Month: May 2017

Norway is repairing the entrance of a “doomsday” seed vault on an Arctic island after an unexpected thaw of permafrost let water into a building meant as a deep freeze to safeguard the world’s food supplies. The water, limited to the 15-meter (50-foot) entrance hall in the melt late last year, had no impact on millions of seeds of crops including rice, maize, potatoes and wheat that are stored more than 110 meters inside the mountainside. Still, water was an unexpected problem for the vault on the Svalbard archipelago, about 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) from the North Pole. It seeks to safeguard seeds from cataclysms such as nuclear war or disease in natural permafrost. “Svalbard Global Seed Vault is facing technical improvements in connection with water intrusion,” Norwegian state construction group Statsbygg, which built the vault that opened in 2008, said in a statement on Saturday. “The seeds in the seed vault have never been threatened.” Spokeswoman Hege Njaa Aschim said Statsbygg had removed electrical equipment from the entrance — a source of heat — and was building waterproof walls inside and ditches outside to channel away any water. The number of visitors would be reduced to limit human body heat, she said. Some of the water that flowed in re-froze and had to be chipped out by workers from the local fire service. An underlying problem was that permafrost around the entrance of the vault, which had thawed from the heat of construction a decade ago, has not re-frozen …

One day instead of visiting a doctor in person for health information or searching online, you could be asking for advice from a medical expert’s avatar. A new app is being developed that can be used on a smartphone to ask a virtual doctor about various medical conditions and their treatments. VOA’s Deborah Block has more on this innovative technology. …

The list of threats to the world’s coral reef systems is long: overfishing, tourism, and the aquarium trade, for starters. Add the continuing effects of climate change, ocean warming and acidification, and it is easy to see why coral reefs around the world are at risk. Efforts to mitigate the damage are ongoing, but one group of Israeli researchers is trying to solve the problem by searching for stronger coral. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports. …

One of the coldest areas in the world is getting greener, and researchers say it’s because of global warming. Researchers from the University of Exeter in England who first studied the increase of moss and microbes in the Antarctic Peninsula in 2013, now say the greening of the region is widespread. “This gives us a much clearer idea of the scale over which these changes are occurring,” says lead author Matthew Amesbury of the University of Exeter. “Previously, we had only identified such a response in a single location at the far south of the Antarctic Peninsula, but now we know that moss banks are responding to recent climate change across the whole of the Peninsula.” The peninsula, researchers say, is one of the more rapidly warming area in the world, adding that temperatures have risen by about a half-degree Celsius each decade since the 1950s. For their study, researchers looked at five more core samples from three areas of moss banks over 150 years old. The new samples included three Antarctic Islands off the peninsula. The cores, researchers say, showed “increased biological activity” over the past 50 years as the peninsula warmed. Researchers say their findings show “fundamental and widespread change,” and that the change was “striking.” The changes are likely to continue. “Temperature increases over roughly the past half-century on the Antarctic Peninsula have had a dramatic effect on moss banks growing in the region, with rapid increases in growth rates and microbial activity,” says Dan Charman, who …

Mozambique has declared an end to a cholera epidemic that was triggered by heavy rains and infected more than 2,000 people, a senior government official said Friday. The outbreak was another setback for Mozambique, which is grappling with a financial crisis as it strives to woo investors to develop huge offshore gas reserves. “The epidemic is under control: In the last 28 to 29 days, we have not registered new cases of cholera and so we are declaring the epidemic terminated,” Francisco Mbofana, national director of public health, told a news conference. Five cholera treatment centers installed in the most affected provinces have already been dismantled, Mbofana said. Four people died between Jan. 5 and April 22 out of the 2,131 cases registered by health authorities. Last year, in the same period, 103 people died of cholera across the country. Cholera causes severe vomiting and diarrhea and is often lethal if not treated swiftly. …

Yemen could see as many as 250,000 new cases of cholera within six months, in addition to 50,000 already reported, the World Health Organization said Friday. “The speed of the resurgence of this cholera epidemic is unprecedented,” Nevio Zagaria, WHO country representative for Yemen, told reporters during a conference call on Friday. He said the death toll from the outbreak has already reached 240 and more than 50,000 cases have been registered in the past three weeks. Two years into a war between Houthi rebels and government forces allied with a Saudi-led Arab military coalition, which has killed more than 8,000 people, Yemen has declared a state of emergency Sunday in the capital, Sana’a, over the outbreak. Fighting has taken a toll on medical facilities in the war-torn country, as more than half of Yemen’s facilities, which are now operated by Houthi rebels, no longer function. The U.N. says some 17 million of Yemen’s 26 million people lack sufficient food and at least three million malnourished children are in “grave peril.” Yemen, which is the Arab world’s poorest nation, is now classified by the World Health Organization as a level three emergency, alongside Syria, South Sudan, Nigeria and Iraq. This is the country’s second cholera outbreak in less than a year. Cholera is highly contagious and can be contracted from ingesting contaminated food and water. …

The World Health Organization has delivered dramatic news about the causes of death for young people the world over. Governments and health agencies have made great strides in reducing deaths of young children through immunization and programs that address maternal and infant care. But adolescents have somehow fallen through the cracks. Dr. Anthony Costello, director of WHO’s Department of Maternal, Newborn, Child and Adolescent Health told VOA, “We’re finding 1.2 million (adolescents) die each year. That’s 3,000 deaths a day. That’s 10 jumbo jets.” What’s more, Costello says these deaths are largely preventable. The study shows traffic injuries are the top cause of death among adolescents, those between 10 and 19. In most cases, the adolescent is struck by a car while walking or riding a bicycle. Other leading causes of death include lower respiratory infections and suicide, the report found. The causes differ by gender, age and region. Boys between 15 and 19 years old are more likely to die from traffic injuries than girls or than younger boys. In sub-Saharan Africa, children are more likely to contract HIV.    Girls between 10 and 14 are at risk for getting respiratory infections from indoor air pollution and from breathing in fumes from cooking fuels. Older girls, between 15 and 19, had a greater risk of death from pregnancy complications, childbirth or unsafe abortions. Teenage girls generally have small pelvises which lead to difficult labor.   Costello said pregnant adolescent girls are also “more likely to get high blood pressure; …

Commercial development of the globe’s huge reserves of a frozen fossil fuel known as “combustible ice” has moved closer to reality after Japan and China successfully extracted the material from the seafloor off their coastlines.   But experts said Friday that large-scale production remains many years away, and if not done properly could flood the atmosphere with climate-changing greenhouse gases.  Frozen mix of water, gas   Combustible ice is a frozen mixture of water and concentrated natural gas. Technically known as methane hydrate, it can be lit on fire in its frozen state and is believed to comprise one of the world’s most abundant fossil fuels.    The official Chinese news agency Xinhua reported that the fuel was successfully mined from beneath the South China Sea on Thursday. Chinese Minister of Land and Resources Jiang Daming declared the event a breakthrough moment heralding a potential “global energy revolution.”    A drilling crew in Japan reported a similar successful operation two weeks earlier, on May 4 along the Shima Peninsula.  For Japan, methane hydrate offers the chance to reduce its heavy reliance on imported fuels. In China, it could serve as a cleaner substitute for coal-burning power plants and steel factories that have polluted much of the country with lung-damaging smog. Estimated reserves are large   Methane hydrate has been found beneath seafloors and buried inside Arctic permafrost and beneath Antarctic ice.    Estimates of worldwide reserves range from 280 trillion cubic meters (10,000 trillion cubic feet) up to 2,800 trillion …

Scientists have discovered a possible cure for all five known Ebola viruses, one of which ravaged West Africa in recent years. The so-called broadly neutralizing antibodies were discovered in the blood of a survivor of the West African epidemic, which ran from late 2013 to mid-2016. The deadly virus killed more than 11,000 people of the nearly 29,000 who became infected in Liberia, Guinea and Sierra Leone. Ebola got its name from the first documented outbreak, which occurred along the Ebola River in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, formerly Zaire, in 1976. Since then, there have been two dozen outbreaks of Ebola in Africa, including a current one that has infected nine people in the DRC. Three people have died. Kartik Chandran, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in Bronx, New York, helped identify the antibodies, which were described online in the journal Cell. He is optimistic that the antibodies can be used as a single therapy to treat all Ebola viruses. “Based on the nonhuman primate studies that are ongoing, and given the fact that they are pretty predictive, I would be optimistic that they could be used to protect people and reverse disease,” Chandran said. 350 antibodies isolated Researchers isolated about 350 antibodies from the human blood sample, two of which showed promise in neutralizing three viruses in tissue culture. The antibodies work by interfering with a process that the pathogen uses to infect and multiply inside …

Heavy rain shaped the Martian landscape billions of years ago, according to a new study. According to researchers at the Smithsonian Institution and the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, rain on Mars once carved river beds and created valleys much like rain on Earth has, and does. It no longer rains on the Red Planet, and the water that remains is mostly in the form of ice. The rain appears to have slowly changed over time, researchers said, noting that changes in the Martian atmosphere influenced how heavy the rain was, particularly the size of the raindrops. When Mars formed 4.5 billion years ago, it had a much thicker atmosphere and higher atmospheric pressure. Pressure, researchers say, influences the size of raindrops. They say that early in the planet’s history, the rain would have actually been more like fog, so it would unlikely have made much of an impact on the terrain. But as the atmosphere thinned over time, larger raindrops could form and were heavy enough to “cut into the soil” changing the shape of craters and leading to running water that could have carved valleys. Specifically, researcher say the atmospheric pressure on the Red Planet was about four bars, compared to one bar on Earth today. This means the raindrops could not have been bigger than three millimeters across. Over time the pressure dropped to 1.5 bars allowing for larger drops measuring about 7.3 millimeters across. “By using basic physical principles to understand the relationship between the …

Colon cancer patients who adopt a healthy lifestyle after treatment could potentially reduce their risk of death from a recurrence by more than 40 percent, according to new research. The findings were released ahead of a conference of the American Society of Clinical Oncology, the world’s largest organization of clinical cancer professionals. Researchers from the University of California, San Francisco analyzed data gathered in a prospective study of 1,000 advanced, stage III colon cancer patients from across the United States who were enrolled from 1999-2001. The volunteers, from 13 institutions, were evaluated over a period of seven years. At two points during the trial, participants filled out a questionnaire asking whether their lifestyle following treatment matched prevention guidelines recommended by the American Cancer Society. Body weight The guidelines include maintaining a healthy body weight, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, limiting consumption of red and processed meats, and engaging in regular physical activity. Nine percent of patients in the study adhered to the guidelines. Of those, there was a reduction in death by 42 percent and a 31 percent lower risk of cancer recurrence compared to patients who did not follow the guidelines. In the study, colon cancer returned in 355 patients, 256 of whom died. The federally-funded study was the first to look at colon cancer survivorship. Other studies have focused on cancer prevention through adoption of a healthy lifestyle. There are a reported one million colon cancer survivors in the United States; the disease is the …

An ongoing measles outbreak in Minnesota has shined a light on the fact that many Somali immigrants choose not to vaccinate their children.    According to the Minnesota Department of Health, 63 measles cases have been reported statewide as of May 16, and 53 of those cases were Minnesotans of Somali origin. Sixty of the reported cases involve individuals confirmed to not be vaccinated. Public health officials blame false rumors that vaccines are linked to autism and other health problems for the high rate of unvaccinated children in Minnesota’s Somali-American community.   The department’s disease director, Kris Ehresmann, said anti-vaccination groups have targeted the community with events and have even translated the anti-vaccine documentary “Vaxxed: From Cover-Up to Catastrophe” into Somali. “They have been very aggressive and are continuing in their efforts to reach out to the community with misinformation throughout the duration of this outbreak,” Ehresmann said. Anti-vaccine views In interviews with Somali mothers, VOA’s Somali Service found that anti-vaccine views are widespread. “I have a baby boy who was well before the vaccine, but eventually he became autistic because of the vaccine. After him, I have never vaccinated my children,” said Safia Sheikh Mohamed, a mother of four children. Mohamed listed a number of problems she believes are associated with vaccines, including food allergies, ear infections and eczema, a treatable condition in which the skin becomes inflamed or irritated. Another mother said she vaccinated her child, but did so later in life. “I never gave vaccines to my …

Cuba said on Thursday 1,847 residents had so far contracted the mosquito-borne Zika virus, warning that certain provinces on the Caribbean island still had high rates of infestation despite a series of measures to stave off the epidemic. At the start of the global Zika outbreak, Cuba managed for months to fend off the virus that can cause microcephaly in babies as well as Guillain-Barre syndrome, even as neighboring territories like Puerto Rico were hard hit. The Communist-run country called out the military to help fumigate, activated neighborhood watch groups to check for places with standing water where mosquitoes breed, and instituted health checks at airports and other entry points to the island. “Even though we have managed to reduce the cases of infestation … there are still provinces like Havana, Guantanamo, Cienfuegos and Camaguey, with big risks and rates of infestation,” the head of the Civil Defense’s Department of Disaster Reduction, Gloria Gely, was quoted as saying by state-run media. Although generally a mild disease, the virus is a particular risk to pregnant women as it can cause microcephaly – a severe birth defect in which babies are born with abnormally small heads and underdeveloped brains. Gely did not detail how many of the cases were contracted locally nor whether there had been any instances of babies born with microcephaly on the island of 11.2 million inhabitants. There is no preventive treatment against Zika, but drug companies are rushing to develop a vaccine. The virus has spread to more …