Month: March 2019

Human rights advocates are calling for an end to the discrimination that denies children with disabilities the same right to an equal education and other opportunities available to other children in society. The U.N. Human Rights Council is holding a special session in Geneva on the empowerment of children with disabilities. In keeping with the theme of the day, the U.N. has made the Council chamber wheelchair-accessible, has hired a sign interpreter for the hearing impaired, and has embossed some oral statements in Braille. With these accommodations to children with disabilities, the U.N. is sending a message that it practices what it preaches. It is saying children with disabilities will be able to lead a full and fulfilling life on a par with other children if certain adaptations are made to their needs. However, the United Nations reports the sad reality is that 93 million children with disabilities around the world are likely to have their rights violated from the moment they are born. It says millions of these children are torn from their families and placed in institutions where they are at risk of violence, abuse and neglect. U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, is a medical doctor and a pediatrician. In her practice, she says she quickly learned the voices of disabled children too often go unheard. “While preparing for today, I was remembering when I just started to be a pediatrician how people will leave the situation of children with disabilities. It was much more …

Yetnebersh Nigussie lost her sight at the age of five, but she has not let her disability slow her down. A tireless advocate for people with disabilities in Africa, she has received prestigious prizes, including the Spirit of Helen Keller Award and the Alternative Nobel Prize. Yetnebersh Nigussie recently spoke to VOA’s Salem Solomon from our studios in New York. Here’s her story. …

The first American commercially built-and-operated crew spacecraft in eight years docked successfully Sunday at the International Space Station. There was, however, no crew aboard the spacecraft, just a test dummy named Ripley, in a nod to the lead character in the Alien movies. The docking was carried out autonomously by the Crew Dragon capsule, as the three astronauts on board the International Space Station watched. The Space X Crew Dragon capsule lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket early Saturday from Florida’s Kennedy Space Center. The Dragon brought supplies and test equipment to the space station where it will spend five days as astronauts conduct tests and inspect the Dragon’s cabin. NASA has awarded millions of dollars to Space X and Boeing to design and operate a capsule to launch astronauts into orbit from American soil some time this year. It is not immediately clear whether that goal will be reached. Space X is entrepreneur Elon Musk’s company. Musk is also the CEO of electric carmaker Tesla. Currently, America relies on Russia to launch astronauts to the space station. Russia charges about $80 million per ticket.   …

Exercise and diet are keys to a healthier life, as many studies show, but a heart specialist also recommends something more. “One, two, three — twirl.” Kendra Martin is taking photographs of three little girls in chiffon dresses. As they twirl, Martin tells them to smile. “All right, big smiles!” “I tell people to fake laugh, and they feel stupid doing it, but the result is theyʼre laughing, and it turns into a genuine smile,” Martin said. And, in this case a giggle. Big grins and giggles pay off on camera. The girls may be too young to have heart problems, but the smiles can promote heart health. Brain rewiring Dr. Anand Chockalingam is a heart specialist at the University of Missouri Health Care who tells his patients to smile. “When we smile, the brain wiring gets altered. The chemicals that are released are more positive,” he said. Chockalingam’s advice is supported by a number of studies. He says smiling is a first step in fighting stress and its ill health effects. When you feel stressed, your body releases a surge of hormones, including adrenaline and cortisol. Adrenaline increases your heart rate and blood pressure. Cortisol, the primary stress hormone, increases sugars in the bloodstream. If you are truly in danger, these hormones can help, but too much of these stress hormones too frequently can lead to heart disease and stroke. ​Bad habits arise People who are stressed look for ways to cope. The American Heart Association says smoking, overeating …

Exercise and diet are keys to a healthier life, as many studies show, but here’s something that may surprise you: A heart specialist also recommends smiling to improve your health. VOA’s Carol Pearson explains. …

Simple DNA testing kits are becoming more popular and affordable. Today, genetic tests can show where your family came from, give you insight into your health, and even reveal unknown living relatives. Nastassia Jaumen has the story, narrated by Anna Rice. …

Scientists estimate half of the world’s corals have been devastated as climate change has led to warmer oceans. When water temperatures get too high, corals become stressed and expel the algae that coats their tissues and provides the corals’ primary food source. The corals gradually lose their color, known as bleaching, and many of them die. But surprisingly, there are corals in one sea in the Middle East that are resistance to the rising temperatures. VOAs Deborah Block explains why. …

The charity Doctors Without Borders has suspended its Ebola virus-fighting operations in the Democratic Republic of Congo after attacks on two of its treatment centers this week, raising the risk that Ebola infections in the area will increase. The World Health Organization has called the Feb. 24 attack in Katwa and the Feb. 27 attack in Butembo “deplorable.” In Butembo, where the center housed 12 confirmed Ebola patients and 38 with suspected Ebola, four patients with the highly contagious virus fled for their lives. One is still missing. The attackers set fire to the treatment centers and engaged in gunfire with security forces. MSF halts treatment Doctors Without Borders, also known as Medicins Sans Frontieres, or MSF, announced Friday it had halted treatment in Butembo, in the eastern RDC province of North Kivu. It had done the same earlier in the week in Katwa, the latest hot spot in the outbreak first reported last August. WHO spokesperson Christian Lindmeier told reporters that experts must now track possible paths of infection. “It is highly important to find those people, that last patient, and then, of course, immediately start the contact tracing and monitor the contacts these patients might have been in touch with,” Lindmeier said. DRC health minister Oly Ilunga Kalenga told VOA French to Africa that the problem with the Ebola situation lies in Katwa and Butembo, where “communities are not fully engaged.” He also said armed groups and unidentified gunmen are common in the area. A spokeswoman for DRC’s …

NASA’s newest Mars lander has started digging into the red planet, but hit a few snags, scientists said Friday. The German drilling instrument on the InSight lander hit what appeared to be a couple of stones. It only managed to burrow between half a foot (18 centimeters) and about 1-and-a-half feet (50 centimeters), far short of the first dig’s goal, said the German Aerospace Center. The hammering device in the “mole” was developed by the Astronika engineering company in Poland. “This is not very good news for me because although the hammer is proving itself … the Mars environment is not very favorable to us,” said the company’s chief engineer, Jerzy Grygorczuk. Over time, the team is shooting for a depth of up to 16 feet (5 meters), which would set an otherworldly record. The lander is digging deep to measure the planet’s internal temperature. InSight landed on Mars last November. Flight controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent commands to the lander Thursday to begin digging. It’ll rest for a bit before burrowing again. The spacecraft already has a seismometer on the surface, listening for potential quakes. The lander is stationary, but has a robot arm to maneuver these two main experiments. …

Africa-born particle physicist Ketevi Assamagan is a man on a science mission. His goal is to bring science education to a new generation of African youth through a traveling program known as the African School of Fundamental Physics and Applications, or ASP. “Sometimes, people just need some help to be able to find the right resources,” said Assamagan, one of the founders. Assamagan works at the U.S. Energy Department’s Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island, New York, experimenting with a huge device or collider that beams tiny particles at each other, almost at the speed of light. “So, together with some colleagues, we decided to create this school,” said Assamagan, who earned a doctorate from the University of Virginia in 1995. Gratitude to past mentors fueled the desire to start the ASP, said Assamagan, who was born in Guinea but grew up in Togo. Positive elements The ASP program runs for three weeks every two years in a different African country. The first was in 2010 in South Africa, with subsequent gatherings in Ghana, Senegal, Rwanda and Namibia. The next is planned for July 2020 in Marrakesh, Morocco. Each workshop brings together up to 80 students, who are treated to intensive lectures and training by top-flight physicists. “We get students from all over Africa [who] have at least three years of university education,” Assamagan said. “The majority of them are usually at the master’s level and they come from different fields: nuclear and high energy physics, medical applications, computing, mathematics and …

Scientists say images of craters taken by European and American space probes show there likely once was a planet-wide system of underground lakes on Mars. Data collected by NASA and ESA probes orbiting the red planet provide the first geological evidence for an ancient Martian groundwater system, according to a study by researchers in Italy and the Netherlands published in the Journal of Geophysical Research. Francesco Salese, one of the scientists involved, said in an email Friday that the findings confirm earlier models and smaller-scale studies, and that the underground lakes may have been connected to each other. The notion of water on Mars has long fascinated scientists because of the possibility that the planet may have once harbored similar conditions to those that allowed life to develop on Earth. Patches of ice previously spotted on Mars provide tantalizing hints of a watery past for the arid world. Researchers said flow channels, pool-shaped valleys and fan-shaped sediment deposits seen in dozens of kilometers-deep craters in Mars’ northern hemisphere would have needed water to form. Co-author Gian Gabriele Ori said an ocean some scientists speculate Mars may once have had between three and four billion years ago could even have been connected to the underground lakes. The researchers also saw signs of minerals such as clay on Mars that would have required long periods of exposure to water to form. Ralf Jaumann, a planetary scientist at the German Aerospace Center who wasn’t directly involved in the study, said such sites are …

The World Health Organization (WHO) says the deadly Ebola virus is likely to spread in the eastern Democratic Republic of Congo because of deteriorating security in conflict-ridden North Kivu and Ituri provinces. The latest WHO figures put the number of Ebola cases at 885, including 555 deaths. International efforts to stop the spread of the deadly Ebola virus in eastern DR Congo have hit a serious roadblock. The charity Doctors Without Borders has suspended its life-saving operations. The action follows attacks on two of its Ebola treatment centers this week — the first on February 24 in Katwa, followed by an attack three days later in Butembo. The World Health Organization called the attacks deplorable and said there is a great risk of the spread of the disease. During the attack on the facility in Butembo, four Ebola patients fled for their lives. WHO spokesman Christian Lindmeier said three of the patients have since returned, while one is still missing. “If you want, the positive note is that all of these four patients were convalescent, that means they were already getting better,” he said. “Hence, they had a lower viral load, which makes it way less likely for further infections.But yes, it is highly important to find those people, that last patient and then, of course, immediately start the contact tracing and monitor the contacts these patients might have been in touch with.” Lindmeier said the WHO remains committed to staying in the DRC until the job is done. However, …

Spelt risotto was on the menu at a recent lunch in Paris. Spelt is an ancient form of wheat with a nutty flavor. It is rich in fiber and minerals, and counts among dozens of sometimes ancient and obscure foods scientists say benefit people and the planet. A green cuisine effort is growing in France as scientists warn that meat consumption must be drastically cut to fight climate change and sustainably feed a global human population set to reach 10 billion by 2050. “Seventy-five percent of our food comes from 12 crops and five animals. Sixty percent of all our calories come through three vegetables,” said David Edwards, director of food strategy at environmental group WWF, which jointly produced a report, “Future 50 Foods,” with the German food giant Knorr. The message: Our current eating habits, which rely heavily on large-scale farming and livestock production, have got to change. “We’ve had a 60 percent decline in the wildlife population since the 1970s — the last 50 years, within a lifetime,” Edwards added. “And …  a precipitous decline in insect populations also … food has pushed wildlife into the extreme margins.” The Paris lunch featured many of the report’s so-called “future” foods. Vegetables are in. Meat is out. On the menu: walnuts, root vegetables, lentil flour, yams and soy milk. Also, fonio — a drought-resistant grain that Senegalese chef Pierre Thiam now markets in the United States and serves at his New York City restaurant. He sources it from smallholder farmers …