Month: June 2018

Parents suspicious that their children may be addicted to video games now have support from health authorities. The World Health Organization has listed “gaming disorder” as a new mental health problem on its 11th edition of  International Classification of Diseases, released on Monday. But as VOA’s Zlatica Hoke reports, not all psychologists agree that compulsive gaming should be on that list. …

Despite decades of research, there has been no treatment to slow the progression of Alzheimer’s in humans. But scientists have found a synthetic compound that can be used to slow the disease in mice. Steve Baragona narrates this report from Faith Lapidus. …

We were warned. On June 23, 1988, a sultry day in Washington, James Hansen told Congress and the world that global warming wasn’t approaching — it had already arrived. The testimony of the top NASA scientist, said Rice University historian Douglas Brinkley, was “the opening salvo of the age of climate change.” Thirty years later, it’s clear that Hansen and other doomsayers were right. But the change has been so sweeping that it is easy to lose sight of effects large and small — some obvious, others less conspicuous. Earth is noticeably hotter, the weather stormier and more extreme. Polar regions have lost billions of tons of ice; sea levels have been raised by trillions of gallons of water. Far more wildfires rage. Over 30 years — the time period climate scientists often use in their studies in order to minimize natural weather variations — the world’s annual temperature has warmed nearly 1 degree (0.54 degrees Celsius), according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. And the temperature in the United States has gone up even more — nearly 1.6 degrees. “The biggest change over the last 30 years, which is most of my life, is that we’re no longer thinking just about the future,” said Kathie Dello, a climate scientist at Oregon State University in Corvallis. “Climate change is here, it’s now and it’s hitting us hard from all sides.” Warming hasn’t been just global, it’s been all too local. According to an Associated Press statistical analysis of 30 …

Exhausted but relieved, Yariani Flores lay next to her healthy newborn son, along with four other Venezuelan women who just gave birth in a hospital in Colombia’s border city of Cucuta. Thousands of Venezuelan women have done the same over the past few years, as the health system in their home country has crumbled. They crossed the border, driven by fear that they or their babies could die. Early in her pregnancy, Flores sought a pre-natal checkup at a municipal hospital in Venezuela’s frontier state of Tachira only to be told that there was little point. “The doctor said, ‘Don’t bother coming here, I can’t do much for you,’” said Flores, lying in the 12-bed maternity ward at Cucuta’s Erasmo Meoz University Hospital. “She recommended I come to Cucuta and have the birth here.” Venezuela’s economic crisis has laid waste to its health system. The numbers of babies and women dying during or after childbirth have soared, while medicines and supplies have become increasingly scarce. “You have to bring everything to the hospital in Venezuela,” said Flores, a 33-year-old mother of five. “There aren’t even any surgical gloves.” A March survey of 137 hospitals, led by the opposition-dominated Congress, showed that they often lack basic equipment like catheters, as well as incubators and x-ray units. Venezuelan hospitals are also plagued by water and electricity outages, and only 7 percent of emergency services are fully operative, the survey found. Infant mortality in the oil-rich nation rose 30 percent last year, according …

Women must be at the heart of climate action if the world is to limit the deadly impact of disasters such as floods, former Irish president and U.N. rights commissioner Mary Robinson said on Monday. Robinson, also a former U.N. climate envoy, said women were most adversely affected by disasters and yet are rarely “put front and center” of efforts to protect the most vulnerable. “Climate change is a man-made problem and must have a feminist solution,” she said at a meeting of climate experts at London’s Marshall Institute for Philanthropy and Entrepreneurship. “Feminism doesn’t mean excluding men, it’s about being more inclusive of women and – in this case – acknowledging the role they can play in tackling climate change.” Research has shown that women’s vulnerabilities are exposed during the chaos of cyclones, earthquakes and floods, according to the British think-tank Overseas Development Institute. In many developing countries, for example, women are involved in food production, but are not allowed to manage the cash earned by selling their crops, said Robinson. The lack of access to financial resources can hamper their ability to cope with extreme weather, she told the Thomson Reuters Foundation on the sidelines of the event. “Women all over the world are … on the front lines of the fall-out from climate change and therefore on the forefront of climate action,” said Natalie Samarasinghe, executive director of Britain’s United Nations Association. “What we — the international community — need to do is talk to them, learn …

Vowing to reclaim U.S. leadership in space, President Donald Trump announced Monday he is directing the Pentagon to create a new “Space Force” as an independent service branch aimed at ensuring American supremacy in space.   Trump envisioned a bright future for the U.S. space program, pledging to revive the country’s flagging efforts, return to the moon and eventually send a manned mission that would reach Mars. The president framed space as a national security issue, saying he does not want “China and Russia and other countries leading us.”   “My administration is reclaiming America’s heritage as the world’s greatest spacefaring nation,” Trump said in the East Room, joined by members of his space council. “The essence of the American character is to explore new horizons and to tame new frontiers.”   Trump had previously suggested the possibility of creating a space unit that would include portions equivalent to parts of the Air Force, Army and Navy. But his directive will task the Defense Department to begin the process of establishing the ‘Space Force’ as the sixth branch of the U.S. armed forces. He said the new branch’s creation will be overseen by Gen. Joseph Dunford, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.   “When it comes to defending America, it is not enough to merely have an American presence in space. We must have American dominance in space,” Trump said. He added: “We are going to have the Air Force and we are going to have the Space …

For the first time, the World Health Organization is adding Gaming disorder to the section on Mental and Addictive Disorders in its new International Classification of Diseases. The ICD provides data on the causes of thousands of diseases, injuries and deaths across the globe and information on prevention and treatment. The International Classification of Diseases was last revised 28 years ago. Changes, which have occurred since then are reflected in this edition. Gaming disorder has been added to the section on mental and addictive disorders because demand for services to tackle this condition has been growing. Gaming disorders usually are linked to a system of rewards or incentives, such as accumulating points in competition with others or winning money. These games are commonly played on electronic and video devices. WHO officials say statistics, mainly from East and South Asian countries, show only a very small two to three percent of people are addicted to Gaming. Director of WHO’s Department for Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Shekhar Saxena, describes some of the warning signs of addictive Gaming behavior. “Be careful if the person you are with, a child or another person is using Gaming in an excessive manner… If it is consuming too much time and if it is interfering with the expected functions of the person, whether it is studies, whether it is socialization, whether it is work, then you need to be cautious and perhaps seek help,” said Saxena. In the previous WHO classification, gender identity disorders, such as …

Astronomers and stargazers will get a chance to get up close and personal with Mars over the next six weeks, as the Earth passes between the Red Planet and the sun. Mars will make its closest swing toward Earth, bringing it closer and appearing brighter, than it has in the past 15 years. In 2003, Mars came within 56.1 million kilometers of Earth, the closest it had come in 60,000 years, according to the Weather Channel. This year the two planets won’t get quite as cozy. The Weather Channel said Mars will appear the brightest to Earth stargazers on July 31, when the two planets are just 57.6 million kilometers apart. How large Mars appears in the sky to people on Earth depends on where the two neighboring planets are in their elliptical journey. While it takes Earth 365 days to orbit the sun, it takes Mars almost twice as long, or 687 days. In 2016, the planets were at the opposite ends of their orbits, with 75.6 million kilometers between them, making Mars appear very small. The next time Mars comes this close to Earth will be in March 2035.   …

For 25 years, Patrick Matondo has earned a living buying and selling monkeys, bats and other animals popularly known as bush meat along the Congo River. Standing on the riverbank in Mbandaka, a city affected by the deadly new outbreak of the Ebola virus, the father of five said that for the first time he’s worried he won’t be able to support his family. “Since Ebola was declared, business has decreased by almost half. It’s really, really bad,” the 47-year-old said, hanging his head. Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak declared in May has 38 confirmed cases, including 14 deaths. The discovery of a handful of Ebola cases among Mbandaka’s more than 1 million residents also has hurt the economy, especially among traders of meat from wild animals. The virus, which spreads through bodily fluids of those infected, has been known to jump from animals such as monkeys and bats to humans. In the West Africa outbreak four years ago that killed more than 11,000 people, it was widely suspected that the epidemic began when a 2-year-old boy in Guinea was infected by a bat. Usually the wild animals are highly sought-after as popular sources of protein along with beef and pork, and cargo ships carrying the smoked meat arrive daily in the city, the trade hub for Congo’s northwestern Equateur province. Meanwhile, bush meat markets still see locals bartering for the animals, both dead and alive. Prospective buyers pause at tables piled with monkey meat, picking up blackened chunks one by …

California officials, having concluded coffee drinking is not a risky pastime, are proposing a regulation that will essentially tell consumers of America’s favorite beverage they can drink up without fear. The unprecedented action Friday by the Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment to propose a regulation to clear coffee of the stigma that it could pose a toxic risk followed a review of more than 1,000 studies published this week by the World Health Organization that found inadequate evidence that coffee causes cancer. The state agency implements a law passed by voters in 1986 that requires warnings of chemicals known to cause cancer and birth defects. One of those chemicals is acrylamide, which is found in many things and is a byproduct of coffee roasting and brewing present in every cup of joe. Win for coffee industry  If the regulation is adopted, it would be a huge win for the coffee industry, which faces potentially massive civil penalties after recently losing an 8-year-old lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court that could require scary warnings on all coffee packaging sold in California. Judge Elihu Berle found that Starbucks and other coffee roasters and retailers had failed to show that benefits from drinking coffee outweighed any cancer risks. He had previously ruled the companies hadn’t shown the threat from the chemical was insignificant. The state’s action rejects that ruling. “The proposed regulation would state that drinking coffee does not pose a significant cancer risk, despite the presence of chemicals created during the …

Among the millions of fans watching the World Cup are amateur football players who have dreams of being as good as their heroes, Now, they have a new way to compare their performance to the best professionals in the game, so they can build their skills. The help comes from a new wearable device that uses GPS and other sensors to track their movements. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates. …

The Central American nation of Costa Rica is among the tropical countries in the world with a very high concentration of snakes. Twenty of the country’s more than 130 species are among the most poisonous. VOA reporter Iacopo Luzi traveled to Costa Rica to report on the work of a research institute that produces the snakebite antidotes that, in many cases, are the only things that make a difference between life and death. …

The U.S. government is shutting down a planned study testing whether moderate drinking has health benefits over concerns that its funding by the alcohol industry would compromise its credibility. The National Institutes of Health said Friday that the results of the planned $100 million study could not be trusted because of the secretive way that employees negotiated with beer and liquor companies to underwrite the effort. Government officials say it is legal to use industry money to pay for government research as long as all rules are followed. However, in this case, NIH officials say employees did not follow proper procedures, including keeping their interactions with industry officials secret. NIH Deputy Director Lawrence Tabak said the interactions between the employees and industry representatives appeared to “intentionally bias” the study so that it would have a better chance to conclude that moderate drinking is beneficial. An NIH review panel was also concerned that the study’s proposed span of 10 years was too short a time period to adequately test the potential problems of a daily drink, such as an increased risk of cancer or heart failure. NIH Director Francis Collins temporarily suspended the study last month after reporting by The New York Times first raised questions about the funding policy violations. Collins said Friday that he was completely shutting down the research.  “This is a matter of the greatest seriousness,’’ he said. The study had planned to track two groups of people, one group drinking a glass of alcohol a day …