Month: March 2022

Scientists say they have finally assembled the full genetic blueprint for human life, adding the missing pieces to a puzzle nearly completed two decades ago. An international team described the first-ever sequencing of a complete human genome – the set of instructions to build and sustain a human being – in research published Thursday in the journal Science. The previous effort, celebrated across the world, was incomplete because DNA sequencing technologies of the day weren’t able to read certain parts of it. Even after updates, it was missing about 8% of the genome. “Some of the genes that make us uniquely human were actually in this ‘dark matter of the genome’ and they were totally missed,” said Evan Eichler, a University of Washington researcher who participated in the current effort and the original Human Genome Project. “It took 20-plus years, but we finally got it done.” Many — including Eichler’s own students — thought it had been finished already. “I was teaching them, and they said, ‘Wait a minute. Isn’t this like the sixth time you guys have declared victory? I said, ‘No, this time we really, really did it!” Eichler said. Scientists said this full picture of the genome will give humanity a greater understanding of our evolution and biology while also opening the door to medical discoveries in areas like aging, neurodegenerative conditions, cancer and heart disease. “We’re just broadening our opportunities to understand human disease,” said Karen Miga, an author of one of the six studies published …

A microgravity ceremony ushers in a new commander of the International Space Station. An old space telescope finds something new in the cosmos. And a futuristic helmet to study astronauts’ brain waves. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. …

After spending two years being socially distanced in his home country of South Korea, Kim Hoe-jun booked a last-minute flight to Hawaii, where he had enjoyed his honeymoon six years ago, giving in to his craving for overseas travel. “I bought the ticket just a week ago, but it was rather a no-brainer. It felt like I was making up for those two years not being able to go abroad often as I used to before COVID,” he said, before boarding the plane from Incheon International Airport on Friday. Vaccinated and boosted, Kim and his wife are among South Koreans joining in a rush for “revenge travel” — a term that has been trending on social media as people scramble to book overseas trips that were delayed by coronavirus restrictions. The boom started after March 21 when South Korea lifted a seven-day mandatory quarantine for fully vaccinated travelers arriving from most countries. The restriction had been eased last year but was reimposed in December as the highly infectious Omicron variant spread. The country has largely scrapped its once-aggressive tracing and containment efforts despite a record COVID-19 wave, joining a growing list of Asian countries that have eased quarantine rules, including Singapore, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Koreans now appear more ready to travel. Polls showed people are less worried about the implications of catching the virus, and increasingly see its prevention as out of their hands. Sales of overseas flight tickets on 11st, an e-commerce unit of SK Telecom, South …

Federal health officials are dropping the warning they have attached to cruising since the beginning of the pandemic, leaving it up to vacationers to decide whether they feel safe getting on a ship. Cruise-ship operators welcomed Wednesday’s announcement, which came as many people thought about summer vacation plans. An industry trade group said the move by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention validated measures that ship owners have taken, including requiring crew members and most passengers to be vaccinated against the virus. The CDC removed the COVID-19 “cruise ship travel health notice” that was first imposed in March 2020, after virus outbreaks on several ships around the world. However, the agency expressed reservations about cruising. “While cruising will always pose some risk of COVID-19 transmission, travelers will make their own risk assessment when choosing to travel on a cruise ship, much like they do in all other travel settings,” CDC spokesperson Dave Daigle said in an email. Daigle said the CDC’s decision was based on “the current state of the pandemic and decreases in COVID-19 cases onboard cruise ships over the past several weeks.” COVID-19 cases in the United States have been falling since mid-January, although the decline has slowed in recent weeks, and the current seven-day rolling average for daily new cases in the U.S. is roughly unchanged from two weeks ago, according to figures from Johns Hopkins University. States have rolled back mask mandates, putting pressure on federal officials to ease virus-related restrictions. Outbreaks continue to be …

A batch of dome-shaped ice volcanoes that look unlike anything else known in our solar system and may still be active have been identified on Pluto using data from NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft, showing that this remote frigid world is more dynamic than previously known. Scientists said that these cryovolcanoes — numbering perhaps 10 or more — stand anywhere from 1 kilometer (six-tenths of a mile) to 7 kilometers (4-1/2 miles) tall. Unlike Earth volcanoes that spew gases and molten rock, this dwarf planet’s cryovolcanoes extrude large amounts of ice — apparently frozen water rather than some other frozen material — that may have the consistency of toothpaste, they said. Features on the asteroid belt dwarf planet Ceres, Saturn’s moons Enceladus and Titan, Jupiter’s moon Europa and Neptune’s moon Triton also have been pegged as cryovolcanoes. But those all differ from Pluto’s, the researchers said, owing to different surface conditions such as temperature and atmospheric pressure, as well as different mixes of icy materials. “Finding these features does indicate that Pluto is more active, or geologically alive, than we previously thought it would be,” said planetary scientist Kelsi Singer of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado, lead author of the study published this week in the journal Nature Communications. “The combination of these features being geologically recent, covering a vast area and most likely being made of water ice is surprising because it requires more internal heat than we thought Pluto would have at this stage of its history,” …

The White House Wednesday announced it has launched a new website — COVID.gov — designed to provide the latest pandemic information as well as access to vaccines, tests, treatments, and masks on a single site. In a press release, the White House said the site provides access to all the tools available to address COVID-19, including a list of all 90,000 vaccination sites established in the United States, links to obtaining masks and tests, and where to obtain COVID-19 treatments. There is also a search function, which can be used to find the latest information on the status of the pandemic in a given area. The site also features a so-called “test-to-treat” locator, designed to allow access to U.S. pharmacies and community health centers, where anyone can get tested for COVID-19 and, if required, receive appropriate treatment. The statement notes U.S. President Joe Biden originally announced the Test-to-Treat initiative in his State of the Union address earlier this month, and since then his administration launched more than 2,000 of the sites across the country. More than 240 sites were established in Veteran’s Health Administration and Department of Defense facilities to serve veterans, military personnel, and their families. The White House also made a pitch for Congress to approve an additional $22 billion in emergency funding to help continue the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic. Officials say in the last two weeks, due to a lack of funding, the administration has already had to stop reimbursements to health care providers for …

Scientists in Kenya are testing a project using solar panels to shade crops while generating clean energy. It’s called agrivoltaics. Successful trials have shown that this technology reduces water loss and results in higher yields. Juma Majanga reports from Kajiado, Kenya. …

Malaysia’s health ministry is proposing a major initiative to prevent young people from smoking. It’s a bold plan but critics say it has flaws. Dave Grunebaum has the story. …

A U.S. astronaut has returned to Earth Wednesday aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft after nearly a full year aboard the International Space Station, during which relations between the two space giants plummeted over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The capsule carrying NASA astronaut Mark Vande Hei and Russian cosmonauts, Anton Shkaplerov and Pyotr Dubrov, completed a parachute-assisted landing on the snow-covered steppe of central Kazakhstan, several hours after undocking from the ISS. For Vande Hei, it ended a U.S. record-breaking stay in space. He was in space for 355 days, breaking the previous record of 340 days set by Scott Kelly in 2016. NASA says the two countries are continuing to cooperate on the ISS, although Dmitry Rogozin, the head of Russia’s space agency Roscosmos, posted a series of angry tweets shortly after the invasion of Ukraine, suggesting Russia could abandon the ISS and let it plummet back to Earth. He also shared a video showing Russian cosmonauts abandoning Vande Hei on the ISS. But in a handover ceremony Tuesday before departing the orbital outpost, Shkaplerov, who commanded the latest ISS crew, expressed a more harmonious view. “People have problems on Earth. On orbit we are one crew,” he said. The invasion has led to fallout in other areas of cooperation between Moscow and other international partners in space travel. The European Space Agency has postponed an unmanned mission to Mars because it relied on a Russian rocket. And British-based satellite company One Web canceled a series of launches because they …

Botswana has become the first country in Africa to approve the use of the Texas-made COVID-19 vaccine Corbevax. Botswana’s president and California biotech company NantWorks made the announcement Monday as they began construction of a plant to produce COVID-vaccines and drugs to fight cancer. CEO of biotech firm NantWorks Patrick Soon-Shiong announced on Monday that Botswana’s Medicines Regulatory Authority (BOMRA) had approved the Corbevax jab. He made the announcement at a groundbreaking ceremony for a vaccine and cancer drug production facility, along with Botswana’s President Mokgweetsi Masisi. “I am pleased to announce, Mr. President, with the incredibly hard work of both the Ministry of Health and BOMRA, today we announce Africa’s first approved vaccine for Africa by Botswana,” Soon-Shiong said. Corbevax is a patent-free COVID vaccine developed by the Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital in the United States. It has been used in Bangladesh, India, and Indonesia. Soon-Shiong said the first consignment would be delivered to Botswana for distribution across Africa. “This vaccine has been tested and shown to be active in every variant including omicron. I got a commitment this morning that Botswana, effective immediately, will have access to 100 million of these vaccines that you can distribute,” Soon-Shiong said. The plant, which is expected to be operational by 2026, plans to produce vaccines for COVID and other diseases, as well as cancer treatment drugs. Masisi said the plant heralds a new dawn for the production of pharmaceuticals on the continent. “This is particularly noteworthy in …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has authorized a fourth dose of the Pfizer and Moderna COVID-19 vaccines for people 50 and over. Previously a fourth dose was only authorized for people 12 and up, who are badly immunocompromised. The U.S. Centers for Disease Prevention and Control will not weigh in on how to implement the FDA’s authorization. People wanting the fourth shot should only do so at least four months after the previous booster, the FDA said Tuesday. The FDA’s authorization comes as COVID-19 cases in the U.S. are falling after a winter surge of the omicron variant.  However, a new subvariant, BA.2, is spreading in Europe and the U.S. Roughly two-thirds of Americans are fully vaccinated, meaning they’ve had two doses of Pfizer or Moderna or one dose of Johnson & Johnson vaccine. Only half of those eligible have gotten a first booster. While the vaccines did not stop omicron from circulating widely, health officials say they did help those infected avoid serious illness or death. The government is also considering authorizing a fourth dose for everyone in the Fall when cases could surge again. Some information in this report comes from The Associated Press. …

Southern Malawi has started recording a rise in cholera cases, which health authorities blame on flooding from a recent tropical storm and cyclone. More than 30 people have been infected and two have died. UNICEF is intervening to reduce the spread of the disease. Malawi confirmed the first cholera case March 2 in the Machinga district. Health authorities say the disease has so far hit the Nsanje and Machinga districts in southern Malawi with a cumulative number of cases now reaching 33. There have been two deaths as of Friday. “Out of 33 cases, eight cases were still receiving treatment at the cholera treatment center, Ndamera treatment center specifically. We also have a cumulative number of two deaths. The rest were discharged,” said George Mbotwa, the spokesperson for the Nsanje District Health Office. He says they have put in place measures to prevent and control the further spread of the disease such as surveillance and contact tracing. “We are also doing health education; health talks in [evacuation] camps where there are a lot of people and of course in surrounding communities. We have also instituted health workers; HSAs (Health Surveillance Assistants) in all uncharted entry points where actually they are conducting health promotion in water treatment efforts, health talks and all that,” he said.  Cholera is an acute diarrheal infection caused by ingesting food or water contaminated with bacteria. The disease affects both children and adults if untreated and it can kill within hours. Cholera is more common during the …

An ice shelf the size of New York City has collapsed in East Antarctica, an area long thought to be stable and not hit much by climate change, concerned scientists said Friday. The collapse, captured by satellite images, marked the first time in human history that the frigid region had an ice shelf collapse. It happened at the beginning of a freakish warm spell last week when temperatures soared more than 70 degrees (40 Celsius) warmer than normal in some spots of East Antarctica. Satellite photos show the area had been shrinking rapidly the last couple of years, and now scientists say they wonder if they have been overestimating East Antarctica’s stability and resistance to global warming that has been melting ice rapidly on the smaller western side and the vulnerable peninsula. The ice shelf, about 460 square miles wide (1200 square kilometers) holding in the Conger and Glenzer glaciers from the warmer water, collapsed between March 14 and 16, said ice scientist Catherine Walker of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute. She said scientists have never seen this happen in this part of the continent and that makes it worrisome. “The Glenzer Conger ice shelf presumably had been there for thousands of years and it’s not ever going to be there again,” said University of Minnesota ice scientist Peter Neff. The issue isn’t the amount of ice lost in this collapse, Neff and Walker said. It’s negligible. But it’s more about the where it happened. Neff said he worries that …

On World Tuberculosis Day, Nigeria said cases of the disease increased by nearly 50 percent last year. At a summit Thursday to heighten awareness of the disease, health authorities said to tackle the epidemic, they need to close a huge funding gap.   At least 200 people attended the ministerial briefing Thursday in Abuja, where health authorities said confirmed cases jumped from about 138,000 in 2020 to more than 207,000 cases last year. Health minister Osagie Ehanire said the actual number of cases is probably higher.   “There’s still a significant gap between the estimated and the notified cases,” he said. “The 207,000 which I spoke of represents only 45 percent of what we estimated.”  Health authorities said the increase was as a result of heightened surveillance and that Nigeria was one of the few countries in the world to sustain its TB detection program despite COVID-19 disruptions.  Authorities said there is still a huge funding shortage when it comes to tuberculosis interventions, as only 31% of funding needed for TB control in 2020 was achieved.  “This year’s world TB Day theme, ‘Invest to End TB, Save Lives,’ is a call to action that resonates with the most critical needs of Nigeria’s national TB program,” said Rachel Goldstein, officer for HIV and TB control for the U.S. Agency for International Development. “We know that the program currently has a significant funding gap, and that’s something we’ve got to work together to advocate for additional resources.”   Every year, about 590,000 …

NASA says international space cooperation “hasn’t missed a beat” despite Russia’s war on Ukraine and punishing Western sanctions on Moscow. Meanwhile, Europe’s space agency cancels travel plans with Russia, and space station astronauts perform repairs. Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space.] …

The World Health Organization warns the fight against tuberculosis is at a critical juncture. It says the COVID-19 pandemic has reversed gains made since 2000 in saving lives from the infectious disease. For the first time in over a decade, the WHO says TB deaths increased in 2020. It says around 1.5 million people died of TB during that pandemic year because of disruptions in services and lack of resources. Most deaths have occurred in developing countries, with conflict affected countries across Eastern Europe, Africa, and the Middle East at greatest risk. The director of the WHO’s Global Tuberculosis Program, Tereza Kaseva, says an extra $1.1 billion a year is needed for the development of new tools, especially new vaccines, to achieve the goal of ending TB by 2030. She says investing in the fight against tuberculosis is a no-brainer given the benefits gained for each dollar spent. “For every one dollar invested to end TB, 43 is returned as the benefits of a healthier, functioning society…Ending TB by 2030 can lead to avoiding 23.8 million tuberculosis deaths and almost 13 trillion U.S. dollars in economic losses.” The WHO says extra funding would allow the world to treat 50 million people with TB, including 3.7 million children and 2.2 million with drug-resistant TB. WHO officials say that would be particularly beneficial for children and young adults who lag adults in accessing TB prevention and care. Team leader of vulnerable populations in the WHO’s global TB program, Kerri Viney, says 1.1 …

Cameroon’s public health ministry says a cholera outbreak is sweeping across the towns of Limbe, Buea and Tiko, near the border with Nigeria. The government says 12 of the 600 patients rushed to hospitals in those towns died within the past 72 hours. Nyenti Annereke, director of the Limbe government hospital, said the facility, which has a capacity of 200 beds, has received more than 240 cholera patients. “We built three tents in Limbe hospital yesterday because patients were at the veranda, in the corridors of the wards,” he said. “All the beds were full. The Tiko district hospital, the capacity also is overpowered. The hospital in Bota is another crisis zone.” To cope with the overflow, humanitarian workers are helping to erect tents at the hospitals in Limbe and Buea. Still, The government says many families are rushing their sick relatives to surrounding towns, including Mutengene and Douala, a commercial hub on the Atlantic coast. Bernard Okalia Bilai, governor of the South West region where Limbe, Tiko and Buea are located, chaired at least three crisis meetings on Wednesday. Bilai said the cholera outbreak is caused by a shortage of clean drinking water in western towns and villages provoked by the long dry season and civilians should desist from drinking open stream water. He said the disease is spreading fast because cattle and civilians defecate in the open and in rivers. “Our structures, the hospitals are overloaded, but thank God that the medical officers in charge of those hospitals …

U.S. pharmaceutical company Moderna said Wednesday interim studies it has conducted indicated its COVID-19 vaccine is safe and effective for very young children, and the company is submitting a request for its approval to U.S. and international drug regulators. In a release published on its website, Moderna said interim data from its Phase 2/3 Study showed “a robust neutralizing antibody response” from a 25 microgram two-dose series of its vaccine among children ages 6 months to just under 2 years of age, and children from 2 years to just under 6. Based on these results, the company said it will submit a request for approval for the two-dose series for children 6 months to just under 6 years old to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, the European Medicines Agency and other global regulators in the coming weeks. If approved, it would be the first vaccination available in the United States for children under the age of 5. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine is currently available in smaller doses for children 5 to 12, and in full-size doses for those 12 and older. An initial trial of the Pfizer vaccine for 2- to 4-year-olds showed a weaker immune response than in adults, forcing the trial to be extended to test a third dose. Results are expected in April. Some information for this report was provided by The Associated Press, Reuters and Agence France-Presse. …