most of the 45 new coal plants the country has planned will likely never be built.

The reports mark a shift in sentiment from six months ago, when environmentalists warned governments were doing too little to carry out the Paris climate accord. Signed by 170 countries, it calls for holding global temperature increases to no more than 2 degrees C (3.6 degrees F) in hopes of preventing sea level rise and other drastic change.

Biggest greenhouse gas emitter

China, the biggest greenhouse gas emitter, said at that time its coal use would rise until 2030. But later data showed the peak passed in 2013 and consumption is falling.

Countries including China, Germany, India and Japan are moving away from coal as alternatives get cheaper, said Tim Buckley, the IEEFA’s director of energy finance studies.

“I don’t think Trump can stop that,” he said.

Despite such changes, the amount of heat-trapping carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rose to a new high last year and is increasing, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Asia alone is expected to account for 70 to 80 percent of the global growth in coal-fired power capacity over the next two decades.

Industry experts cautioned that countries including India, Indonesia, Bangladesh and Vietnam need to keep adding coal power because it is the only affordable option in a region where 500 million people lack access to electricity. The cost of solar and wind have fallen by up to 80 percent in some markets, but in places such as Bangladesh or parts of China it can still be double that of coal.

“We have to meet the basic needs of people while pushing for energy transition at the same time,” said Yongping Zhai, an adviser on energy to the Asian Development Bank. “You will need a mixture of different fuels. Coal will be there. You cannot avoid it.”

Canceled half its plans

China canceled half its planned additional coal-fired generating capacity over the past year but will still add 100 gigawatts by 2020, according to Xizhou Zhou, who heads the Asian gas and power practice for IHS Markit, a research firm. He said Asian countries are due to add 180 gigawatts out of a global total of 210 gigawatts.

“It’s true that we are seeing a slowdown in coal plant additions, but that doesn’t mean that demand will stop increasing or that they won’t need to build coal plants,” Zhou said.

In China, construction of power plants totaling more than 300 gigawatts was suspended following last year’s release of the latest five-year economic development plan, according to the CoalSwarm report.

On Saturday, Beijing’s last major coal-fired power plant was shut down under plans to switch the Chinese capital to gas and other power sources.

China’s power demand is cooling due to official efforts to reduce reliance on heavy industry and encourage services and technology, said Zhou. He said that might lead to higher demand in India or Southeast Asia if manufacturing of products such as smartphones that require glass, metal and other energy-intensive components migrates there.

“You have a lot of countries that could become a new manufacturing hub but still rely on coal-fired power,” he said.

No new coal-fired capacity

India’s government said in December it needed no new coal-fired capacity until at least 2027. But industry leaders expect work to resume on power projects that have been suspended.

Analysts also warn India is just setting out on a vast and energy-hungry process of building highways and other infrastructure, while China has completed that cycle.

“What happens in India is still an open question,” said Navroz Dubash of the Centre for Policy Research, a New Delhi think tank. “It’s important not to switch from the point of view that coal is inevitable to coal is unnecessary. I don’t think we’re there yet.”

In Japan, the amount of power generated from coal should fall by 40 percent from 2015 levels by 2030 due to lower demand and more use of alternative sources, the IEEFA report said.

“The economic arguments will win out,” said Paul Fisher, an economist at Cambridge University’s Institute for Sustainable Leadership. “Once the financial sector sees that it’s not in their interest to finance fossil fuels, we’ll get there.”
…

When it comes to the deployment and use of an HIV vaccine, researchers say even a partially effective vaccine, although not perfect, still could prevent millions of infections each year.

There are no AIDS vaccines in use, but many are in the development pipeline or clinical trials. The problem is the vaccines are turning out to be less effective than hoped.

To get a handle on what the future might hold, scientists at Oregon State University developed a mathematical model of HIV progression, transmission and intervention, tailored to 127 countries around the world.

According to the model, using current interventions, the world might expect to see about 49 million new cases of HIV in the next 20 years.

But the study concluded that 25 million of those infections might be prevented if ambitious targets for diagnosis, treatment and viral suppression set by the United Nations are met.  

And that’s where an HIV vaccine comes in.

Jan Medlock, the study’s lead author, said adding a vaccine to the mix — even one that is only 50 percent effective — by 2020 could prevent another 6.3 million new infections, potentially reversing the HIV pandemic.

“Partial efficacy is still better than zero efficacy, and it really becomes (a matter) of thinking about the cost and trade-off,” she said. “Are you taking away money from treatment or some other health program to buy these vaccines?  If not, then they’re probably worth doing, even at very low efficacy.”

Medlock’s model — reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences — input clinical data from a vaccine that’s now in large-scale trials in South Africa.  

Until it was modified for the phase-three trial in the hopes of boosting its effectiveness, the vaccine candidate showed about a 60 percent efficacy in preventing infection for the first year. The effectiveness dropped to 31 percent 3½ years later.

Even without an improvement in current levels of HIV detection and treatment globally, a vaccine that’s only 50 percent effective has the potential to avert 17 million new cases during the next two decades, Medlock said.

Medlock added an even less effective vaccine could make a sizeable dent to slow the pandemic.

“Twenty percent efficacy at the global population scale is still going to prevent several million infections,” she said.

Medlock said many countries will inevitably fall short of the U.N.’s ambitious goals to contain the HIV pandemic.  

That’s why researchers believe the firepower of imperfect HIV vaccines should be brought to bear in the fight against the AIDS virus.
…

Wastewater from households, industries and agriculture should not be seen as a problem but a valuable resource which could help meet the demands for water, energy and nutrients from a growing global population, a U.N. water expert said.

Globally, more than 80 percent of wastewater is released into rivers and lakes without treatment with a negative impact on health and the environment, according to the 2017 U.N. World Water Development Report published on Wednesday.

Pollution from human and animal waste affects nearly one in three rivers in Latin America, Asia and Africa, putting millions of lives at risk, it said.

But wastewater contains nutrients such as phosphorus and nitrates which can be turned into fertilizer, said Richard Connor, editor-in-chief of the report.

Treated sludge can be turned into biogas that could power wastewater treatment plants or be sold on the market, he added.

“Wastewater itself is a valuable resource, even the term wastewater is an oxymoron,” Connor told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

“We need to stop seeing it as a burden to be dealt with. It’s not a waste and should not be a waste, especially in this world of water scarcity,” he said by phone from Perugia.

With the world’s population expected to grow by one third to more than 9 billion by 2050, the world will need 55 percent more water and 70 percent more energy, the United Nations says.

Population growth will also lead to a 70 percent increase in demand for food, putting more pressure on water through farming, which is already the biggest consumer of water.

More people also means more wastewater, including from sanitation, which governments have pledged to improve as part of development goals agreed by U.N. member states in 2015.

Increased wastewater is one of the biggest challenges associated with the growth of informal settlements in rapidly expanding cities in developing countries, the report said.

Connor said even though wastewater is a valuable resource, what often stops governments from investing in treatment plants is the cost while what puts people off using it is the “yuck factor”.

Yet the International Space Station has been using the same water for 17 years, Connor noted.

“One morning it’s tea, by the afternoon it’s pee and then the next morning somebody is shaving with it,” he said.

A solution for governments is to invest in smaller, decentralized treatment systems, which cost a fraction of conventional plants and require less maintenance, Connor said.

He added that not all water needs to be treated to drinking water quality but to a level where it is safe to use by industries, municipalities, agriculture or for cooling in power plants.

“You go for what’s affordable and design the level of treatment according to your needs,” Connor said.

“The key word is ‘fit for purpose treatment’.”
…

Thirty-three of Europe’s most polluted cities are in Poland. Part of the reason: in winter, people keep warm by burning coal. Northern China has a similar problem. And it’s a big problem. Burning coal pours particulate matter into the atmosphere, which contributes to global warming and significant health problems. But some simple technology may help reduce the problem. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

The cost for individual homes in the U.S. to “go solar” has dropped by more than 60 percent over the last decade.

Those low costs helped convince more than a million Americans to install solar panels on their roofs.

Now schools are beginning to get in on the benefits. One of them is the school system in Fremont, Indiana.

The residents of this small town in America’s upper Midwest have always relied on the sun to warm their fields and draw tourists to their lakes. Now school superintendent William Stitt said they’re counting on it to power their schools.

“The technology has advanced so much in the last couple of years that it’s become more energy efficient, more cost effective for schools to get solar energy,” Stitt said.

Start-up cost

Construction of the solar project will cost $3 million. But when finished, it will completely power the elementary, middle and high school buildings. It may generate so much electricity, that the school will be able to sell some back to the power company at a profit.

The system will work through several rows of 3,000-4,000 panels each. They will be located in a special 2.5 hectare solar field behind the middle school.

The district has to lease the equipment from the local power company for 20 years, at a fixed rate.

But Kim Quick, facility director, said that even with that added cost, the schools should save money because the panels should last 40 years.

“[It] is going to cost us approximately the same amount we’re paying for utilities today. So that cost is never going to increase for the next 20 years,” Quick said. “So if the power company comes in next year and says, ‘We want to increase utilities 6 percent,’ we’re going to pay the same we’re paying today 20 years from now.”

Free electricity, eventually

In 20 years, the school district will own the equipment outright, meaning it won’t pay anything for electricity.

Since the panels are always “on,” Quick said the district will save additional money by banking the unused electricity that’s generated when school is not in session.

“These work year-round. Even in a full moon they will produce electricity,” he said.

Just 3 percent of the nation’s 125,000 schools use some form of solar energy. While not all can use solar power cost-effectively, a recent report by the Solar Foundation found that 72,000 US schools could save money with solar.

Schools could install panels on their roofs or elevate a field of panels over a parking lot. Those innovations would save most schools an average of $1 million over 30 years.

Educational component

Going solar also offers schools an educational component. It provides teachers opportunities to incorporate lessons in science, technology, engineering, and math into the curriculum.

All three schools in the Fremont system will have a live display module that kids can visit daily to learn how much energy is being used and saved.

If all goes according to plan, Fremont School District’s new solar field will be up and running by mid-summer. Superintendent Stitt is already looking further ahead.

“I’d love the community and the kids in 40 years to go, ‘Man, they made a great decision 40 years ago by creating this solar project!’ ” he said.
…

The biggest construction project in Europe is taking place beneath the British capital, London.

The largely subterranean Crossrail route linking Heathrow airport to the eastern financial district and beyond is designed to ease congestion as London’s population grows; but, it has also unearthed a trove of archaeological finds that provide a fascinating window on eight thousand years of the city’s history.

“The great thing about the Crossrail project is that it’s allowed us to basically sort of take a slice through London. We’ve been amazed at the quantity, tens of thousands of artifacts,” said Jackie Keily, curator of “The Archaeology of Crossrail” exhibition at the Museum of London – itself housed in a 200-year-old shipping warehouse in the old docks next to the River Thames.

Among the highlights is a bronze medallion dating from the year 245 AD, when southern Britain was ruled by the Romans.

“It would have been given by the emperor to a high-ranking official, probably in Rome. And it’s quite fascinating that it’s traveled right across the Empire to be here in London,” Keily said.

Nearby, a glass case contains a dozen carefully worked metal discs. These “hipposandals” were an early form of horse shoe designed to aid pack animals as they negotiated the rain-soaked streets of Roman London.

Many of the finds hint at macabre rituals. Hundreds of skulls were found beneath what is now the financial heart of London. Could the victims have been executed and put on display as a warning? Were they the losers of gladiatorial battles at the nearby Roman amphitheater?

One of the most striking exhibits is the decapitated skeleton of a Roman woman found buried beneath what is now Liverpool Street station. The skull is placed between the leg bones.

“To have placed the head between the legs one feels was almost certainly sending some sort of message, either about the person or was some kind of ritual associated with the burial,” Keily said.

The Crossrail route tunnels through several graveyards, many dating to major disease outbreaks such as the “Black Death” in the mid-1300s. That plague pandemic wiped out much of London’s population and killed an estimated 1.5 million people across Britain.

Despite the panic that swept across Europe at the time, archaeologists have noted that burials appear to have been conducted with as much dignity as possible. There are few mass graves and most burial sites were dug in an orderly fashion. Some held up to 20,000 bodies.

Lighter aspects of London life are also on display: a bowling ball found in the moat of a 16th century manor house, perhaps lost beneath the murky water during a high society summer party. Laws prevented lower class peasants from partaking in such revelry.

A collection of leather shoes has survived five centuries buried in the London mud. Some are plain with rounded toes, patched up and well worn. Others appear to have barely been used, their tapering ends suggestive of the modern stiletto heel.

“So very fashionable shoes that Londoners were wearing. It connects us in a way with people in the past,” Keily noted.

Despite the painstaking archaeological work each time something new is unearthed, construction of Crossrail remains on schedule. The first trains are due to take passengers through the tunnels in late 2018.
…

Animal testing has become problematic in the past few decades. Animal rights activists have uncovered numerous instances of animal cruelty, and it’s also expensive to keep animal test subjects, especially if they’re treated humanely. But how else can pharmaceutical companies test the effectiveness, and safety of their products, some of which could save thousands of lives? The answer to that problem may be wriggling in a laboratory petri dish. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
…

Fifty thousand Haitians will have access to quality health care for the first time after a modern new hospital opened Monday in the isolated and impoverished Cotes-de-Fer region.

The Bishop Joseph M. Sullivan Center for Health will serve those who, until now, had to travel for hours on rough roads for treatment.

The new hospital is a project of the nonprofit charity Catholic Medical Mission Board. The U.S.- based group Mercy Health contributed $2 million for construction costs.

“With active involvement of the community and an emphasis on training and knowledge sharing, the health center will strengthen the local health system in a long-term and sustainable way,” said CMMB’s director in Haiti, Dr. Dianne Jean-Francois.

Along with an emergency room and pharmacy, the new hospital will give pregnant women a place to deliver their babies, along with postnatal and pediatric care.

The hospital also has plans for expansion for dental and ophthalmology clinics.
…