Month: May 2018

Scientists at Rockefeller University in New York discovered that the brains of songbirds use a similar process as humans do when learning to make sounds. And, as a result, VOA’s Deborah Block reports, the research could lead to treatments for people with speech impediments. …

NASA is planning to send a tiny autonomous helicopter to Mars on its next rover mission to the red planet. The space agency announced Friday that the helicopter will be carried aboard the Mars 2020 rover as a technology demonstration to test its ability to serve as a scout and to reach locations not accessible by ground. The helicopter is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The craft weighs less than 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), has a fuselage about the size of a softball and twin, counter-rotating blades that will spin at almost 3,000 rpm — a necessity in the thin Martian atmosphere. Solar cells will charge its lithium-ion batteries. Flights will be programmed because the distance to Mars precludes real-time commands from Earth. …

Aardvarks are not the most attractive animals. They have rabbitlike ears, a kangaroo tail and a nose like a pig. But they are mammals, and that means they feed their babies milk. At the Cincinnati Zoo in Ohio, an aardvark mother is contributing to the largest collection of exotic animal milk in the world. As Faiza Elmasry tells us, the milk is used to learn about mammal nutrition and help create milk alternatives for animal babies that need to be hand-raised. VOA’s Faith Lapidus narrates. …

Electric-powered ground transport is slowly but steadily taking over from one based on fossil fuels. Electric cars, buses, bikes, scooters, even electric skateboards are growing more common on streets around the world. The next step is electric aviation, and airplane manufacturers are eyeing this potentially very lucrative market. VOA’s George Putic reports. …

America will not be “cheated” by foreign countries that “extort” unreasonably low drug prices from U.S. companies, declared President Donald Trump on Friday. Rolling out an ambitious blueprint to significantly cut the cost of prescription medication here and abroad, Trump announced he is directing U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer to make it a priority to prevent foreign countries from forcing American drugmakers to provide medicines at drastically lower prices than in the United States. “It’s time to end the global freeloading once and for all,” Trump said during a White House Rose Garden event. Trump did not specifically name any countries, but according to a report from the White House Council of Economic Advisers profit margins on brand-name drugs in the United States are four times as high as in more regulated markets, such as major European countries and Japan. Earning more profit in such countries presumably would give drugmakers greater maneuverability with their bottom line to charge less in America.    In its annual report last month on the protection of intellectual property around the world, the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in addition to EU nations and Japan, also specifically criticized the drug pricing and reimbursement policies of Canada, India, South Korea and New Zealand.  In his Rose Garden comments, Trump also singled out what he called greedy companies and middlemen, who he declared had grown rich through “dishonest double-dealing,” vowing his administration is now “putting American patients first.” Trump’s plan has four main themes: increasing marketplace …

An updated version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, tailored for eventual crewed missions into orbit, made its debut launch Friday from Florida’s Cape Canaveral, carrying a communications satellite for Bangladesh. The newly minted Block-5 edition of the Falcon 9 — equipped with about 100 upgrades for greater power, safety and reusability than its Block-4 predecessor — lifted off at 4:14 p.m. EDT (2014 GMT) from the Kennedy Space Center. Minutes later, the Block-5’s main-stage booster flew itself back to Earth to achieve a safe return landing on an unmanned platform vessel floating in the Pacific Ocean. The recoverable booster for the Block-5 is designed to be reused at least 10 times with minimal refurbishment between flights, allowing more frequent launches at lower cost — a key to the SpaceX business model. Enhanced rocket reusability also is a core tenet of SpaceX owner and billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s broader objectives: making space travel commonplace and ultimately sending humans to Mars. The flight came a day after the original launch countdown was halted one minute before blastoff time due to a technical problem detected by the rocket’s onboard computers. Friday’s second attempt by SpaceX, formally known as Space Exploration Technologies, appeared to have gone off without a hitch. …

On Yaji Mountain in southern China, they are checking in the sows a thousand head per floor in high-rise “hog hotels.” Privately owned agricultural company Guangxi Yangxiang Co Ltd is running two seven-floor sow breeding operations, and is putting up four more, including one with as many as 13 floors that will be the world’s tallest building of its kind. Hog farms of two or three floors have been tried in Europe. Some are still operating, others have been abandoned, but few new ones have been built in recent years, because of management difficulties and public resistance to large, intensive farms. Now, as China pushes ahead with industrialization of the world’s largest hog herd, part of a 30-year effort to modernize its farm sector and create wealth in rural areas, companies are experimenting with high-rise housing for pigs despite the costs. The “hotels” show how far some breeders are willing to go as China overhauls its farming model. “There are big advantages to a high-rise building,” said Xu Jiajing, manager of Yangxiang’s mountain-top farm. “It saves energy and resources. The land area is not that much but you can raise a lot of pigs.” Companies like Yangxiang are pumping more money into the buildings — about 30 percent more than on single-story modern farms — even as hog prices in China hold at an eight-year low. For some, the investments are too risky. Besides low prices that have smaller operations culling sows or rethinking expansion plans, there is worry about …

Before taking office, President Donald Trump railed against the pharmaceutical industry and accused it of “getting away with murder.” The populist rhetoric appears to be giving way to a more nuanced strategy focused on making the pharmaceutical market more open and competitive, with the aim of lowering costs for consumers. It’s an approach that could avoid a direct confrontation with the powerful pharmaceutical lobby, but it could also underwhelm Americans seeking relief from escalating prescription costs. On Friday, Trump is scheduled to give his first speech on an overarching plan to lower drug prices. Administration officials previewing the speech Thursday touted it as the most comprehensive plan to tackle prescription drug costs that any president has ever proposed, but offered few specifics. Officials said the plan would increase competition, create incentives for drugmakers to lower initial prices and slash federal rules that make it harder for private insurers to negotiate lower prices. The result would be lower pharmacy costs for patients — a key Trump campaign promise. The plan will not include giving the federal Medicare program power to directly negotiate prices with drugmakers, they noted. Trump campaigned on the idea, which is vigorously opposed by the pharmaceutical industry. Public outrage over drug costs has been growing for years, because Americans are being squeezed in a number of ways: New medicines for cancer and other life-threatening diseases often launch with prices exceeding $100,000 per year. Drugs for common ailments like diabetes and asthma routinely see price hikes around 10 percent …

The World Health Organization said Friday it is preparing for “the worst case scenario” for an Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. WHO said Thursday that between April 4 and May 5, twenty-seven cases of fever with hemorrhagic signs, including 17 deaths, were reported in the DRC’s Bikoro district.  WHO says two of the cases tested positive for the Ebola virus. The DRC Ministry of Public Health has requested WHO’s support in coordinating the international and NGO response to the health crisis. The full extent of the outbreak is not yet known, according to WHO, and the location presents “significant logistical challenges.”  The affected area is remote with limited communication and poor transportation infrastructure. Ebola, named for the Congolese river near where it was first identified in 1976, begins with a sudden fever, aching muscles, diarrhea and vomiting. It is a hemorrhagic fever, marked by spontaneous bleeding from internal organs and, in most cases, death. It can be transmitted by close contact with infected animals or people, usually through blood or other bodily fluids. People can contract the virus through direct contact with victims’ bodies at funerals. Caretakers, nurses and doctors treating Ebola patients also are at high risk. WHO says the outbreak in Bikoro is the ninth outbreak of Ebola in the DRC since it first emerged in 1976.  …

Advanced sensor technology can monitor a wide range of applications, from water quality to air pollution to energy use. Faith Lapidus tells us how a team of scientists at the University of Washington, with support from the National Science Foundation, is turning the sensors in smartphones into home health care tools. …

Two weeks of climate talks organized by the United Nations ended Thursday as countries failed to resolve differences about implementing the Paris climate accord. The negotiations will resume in Bangkok in September, where an extra week’s meeting has now been scheduled. The pact’s 197 signatories have set a December deadline to agree on the precise rules that countries have to stick to under the Paris agreement. The lack of progress threatens to unravel three years’ worth of work to complete the Paris agreement, a landmark deal reached in 2015 that set a goal to limit fossil-fuel pollution in all nations for the first time and keep global warming below 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. Overall progress at the meeting in Bonn was very slow, with some countries such as China looking to renegotiate aspects of the Paris deal. Patricia Espinosa, head of the U.N. agency that oversees climate talks, described the package being negotiated as “highly technical and complex.” It aims to ensure that the efforts countries claim they’re making in the fight against global warming can be verified and compared. The administration of President Barack Obama was widely credited with helping to bring together the diverging interests of rich and poor countries in the drive to secure the Paris deal. His successor, President Donald Trump, withdrew the U.S. from the accord in June 2017. His administration has attacked climate science, saying it questions whether human activity is behind climate change, and is focused on boosting the …

Young men who smoke are more likely to have a stroke before age 50 than their peers who avoid tobacco, a small study suggests. Smoking has long been linked to an increased risk of stroke in older adults, but research to date examining this connection in younger adults has mainly focused on women. For the current study, researchers examined data on 615 men who had a stroke before age 50 and compared their smoking habits to a control group of 530 similar men who didn’t have a history of stroke. Overall, current smokers were 88 percent more likely to have a stroke than men who never smoked, the study found. Light smokers who had fewer than 11 cigarettes a day were 46 percent more likely to have a stroke. Heavy smokers with a two pack-a-day habit, or more, were over five times more likely to have a stroke. ‘Simple takeaway’ “The simple takeaway is the more you smoke, the more you stroke,” said lead study author Janina Markidan of the University of Maryland School of Medicine in Baltimore. Smoking causes inflammation in blood vessels that increases the risk of blood clots forming, which in turn increases the risk of stroke, Markidan said by email. “Although reducing the number of cigarettes smoked can reduce your risk of stroke, quitting is still the best choice for smokers,” Markidan added. For the study, researchers focused on what’s known as an ischemic stroke, the most common kind, which occurs when a clot blocks an …

There’s a budding industry that’s trying to solve the problem of the limp lettuce and tasteless tomatoes in America’s supermarkets. It’s full of technologists who grow crops in buildings instead of outdoors, short-cutting the need to prematurely harvest produce for a bumpy ride often thousands of miles to consumers in colder climes.   More than 30 high-tech companies from the U.S. to Singapore hoping to turn indoor farming into a major future food source, if only they can clear a stubborn hurdle: high costs.   These companies stack plants inside climate-controlled rooms, parse out nutrients and water, and bathe them with specialized light. It’s all so consumers can enjoy tasty vegetables year-round using a fraction of the water and land that traditional farming requires. Farmers can even brag the produce is locally grown.   But real estate around cities is pricey. Electricity and labor don’t come cheap. And unlike specialty crops like newly legal marijuana, veggies rarely command premium prices. (It’s tough to compete with plants grown in dirt with free sunlight, after all.)   Even the best-funded indoor farming company on the planet — Plenty, which has raised nearly $230 million so far — has embraced a longtime farmers’ crutch: government handouts. It hasn’t found any takers yet.   “We believe society should consider investing in this new form of agriculture in the way it invested in agriculture in the 1940s,” said Plenty CEO Matt Barnard in a recent interview.   Barnard says public aid — in the form of cheaper …

The Spanish explorer Ponce de Leon never found the Fountain of Youth, a magical water source supposedly capable of reversing the aging process. But scientists at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, are working to extend human life span and delay the onset of multiple age-related diseases and disabilities. VOA Maia Kay has the story. …

Health officials in the Democratic Republic of Congo are racing to contain a new Ebola outbreak announced this week. At least two people are confirmed to have died of Ebola this month in a remote village of northwest DRC, very close to the border of the smaller, neighboring Republic of Congo. The DRC’s health minister, Dr. Oly Ilunga, has been keeping people updated on social media, tweeting that on Thursday — some 24 hours after the initial announcement — a team of 12 experts landed in Mbandaka, the city closest to the outbreak. Ilunga said that Ebola had been confirmed in two of 17 hemorrhagic fever deaths seen in recent weeks in the northwest village of Bikoro. The area has reported 21 cases of hemorrhagic fever in all.   “Our country,” he said in an open letter to the Congolese population, “is facing a new epidemic of Ebola that is a public health emergency of international concern.” The World Health Organization has released $1 million from its emergency fund to respond to this outbreak. WHO and medical aid group Doctors Without Borders are leading the response, and have sent experts to the site. “MSF’s DRC emergency team is already on site and has been supporting the Ministry of Health to deploy a rapid and tailored response to the emergency since last Saturday,” the group, known by its french acronym MSF, said in a statement. “MSF will continue to adapt its response according to the needs on the ground.” The aid …