Month: January 2023

Israeli archaeologists said Wednesday that they are trying to uncover the meaning of a recently discovered hand imprint carved into the stone wall of an ancient moat outside Jerusalem’s Old City. The imprint, which may been made as a “prank”, was found in a thousand-year-old moat exposed during works to expand a road in Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem near Herod’s Gate, the Israeli Antiquities Authority said. The massive moat was hewn into the stone around all of the Old City, stretching 10 meters (33 feet) across and between two to seven meters deep and, unlike typical European ones, not filled with water. According to the IAA, Crusaders in 1099 needed five weeks to cross it and breach the city’s walls and defenses While the moat’s function was clear, the hand’s meaning was elusive. “It’s a mystery, we tried to solve it,” IAA’s excavation director Zubair Adawi said in a statement. IAA archaeologists remained uncertain who carved the hand into the rock or its significance. The moat and hand have meanwhile been covered to enable the continued infrastructure works just below the walls that currently surround the city, built in the 16th century by Suleiman the Magnificent. …

A chatbot powered by reams of data from the internet has passed exams at a U.S. law school after writing essays on topics ranging from constitutional law to taxation and torts. ChatGPT from OpenAI, a U.S. company that this week got a massive injection of cash from Microsoft, uses artificial intelligence (AI) to generate streams of text from simple prompts. The results have been so good that educators have warned it could lead to widespread cheating and even signal the end of traditional classroom teaching methods. Jonathan Choi, a professor at Minnesota University Law School, gave ChatGPT the same test faced by students, consisting of 95 multiple-choice questions and 12 essay questions. In a white paper titled “ChatGPT goes to law school” published on Monday, he and his coauthors reported that the bot scored a C+ overall. While this was enough for a pass, the bot was near the bottom of the class in most subjects and “bombed” at multiple-choice questions involving mathematics. ‘Not a great student’ “In writing essays, ChatGPT displayed a strong grasp of basic legal rules and had consistently solid organization and composition,” the authors wrote. But the bot “often struggled to spot issues when given an open-ended prompt, a core skill on law school exams”. Officials in New York and other jurisdictions have banned the use of ChatGPT in schools, but Choi suggested it could be a valuable teaching aide. “Overall, ChatGPT wasn’t a great law student acting alone,” he wrote on Twitter. “But we expect …

The Carter Center said Tuesday that only 13 human cases of Guinea worm disease were reported worldwide last year. After decades of progress, the eradication program’s director cautioned the end phase of the global effort to eradicate the parasitic disease will be “the most difficult.” The Atlanta-based center, founded by former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Eleanor Rosalynn Carter, said the remaining infections occurred in four countries in sub-Saharan Africa. Six human cases were reported in Chad, five in South Sudan, one in Ethiopia and one in the Central African Republic, which remains under investigation. That’s a significant drop from when former President Carter began leading the global eradication effort in 1986, when the disease infected 3.5 million people. The figures, which are provisional, are expected to be confirmed in the coming months. “We are truly in the midst of that last mile and experiencing firsthand that it is going to be a very long and arduous last mile,” Adam Weiss, director of The Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program, told The Associated Press. “Not so much as it taking more than the next seven years – five to seven years – but just knowing that it’s going to be a slow roll to get to zero.” Guinea worm affects some of the world’s more vulnerable people and can be prevented by training people to filter and drink clean water. People who drink unclean water can ingest parasites that can grow as long as 1 meter (3 feet). The …

Malawi has appealed for more than 7 million additional doses of cholera vaccine from the World Health Organization as it struggles to control a record outbreak of the bacterial illness. The WHO donated almost 3 million doses of the vaccine to Malawi in November but those were quickly used up. Since March of last year, almost 30,000 people have been infected and nearly 1,000 have died. The appeal for more cholera doses comes as Malawi continues to register an increase in cases that have now affected all of its 29 districts. The spokesperson for the health ministry, Adrian Chikumbe, said talks with the WHO are underway. “We are expecting a consignment of 7.6 million doses for 17 districts, but we are going to also consider districts that are hard hit with the current outbreak,” Chikumbe said. The Ministry of Health said Tuesday that there is no indication Malawi will receive the vaccine any time soon because many other countries are also pressing the WHO on the same issue. The World Health Organization first supported Malawi with 3.9 million doses of the oral cholera vaccine last May, after the outbreak was reported in March. The country received another consignment of 2.9 million doses in November through the WHO and the U.N. children’s agency, UNICEF. Maziko Matemba, community health ambassador in Malawi, said the vaccine shortage shows a change in attitude toward the shots. “We had a similar situation with COVID-19 where we had low uptake when we saw more people getting …

A so-called space environmentalist is working to make the public more aware about space debris by tracking its movement in real time on a website. He says we need to think about space as an ecosystem. Deana Mitchell has the story. Camera: Deana Mitchell Produced by: Deana Mitchell …

The World Health Organization is appealing for a record $2.54 billion to assist millions of people in 54 countries facing catastrophic health emergencies triggered by multiple man-made and natural disasters.   In launching the appeal, WHO Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said the world is witnessing an unprecedented convergence of crises that demand an unprecedented response.  He said WHO is addressing an overwhelming number of intersecting health emergencies. These include climate change-related flooding in Pakistan, drought and acute hunger across the Sahel and in the greater Horn of Africa, health challenges sparked by the war in Ukraine, and the outbreaks of measles, cholera, and other killer diseases in dozens of countries.  “The world cannot look away and hope these crises resolve themselves,” Tedros emphasized. “With funding and urgent action, we can save lives, support recovery efforts, prevent the spread of diseases within countries and across borders, and help give communities the opportunity to rebuild for the future.”  WHO reports 80 percent of humanitarian needs globally are driven by conflict and around half of preventable maternal and child deaths occur in fragile, conflict-affected and vulnerable settings.  The African region faces the highest burden of public health emergencies globally. In 2022, the continent accounted for 64 percent of all Grade 3, or most acute, emergencies globally.  Fiona Braka, health emergencies operations manager in WHO’s regional office for Africa, said the continent has had to deal with conflicts and climate-driven humanitarian crises combined with new and recurrent outbreaks of diseases. Speaking from Brazzaville, …

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration is proposing switching to an annual COVID-19 vaccination campaign for the country, similar to the flu shot. In documents posted online Monday, the agency said the new strategy would provide a simplified approach to the coronavirus vaccine. The proposed plan is set to be discussed at a meeting this week of FDA scientists and the agency’s panel of external vaccine advisers. The FDA said most Americans would need only one annual vaccination to help protect them against the coronavirus, while others — including the elderly, the very young and those with weakened immune systems — might need a two-dose inoculation for additional protection. Under the current vaccination system, a person must get two doses of the original COVID-19 vaccine, which targets the coronavirus that emerged in 2020. Following that, booster shots have been recommended at periodic intervals, with the latest boosters targeting both the original virus and the omicron variant. The proposed FDA changes would do away with the system of primary vaccinations and boosters and would instead recommend for most Americans a single vaccine dose that is developed annually. As with the flu shot, vaccine makers and independent experts would aim to develop a shot that targets the virus strains most likely to dominate in the winter season. The targeted strains could be changed every year. The FDA is also considering making the shots interchangeable, so people would not have to keep track of which vaccine brand they receive. The agency is hoping …

Far below our feet, a giant may have started moving against us.  Earth’s inner core, a hot iron ball the size of Pluto, has stopped spinning in the same direction as the rest of the planet and might even be rotating the other way, research suggested on Monday. Roughly 5,000 kilometers (3,100 miles) below the surface we live on, this “planet within the planet” can spin independently because it floats in the liquid metal outer core.  Exactly how the inner core rotates has been a matter of debate between scientists — and the latest research is expected to prove controversial. What little we know about the inner core comes from measuring the tiny differences in seismic waves — created by earthquakes or sometimes nuclear explosions — as they pass through the middle of the Earth. Seeking to track the inner core’s movements, new research published in the journal Nature Geoscience analysed seismic waves from repeating earthquakes over the last six decades. The study’s authors, Xiaodong Song and Yi Yang of China’s Peking University, said they found that the inner core’s rotation “came to near halt around 2009 and then turned in an opposite direction.” “We believe the inner core rotates, relative to the Earth’s surface, back and forth, like a swing,” they told AFP. “One cycle of the swing is about seven decades,” meaning it changes direction roughly every 35 years, they added. They said it previously changed direction in the early 1970s and predicted the next about-face would be …

The World Health Organization has called for “immediate and concerted action” to protect children from contaminated medicines after a spate of child deaths linked to cough syrups last year.  In 2022, more than 300 children — mainly younger than 5 years old — in Gambia, Indonesia and Uzbekistan died of acute kidney injury, deaths that were associated with contaminated medicines, the WHO said in a statement on Monday.  The medicines, over-the-counter cough syrups, had high levels of diethylene glycol and ethylene glycol.  “These contaminants are toxic chemicals used as industrial solvents and antifreeze agents that can be fatal even taken in small amounts, and should never be found in medicines,” the WHO said.  It said seven countries had reported finding the contaminated syrups in the last four months, and called for action across its 194 member states to prevent more deaths.  “Since these are not isolated incidents, WHO calls on various key stakeholders engaged in the medical supply chain to take immediate and coordinated action,” WHO said.    …

The World Health Organization is calling for the total elimination of trans fat — an artificial toxic chemical commonly found in packaged foods, baked goods, cooking oils, and spreads which is responsible for half a million premature deaths each year.  WHO reports 5 billion people are being exposed to this toxic product, increasing their risk of heart disease and death.  Tom Frieden, the president and chief executive officer of the public health initiative Resolve to Save Lives, said that the global elimination of trans fat from food could prevent up to 17 million deaths from cardiovascular diseases by 2040.  Frieden also spoke of the importance of distinguishing artificial trans fat, “which is a toxic chemical, which has no valid use in the food supply and should be eliminated,” from saturated fat, which he called “an inherent part of many food groups in which nobody is proposing to ban.”  To put it simply, Frieden said, “Think of artificial trans fat as the tobacco of nutrition. It has no values.”  Progress has been made since 2018 when the WHO set a goal for the global elimination of trans fat in 2023. It says 43 countries now have implemented best-practice policies for tackling trans fat in food, thus protecting 2.8 billion people from heart disease and death.  To Frieden, however, that still leaves 5 billion people at risk from the devastating health impacts of trans fat. He said governments can stop these preventable deaths by enacting WHO’s best-practice policies.  He noted several countries, especially …

A study published in the December 2022 issue of the American Journal of Transplantation finds Canada leading the world in harvesting organs from those who received medical assistance in dying. The study found that in Canada, Belgium, the Netherlands and Spain, a total of 286 people who sought euthanasia provided organs to save the lives of 837 people. Almost half of those donors, 136, came from Canada. Patients who choose a medically assisted death due to suffering from cancer cannot be organ donors, due to the medications that are usually taken. Usable donors were suffering from diseases such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease or multiple sclerosis. Arthur Schafer, director of the Centre for Professional and Applied Ethics at the University of Manitoba, is pleased with the findings of the report. “I was rather proud to learn that Canadian patients who receive medical assistance in dying have been given the opportunity to make something morally significant out of their death, by opting to give life through their organs to other patients,”‘ he said. Nicole Scheidl, executive director of Ottawa-based Physicians for Life, had a very different reaction. “I was shocked,” she said. “I also think that it really undermines the organ donation framework in this country.” A longtime opponent of any form of euthanasia, Scheidl said it reminds her of suspected organ harvesting of executed prisoners in places such as the People’s Republic of China. “I think people are concerned,” she said. “I know transplant teams would want to make …

The warming of the waters off the East Coast has come at an invisible, but very steep cost — the loss of microscopic organisms that make up the base of the ocean’s food chain. The growing warmth and saltiness of the Gulf of Maine off New England is causing a dramatic decrease in the production of phytoplankton, according to Maine-based scientists who recently reported results of a yearslong, NASA-funded study. Phytoplankton, sometimes described as an “invisible forest,” are tiny plant-like organisms that serve as food for marine life. The scientists found that phytoplankton are about 65% less productive in the Gulf of Maine, part of the Atlantic Ocean bounded by New England and Canada, than they were two decades ago. The Gulf of Maine has emerged as one of the fastest warming sections of the world’s oceans. Potential loss of phytoplankton has emerged as a serious concern in recent years in other places, such as the Bering Sea off Alaska. The loss of the tiny organisms has the ability to disrupt valuable fishing industries for species such as lobsters and scallops, and it could further jeopardize imperiled animals such as North Atlantic right whales and Atlantic puffins, scientists said. “The drop in the productivity over these 20 years is profound,” said William Balch, a senior research scientist with Bigelow Laboratory for Ocean Sciences in East Boothbay, Maine, who led the study. “And that has large ramifications to what can grow here. The health of the ecosystem, the productivity of the …

“I’ve always been able to understand how people feel and to see their perspective,” said Luisa Piette, who lives in Cool, California. “I feel their pain, whether it’s people going through a difficult divorce or an acquaintance who couldn’t pay their rent. I’ve been there to lend an ear and to empathize with them.” Piette has a daughter and a granddaughter. “I think women better understand what it feels like to put themselves in other people’s situations,” she told VOA. Piette could be a textbook case on what studies on empathy have shown and what many people already suspect — women tend to be more empathetic than men. A study released last month by researchers at the University of Cambridge surveyed tens of thousands of people worldwide. Like other studies, it indicated that women are much better than men at empathizing with others, regardless of any familial or cultural influences. “Our findings provide some of the first evidence of the well-known phenomenon that women are, on average, more empathetic than men,” said David Greenberg, the study’s lead scientist. Cognitive empathy The scientists sought to measure cognitive empathy, which is when someone intellectually understands what another person may be thinking or feeling and then predicts how they will react. For example, a friend tells you they are upset because they had an unpleasant disagreement with someone. If you have cognitive empathy, you will understand how your friend feels by putting yourself in their shoes. The Cambridge study was the largest to …

Brazil’s government has declared a public health emergency for the Yanomami people in the Amazon who are suffering from malnutrition and diseases such as malaria because of illegal mining. The decree, signed by Health Minister Nisia Trindade on Friday, has no expiration date and allows for hiring extra personnel. It determines that the team in charge has to publish reports regarding the Indigenous group’s health and general well-being. President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also created a multiministerial committee to be coordinated by his chief of staff for an initial period of 90 days. He is traveling to Roraima state’s capital, Boa Vista, where many ill Yanomami have been admitted to specialized hospitals. The Yanomami are the largest native group in Brazil, with a population of around 30,000 that lives in an area larger than 9 million hectares (22 million acres) in the northern area of the Amazon rainforest, close to the border with Venezuela. In recent years, specialists sounded the alarm that humanitarian and sanitary crises were taking shape. The report “Yanomami Under Attack,” written by the nonprofit Socio-Environmental Institute, points out that in 2021 the region was responsible for 50% of the malaria cases in the country. The same report said that more than 3,000 children were malnourished. Illegal mining is the main root of the problems faced by the Yanomami people. Activists accuse miners of death threats, sexual violence and alcohol and drug abuse, especially against Indigenous children. The same report shows that the region had more …

Tons of waste dumped in poorly regulated riverside landfills or directly into the waterways that flow across three countries end up accumulating behind a trash barrier in the Drina River in eastern Bosnia during the wet weather of winter and early spring. This week, the barrier once again became the outer edge of a massive floating waste dump crammed with plastic bottles, rusty barrels, used tires, household appliances, driftwood and other garbage picked up by the river from its tributaries. The river fencing installed by a Bosnian hydroelectric plant, a few kilometers upstream from its dam near Visegrad, has turned the city into an unwilling regional waste site, local environmental activists complain. Heavy rain and unseasonably warm weather over the past week have caused many rivers and streams in Bosnia, Serbia and Montenegro to overflow, flooding the surrounding areas and forcing scores of people from their homes. Temperatures dropped in many areas Friday as rain turned into snow. “We had a lot of rainfall and torrential floods in recent days and a huge inflow of water from (the Drina’s tributaries in) Montenegro which is now, fortunately, subsiding,” said Dejan Furtula of the environmental group Eko Centar Visegrad. “Unfortunately, the huge inflow of garbage has not ceased,” he added.   The Drina The Drina River runs 346 kilometers (215 miles) from the mountains of northwestern Montenegro through Serbia and Bosnia. and some of its tributaries are known for their emerald color and breathtaking scenery. A section along the border between Bosnia …

As damaging as it was for more than 32 trillion gallons of rain and snow to fall on California since Christmas, a worst-case global warming scenario could juice up similar future downpours by one-third by the middle of this century, a new study says. The strongest of California’s storms from atmospheric rivers, long and wide plumes of moisture that form over an ocean and flow through the sky over land, would probably get an overall 34% increase in total precipitation, or another 11 trillion gallons more than just fell. That’s because the rain and snow is likely to be 22% more concentrated at its peak in places that get really doused, and to fall over a considerably larger area if fossil fuel emissions grow uncontrolled, according to a new study in Thursday’s journal Nature Climate Change. The entire western United States would likely see a 31% increase in precipitation from these worst of the worst storms in a souped-up warming world because of more intense and widely spread rainfall, the study said. Scientists say the worst-case scenario, which is about 4.4 degrees Celsius (7.9 degrees Fahrenheit) of warming since pre-industrial times, looks a bit more unlikely since efforts are being undertaken to rein in emissions. If countries do as they promise, temperatures are on track to warm about 2.7 degrees Celsius (4.9 degrees Fahrenheit), according to Climate Action Tracker. The National Weather Service calculated that California averaged 11.47 inches of precipitation statewide from Dec. 26 to Jan. 17 — including …

Countless artists have taken inspiration from “The Starry Night” since Vincent Van Gogh painted the swirling scene in 1889. Now artificial intelligence systems are doing the same, training themselves on a vast collection of digitized artworks to produce new images you can conjure in seconds from a smartphone app. The images generated by tools such as DALL-E, Midjourney and Stable Diffusion can be weird and otherworldly but also increasingly realistic and customizable — ask for a “peacock owl in the style of Van Gogh” and they can churn out something that might look similar to what you imagined. But while Van Gogh and other long-dead master painters aren’t complaining, some living artists and photographers are starting to fight back against the AI software companies creating images derived from their works. Two new lawsuits —- one this week from the Seattle-based photography giant Getty Images —- take aim at popular image-generating services for allegedly copying and processing millions of copyright-protected images without a license. Getty said it has begun legal proceedings in the High Court of Justice in London against Stability AI — the maker of Stable Diffusion —- for infringing intellectual property rights to benefit the London-based startup’s commercial interests. Another lawsuit filed Friday in a U.S. federal court in San Francisco describes AI image-generators as “21st-century collage tools that violate the rights of millions of artists.” The lawsuit, filed by three working artists on behalf of others like them, also names Stability AI as a defendant, along with San …

The World Health Organization says there is no evidence that COVID-19 mRNA vaccines increase the risk of strokes in older people. WHO officials say there is no basis to the recent concerns raised by the media and science communities about the safety of the mRNA booster shots. They say the concerns, which are related to one U.S. data system that monitors safety, presented misinformation about deaths related to COVID-19 infection. Kate O’Brien, WHO director of Immunization, Vaccines and Biologicals, said other U.S. and national vaccine safety monitoring systems have not found further evidence that mRNA vaccines lead to strokes. “At this point in time, the best evidence is that there is no true association between the booster doses of Pfizer in the older adults and strokes,” she said. “And, again, there is an ongoing, unending system to continuously monitor safety, not only for COVID vaccine and dose-by-dose, but also for all other vaccines.” O’Brien said COVID-19 vaccines are highly effective at preventing hospitalization, severe disease, or death, but less effective at stopping people from getting infected and transmitting the disease. She noted it is particularly important that people in high priority groups receive all their recommended doses. They include people over age 60, those who have underlying medical conditions or are immunocompromised, pregnant women and health workers. “For the strains that we have circulating in the world now, the omicron strains, the first booster dose actually improves the performance of your primary series for protection against the severe end of …

South Korea on Friday announced an end to its indoor mask mandate, one of the country’s last major pandemic restrictions. Health authorities said as of Jan. 30, face coverings will no longer be required indoors, except in hospitals, pharmacies, and on public transportation. The move was made because a winter spike in COVID-19 cases is on the decline and the overall pandemic situation is under control, authorities said. “Of course, there may be some increase in cases after changing the mandatory mask rule, but given the current situation in Korea we are not expecting a major spike,” said Jee Young-mee, the commissioner of the Korean Disease Control and Prevention Agency. The announcement came exactly three years after South Korea reported its first COVID-19 case. South Korea is the world’s last remaining developed country to lift its indoor mask rule and one of just a handful of nations where masks are still expected to be worn in nearly every public setting. In Seoul, the densely populated metropolitan area where nearly half the country lives, many residents say they disagree with lifting the mask mandate. “It’s too early,” said Kim Da-young, a 30-year-old nursing student, who said she fears a spike in COVID-19 cases. “I’m still nervous about taking off my mask, so I’ll keep wearing it.” According to an opinion poll released earlier this month, 66% of South Koreans will continue to wear masks even after the mandate is lifted. Several polls suggest a large percentage of South Koreans do not …

Every year, the night sky grows brighter, and the stars look dimmer. A new study that analyzes data from more than 50,000 amateur stargazers finds that artificial lighting is making the night sky about 10% brighter each year. That’s a much faster rate of change than scientists had previously estimated looking at satellite data. The research, which includes data from 2011 to 2022, is published Thursday in the journal Science. “We are losing, year by year, the possibility to see the stars,” said Fabio Falchi, a physicist at the University of Santiago de Compostela, who was not involved in the study. “If you can still see the dimmest stars, you are in a very dark place. But if you see only the brightest ones, you are in a very light-polluted place,” he said. As cities expand and put up more lights, “skyglow” or “artificial twilight,” as the study authors call it, becomes more intense. The 10% annual change “is a lot bigger than I expected — something you’ll notice clearly within a lifetime,” said Christopher Kyba, a study co-author and physicist at the German Research Centre for Geosciences in Potsdam. Kyba and his colleagues gave this example: A child is born where 250 stars are visible on a clear night. By the time that child turns 18, only 100 stars are still visible. “This is real pollution, affecting people and wildlife,” said Kyba, who said he hoped that policymakers would do more to curb light pollution. Some localities have set …