Month: August 2023

With warming ocean waters threatening much of the world’s coral reefs, some ecologists are using simple technology to help restore them. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more. …

India’s space agency on Friday released images of the moon taken from its Chandrayaan-3 space craft as it approaches the lunar south pole, a previously unexplored region thought to contain water ice where Russia is trying to land first. The video, taken on Thursday just after the separation of the rocket’s lander from the propulsion module, showed a close-up of craters as Earth’s only natural satellite spun round. “The Lander Module [LM] health is normal. LM successfully underwent a deboosting operation that reduced its orbit to 113 km x 157 km,” the Indian Space Research Organization [ISRO] tweeted later. The Indian space agency launched the rocket carrying the spacecraft on July 14, blasting off from the country’s main spaceport in the southern state of Andhra Pradesh. The lander is scheduled to attempt a touchdown on Aug. 23. Russia launched its first moon-landing spacecraft in 47 years on Aug. 11, taking a more direct course to reach the moon’s south pole where scientists have detected water ice that could be used for fuel, oxygen and drinking water for future moon missions or a lunar colony. Russia’s moon mission is on track to land the Luna-25 on Aug. 21, two days before India’s spacecraft. Rough terrain is expected to complicate a landing on the lunar south pole. A previous mission by India’s space agency, the Chandrayaan-2, crashed in 2019 near where the Chandrayaan-3 will attempt a touchdown. Chandrayaan, which means “moon vehicle” in Sanskrit, includes a 2-meter-(6.6-foot)-tall lander designed to deploy a …

Comic books can be a great way to help people work through emotional trauma. For VOA, Genia Dulot reports on comics that encourage children and adults to share their feelings and address issues of mental health …

The evacuation center at the South Maui Community Park & Gymnasium is now Anne Landon’s safe space. She has a cot and access to food, water, showers, books and even puzzles that bring people together to pass the evening hours.  But all it took was a strong wind gust for her to be immediately transported back to the terrifying moment a deadly fire overtook her senior apartment complex in Lahaina last week.  “It’s a trigger,” she said. “The wind was so horrible during that fire.”  Helping survivors cope Mental health experts are working in Maui to help people who survived the deadliest fire in the United States in more than a century make sense of what they endured. While many are still in a state of shock, others are starting to feel overcome with anxiety and post-traumatic stress that experts say could be long-lasting.  Landon, 70, has twice sought help in recent days to help her cope with anxiety. One psychologist she spoke with at an evacuation shelter taught her special breathing techniques to bring her heart rate down. On another occasion, a nurse providing 24/7 crisis support at her current shelter was there to comfort her while she cried.  “I personally could hardly talk to people,” Landon said. “Even when I got internet connection and people reached out, I had trouble calling them back.”  The person sleeping on the cot next to her, 65-year-old Candee Olafson, said a nurse helped her while she was having a nervous breakdown. Like …

Pollution from discarded plastic, metals and other items is a persistent problem in Nigeria. Some young people are doing what they can to clean up the trash and make strides toward sustainable development. Gibson Emeka has this story from Abuja, Nigeria, narrated by Salem Solomon. …

New restrictions on access to a drug used in the most common form of abortion would be imposed under a federal appeals court ruling issued Wednesday, but the Supreme Court will have the final say. The ruling by three judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned part of a lower court ruling that revoked the Food and Drug Administration’s approval — more than two decades ago — of mifepristone. But it left intact part of the ruling that would end the availability of the drug by mail and require that the drug be administered in the presence of a physician. Those restrictions won’t take effect, at least right away, because the Supreme Court previously intervened to keep the drug available during the legal fight. At issue is a Texas-based federal judge’s April ruling revoking the drug’s approval, which was granted more than 20 years ago by the Food and Drug Administration. There is no precedent for a U.S. court overturning the approval of a drug that the FDA has deemed safe and effective. While new drug safety issues often emerge after FDA approval, the agency is required to monitor medicines on the market, evaluate emerging issues and take action to protect U.S. patients. Congress delegated that responsibility to the FDA — not the courts — more than a century ago. But during a May 17 hearing, the 5th Circuit panel — Judges Jennifer Walker Elrod, James Ho and Cory Wilson — pushed back frequently …

Russia’s lunar spacecraft entered the moon’s orbit on Wednesday, a major step toward the country’s ambition of being the first to land on the moon’s south pole in the search for frozen water.  The Luna-25 entered the moon’s orbit at 11:57 a.m. local time (0857 GMT), Russia’s space corporate Roskosmos said.  Luna-25 will circle the moon, the Earth’s only natural satellite, for about five days, then change course for a soft landing on the lunar south pole planned for August 21.  India’s Chandrayaan-3 entered the moon’s orbit earlier this month ahead of a planned touchdown on the south pole of the moon later this month.  The Luna-25, which is roughly the size of a small car, will aim to operate for a year on the south pole, where scientists at NASA and other space agencies in recent years have detected traces of frozen water in the craters.  The presence of water on the moon has implications for major space powers, potentially allowing longer human sojourns on the planet that would enable the mining of lunar resources.   No Russian spacecraft has entered lunar orbit since Luna-24, the Soviet Union’s 1976 moon mission, according to Anatoly Zak, the creator and publisher of www.RussianSpaceWeb.com which tracks Russian space programs.  “Entering lunar orbit is absolutely critical for the success of this project,” Zak told Reuters. “This is a first for the post-Soviet period.”  “Some are calling this the second lunar race so it is very important for Russia to resume this program. Luna-25 …

Surgeons transplanted a pig’s kidney into a brain-dead man and for over a month it’s worked normally — a critical step toward an operation the New York team hopes to eventually try in living patients. Scientists around the country are racing to learn how to use animal organs to save human lives, and bodies donated for research offer a remarkable rehearsal. The latest experiment announced Wednesday by NYU Langone Health marks the longest a pig kidney has functioned in a person, albeit a deceased one — and it’s not over. Researchers are set to track the kidney’s performance for a second month. “Is this organ really going to work like a human organ? So far it’s looking like it is,” Dr. Robert Montgomery, director of NYU Langone’s transplant institute, told The Associated Press. “It looks even better than a human kidney,” Montgomery said on July 14 as he replaced a deceased man’s own kidneys with a single kidney from a genetically modified pig — and watched it immediately start producing urine. The possibility that pig kidneys might one day help ease a dire shortage of transplantable organs persuaded the family of the 57-year-old Maurice “Mo” Miller from upstate New York to donate his body for the experiment. “I struggled with it,” his sister, Mary Miller-Duffy, told the AP. But he liked helping others and “I think this is what my brother would want. So I offered my brother to them.” “He’s going to be in the medical books, and he …

Germany’s Cabinet on Wednesday approved a plan to liberalize rules on cannabis, setting the scene for the European Union’s most populous member to decriminalize possession of limited amounts and allow members of “cannabis clubs” to buy the substance for recreational purposes. The legislation is billed as the first step in a two-part plan and still needs approval by parliament. But the government’s approval is a stride forward for a prominent reform project of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s socially liberal coalition, although significantly short of its original ambitions. The bill, which the government hopes will take effect at the end of this year, foresees legalizing possession of up to 25 grams (nearly 1 ounce) of cannabis for recreational purposes and allowing individuals to grow up to three plants on their own. German residents who are 18 and older would be allowed to join nonprofit “cannabis clubs” with a maximum of 500 members each. The clubs would be allowed to grow cannabis for members’ personal consumption. Individuals would be allowed to buy up to 25 grams per day, or a maximum 50 grams per month — a figure limited to 30 grams for people under 21. Membership in multiple clubs would not be allowed. The clubs’ costs would be covered by membership fees, which would be staggered according to how much cannabis members use. The government plans a ban on advertising or sponsoring cannabis and the clubs, and consumption won’t be allowed within 200 meters (656 feet) of schools, playgrounds and sports facilities, …

Vice President Kamala Harris marked the one-year anniversary of the Inflation Reduction Act by touting the Biden administration’s commitment to mitigating the climate crisis. Natasha Mozgovaya reports from Seattle. …

Researchers in heavily drilled Pennsylvania were preparing Tuesday to release findings from taxpayer-financed studies on possible links between the natural gas industry and pediatric cancer, asthma and poor birth outcomes. The four-year, $2.5 million project is wrapping up after the state’s former governor, Democrat Tom Wolf, in 2019 agreed to commission it under pressure from the families of pediatric cancer patients who live amid the nation’s most prolific natural gas reservoir in western Pennsylvania. A number of states have strengthened their laws around fracking and waste disposal over the past decade. However, researchers have repeatedly said that regulatory shortcomings leave an incomplete picture of the amount of toxic substances the industry emits into the air, injects into the ground or produces as waste. The Pennsylvania-funded study involves University of Pittsburgh researchers and comes on the heels of other major studies that are finding higher rates of cancer, asthma, low birth weights and other afflictions among people who live near drilling fields around the country. Tuesday evening’s public meeting to discuss the findings will be hosted by the University of Pittsburgh School of Public Health and the state Department of Health, on the campus of state-owned Pennsylvania Western University. Edward Ketyer, a retired pediatrician who is president of the Physicians for Social Responsibility Pennsylvania and who sat on an advisory board for the study, said he expects that the studies will be consistent with previous research showing that the “closer you live to fracking activity, the increased risk you have at …

A clinical trial in Australia is developing a treatment for sleep disturbances caused by wildfires. The study, which is supported by Natural Hazards Research Australia, a research organization, and Federation University Australia, is now seeking participants in Australia, the United States and Canada. The trial is aimed at people who have disturbed sleep, including nightmares, insomnia or symptoms of trauma after surviving a wildfire. Participants will be asked about their experiences with wildfires and asked to rate the severity of their sleep and trauma symptoms. Those who take part complete short assessments and provide feedback through online activities. The testing is at home using sleep-specific technology and apps that track sleep. Clinical psychologist Fadia Isaac is conducting the trial with other researchers at Federation University Australia, with funding from Natural Hazards Research Australia’s Postgraduate Research Scholarship program. She tells VOA that people confronted by trauma experience a so-called “fight or flight” response, when the brain reacts to shock. “If we are not getting sleep because of the fight or flight response then there is no room for these emotions to get processed during that time and therefore the trauma can be ongoing, sleep can also continue to be a problem for those people and unfortunately it becomes a vicious cycle for many people,” she said. This is an international study that is seeking participants in Australia, the United States and Canada. Their experiences of a wildfire do not need to be recent; the event could be several years or even …

New Zealand on Monday removed the last of its remaining COVID-19 restrictions, marking the end of a government response to the pandemic that was watched closely around the world.  Prime Minister Chris Hipkins said the requirement to wear masks in hospitals and other health care facilities would end at midnight, as would a requirement for people who caught the virus to isolate themselves for seven days.  New Zealand was initially praised internationally for eliminating the virus entirely after imposing nationwide lockdowns and strict border controls.  But as the pandemic wore on and more infectious variants took hold, the nation’s zero-tolerance approach became untenable. It eventually abandoned its elimination strategy.  Reflecting on the government’s response to the virus over more than three years, Hipkins said that during the height of the pandemic he had longed for the day he could end all restrictions, but now it felt anticlimactic.  He said about 3,250 New Zealanders from a population of 5 million had died with COVID-19 as a primary or secondary cause — about one-fifth of the mortality rate in the United States.  “While there were no doubt fractures in our collective sense of unity, I believe that New Zealanders can be enormously proud of what we achieved together,” Hipkins said. “We stayed home, we made sacrifices, we got vaccinated, and there is absolutely no question, we saved lives.”  Health Minister Ayesha Verrall said coronavirus case numbers and hospitalizations were low and had been trending down since June, and the publicly funded health …

For the team aboard the Okeanos Explorer off the coast of Alaska, exploring the mounds and craters of the sea floor along the Aleutian Islands is a chance to surface new knowledge about life in some of the world’s deepest and most remote waters. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration research vessel is on a five-month mission aboard a reconfigured former Navy vessel run by civilians and members of the NOAA Corps. The ship, with a 48-member crew, is outfitted with technology and tools to peer deep into the ocean to gather data to share with onshore researchers in real time. The hope is that this data will then be used to drive future research. “It’s so exciting to go down there and see that it’s actually teeming with life,” said expedition coordinator Shannon Hoy. “You would never know that unless we were able to go down there and explore.” Using a variety of sonars and two remotely operated vehicles — Deep Discoverer and Serios — researchers aboard the ship are mapping and collecting samples from areas along the Aleutian Trench and the Gulf of Alaska. High-resolution cameras that can operate at depths of up to 6,000 meters (19,685 feet) allow researchers to document and immediately share their findings. The ship can also livestream dives to the public. Many factors, such as depth, speed and sonar capability, influence how much sea floor can be mapped. In 2 to 4 weeks, the Okeanos Explorer can map as much as 50,000 square …

A Montana judge on Monday sided with young environmental activists who said state agencies were violating their constitutional right to a clean and healthful environment by permitting fossil fuel development without considering its effect on the climate. The ruling in the first-of-its-kind trial in the U.S. adds to a small number of legal decisions around the world that have established a government duty to protect citizens from climate change. District Court Judge Kathy Seeley found the policy the state uses in evaluating requests for fossil fuel permits — which does not allow agencies to evaluate the effects of greenhouse gas emissions — is unconstitutional. Judge Seeley wrote in the ruling that “Montana’s emissions and climate change have been proven to be a substantial factor in causing climate impacts to Montana’s environment and harm and injury” to the youth. However, it’s up to the state Legislature to determine how to bring the policy into compliance. That leaves slim chances for immediate change in a fossil fuel-friendly state where Republicans dominate the statehouse. The attorney representing the youth, Julia Olson of Our Children’s Trust, an Oregon environmental group that has filed similar lawsuits in every state since 2011, celebrated the ruling. “As fires rage in the West, fueled by fossil fuel pollution, today’s ruling in Montana is a game-changer that marks a turning point in this generation’s efforts to save the planet from the devastating effects of human-caused climate chaos,” Olson said in a statement. “This is a huge win for Montana, …

Patients who take blockbuster drugs like Wegovy or Ozempic for weight loss may face life-threatening complications if they need surgery or other procedures that require empty stomachs for anesthesia. This summer’s guidance to halt the medication for up to a week may not go far enough, either.  Some anesthesiologists in the U.S. and Canada say they’ve seen growing numbers of patients on the weight-loss drugs who inhaled food and liquid into their lungs while sedated because their stomachs were still full — even after following standard instructions to stop eating for six to eight hours in advance.  The drugs can slow digestion so much that it puts patients at increased risk for the problem, called pulmonary aspiration, which can cause dangerous lung damage, infections and even death, said Dr. Ion Hobai, an anesthesiologist at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.  “This is such a serious sort of potential complication that everybody who takes this drug should know about it,” said Hobai, who was among the first to flag the issue.  Nearly 6 million prescriptions for the class of drugs that include Wegovy and Ozempic were written between January and May in the U.S. for people who don’t have diabetes, according to Komodo Health, a health care technology company. The drugs induce weight loss by mimicking the actions of hormones, found primarily in the gut, that kick in after people eat. They also target signals between the gut and the brain that control appetite and feelings of fullness, and by slowing how …

For a vast number of book writers, artificial intelligence is a threat to their livelihood and the very idea of creativity. More than 10,000 of them endorsed an open letter from the Authors Guild this summer, urging AI companies not to use copyrighted work without permission or compensation. At the same time, AI is a story to tell, and no longer just science fiction. As present in the imagination as politics, the pandemic, or climate change, AI has become part of the narrative for a growing number of novelists and short story writers who only need to follow the news to imagine a world upended. “I’m frightened by artificial intelligence, but also fascinated by it. There’s a hope for divine understanding, for the accumulation of all knowledge, but at the same time there’s an inherent terror in being replaced by non-human intelligence,” said Helen Phillips, whose upcoming novel “Hum” tells of a wife and mother who loses her job to AI. “We’ve been seeing more and more about AI in book proposals,” said Ryan Doherty, vice president and editorial director at Celadon Books, which recently signed Fred Lunzker’s novel “Sike,” featuring an AI psychiatrist. “It’s the zeitgeist right now. And whatever is in the cultural zeitgeist seeps into fiction,” Doherty said.  Other AI-themed novels expected in the next two years include Sean Michaels’ “Do You Remember Being Born?” — in which a poet agrees to collaborate with an AI poetry company; Bryan Van Dyke’s “In Our Likeness,” about a bureaucrat …

Postal worker Eugene Gates Jr. was delivering mail in the suffocating Dallas heat this summer when he collapsed in a homeowner’s yard and was taken to a hospital, where he died. Carla Gates said she’s sure heat was a factor in her 66-year-old husband’s death, even though she’s still waiting for the autopsy report. When Eugene Gates died on June 20, the temperature was 36.6 Celsius and the heat index, which also considers humidity, had soared over 43.3 Celsius. “I will believe this until the day I die, that it was heat-related,” Carla Gates said. Even when it seems obvious that extreme heat was a factor, death certificates don’t always reflect the role it played. Experts say a mishmash of ways more than 3,000 counties calculate heat deaths means we don’t really know how many people die in the U.S. each year because of high temperatures in an ever-warming world. That imprecision harms efforts to better protect people from extreme heat because officials who set policies and fund programs can’t get the financial and other support needed to make a difference. “Essentially, all heat related deaths are preventable. People don’t need to die from the heat,” said epidemiologist Kristie L. Ebi, who focuses on global warming’s impact on human health as a professor at the University of Washington. With a better count, she said, “you can start developing much better heat wave early warning systems and target people who are at higher risk and make sure that they’re aware of …

With field temperatures soaring above 150 degrees at times, 10-year-old baseball player Emmitt Anderson and his teammates from Alabama thought better of kneeling when they gathered near the mound for pregame prayers at a recent regional youth baseball tournament here. “It was too hot on our knees,” Anderson said of the artificial surface. “We just stood up.” High heat proved considerably harder to handle than fastballs up in the strike zone at the DYB World Series this week. Temperatures reached 105 degrees, with the heat index peaking at 117. Some spectators and umpires required treatment for heat-related symptoms. A few passed out and were briefly hospitalized. “The heat was so extreme, I just knew it was a matter of time before something happened,” said Dr. Kelsey Steensland, an anesthesiologist from Dothan, Alabama, who was there to watch her 10-year-old son, Finn, play for a team representing their state. During opening ceremonies, she rushed to help an elderly woman who’d collapsed and didn’t regain consciousness for several minutes. “This was a medical emergency,” Steensland said. “It was more than just giving someone a glass of water.”   With climate change driving average global temperatures higher, organizers, players and spectators taking part in quintessentially American traditions such as midsummer youth baseball championships are having to pay closer attention to the heat — and become more resourceful about mitigating its effects.   A case in point is the DYB World Series, which features teams from 11 Southern states competing in multiple age groups …

Scientists are wondering if global warming and El Nino have an accomplice in fueling this summer’s record-shattering heat. The European climate agency Copernicus reported that July was one-third of a degree Celsius (six-tenths of a degree Fahrenheit) hotter than the old record. That’s a bump in heat that is so recent and so big, especially in the oceans and even more so in the North Atlantic, that scientists are split on whether something else could be at work. Scientists agree that by far the biggest cause of the recent extreme warming is climate change from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas that has triggered a long upward trend in temperatures. A natural El Nino, a temporary warming of parts of the Pacific that changes weather worldwide, adds a smaller boost. But some researchers say another factor must be present. “What we are seeing is more than just El Nino on top of climate change,” Copernicus Director Carlo Buontempo said. One surprising source of added warmth could be cleaner air resulting from new shipping rules. Another possible cause is 165 million tons (150 million metric tons) of water spewed into the atmosphere by a volcano. Both ideas are under investigation. The cleaner air possibility Florida State University climate scientist Michael Diamond says shipping is “probably the prime suspect.” Maritime shipping has for decades used dirty fuel that gives off particles that reflect sunlight in a process that actually cools the climate and masks some of global warming. In 2020, …