Year: 2023

A legendary U.S. groundhog, from the (east central U.S.) town of Punxsutawney, Pennsylvania, was pulled from his burrow early Thursday, with local officials declaring he saw his shadow, indicating, according to legend, there will be at least six more weeks of winter. The annual observance of Groundhog Day on February 2 brings thousands of revelers to the town—located about 105 kilometers northeast of Pittsburgh—each year. Local officials, dressed in top hats and long coats, make a show of pulling the famous groundhog Punxsutawney Phil from his underground burrow to get his forecast. The event is held shortly after dawn, around 7:15am, but the festivities begin as early as early as 3:30am with live entertainment and fireworks. According to the organizer’s website, the tradition of seeking a weather forecast from a groundhog—a large rodent and member of the squirrel family—began in the town in 1886. Its origins go back to both Christian and pagan observances in Europe. The pagan ritual marked the halfway point between the winter solstice and spring equinox. In Christian tradition, the feast day of Candlemas was when the church would distribute candles needed for the rest of winter, and it evolved into a prediction for how much longer winter would last. Historians say the Germans began the tradition of involving an animal to the prediction process, using a hedgehog, a small, spiny animal common in parts of Europe. Germans immigrating to the eastern United States, where there are no hedgehogs, kept up the tradition by turning to …

…

Personal possession of a small amount of hard drugs is now legal in the Canadian province of British Columbia. The controversial move is intended to reduce deaths from drug use. The personal possession of 2.5 grams of hard drugs, including cocaine, crack cocaine, heroin, fentanyl, methamphetamine and morphine, has now been decriminalized. This temporary exemption means a person found with a small quantity of these drugs will not have them seized nor face arrest or any criminal charges.  An average of six people a day die in British Columbia from illicit drug use, mostly men in their private residences.  The day the three-year pilot program went into effect, the provincial coroner announced 2,272 people had died in 2022 from drug overdose. That was the second highest on record, topped only by 2,306 deaths in 2021.  It is hoped decriminalizing small-scale possession will help fight drug mortality by putting the focus on treatment instead of criminal prosecution.  Retired police officer Chuck Doucette, president of the Drug Prevention Network of Canada, is strongly opposed to the move, and said that “it really doesn’t address the issues at all, it’s not going to save any lives.”  He pointed to the number of deaths by overdose and added that with drugs, “Whether they’re legal or decriminalized or not — doesn’t make them any less likely to kill you.”  Kora DeBeck, a research scientist at the BC Center on Substance Use in Vancouver and an associate professor in the School of Public Policy at Simon Fraser University, backs …

For thousands of years, ancient Egyptians mummified their dead in the search for eternal life. Now, researchers have used chemistry and an unusual collection of jars to figure out how they did it. Their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, is based on a rare archaeological find: An embalming workshop with a trove of pottery around 2,500 years old. Many jars from the site were still inscribed with instructions like “to wash” or “to put on his head.” By matching the writing on the outside of the vessels with the chemical traces inside, researchers uncovered new details about the “recipes” that helped preserve bodies for thousands of years. “It’s like a time machine, really,” said Joann Fletcher, an archaeologist at University of York who was not involved with the study. “It’s allowed us to not quite see over the shoulders of the ancient embalmers, but probably as close as we’ll ever get.” Those recipes showed that embalmers had deep knowledge about what substances would help preserve their dead, said Fletcher, whose partner was a co-author on the study. And they included materials from far-flung parts of the world — meaning Egyptians went to great lengths to make their mummies “as perfect as they could possibly be.” The workshop — uncovered in 2016 by study author Ramadan Hussein, who passed away last year — is located in the famous burial grounds of Saqqara. Parts of it sit above the surface, but a shaft stretches down to an embalming room and …

Australian authorities on Wednesday found a radioactive capsule smaller than a coin that was lost in the vast Outback after nearly a week-long search along a 1,400 kilometers (870 miles) stretch of highway, officials said.  The Caesium-137 capsule was discovered when a vehicle travelling at 70 kms per hour equipped with specialist detection equipment picked up the radiation, according to officials from the state of Western Australia.  The search team then used portable detection equipment to find the capsule, which was located about 2 meters from the side of the road, they added.  “I do want to emphasize this is an extraordinary result,” Western Australia’s Emergency Services Minister Stephen Dawson said in a news conference.  “When you consider the scope of the research area, locating this object was a monumental challenge, the search groups have quite literally found the needle in the haystack,” Dawson said.  The military was verifying the capsule and it would be taken to a secure facility in the city of Perth on Thursday, he added. Officials from Western Australia’s emergency response department, defense authorities, radiation specialists and others have been combing a stretch of highway for the tiny capsule that was lost in transit more than two weeks ago.  The radioactive capsule was part of a gauge used to measure the density of iron ore feed from Rio Tinto’s Gudai-Darri mine in the state’s remote Kimberley region. The ore was being taken to a facility in the suburbs of Perth – a distance longer than the …

The dodo bird isn’t coming back anytime soon. Nor is the woolly mammoth. But a company working on technologies to bring back extinct species has attracted more investors, while other scientists are skeptical such feats are possible or a good idea.  Colossal Biosciences first announced its ambitious plan to revive the woolly mammoth two years ago, and on Tuesday said it wanted to bring back the dodo bird, too.  “The dodo is a symbol of man-made extinction,” said Ben Lamm, a serial entrepreneur and co-founder and CEO of Colossal. The company has formed a division to focus on bird-related genetic technologies.  The last dodo, a flightless bird about the size of a turkey, was killed in 1681 on the island of Mauritius in the Indian Ocean.  The Dallas company, which launched in 2021, also announced Tuesday it had raised an additional $150 million in funding. To date, it has raised $225 million from wide-ranging investors that include United States Innovative Technology Fund, Breyer Capital and In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capital firm that invests in technology.  The prospect of bringing back the dodo isn’t expected to directly make money, Lamm said. But the genetic tools and equipment that the company develops to try to do it may have other uses, including for human health care, he said.  For example, Colossal is now testing tools to tweak several parts of the genome simultaneously. It’s also working on technologies for what is sometimes called an “artificial womb,” he said.  The dodo’s closest living …

The world will likely breach the internationally agreed-upon climate change threshold in about a decade and keep heating to break through a next warming limit around mid-century, even with big pollution cuts, artificial intelligence predicts in a new study that’s more pessimistic than previous modeling. The study in Monday’s journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences reignites a debate on whether it’s still possible to limit global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius, as called for in the 2015 Paris climate agreement, to minimize the most damaging effects of climate change. The world has already warmed 1.1 or 1.2 degrees since pre-industrial times, or the mid-19th century, scientists say. Two climate scientists using machine learning calculated that Earth will surpass the 1.5-degree (2.7 degrees Fahrenheit) mark between 2033 and 2035. Their results fit with other, more conventional methods of predicting when Earth will break the mark, though with a bit more precision. “There will come a time when we call the 1.5C target for maximum warming dead, beyond the shadow of a doubt,” Brown University Environment Institute director Kim Cobb, who wasn’t part of the study, said in an email interview. “And this paper may be the beginning of the end of the 1.5C target.” Stanford University’s Noah Diffenbaugh, a study co-author, said the world is on the brink of the 1.5-degree mark in “any realistic emissions reduction scenario.” Avoiding a 2-degree rise, he said, may depend on nations meeting zero-emissions goals by the middle of this century. The artificial …

In the 1980s, more than 3 million people worldwide were infected with Guinea worm. At the end of 2022, the number of reported cases globally was down to 13. There were 15 cases reported a year earlier, “which does not sound like a big reduction, but when you are dealing with very small numbers in very remote areas we take it as a huge step forward,” said Adam Weiss, director of the Carter Center’s Guinea Worm Eradication Program. Guinea worm, a parasite usually ingested through contaminated water, grows inside the human body, then emerges through open sores creating intense pain. When Weiss’ organization, founded by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn, began spearheading the effort to rid the world of Guinea worm parasites in 1986, it existed in 20 countries. In 2022, just four countries reported new Guinea worm infections in humans. “We had six human cases in Chad, five human cases in South Sudan, and one in Ethiopia and one in the Central African Republic on the border with Chad,” Weiss told VOA during a recent Skype interview. The Atlanta-based global nonprofit Carter Center is marking continued progress in the global fight against Guinea Worm infections as the World Health Organization recognizes World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day January 30. Across the globe, from his office in Addis Ababa in Ethiopia, Dr. Zerihun Tadesse Gebreselassie was pragmatic about the overall eradication efforts. “It’s both good news and at the same time, not so good news,” he explained …

As the World Health Organization celebrates World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day January 30, the Atlanta-based Carter Center is marking continued progress in the fight against Guinea worm infections. VOA’s Kane Farabaugh has more on how countries in Africa are working to rid the world of the parasite once and for all. …

World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus warns global health challenges are growing and threatening the well-being of millions of people worldwide. He spoke at the opening of WHO’s week-long executive board meeting.  The WHO chief began his presentation on a somber note. He told meeting participants that an emergency committee convened to assess the status of the pandemic has concluded that COVID-19 remains a global health emergency.  He said the situation is much better now than a year ago when the omicron variant of the coronavirus was at its peak. But, he added, weekly reported deaths have been rising since early December. He said more than 170,000 people have lost their lives to COVID-19 in the past eight weeks.  “And that is just the reported deaths. We know the actual number is much higher. We cannot control the virus, but we can do more to address the vulnerabilities in populations and health systems.”  Tedros said health providers have the knowledge and means to control the spread of other diseases as well. He outlined an ambitious program for promoting health and protecting people from diseases. These, as well as other proposals for how the world can better prepare and respond to future health emergencies will be under discussion by member countries this week.  Tedros said progress has been made over the past year in promoting health, by addressing the root causes of disease. He called this action essential in achieving a target set by WHO of seeing one billion …

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies warns the world is dangerously unprepared for the next pandemic and this will have severe health, economic and social consequences for countries around the world.  The IFRC has just released this year’s World Disaster Report. In a marked departure from previous reports, the IFRC does not delve into the numerous natural disasters that caused untold devastation last year.  It does not rank the severity of disasters such as earthquakes, floods, and drought in terms of deaths and the destruction of livelihoods and infrastructure. Instead, the report focuses on the global crisis unleashed by the COVID-19 pandemic and on warnings of worse calamities to come if the global community does not prepare now for the next health crisis. IFRC Secretary General Jagan Chapagain said the authors of the report conclude the coronavirus pandemic has been the biggest disaster in our living memory, by any measure. “I think no other disasters, the hurricane, earthquake, drought, or flood can compete in terms of the terrible human and socio-economic costs.  Of course, the most conservative estimates tell us that 6.5 million people died from COVID-19 across these three years.  But we all know that the real number could be much, much higher,” said Chapagain. And the financial costs, he said, are staggering.  He said the International Monetary Fund estimates the cost of the pandemic over the last three years to be $13.8 trillion. He said the COVID-19 pandemic should be a wake-up call for …

Ahead of World Neglected Tropical Diseases Day Monday, the World Health Organization is calling for action to tackle these debilitating illnesses, which affect an estimated 1.65 billion people globally.  A diverse group of 20 parasitic and bacterial tropical diseases is categorized as neglected. This is because they disproportionally affect people who live in poor, remote communities and are not on the list of global health priorities. Ibrahima Soce Fall is director of WHO’s Department of Neglected Tropical Diseases. He says these vector-borne diseases are transmitted by insects in areas that lack safe water, sanitation, and access to health care. He says they also are spread via contaminated food and water. Fall says they cause immense suffering because of their disfiguring and disabling impact. “If you take diseases like onchocerciasis, you know, so-called river blindness because it can lead to blindness. The same for trachoma. So, these are so many diseases that are fatal and very debilitating,” he said. Trachoma is an eye disease that can cause permanent blindness. Fall says these diseases do not attract the amount of investment needed to access health services or develop new tools for diagnostics, treatments, and vaccines. He notes some of these ailments have been around for a very long time. For instance, the biblical disease, leprosy, still exists in 139 countries and dengue, which has been around for 800 years, remains prevalent in 129 nations. Despite the many challenges, progress is being made in the elimination of the NTDs. WHO reports the number …

The discovery of an asteroid the size of a small shipping truck mere days before it passed Earth on Thursday, albeit one that posed no threat to humans, highlights a blind spot in our ability to predict those that could actually cause damage, astronomers say. NASA for years has prioritized detecting asteroids much bigger and more existentially threatening than 2023 BU, the small space rock that streaked by 2,200 miles from the Earth’s surface, closer than some satellites. If bound for Earth, it would have been pulverized in the atmosphere, with only small fragments possibly reaching land. But 2023 BU sits on the smaller end of a size group, asteroids 5-to-50 meters in diameter, that also includes those as big as an Olympic swimming pool. Objects that size are difficult to detect until they wander much closer to Earth, complicating any efforts to brace for one that could impact a populated area. The probability of an Earth impact by a space rock, called a meteor when it enters the atmosphere, of that size range is fairly low, scaling according to the asteroid’s size: a 5-meter rock is estimated to target Earth once a year, and a 50-meter rock once every thousand years, according to NASA. But with current capabilities, astronomers can’t see when such a rock targets Earth until days prior. “We don’t know where most of the asteroids are that can cause local to regional devastation,” said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. …

Heavy rainfall hit New Zealand’s north island again on Sunday, causing landslides, flash floods and knocking out roads, with the death toll rising to four after a person who had been missing was confirmed dead. Battered by rain since Friday, Auckland — New Zealand’s largest city of 1.6 million people — remained under a state of emergency. The nation’s weather forecaster, MetService, warned of severe weather on Sunday and Monday for the north island. Intense rainfall could also cause surface and flash flooding, it said. The focus of the emergency has since moved south, with Waitomo District, about 220 km from Auckland, declaring a state of emergency late on Saturday. Police confirmed that a man missing after being swept away on Friday in Onewhero, a rural village about 70 km south of Auckland, had died. “The most horrific part of it is that we’ve lost lives,” Deputy Prime Minister Carmel Sepuloni told reporters in Auckland. The culprit: Climate change Climate change is causing episodes of heavy rainfall to become more common and more intense in New Zealand, though the impact varies by region. Climate Change Minister James Shaw noted the link to climate change on Saturday when he tweeted his support for those affected by flooding. On Sunday, police said they were assisting with traffic management and road closures after heavy rainfall “caused numerous slips, flooding and damage to roads.” In nearby Bay of Plenty there was also “widespread flooding,” police said, as well as a landslide that had knocked …

The U.N.’s main AIDS program says thousands of children are dying from HIV/AIDS because, unlike adults, they do not receive treatment for the deadly disease. HIV/AIDS is no longer an automatic death sentence. People infected with the disease can live a normal lifespan, provided they receive treatment and care. Unfortunately, there is a glaring disparity between the way children and adults with HIV/AIDS are treated. UNAIDS spokeswoman Charlotte Sector says 76 percent of adults have access to treatment but only half of children living with HIV are receiving lifesaving treatment. She says children account for 15 percent of all AIDS deaths, despite making up only four percent of all people living with the disease. “Last year alone 160,000 children were infected with HIV,” Sector said. “So, what is happening is that 12 countries are coming together in Africa because six countries in sub-Saharan Africa represent 50 percent of those new infections.” She says a global alliance led by UNAIDS, the World Health Organization, and UNICEF has formed to close the huge gap. She says 12 African countries have joined the alliance. Sector says health ministers from eight countries will launch the initiative next week in Tanzania. “So, not only is it getting children on treatment, but it is mostly trying to stop vertical transmission,” Sector said. “Now what is vertical transmission? It is the mother passing on HIV during pregnancy, during delivery or during breast feeding because most of those transmissions are taking place during breastfeeding.” Spector says efforts to …

This week India launched its first nasal COVID-19 vaccine, four months after it received approval for its restricted emergency use among adults in the country. The mucosal vaccine, made by India’s leading vaccine maker, Bharat Biotech, is based on technology licensed from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in the U.S. It is administered in the form of drops in the nose and stimulates an immune response in the mucous membranes of the tissues lining the nasal cavity, upper airways and lungs. Originally called BBV154 and now sold by Bharat Biotech as iNCOVACC, the nasal vaccine was launched by Indian Health Minister Mansukh Mandaviya on Thursday, Republic Day, a national holiday in the country. “Proud to launch iNCOVACC, the world’s 1st intranasal vaccine for COVID … A mighty display of India’s research and innovation prowess under PM Narendra Modi Ji’s leadership. Congratulations to Bharat Biotech for this feat!” Mandaviya posted on Twitter. He called the vaccine a “historic achievement & a testimony to the innovative zeal” of India’s scientists. In a statement, Bharat Biotech said that iNCOVACC, the “world’s first intranasal COVID vaccine for primary series and heterologous booster” is now available on CoWIN, India’s vaccine portal that digitally tracks people’s vaccination status. It will cost 800 rupees ($9.80) in private hospitals and 325 rupees ($4) in government hospitals. A heterologous booster is the vaccine dose for people who have already received two doses of Covishield or Covaxin, the two common Indian COVID vaccines. “iNCOVACC is a cost-effective …

A comet is streaking back our way after 50,000 years.  The dirty snowball last visited during Neanderthal times, according to NASA. It will come within 42 million kilometers (26 million miles) of Earth on Wednesday before speeding away again, unlikely to return for millions of years.  Discovered less than a year ago, this harmless green comet already is visible in the northern night sky with binoculars and small telescopes, and possibly the naked eye in the darkest corners of the Northern Hemisphere. It’s expected to brighten as it draws closer and rises higher over the horizon through the end of January, best seen in the predawn hours. By February 10, it will be near Mars, a good landmark.  Skygazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have to wait until next month for a glimpse.  Bigger, brighter, closer While plenty of comets have graced the sky over the past year, “this one seems probably a little bit bigger and therefore a little bit brighter and it’s coming a little bit closer to the Earth’s orbit,” said NASA’s comet and asteroid-tracking guru, Paul Chodas.  Green from all the carbon in the gas cloud, or coma, surrounding the nucleus, this long-period comet was discovered last March by astronomers using the Zwicky Transient Facility, a wide field camera at Caltech’s Palomar Observatory. That explains its official, cumbersome name: comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF).  On Wednesday, it will hurtle between the orbits of Earth and Mars at a relative speed of 207,000 kph (128,500 mph). Its nucleus …

The United States and European Union announced Friday an agreement to speed up and enhance the use of artificial intelligence to improve agriculture, health care, emergency response, climate forecasting and the electric grid.  A senior U.S. administration official, discussing the initiative shortly before the official announcement, called it the first sweeping AI agreement between the United States and Europe. Previously, agreements on the issue had been limited to specific areas such as enhancing privacy, the official said.   AI modeling, which refers to machine-learning algorithms that use data to make logical decisions, could be used to improve the speed and efficiency of government operations and services.   “The magic here is in building joint models [while] leaving data where it is,” the senior administration official said. “The U.S. data stays in the U.S. and European data stays there, but we can build a model that talks to the European and the U.S. data, because the more data and the more diverse data, the better the model.”  The initiative will give governments greater access to more detailed and data-rich AI models, leading to more efficient emergency responses and electric grid management, and other benefits, the administration official said.  Pointing to the electric grid, the official said the United States collects data on how electricity is being used, where it is generated, and how to balance the grid’s load so that weather changes do not knock it offline.  Many European countries have similar data points they gather relating to their own grids, the official …