Month: November 2023

This year is “virtually certain” to be the warmest in 125,000 years, European Union scientists said on Wednesday, after data showed last month was the world’s hottest October in that period. Last month smashed through the previous October temperature record, from 2019, by a massive margin, the EU’s Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S) said. “The record was broken by 0.4 degrees Celsius, which is a huge margin,” said C3S Deputy Director Samantha Burgess, who described the October temperature anomaly as “very extreme.” The heat is a result of continued greenhouse gas emissions from human activity, combined with the emergence this year of the El Nino weather pattern, which warms the surface waters in the eastern Pacific Ocean. Globally, the average surface air temperature in October was 1.7 degrees Celsius warmer than the same month in 1850-1900, which Copernicus defines as the pre-industrial period. The record-breaking October means 2023 is now “virtually certain” to be the warmest year recorded, C3S said in a statement. The previous record was 2016, another El Nino year. Copernicus’ dataset goes back to 1940. “When we combine our data with the IPCC, then we can say that this is the warmest year for the last 125,000 years,” Burgess said. The longer-term data from the U.N. climate science panel IPCC includes readings from sources such as ice cores, tree rings and coral deposits. The only other time before October a month breached the temperature record by such a large margin was in September 2023. “September really, really …

After a century-long absence, gray wolves have returned to California forests. Though some wildlife experts are thrilled to see the their return, some farmers and ranchers worry the wolves present a threat to their animals. From Tulare County, California, VOA’s Robin Guess reports. Camera: Matt Dibble, Roy Kim. …

Alarmed by yet another jump in syphilis cases in newborns, U.S. health officials are calling for stepped-up prevention measures, including encouraging millions of women of childbearing age and their partners to get tested for the sexually transmitted disease. More than 3,700 babies were born with congenital syphilis in 2022 — 10 times more than a decade before and a 32% increase from 2021, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Tuesday. Syphilis caused 282 stillbirth and infant deaths, nearly 16 times more than the 2012 deaths. The 2022 count was the most in more than 30 years, CDC officials said, and in more than half of the congenital syphilis cases, the mothers tested positive during pregnancy but did not get properly treated. The rise in congenital syphilis comes despite repeated warnings by public health agencies, and it’s tied to the surge in primary and secondary cases of syphilis in adults, CDC officials said. It’s also been increasingly difficult for medical providers to get benzathine penicillin injections — the main medical weapon against congenital syphilis — because of supply shortages. “It is clear that something is not working here, that something has to change,” the CDC’s Dr. Laura Bachmann said. “That’s why we’re calling for exceptional measures to address this heartbreaking epidemic.” The federal agency wants medical providers to start syphilis treatment when a pregnant woman first tests positive, rather than waiting for confirmatory testing, and to expand access to transportation so the women can get treatment. The CDC also …

European astronomers on Tuesday released the first images from the newly launched Euclid space telescope, designed to unlock the secrets of dark matter and dark energy — hidden forces thought to make up 95% of the universe. The European Space Agency, which leads the six-year mission with NASA as a partner, said the images were the sharpest of their kind, showcasing the telescope’s ability to monitor billions of galaxies up to 10 billion light years away. The images spanned four areas of the relatively nearby universe, including 1,000 galaxies belonging to the massive Perseus cluster just 240 million light years away, and more than 100,000 galaxies spread out in the background, ESA said. Scientists believe vast, seemingly organized structures such as Perseus could have formed only if dark matter exists. “We think we understand only 5% of the universe. That’s the matter that we can see,” ESA’s science director Carole Mundell told Reuters. “The rest of the universe we call dark because it doesn’t produce light in the normal electromagnetic spectrum,” she said. “But we know its effect because we see the effect on visible matter.” Tell-tale signs of the hidden force exerted by dark matter include galaxies rotating more quickly than scientists would expect from the amount of visible matter that can be detected. Its influence is also implicated in pulling together some of the most massive structures in the universe, such as clusters of galaxies, Mundell said. Dark energy is even more enigmatic. Its hypothetical existence was established …

Sweden is poised to become Europe’s first smoke-free country largely thanks to the popularity of snus, a kind of moist snuff which is placed under the upper lip.    But some are worried the tobacco industry is peddling a “fairytale” that is too good to be true.     Used by one in seven Swedes, snus has, according to the government, helped slash the number of smokers from 15% of the population in 2005 to 5.2% last year, a record low in Europe.   A country is considered smoke-free when less than 5% of its population are daily smokers.      Snus has been banned in the European Union since 1992. But Sweden negotiated an exemption when it joined the bloc three years later.    At the Swedish Match factory in the western city of Gothenburg, thousands of doses of snus wend their way through a complex web of machinery producing the sachets.    The company sold 277 million boxes of snus in Sweden and Norway in 2021.    “We have used it for 200 years in Sweden. [It’s] part of the Swedish culture, just like many other European countries have their wine culture,” Swedish Match spokesman Patrik Hildingsson told AFP.      Clad in a white lab coat, he described the manufacturing process.    “Tobacco comes from India or the United States. It goes through this silo and is then packed inside the pouches like tea bags and then into these boxes.”     There are two types: traditional brown snus, which contains tobacco, and white snus, which is …

President Joe Biden signed last week a sweeping executive order to promote the safe, secure and trustworthy development and use of artificial intelligence. VOA’s Julie Taboh reports on reactions by Washington-area AI experts. …

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) will expand its traveler-based surveillance program to include testing for respiratory viruses, partners Ginkgo Bioworks and XWELL said on Monday. The expansion, to be launched at four of the seven participating airports, comes ahead of the fall and winter months in the United States when viruses that cause respiratory diseases such as influenza and respiratory synctial virus (RSV) usually circulate more heavily. CDC has warned that it expects hospitalizations from COVID-19, RSV infections and flu this year to be similar to last year’s numbers, higher than the pre-pandemic levels. Ginkgo and XWELL said they will monitor over 30 new viruses, bacteria, and antimicrobial resistance targets including seasonal respiratory pathogens such as influenza A and B, RSV, and SARS-CoV-2 as part of the expansion. The expansion will launch at New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, San Francisco International Airport, Boston Logan International Airport and Washington Dulles International Airport. The surveillance program is a public-private partnership between the health agency, Ginkgo’s biosecurity and public health unit, Concentric, and XWELL’s diagnostic testing service, XpresCheck. The agency conducts voluntary nasal swabbing and airport wastewater sampling as part of the program, aimed to help with early detection of new SARS-CoV-2 variants and other pathogens. …

When Hurricane Michael hit the Florida Panhandle five years ago, it left boats, cars and trucks piled up to the windows of Bonny Paulson’s home in the tiny coastal community of Mexico Beach, Florida, even though the house rests on pillars 14 feet above the ground. But Paulson’s home, with a rounded shape that looks something like a ship, shrugged off Category 5 winds that might otherwise have collapsed it.  “I wasn’t nervous at all,” Paulson said, recalling the warning to evacuate. Her house lost only a few shingles, with photos taken after the storm showing it standing whole amid the wreckage of almost all the surrounding homes. Some developers are building homes like Paulson’s with an eye toward making them more resilient to the extreme weather that’s increasing with climate change, and friendlier to the environment at the same time. Solar panels, for example, installed so snugly that high winds can’t get underneath them, mean clean power that can survive a storm. Preserved wetlands and native vegetation that trap carbon in the ground and reduce flooding vulnerability, too. Recycled or advanced construction materials that reduce energy use as well as the need to make new material. A person’s home is one of the biggest ways they can reduce their individual carbon footprint. Buildings release about 38% of all energy-related greenhouse gas emissions each year. Some of the carbon pollution comes from powering things like lights and air conditioners and some of it from making the construction materials, like concrete …

Building a robot that’s both humanlike and useful is a decadesold engineering dream inspired by popular science fiction.  While the latest artificial intelligence craze has sparked another wave of investments in the quest to build a humanoid, most of the current prototypes are clumsy and impractical, looking better in staged performances than in real life. That hasn’t stopped a handful of startups from keeping at it.  “The intention is not to start from the beginning and say, ‘Hey, we’re trying to make a robot look like a person,’” said Jonathan Hurst, co-founder and chief robot officer at Agility Robotics. “We’re trying to make robots that can operate in human spaces.”  Do we even need humanoids? Hurst makes a point of describing Agility’s warehouse robot Digit as human-centric, not humanoid, a distinction meant to emphasize what it does over what it’s trying to be.  What it does, for now, is pick up tote bins and move them. Amazon announced in October it would begin testing Digits for use in its warehouses, and Agility opened an Oregon factory in September to mass-produce them.  Digit has a head containing cameras, other sensors and animated eyes, and a torso that essentially works as its engine. It has two arms and two legs, but its legs are more birdlike than human, with an inverted knees appearance that resembles so-called digitigrade animals such as birds, cats and dogs that walk on their toes rather than on flat feet.  Rival robot-makers, like Figure AI, are taking a …

Prince William arrived Sunday in Singapore for the annual Earthshot Prize awards, the first to be held in Asia, to support environmental innovators with solutions to battle climate change and save the planet.  Upon his arrival, dozens of people waving British flags welcomed him with loud cheers. William, 41, shook hands, signed autographs and sportingly took selfies with many of them during a walkabout.  “It’s fantastic to be back in Singapore for this year’s Earthshot Prize ceremony, after 11 years,” he said in a statement upon landing. “Singapore’s bold vision to be a leader for environmental innovation sets the standard for others to follow.”  “He has this charm,” said Johanes Mario, a Singaporean welcoming William at the airport. “He really fights for … the climate. I believe this is really a good cause for the future of our generation.” At Singapore’s Changi Airport and before greeting the crowd, William stood on an upper floor for a stunning view of the 40-meter (131-foot) Rain Vortex, the world’s largest indoor waterfall, which was illuminated green to mark his arrival. He was also shown a tree planted in his honor in the indoor garden at the foot of the waterfall.  The heir to the British throne last visited Singapore with his wife, Princess Catherine, in 2012. Traveling solo this time, William’s focus is on the Earthshot Prize that he and his Royal Foundation charity launched in 2020 to promote innovative solutions and technologies to combat global warming and mitigate its impact on the …

Using sidewalks as exam rooms and heavy red duffle bags as medical supply closets, volunteer medics spend their Saturdays caring for the growing number of migrants arriving in Chicago without a place to live. Mostly students in training, they go to police stations where migrants are first housed, prescribing antibiotics, distributing prenatal vitamins and assessing for serious health issues. These student doctors, nurses and physician assistants are the front line of health care for asylum-seekers in the nation’s third-largest city, filling a gap in Chicago’s haphazard response. “My team is a team that shouldn’t have to exist, but it does out of necessity,” said Sara Izquierdo, a University of Illinois Chicago medical student who helped found the group. “Because if we’re not doing this, I’m not sure anyone will.” More than 19,600 migrants have come to Chicago over the last year since Texas Gov. Greg Abbott began sending buses to so-called sanctuary cities. The migrants wait at police stations and airports, sometimes for months, until there’s space at a longer-term shelter, like park district buildings. Once in shelter, they can access a county clinic exclusively for migrants. But the currently 3,300 people in limbo at police stations and airports must rely on a mishmash of volunteers and social service groups that provide food, clothes and medicine. Izquierdo noted the medical care gap months ago, consulted experienced doctors and designed a street-medicine model tailored to migrants’ medical needs. Her group makes weekly visits to police stations, operating on a shoestring budget …

One of modern climate science’s pioneers is warning that the world isn’t just steadily warming but is dangerously accelerating, according to a study that some other scientists call a bit overheated. The work from former NASA top scientist James Hansen, who since leaving the space agency has become a prominent protester against the use of fossil fuels, which cause climate change, illustrates a recently surfaced division among scientists about whether global warming has kicked into a new and even more dangerous gear. Hansen, who alerted much of the United States to the harms of climate change in dramatic congressional testimony in 1988, said Thursday that since 2010, the rate of warming has jumped by 50%. Hansen argues that since 2010 there is more sun energy in the atmosphere, and less of the particles that can reflect it back into space thanks to efforts to cut pollution. The loss of those particles means there’s less of the cooling effect that they can have. Hansen said a key calculation used in figuring out how much the world will warm in response to carbon pollution shows much faster warming than the United Nations’ Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change estimates. He called the international goal of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius since pre-industrial times “deader than a doornail” and said a less stringent goal of 2 degrees Celsius is on its deathbed. That matters because increases in average global temperatures lead to more frequent and intense extreme weather events. “The next few years …

The cancellation of two large offshore wind projects in New Jersey is the latest in a series of setbacks for the nascent U.S. offshore wind industry, jeopardizing the Biden administration’s goals of powering 10 million homes from towering ocean-based turbines by 2030 and establishing a carbon-free electric grid five years later. The Danish wind energy developer Ørsted said this week it’s scrapping its Ocean Wind I and II projects off southern New Jersey due to problems with supply chains, higher interest rates and a failure to obtain the amount of tax credits the company wanted. Together, the projects were supposed to deliver over 2.2 gigawatts of power. The news comes after developers in New England canceled power contracts for three projects that would have provided another 3.2 gigawatts of wind power to Massachusetts and Connecticut. They said their projects were no longer financially feasible. In total, the cancellations equate to nearly one-fifth of President Joe Biden’s goal of 30 gigawatts of offshore wind power by 2030. Despite the setbacks, offshore wind continues to move forward, the White House said, citing recent investments by New York state and approval by the Interior Department of the nation’s largest planned offshore wind farm in Virginia. Interior’s Bureau of Ocean Energy Management also announced new offshore wind lease areas in the Gulf of Mexico. “While macroeconomic headwinds are creating challenges for some projects, momentum remains on the side of an expanding U.S. offshore wind industry — creating good-paying union jobs in manufacturing, shipbuilding and …

Countries moved a step closer Saturday to getting a fund off the ground to help poor states damaged by climate disasters, despite reservations from developing nations and the United States.   The deal to create a “loss and damage” fund was hailed as a breakthrough for developing country negotiators at United Nations climate talks in Egypt last year, overcoming years of resistance from wealthy nations.   But in the past 11 months, governments have struggled to reach consensus on the details of the fund, such as who will pay and where the fund will be located.   A special U.N. committee tasked with implementing the fund met for a fifth time in Abu Dhabi this week — following a deadlock in Egypt last month — to finalize recommendations that will be put to governments when they meet for the annual climate summit COP28 in Dubai in less than four weeks. The goal is to get the fund up and running by 2024.   The committee, representing a geographically diverse group of countries, resolved to recommend the World Bank serve as trustee and host of the fund — a tension point that has fueled divisions between developed and developing nations.  Housing a fund at the World Bank, whose presidents are appointed by the U.S., would give donor countries outsized influence over the fund and result in high fees for recipient countries, developing countries have argued.  To get all countries on board, it was agreed the World Bank would serve as interim …

Called cover crops, they top the list of tasks U.S. farmers are told will build healthy soil, help the environment and fight climate change. Yet after years of incentives and encouragement, Midwest farmers planted cover crops on only about 7% of their land in 2021. That percentage has increased over the years but remains small in part because even as farmers receive extra payments and can see numerous benefits from cover crops, they remain wary. Many worry the practice will hurt their bottom line — and a study last year indicates they could be right. Researchers who used satellite data to examine over 90,000 fields in six Corn Belt states found cover crops can reduce yields of cash crops — the bushels per acre. The smaller the yield, the less money farmers make. “I don’t want to abandon it, but as far as just going whole-hog with planting cover crops, that’s a tough thing for me to do,” said Illinois farmer Doug Downs, who plants cover crops only on a sliver of his land in a relatively flat region of east-central Illinois. Cover crops are plants grown on farmland that otherwise would be bare. While crops like corn and soybeans are growing or soon after harvest, farmers can sow species such as rye or red clover that will grow through winter and into spring. They stabilize soil, reduce fertilizer runoff, store carbon in plant roots and potentially add nutrients to the dirt. The practice is key to government efforts to …

A thick layer of toxic haze choked Indian capital New Delhi on Friday, and some schools were ordered closed as the air quality index plummeted to the “severe” category. New Delhi again topped a real-time list of the world’s most polluted cities compiled by Swiss group IQAir, which put the Indian capital’s air quality index, or AQI, at 640, which is in the “hazardous” category, followed by 335 in the Pakistani city of Lahore. Regional officials said a seasonal combination of lower temperatures, a lack of wind and crop stubble burning in neighboring farm states caused a spike in air pollutants. Many of New Delhi’s 20 million residents complained of irritation in the eyes and itchy throats with the air turning a dense gray. An AQI of 0-50 is considered good while anything between 400-500 affects healthy people and is a danger to those with existing diseases. “In my last 24 hours duty, I saw babies coughing, children coming with distress and rapid breathing,” Aheed Khan, a Delhi-based doctor, said on social media platform X. Fewer people came to the city’s parks, such as Lodhi Garden and India Gate, popular with joggers. Residents snapped up air purifiers. One service center for the appliances said there was a shortage of new filters and fresh stocks were expected Monday. Officials said they did not expect an immediate improvement in the air quality. “This pollution level is here to stay for the next two to three weeks, aggravated by incidents of stubble burning, …

The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists. It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon. The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 480 million kilometers (300 million miles) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 435 kilometers (270 miles) out. In data and images beamed back to Earth, the spacecraft confirmed that Dinkinesh is barely a half-mile (790 meters) across. Its closely circling moon is a mere one-tenth-of-a-mile (220 meters) in size. NASA sent Lucy past Dinkinesh as a rehearsal for the bigger, more mysterious asteroids out near Jupiter. Launched in 2021, the spacecraft will reach the first of these so-called Trojan asteroids in 2027 and explore them for at least six years. The original target list of seven asteroids now stands at 11. Dinkinesh means “you are marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia. It’s also the Amharic name for Lucy, the 3.2 million year old remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, for which the spacecraft is named. “Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison, the lead scientist, said in a statement. …

Fewer high school students are vaping this year, the government reported Thursday. In a survey, 10% of high school students said they had used electronic cigarettes in the previous month, down from 14% last year. Use of any tobacco product — including cigarettes and cigars — also fell among high schoolers, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report. “A lot of good news, I’d say,” said Kenneth Michael Cummings, a University of South Carolina researcher who was not involved in the CDC study. Among middle school student, about 5% said they used e-cigarettes. That did not significantly change from last year’s survey. This year’s survey involved more than 22,000 students who filled out an online questionnaire last spring. The agency considers the annual survey to be its best measure of youth smoking trends. Why the drop among high schoolers? Health officials believe a number of factors could be helping, including efforts to raise prices and limit sales to kids by raising the legal age to 21. “It’s encouraging to see this substantial decrease in e-cigarette use among high schoolers within the past year, which is a win for public health,” said Brian King, the Food and Drug Administrations tobacco center director. The FDA has authorized a few tobacco-flavored e-cigarettes intended to help adult smokers cut back but has struggled to stop sales of illegal products. Other key findings in the report: Among students who currently use e-cigarettes, about a quarter said they use them every day. About …

Colombia will try to control its population of more than 100 hippopotamuses, descendants of animals illegally brought to the country by late drug kingpin Pablo Escobar in the 1980s, through surgical sterilization, the transfer of hippos to other countries and possibly euthanasia, the government said Thursday. The hippos, which spread from Escobar’s estate into nearby rivers where they flourished, have no natural predators in Colombia and have been declared an invasive species that could upset the ecosystem. Authorities estimate there are 169 hippos in Colombia, especially in the Magdalena River basin, and that if no measures are taken, there could be 1,000 by 2035. Environment Minister Susana Muhamad said the first stage of the plan will be the surgical sterilization of 40 hippos per year and this will begin next week. The procedure is expensive — each sterilization costs about $9,800 — and entails risks for the hippopotamus, including allergic reactions to anesthesia or death, as well as risks to the animal health personnel, according to the ministry. The hippos are dispersed over a large area and are territorial and often aggressive. Experts say sterilization alone is not enough to control the growth of the invasive species, which is why the government is arranging for the possible transfer of hippos to other countries, a plan that was announced in March. Muhamad said Colombian officials have contacted authorities in Mexico, India and the Philippines, and are evaluating sending 60 hippos to India. “We are working on the protocol for the export …

Climate change threatens to reverse decades of progress toward better health and well-being, particularly in the most vulnerable communities, according to a new report by the U.N. weather agency. In its annual State of Climate Services report, the World Meteorological Organization on Thursday warned that the climate crisis was generating a global health crisis and said that many ill effects of climate change could be tempered by adaptation and prevention measures. WMO said climate change was causing the world to warm at a faster rate than at any other point in recorded history. “There is no more return back to the good old milder climate of the last century.  Actually, we are heading towards a warmer climate for the coming decades, anyhow,” said Petteri Taalas, WMO secretary-general. “Unless we are successful in phasing out this negative trend” by limiting global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius, “we will see this situation getting worse,” he said. The report finds countries in Africa and southern Asia are most at risk from climate change, which it says is fueling vector-borne diseases such as dengue and malaria, even in places where they were not seen before. “And we are creating conditions for more noncommunicable diseases like lung cancer and chronic respiratory infections also, because of the bad quality of the air that we breathe,” said Maria Neira, director of the Department of Environment, Climate Change and Health at the World Health Organization. “The extreme weather events obviously will have dramatic consequences for the …