Month: September 2023

NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey. In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid. Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu but won’t know for sure until the container is opened. Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much and rocks jammed the container’s lid during collection three years ago. Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples, gathered about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions. The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon. Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed. Osiris-Rex, the mothership, rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed rubble from the small roundish space rock in 2020. By the time it returned, the spacecraft had logged 4 billion miles (6.2 billion kilometers). NASA’s recovery effort in Utah included helicopters as well as a temporary clean room set up at the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range. The samples will be flown Monday …

The World Health Organization says there is a global uptick in cholera cases. The number of cases reported last year was more than double those reported in 2021, the United Nations agency said. The number of countries reporting cholera statistics also grew in 2022 by 25%, from 35 countries in 2021 to 44 countries last year. Cholera can be a life-threatening disease, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, that can spread through unsafe food or water.  Cholera bacteria can spread from a person to drinking water or water used to grow food or prepare food.  Cholera can also spread when human feces with cholera enter the water supply. The standard treatment for cholera has been a two-dose vaccination, but beginning in October 2022, the International Coordinating Group that manages emergency vaccine supplies, switched to a single-dose vaccine. Last year, there were large cholera outbreaks, the WHO said. Seven countries –Afghanistan, Cameroon, Democratic Republic of the Congo, Malawi, NIgeria, Somalia and Syria – reported more than 10,000 suspected and confirmed cholera cases. The WHO said the world is on track this year to continue the cholera upsurge with outbreaks currently in 24 countries “with some countries in the midst of acute crises.”   …

As Republican-led states have rushed to ban gender-affirming for minors, some families with transgender children found a bit of solace: At least they lived in states that would allow those already receiving puberty blockers or hormone therapy to continue. But in some places, including Missouri and North Dakota, the care has abruptly been halted because medical providers are wary of harsh liability provisions in those same laws — one of multiple reasons that advocates say care has become harder to access even where it remains legal. “It was a completely crushing blow,” said Becky Hormuth, whose 16-year-old son was receiving treatment from the Washington University Gender Center at St. Louis Children’s Hospital until it stopped the care for minors this month. Hormuth cried. Her son cried, too. “There was some anger there, not towards the doctors, not toward Wash U. Our anger is towards the politicians,” she said. “They don’t see our children. They say the health care is harmful. They don’t know how much it helps my child.” Since last year, conservative lawmakers and governors have prioritized restricting access to transgender care under the name of protecting children. At least 22 states have now enacted laws restricting or banning gender-affirming medical care for transgender minors. Most of the bans face legal challenges and enforcement on some of them has been put on hold by courts. All the laws ban gender-affirming surgery for minors, although it is rare, with fewer than 3,700 performed in the U.S. on patients ages 12 …

The climactic end of a seven-year voyage comes Sunday when a NASA capsule is to land in the Utah desert, carrying to Earth the largest asteroid samples ever collected. Scientists have high hopes for the sample, saying it will provide a better understanding of the formation of our solar system and how Earth became habitable. The Osiris-Rex probe’s final, fiery descent through Earth’s atmosphere will be perilous, but the U.S. space agency is hoping for a soft landing, around 9 a.m. local (15H00 GMT), in a military test range in northwestern Utah. Four years after its 2016 launch, the probe landed on the asteroid Bennu and collected roughly nine ounces (250 grams) of dust from its rocky surface. Even that small amount, NASA says, should “help us better understand the types of asteroids that could threaten Earth” and cast light “on the earliest history of our solar system,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said. “This sample return is really historic,” NASA scientist Amy Simon told AFP. “This is going to be the biggest sample we’ve brought back since the Apollo moon rocks” were returned to Earth. But the capsule’s return will require “a dangerous maneuver,” she acknowledged. Osiris-Rex is set to release the capsule — from an altitude of more than 108,000 kilometers — about four hours before it lands. The fiery passage through the atmosphere will come in the last 13 minutes, as the capsule hurtles downward at a speed of more than 43,453 kph, with temperatures of up to …

A 58-year-old man this week became the world’s second patient to receive a transplant of a genetically modified pig heart, the latest milestone in a growing field of medical research.  Transplanting animal organs into humans, called xenotransplantation, could offer a solution to the chronic shortage of human organ donations. More than 100,000 Americans are currently on waiting lists for organ transplants.  Both heart procedures were carried out by experts from the University of Maryland School of Medicine, with the first patient dying two months after his transplant last year due to “a multitude of factors including his poor state of health” prior to the operation, the university said in a statement Friday.  ‘Now I have hope’ The latest operation took place Wednesday with patient Lawrence Faucette. He was ineligible for a donated human heart due to pre-existing vascular disease and internal bleeding complications.  Without the experimental transplant, the father of two and Navy veteran was facing near-certain heart failure.  “My only real hope left is to go with the pig heart, the xenotransplant,” Faucette was quoted as saying prior to the procedure. “At least now I have hope, and I have a chance.”  Following the transplant, Faucette was breathing on his own and the new heart was functioning well “without any assistance from supportive devices,” the university said.  He was taking conventional anti-rejection drugs as well as receiving a new antibody therapy to prevent his body from damaging or rejecting the new organ.  Transplanted pig kidney lasted 61 days Xenotransplants …

About 76% of farmers are worried about the future impact of climate change, while 71% say it already has had an impact on their farms and incomes, a recent survey by life science company Bayer Group found. Researchers interviewed 800 farmers in eight countries — Australia, Brazil, China, Germany, India, Kenya, Ukraine and the United States — and said that 568 of those farmers have witnessed the impact of climate change directly on their farms. About 80% of them have experienced heat effects and anticipate reduced yields in the coming years. Rodrigo Santos, president of the Crop Science Division at Bayer, said that despite the impact of climate change on farming communities, there will be more demand for food harvested from less land in the coming years. “We need to produce 50% more food … with 20% less land per capita than we do today,” Santos said. “Climate change for us, when we live in the cities, is one thing, but for the farmers it is impacting their yields, it’s impacting their production, it’s impacting their ability to produce food and feed,” he said. The report said that 73% of farmers interviewed in Kenya, for instance, have faced drought. Persistent droughts in the East African nation have resulted in crop losses and livestock deaths. The report highlights that 1 in every 6 farmers worldwide suffered a nearly 16% loss of income due to adverse weather conditions over the past two years. Unpredictable weather patterns and insufficient seed varieties exacerbated food …

U.N. member nations Friday approved a “political declaration” that establishes a plan to end tuberculosis around the world in the next five years. The plan, engineered by the World Health Organization (WHO), was approved during the U.N. General Assembly’s high-level meeting on tuberculosis in New York. It sets a goal that includes reaching 90% of the world’s population with TB prevention services, using a WHO-recommended TB rapid test for initial diagnosis, and licensing at least one new TB vaccine by 2027. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus – who led the meeting – says many of the targets established at the first high-level tuberculosis meeting in 2018 were not met, mainly because of the COVID-19 pandemic. He says the goal of treating 44 million people with TB fell short by about 10 million people, and the goal of reaching 30 million people with preventive treatment fell short by about half. The target of funding providing $2 billion for research also fell short by about half between 2018 and 2020. TB remains one of the world’s most deadly infectious diseases, the WHO chief says, killing more than a million people a year while infecting more than 10 million. Tedros says there are also about 500,000 drug-resistant TB cases each year. The WHO reports new cases and deaths from TB rose between 2020 and 2021 – the peak years of the pandemic – but adds that coordinated efforts since then have seen some improvement in the numbers. As it did with COVID-19 during …

Fall is in the air — officially. The equinox arrives on Saturday, marking the start of the fall season for the Northern Hemisphere. But what does that actually mean? Here’s what to know about how we split up the year using the Earth’s orbit. What is the equinox? As the Earth travels around the sun, it does so at an angle. For most of the year, the Earth’s axis is tilted either toward or away from the sun. That means the sun’s warmth and light fall unequally on the northern and southern halves of the planet. During the equinox, the Earth’s axis and its orbit line up so that both hemispheres get an equal amount of sunlight. The word equinox comes from two Latin words meaning equal and night. That’s because on the equinox, day and night last almost the same amount of time — though one may get a few extra minutes, depending on where you are on the planet. The Northern Hemisphere’s spring — or vernal — equinox can land between March 19 and 21, depending on the year. Its fall – or autumnal — equinox can land between Sept. 21 and 24. What is the solstice? The solstices mark the times during the year when the Earth is seeing its strongest tilt toward or away from the sun. This means the hemispheres are getting very different amounts of sunlight — and days and nights are at their most unequal. During the Northern Hemisphere’s summer solstice, the upper …

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Thursday announced the government will conduct a yearlong inquiry into the country’s approach to COVID-19, but opposition politicians say the limited scope and powers of the inquiry will make it “a complete waste of time.”    International border closures made Australia a fortress for much of the pandemic.  It had some of the world’s longest and toughest lockdowns. Australian efforts to contain the virus were some of the most restrictive in the world, with residents of Melbourne spending more time in lockdowns than almost any other urban area.  An inquiry, announced by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will look at the health and economic issues raised by the COVID-19 pandemic and bureaucratic obstacles to responding to it.  Three independent experts, to be appointed by the government, will examine vaccinations, the availability of personal protective equipment and public health campaigns as well as financial support for businesses and individuals.    Albanese told reporters Thursday that an independent inquiry will help to prepare Australia for the next pandemic. “It was a time where Australians joined together,” said Albanese. “They made sacrifices. We need to examine what went right, what could be done better with a focus on the future because the health experts and the science tells us that this pandemic is not likely to be the last one.” The federal inquiry follows up to 20 other state probes into COVID-19 in Australia. Experts hope the new inquiry will provide a comprehensive nationwide assessment of Australia’s response to the pandemic. …

Kai Koerber was a junior at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School when a gunman killed 14 students and three staff members there on Valentine’s Day in 2018. Seeing his peers — and himself — struggle with returning to normal, he wanted to do something to help people manage their emotions on their own terms. While some of his classmates at the Parkland, Florida, school have worked on advocating for gun control, entered politics or simply taken a step back to heal and focus on their studies, Koerber’s background in technology — he’d originally wanted to be a rocket scientist — led him in a different direction: to build a smartphone app. The result was Joy: AI Wellness Platform, which uses artificial intelligence to suggest bite-sized mindfulness activities for people based on how they are feeling. The algorithm Koerber’s team built is designed to recognize how people feel from the sounds of their voices — regardless of the words or language they speak. “In the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, the first thing that came to mind after we’ve experienced this horrible, traumatic event — how are we going to personally recover?” he said. “It’s great to say OK, we’re going to build a better legal infrastructure to prevent gun sales, increased background checks, all the legislative things. But people really weren’t thinking about … the mental health side of things.” Like many of his peers, Koerber said he suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder for a “very long time” and only …

The Biden administration announced Wednesday that it is providing $600 million in funding to produce new at-home COVID-19 tests and is restarting a website allowing Americans to again order up to four free tests per household — aiming to prevent possible shortages during a rise in coronavirus cases that has typically come during colder months. The Department of Health and Human Services says orders can be placed at COVIDTests.gov starting September 25, and that no-cost tests will be delivered for free by the United States Postal Service. Twelve manufacturers that employ hundreds of people in seven states have been awarded funding and will produce 200 million over-the-counter tests to replenish federal stockpiles for government use, in addition to producing enough tests to meet demand for tests ordered online, the department said. Federal officials said that will help guard against supply chain issues that sparked some shortages of at-home COVID tests made overseas during past surges in coronavirus cases. Dawn O’Connell, assistant secretary for preparedness and response at HHS, said the website will remain functional to receive orders through the holidays and “we reserve the right to keep it open even longer if we’re starting to see an increase in cases.” “If there is a demand for these tests, we want to make sure that they’re made available to the American people for free in this way,” O’Connell said. “But, at this point, our focus is getting through the holidays and making sure folks can take a test if they’re going …

U.N. Secretary-General Antonio Guterres warned a climate summit of world leaders on Wednesday there is not much time left to avert an environmental catastrophe. “We must make up for time lost to foot-dragging, arm-twisting and the naked greed of entrenched interests raking in billions from fossil fuels,” Guterres told world leaders at the start of the daylong General Assembly symposium at United Nations headquarters in New York. After Guterres’ opening remarks, heads of state representing 34 nations were set to speak on the importance of sustainability, including Brazil, Pakistan, South Africa, Canada, the European Union and Tuvalu, a Polynesian island nation imperiled by rising sea levels. Brazilian President Luis Inacio “Lula” da Silva withdrew after falling ill. His environment minister was expected to speak in his place. The two largest economies that also are the biggest polluters — the United States and China — were noticeably left off the speakers’ list. Only nations who planned to increase their pledges to slash emissions were invited to the podium. U.S. Special Envoy on Climate John Kerry was in attendance. Guterres said that the global shift from fossil fuels to renewables is underway, but that progress is decades overdue. The harms of climate change, he said, are hitting the developing world the hardest, and the Global North is mostly to blame. “Many of the poorest nations have every right to be angry, angry that they are suffering from a climate crisis they did nothing to create, angry that promised finance has not been …

Billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s brain-chip startup Neuralink said on Tuesday it has received approval from an independent review board to begin recruitment for the first human trial of its brain implant for paralysis patients.  Those with paralysis due to cervical spinal cord injury or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis may qualify for the study, Neuralink said, but did not reveal how many participants would be enrolled in the trial, which will take about six years to complete.  The study will use a robot to surgically place a brain-computer interface implant in a region of the brain that controls the intention to move, Neuralink said, adding that its initial goal is to enable people to control a computer cursor or keyboard using their thoughts alone.  The company, which had earlier hoped to receive approval to implant its device in 10 patients, was negotiating a lower number of patients with the U.S. Food and Drug Administration after the agency raised safety concerns, according to current and former employees. It is not known how many patients the FDA ultimately approved.  Musk has grand ambitions for Neuralink, saying it would facilitate speedy surgical insertions of its chip devices to treat conditions such as obesity, autism, depression and schizophrenia.   In May, the company said it had received clearance from the FDA for its first-in-human clinical trial, when it was already under federal scrutiny for its handling of animal testing.  Even if the BCI device proves to be safe for human use, it would still potentially take more …

The tiny Pacific island nation of Niue has come up with a novel plan to protect its vast and pristine territorial waters — it will get sponsors to pay. Under the plan, which was being launched by Niue’s Prime Minister Dalton Tagelagi on Tuesday in New York, individuals or companies can pay $148 to protect 1 square kilometer (about 250 acres) of ocean from threats such as illegal fishing and plastic waste for a period of 20 years. Niue hopes to raise more than $18 million from the scheme by selling 127,000 square-kilometer units, representing the 40% of its waters that form a no-take marine protected area. In an interview with The Associated Press before the launch, Tagelagi said his people have always had a close connection with the sea. “Niue is just one island in the middle of the big blue ocean,” Tagelagi said. “We are surrounded by the ocean, and we live off the ocean. That’s our livelihood.” He said Niueans inherited and learned about the ocean from their forefathers, and they want to be able to pass it on to the next generation in sustainable health. Most fishing in Niue is to sustain local people, although there are some small-scale commercial operations and occasional offshore industrial-scale fishing, according to the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization. “Because of all the illegal fishing and all the other activities at the moment, we thought that we should be taking the lead, to teach others that we’ve got to protect the …

Measles, diarrhea and malnutrition, among other preventable diseases, kill about 100 children every month in Sudan where armed conflicts have uprooted more than five million people from their homes, according to the United Nations. Between May 15 and September 14, at least 1,200 children under the age of five died from a deadly combination of a suspected measles outbreak and high malnutrition in nine camps for internally displaced people in Sudan’s White Nile state. There have also been reports of cholera, dengue, and malaria cases emerging in various parts of the country, sparking concerns about the looming threat of epidemics. “Children younger than five are worst impacted, accounting for nearly 70% of all cases and 76% of all deaths,” the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Tuesday. The U.N. warning comes as Sudan’s health sector is teetering on the brink of collapse, crippled by a severe lack of funding and essential resources. “Health facilities are at breaking point, due to shortages of staff, life-saving medicine and critical equipment, exacerbating current outbreaks and causing unnecessary deaths,” the WHO said. Ongoing-armed hostilities between Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the paramilitary Rapid Support Forces (RSF), which started in April, have generated and exacerbated humanitarian crises in the African country. The conflict has taken an immense toll on Sudan’s civilian population, with the Health Ministry acknowledging over 1,500 civilian deaths since the conflict started. However, aid agencies contend that the actual death toll far exceeds the officially reported figures. Both warring factions, the SAF …

Climate change and conflict are hitting efforts to tackle three of the world’s deadliest infectious diseases, the head of the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria has warned. International initiatives to fight the diseases have largely recovered after being badly affected by the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the Fund’s 2023 results report released on Monday. But the increasing challenges of climate change and conflict mean the world is likely to miss the target of putting an end to AIDS, TB and malaria by 2030 without “extraordinary steps,” said Peter Sands, executive director of the Global Fund. For example, malaria is spreading to highland parts of Africa that were previously too cold for the mosquito carrying the disease-causing parasite. Extreme weather events like floods are overwhelming health services, displacing communities, causing upsurges in infection and interrupting treatment in many different places, the report said. In countries including Sudan, Ukraine, Afghanistan and Myanmar, simply reaching vulnerable communities has also been immensely challenging due to insecurity, it added. There are positives, Sands said. For example, in 2022, 6.7 million people were treated for TB in the countries where the Global Fund invests, 1.4 million more people than in the previous year. The Fund also helped provide 24.5 million people with antiretroviral therapy for HIV and distributed 220 million mosquito nets. Sands added that innovative prevention and diagnostic tools also provided hope. This week, there is a high-level meeting on TB at the U.N. General Assembly, and advocates hope for renewed focus …

Bystanders are less likely to give life-saving CPR to women having a cardiac arrest in public than men, leading to more women dying from the common health emergency, researchers said Monday. Cardiopulmonary resuscitation combines mouth-to-mouth breathing and chest compressions to pump blood to the brain of people whose hearts have stopped beating, potentially staving off death until medical help arrives. In research to be presented at a medical conference in Spain this week, but which has not yet been peer-reviewed, a team of Canadian doctors sought to understand how bystanders administer the procedure differently to men and women. They looked at records of cardiac arrests that took place outside of hospitals in the United States and Canada between 2005 and 2015, which included nearly 40,000 patients.  Overall, 54% of the patients received CPR from a bystander, the research said. For cardiac arrests in a public place, such as in the street, 61% of women were given CPR by a bystander — compared to 68% of men.  Alexis Cournoyer, an emergency physician at the Hopital du Sacre-Coeur de Montreal who conducted the research, told AFP that this gap “increases women’s mortality following a cardiac arrest — that’s for sure.” Cardiac arrests are a leading cause of death, with more than 350,000 occurring in the U.S. alone every year, according to the American Heart Association. Only around 10% of people who have a sudden cardiac arrest outside of a hospital survive, research has shown. The researchers sought to find a reason for …

Solar panels soak up blinding noontime rays that help power a water desalination facility in eastern Saudi Arabia, a step towards making the notoriously emissions-heavy process less environmentally taxing. The Jazlah plant in Jubail city applies the latest technological advances in a country that first turned to desalination more than a century ago, when Ottoman-era administrators enlisted filtration machines for hajj pilgrims menaced by drought and cholera. Lacking lakes, rivers and regular rainfall, Saudi Arabia today relies instead on dozens of facilities that transform water from the Gulf and Red Sea into something potable, supplying cities and towns that otherwise would not survive. But the kingdom’s growing desalination needs — fueled by Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s dreams of presiding over a global business and tourism hub — risk clashing with its sustainability goals, including achieving net-zero emissions by 2060. Projects like Jazlah, the first plant to integrate desalination with solar power on a large scale, are meant to ease that conflict: officials say the panels will help save around 60,000 tons of carbon emissions annually. It is the type of innovation that must be scaled up fast, with Prince Mohammed targeting a population of 100 million people by 2040, up from 32.2 million today. “Typically, the population grows, and then the quality of life of the population grows,” necessitating more and more water, said CEO Marco Arcelli of ACWA Power, which runs Jazlah. Using desalination to keep pace is a “do or die” challenge, said historian Michael Christopher Low …