Month: October 2023

A study published Friday indicates 1 in 10 babies around the world are born prematurely — before 37 weeks — leading to deaths, disability and chronic illnesses. The study was conducted by the World Health Organization, the U.N. Children’s Fund, UNICEF and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. The study monitored global births between 2010 and 2020 and documented global, regional and country estimates and trends. It found 13.4 million babies — 1 in 10 of all live births — were born prematurely in 2020, with large disparities between regions and nations. It showed about 65% of 2020 preterm births worldwide occurred in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia, where more than 13% of all births were preterm. The rates in the most affected countries — Bangladesh, 16.2%; Malawi 14.5%; and Pakistan, 14.3% — were three or four times higher than those in the world’s least affected countries — Serbia, 3.8%; Moldova, 4%; and Kazakhstan, 4.7%. The study indicates premature birth is not limited to low- and middle-income countries, with data showing preterm rates of 10% or higher in wealthier nations such as Greece, with 11.6%, and the United States, at 10%. No region saw a significant reduction in premature births during the 10-year period. The WHO said that premature birth is a leading cause of death among young children, and that those who survive are more susceptible to disabilities, developmental issues and chronic illness as adults. The U.N. agency called for greater global investment in prevention and ensuring …

AT&T and Gallaudet University have developed a football helmet for players who are deaf or hard of hearing and communicate using American Sign Language.  The company and the Washington-based school for students who are deaf or hard of hearing unveiled the new technology Thursday.  It allows a coach to call a play on a tablet from the sideline that then shows up visually on a small display screen inside the quarterback’s helmet. Gallaudet, which competes in Division III, was cleared by the NCAA to use the helmet in its game on Saturday at home against Hilbert.  Gallaudet coach Chuck Goldstein said he thinks the helmet “will change football.”  “We work out the same way as every other college football program, we practice the same way, we compete the same way,” Goldstein said. “The difference between coaching a hearing team compared to a Deaf team is first the communication.”  The final product is the result of almost two years of communication between the team and AT&T, which came up with the concept as a way to close the inclusion gap for the Deaf community with its 5G network.  “We came up with ideas on how to make this helmet more effective [and] we’d interact with [players and coaches],” said Corey Anthony, AT&T senior VP of networking engineering and operations. “They would give us feedback. We’d go back, make changes, work on it. It’s just a beautiful relationship that we have with that university.”  Anthony said the company also leaned on employees …

All About America explores American culture, politics, trends, history, ideals and places of interest. Money may not buy happiness, but a new analysis of the happiest and unhappiest U.S. states suggests the lack of cash can contribute to a person’s misery. “The thing about money and happiness is that being increasingly and increasingly wealthy doesn’t make you more and more happy, but experiencing poverty definitely can make you unhappy,” says Miriam Liss, professor of psychology at the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. That’s because basic needs of shelter, food, clothing, safety, health care and transportation are hard to meet when people aren’t financially secure, she adds. In order to assess levels of happiness in all 50 states, personal finance company WalletHub looked at three key factors: emotional and physical well-being, work environment, and community and environment. Utah, Hawaii, Maryland, Minnesota and New Jersey were the happiest states, according to WalletHub’s analysis. Liss thinks it makes sense that Utah emerged as the happiest state, where about 60% of its population identify as Mormon. “I’m not surprised by that, because I do think there is an association between religious affiliation and happiness,” Liss says. “And that’s largely because of the community and the connection that people experience if you feel nurtured and loved by your community.” WalletHub identifies the unhappiest states as Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Tennessee and West Virginia. “It’s not surprising to me. These are poor states,” Liss says. She adds that in order to be happy, a person …

Japan’s wrecked Fukushima nuclear power plant said it began releasing a second batch of treated radioactive wastewater into the sea on Thursday after the first round of discharges ended smoothly. Plant operator Tokyo Electric Power Company Holdings said workers activated a pump to dilute the treated water with large amounts of seawater, slowly sending the mixture into the ocean through an underground tunnel. The wastewater discharges, which are expected to continue for decades, have been strongly opposed by fishing groups and neighboring countries including South Korea, where hundreds of people staged protest rallies. China banned all imports of Japanese seafood, badly hurting Japanese seafood producers and exporters. The plant’s first wastewater release began Aug. 24 and ended Sept. 11. During that release, TEPCO said it discharged 7,800 tons of treated water from 10 tanks. In the second discharge, TEPCO plans to release another 7,800 tons of treated water into the Pacific Ocean over 17 days. About 1.34 million tons of radioactive wastewater is stored in about 1,000 tanks at the plant. It has accumulated since the plant was crippled by a massive earthquake and tsunami in 2011. TEPCO and the government say discharging the water into the sea is unavoidable because the tanks will reach capacity early next year and space at the plant will be needed for its decommissioning, which is expected to take decades. They say the water is treated to reduce radioactive materials to safe levels, and then is diluted with seawater to make it much safer …

More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente health care staff across the U.S. began a three-day strike Wednesday, which will likely hold up appointments, test results and prescriptions at locations across the nation. Kaiser Permanente, a California-based chain of hospitals, pharmacies and clinics, serves nearly 13 million Americans. The Coalition of Kaiser Permanente Unions, which represents about 85,000 company workers, announced a three-day strike in California, Colorado, Oregon and Washington state, and a daylong strike in Virginia and Washington, D.C., after contract negotiations stalled overnight. More than 75,000 Kaiser Permanente employees are expected to join in. Talks restarted Wednesday. A key complaint from those on the picket line is that understaffing is inundating workers and delaying vital care. “We’re striking for our patients,” said Mikki Fletchall, a licensed vocational nurse at a Kaiser clinic in Camarillo, California. Kaiser Permanente promised that its 39 hospitals, including emergency rooms, would stay open as doctors and many nurses are not picketing. But non-emergency procedures could be delayed and wait times on customer service calls could soar. Kaiser workers’ unions demanded a $25 hourly minimum wage in August followed by increases of 7% in the next two years and 6.25% in the two years after that. Union members say understaffing is helping Kaiser Permanente reap massive profits at the cost of patients’ health, accusing executives of bargaining in bad faith. Kaiser proposed minimum hourly wages of $21 to $23 in 2024. Since 2022, Kaiser has hired 51,000 employees and is looking to add 10,000 more before …

France has urged the public not to worry about reports of bedbug outbreaks on public transportation in Paris and throughout the country. At least 37 sightings of bedbugs on public transportation have been reported over the past few weeks by national rail operator SNCF, with a dozen additional reports made to Paris public transport operator RATP. French Transport Minister Clément Beaune said that each report had been checked out, and that none were proved to be true. “When there is a problem, we deal with it. We won’t deny it,” Beaune said. “There is no outbreak of bedbugs in public transportation.” French media have reported extensively about bedbugs on trains and in cinemas, and the government worries about the impact on tourism and the Paris Olympics, which start in less than a year. Despite the denials, France will be taking preventative measures against a potential outbreak, using sniffing dogs on trains to detect the pests. Beaune also plans to meet with pest control companies to preemptively come up with a solution if bedbugs were to infest public transportation. He has promised transparency and said he would publish data every three months citing all reports and confirmed bedbug infestations. On a radio spot Tuesday, French Health Minister Aurelien Rousseau told the French public there’s “no reason for panic” about “widespread” reports of bedbugs in Paris. According to a report Tuesday by CNN, Marie Effroy, head of the Paris-based National Institute for the Study and Control of Bedbugs, said the level of …

Scientists Moungi Bawendi, Louis Brus and Alexei Ekimov won the 2023 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for “the discovery and synthesis of quantum dots,” which illuminate computer monitors and television screens and are used by doctors to map tumors. “The Nobel Laureates … have succeeded in producing particles so small that their properties are determined by quantum phenomena. The particles, which are called quantum dots, are now of great importance in nanotechnology,” the Nobel Committee for Chemistry said in a statement. “Researchers believe that in the future they could contribute to flexible electronics, tiny sensors, thinner solar cells and encrypted quantum communication.” Nanoparticles and quantum dots are used in LED-lights and can also be used to guide surgeons while removing cancer tissue. The more than century-old prize is awarded by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and is worth 11 million Swedish crowns ($997,959). Earlier on Wednesday, the academy appeared to have inadvertently published the names of the three scientists it said had won this year’s Nobel Prize in chemistry. Bawendi is a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Brus is professor emeritus at Columbia University and Ekimov works for Nanocrystals Technology Inc. Brus was hired by AT&T Bell Labs in 1972 where he spent 23 years, devoting much of the time to studying nanocrystals. Bawendi was born in Paris and grew up in France, Tunisia, and the U.S. Bawendi did his postdoctoral research under Brus then joined MIT in 1990 and became professor in 1996. Ekimov was born …

Wearing an “I Love Pandas” T-shirt and clutching a panda-covered diary, 10-year-old Kelsey Lambert bubbled with excitement as she glimpsed the real thing. She and her mother, Alison, had made a special trip from San Antonio, Texas, just to watch the National Zoo’s furry rock stars  munch bamboo and roll on the grass.  “It felt completely amazing,” Kelsey said on Friday. “My mom has always promised she would take me one day. So, we had to do it now that they’re going away.”  The National Zoo’s three giant pandas — Mei Xiang, Tian Tian and their cub Xiao Qi Ji — are set to return to China in early December with no public signs that the 50-year-old exchange agreement struck by President Richard Nixon will continue.  National Zoo officials have remained tight-lipped about the prospects of renewing or extending the agreement, and repeated attempts to gain comment on the state of the negotiations did not receive a response. However, the public stance of the zoo has been decidedly pessimistic — treating these remaining months as the end of an era.  ‘Punitive panda diplomacy’ The zoo just finished a weeklong celebration called Panda Palooza: A Giant Farewell.  The potential end of the National Zoo’s panda era comes amid what veteran China-watchers say is a larger trend. With diplomatic tensions running high between Beijing and a number of Western governments, China appears to be gradually pulling back its pandas from multiple Western zoos as their agreements expire.  Dennis Wilder, a senior fellow …

Belize is developing a pilot project to convert the masses of foul-smelling sargassum seaweed swamping its pristine beaches into biofuel, its prime minister said in a statement published by regional Caribbean bloc CARICOM on Tuesday. Many Caribbean countries depend economically on drawing travelers from around the world to their white sand beaches, but since 2010 heaps of rotting seaweed have been massing on the shores for reasons scientists do not yet fully understand but suspect are related to climate change. Floating sargassum provides shelter and food for marine animals but as it washes ashore it can smother ecological habitats and begins to rot, becoming harmful to humans. Belize Prime Minister John Briceno said in the statement that the $50 million facility, the result of a public-private partnership with German company Variodin, would convert municipal solid waste and sargassum into diesel fuel replacements. The facility could be scaled up with more financing, he said, adding that it would sign a power purchase agreement for energy generated from the plant. “The sargassum seaweed invasion [is] causing economic, social and environmental wreckage across Belize and the Caribbean,” CARICOM said, citing estimates that the region spends $120 million a year to collect and dispose of it. “Removal is a vicious cycle of never-ending sargassum, a cycle that removes the seaweed but also the sand, causing further damage to the coastline,” it said, noting that 24 million tons landed on Caribbean coasts last year — damaging tourism, the fishing industry and people’s health. Briceno said …

A charity group in Zimbabwe is raising funds for a basic product that can be critical for people living with albinism – sunscreen. The group, called “The Noble Hands of Zimbabwe,” released a report in September saying 1 in 3 people with albinism in Zimbabwe die of skin cancer before the age of 40, including children as young as 8. Columbus Mavhunga has more from Harare, Zimbabwe. VOA footage by Blessing Chigwenhembe. …

A new malaria vaccine approved Monday for use by the World Health Organization could be rolled out in African countries in the next few months, potentially saving hundreds of thousands of children’s lives in the coming years. The new vaccine, known as R21, was developed by Britain’s Oxford University along with the Serum Institute of India. It is already in use in Ghana and Burkina Faso. “This new approval for R21 has the potential now that vaccination can occur across sub-Saharan Africa and protect many more children at risk,” said Professor Azra Ghani, an infectious disease epidemiologist at Imperial College London. “We estimate that if this is rolled out across the continent at the sort of coverage levels that we’ve seen in the implementation study so far, this could avert up to a third of malaria deaths in children under five,” she said. Dr. Hanna Nohynek, chair of WHO’s Strategic Advisory Group of Experts on Immunization, said the R21 vaccine is expected to close the gap between supply and demand, “enabling broader and possibly unconstrained access. Malaria vaccines introduced widely have the potential of saving tens of thousands of young lives each year,” she told reporters Monday in Geneva. African trials The vaccine has been undergoing clinical trials in several African countries. WHO Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus announced the approval at a press conference Monday in Geneva. “In areas with seasonal transmission, it’s reduced symptomatic cases of malaria by 75% in the 12 months following a three-dose series of the …

The World Health Organization approved a second malaria vaccine Monday. It’s hoped the new drug will quickly be rolled out in countries across Africa in the coming months. Henry Ridgwell reports from London. …

New technologies are giving bionic hands some of the more complex features of human hands. Genia Dulot reports on a California company that is using touch feedback to give users a sense of the objects they are holding or interacting with …

The Nobel Prize in physics was awarded Tuesday to three scientists who look at electrons in atoms during the tiniest of split seconds. Pierre Agostini of The Ohio State University in the U.S.; Ferenc Krausz of the Max Planck Institute of Quantum Optics and Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in Germany; and Anne L’Huillier of Lund University in Sweden won the award. Their experiments “have given humanity new tools for exploring the world of electrons inside atoms and molecules,” according to the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, which announced the prize in Stockholm. They “have demonstrated a way to create extremely short pulses of light that can be used to measure the rapid processes in which electrons move or change energy.” At the moment, this science is about understanding our universe rather than practical applications, but the hope is that it will eventually lead to better electronics and disease diagnosis. “Attosecond science allows us to address fundamental questions such as the time scale of the photoelectric effect for which Einstein, Albert Einstein, received the Nobel Prize in physics in 1921,” according to Eva Olsson, chair of the Nobel Committee for Physics. The Nobel Prizes carry a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million). The money comes from a bequest left by the prize’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel, who died in 1896. Last year, three scientists jointly won the physics prize for proving that tiny particles could retain a connection with each other even when separated. The phenomenon …

The World Health Organization on Monday announced the recommendation of a second malaria vaccine, with the aim of giving countries a cheaper and more readily available option to tackle the deadly disease. Developed by Oxford University with the help of the Serum Institute of India, the new vaccine, known as R-21, will be rolled out in some African countries early next year, and expand into other countries later in 2024, according to WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus. Research that has not yet undergone the usual process of scientific review suggests the three-dose vaccine to be around 75% effective. Boosters would be available for continued protection. “Almost exactly two years ago, WHO recommended the broad use of the world’s first malaria vaccine called RTS,S” also known as Mosquirix, Tedros told a briefing in Geneva. Developed by British pharmaceutical GSK, Mosquirix requires four doses, is only about 30% effective, and fades within months. The WHO says there is not enough data available to confirm whether the newly developed Oxford vaccine will be more effective. The Serum Institute has said it could produce 200 million doses of the R-21 vaccine per year, while GSK is able to produce only 15 million doses of Mosquirix annually. The aim of widespread rollout of the vaccine would be to significantly curb infection rates and spread of the disease. However, experts have urged the public not to see vaccines as a replacement for other preventative measures, such as bed nets and the spraying of insecticides. The WHO …

Two scientists who jointly worked on the ground-breaking technology behind some of the most effective COVID-19 vaccines have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for medicine, one of the most prestigious accolades in the field. Hungarian American scientist Katalin Kariko and her American colleague, Drew Weissman, began working on so-called “mRNA” technology in the early 1990s at the University of Pennsylvania. Their breakthrough was crucial in developing the Moderna and Pfizer-BioNtech coronavirus vaccines, which have proved among the most effective in tackling COVID-19. Lifesaving vaccines The Nobel Prize in Medicine Committee in Sweden said the discovery had helped defeat one of the greatest threats to human health in modern times. “mRNA vaccines, together with other COVID-19 vaccines, have been administered over 13 billion times. Together, they have saved millions of lives, prevented severe COVID-19, reduced the overall disease burden, and enabled societies to open up again,” Nobel committee member Rickard Sandberg told reporters following the announcement Monday. “mRNA technologies are now being used to develop vaccines against other infections. The technology may also be used for therapeutic protein delivery and cancer treatment in the hope of further improving human health,” Sandberg said. World Health Organization Director-General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus congratulated the Nobel Prize winners Monday. “Today is a great day for health, a great day for science and a great day for vaccines,” he told reporters in Geneva. mRNA Technology mRNA — or messenger RNA — instructs cells to make proteins that match those found on the surface of pathogens, …

A Hungarian American scientist and her American colleague who jointly worked on the ground-breaking technology behind some of the most effective COVID vaccines have been awarded the 2023 Nobel Prize for medicine. Henry Ridgwell reports. …