Month: July 2020

The number of reported Ebola cases in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has surpassed the African nation's 2018 outbreak numbers in the same region, World Health Organization officials said Thursday. "There are now 56 cases, and this is of great concern, particularly as it is now surpassing the previous (2018) outbreak in this area, which was closed off and controlled at a total of 54 cases," said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, referring to DRC's Equateur province, a large region bordering the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The challenges of responding to Ebola cases amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he added, are exacerbated by inadequate funding and rough terrain. “The current Ebola outbreak is running into headwinds because cases are scattered across remote areas in dense rain…

More than 1 million people in the United Kingdom have quit smoking since the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, an anti-smoking group said. Action on Smoking and Health said more than 40% of those surveyed say they gave up cigarettes in direct response to the coronavirus.  A separate poll by University College London found more people quit smoking in the first six months of the year than in any full year since 2007. Medical researchers across the globe say COVID-19 symptoms are worse in smokers who get the virus than in nonsmokers who get sick.  U.S. experts say hospitalized smokers with coronavirus are less likely to survive.  Menthol cigarettesAlso Thursday, the U.S. branch of Action on Smoking and Health joined an African American anti-smoking group in filing a court action against…

Officials from the European Space Agency, ESA, and its U.S. counterpart, NASA Thursday released the first ever pictures from the agencies’ joint Solar Orbiter mission, including the closest pictures ever taken of the sun.The orbiter was about 77 million kilometers from the sun - about halfway between Earth and the star - when it took the stunning high-resolution pictures last month.During a remote news briefing as the pictures were released, ESA’s Solar Orbiter project scientist, Daniel Müller, said the mission was off to an excellent start. He said, “We didn’t expect such great results so early.”The Belgium Royal Observatory’s David Berghmans, the principal investigator for the  “Extreme Ultraviolet Imagers” (EUI) on board the spacecraft, described the very first high-resolution image they saw from the orbiter, which snapped a picture of…

NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken stepped outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to continue efforts to complete a three-and-a-half-year project to upgrade the station’s batteries, the space agency said.Cassidy and Behnken have been working to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries delivered to the station on a Japanese cargo ship in May. In all, NASA said 12 spacewalks will have been performed since January 2017 to change out batteries for eight power channels used to route electricity on the station.Thursday’s extravehicular activity is expected to last up to seven hours.NASA Astronauts Take Space Walk to Upgrade ISS BatteriesSpacewalk continues mission begun last week to upgrade ISS batteriesThe final spacewalk to complete the project is scheduled for next Tuesday and it will be somewhat historic. When…

Can a pregnant woman spread the coronavirus to her fetus? It's possible, but it seems to be relatively rare and scientists think they know why that is. Many viruses can cross the placenta and infect a fetus in the womb, and evidence has been growing that the coronavirus sometimes can too.   Researchers in Italy studied 31 women with COVID-19 who delivered babies in March and April and found signs of the virus in several samples of umbilical cord blood, the placenta and, in one case, breast milk. But this sort of testing can just detect bits of genetic material — it doesn't mean there is virus capable of causing infection in those places. In one case, there was strong evidence suggesting the newborn had the virus at birth because…

U.S. President Donald Trump has unveiled a top-to-bottom overhaul of the review process for infrastructure projects that critics contend causes major cracks in bedrock conservations laws.  “This is something that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said on the outskirts of Atlanta’s airport on Wednesday, contending that “horrible roadblocks” due to environmental regulations had cost “trillions of dollars” over the years.  The president said his new rule “completely modernizes the approval review process under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969,” which will cut the timeline for major projects, including highways, from up to 20 years down to two years or less.  “You’re not going to devote a lifetime to doing a project that doesn’t get approved,” Trump said of the streamlined process. “It’s going to be very quick — yes or no, after study.” In his remarks at the Hapeville Airport Hub of United Parcel Service, Trump discussed how he had personally experienced frustration with…

There has been an alarming decline in the number of children getting vaccinated for such preventable diseases as diphtheria, tetanus and measles, the United Nations warned Wednesday. The U.N.’s World Health Organization and UNICEF blame the decline on the disruption of routine health care caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of World Health Organization, attends the virtual 73rd World Health Assembly in Geneva, May 18, 2020.“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunized than ever before,” WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “But the pandemic has put those gains at risk. The avoidable suffering and death caused by children missing out on routine immunizations could be far greater than COVID-19 itself.” The WHO and UNICEF said that even when vaccines are available, many children who need them…

President Donald Trump is ready to roll back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles infrastructure projects, but that is credited with ensuring decades of scrutiny of major projects and giving local communities a say. Trump was in Atlanta to announce changes Wednesday to the National Environmental Policy Act's regulations for how and when authorities must conduct environmental reviews, making it easier to build highways, pipelines, chemical plants and other projects. The 1970 law changed environmental oversight in the United States by requiring federal agencies to consider whether a project would harm the air, land, water or wildlife, and giving the public the right of review and input. The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America. Critics call the Republican president's efforts a cynical attempt…

Researchers believe they have identified the area of the brain that determines a preference for alcohol, perhaps the first step in an eventual treatment for alcoholism.In a study published Monday in the Society for Neuroscience journal eNeuro, researchers said they were trying to determine why some people can consume alcohol every day without developing dependence while less frequent drinkers develop a dependence.The researchers, from the University of Massachusetts, offered a test group of rats intermittent access to a 20 percent alcohol solution, then trained them to self-administer both 10 and 20 percent solutions of alcohol, as well as a sugar solution as a reward. They then were able to determine which rats were high or low alcohol consumers and divide them accordingly.The researchers monitored the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity in…

NASA plans to launch its newest Mars rover by the end of the month after a hardware issue scrapped an earlier launch.  The space agency has until the middle of August to complete a successful launch before planetary alignment issues force a costly delay to the mission.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us The Week in Space. ...

The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are calling for a renewed push for vaccinations, as the numbers of vaccinations fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.In a statement issued Wednesday, the non-profits say child vaccination rates plateaued at 85 percent in the decade prior to the outbreak, with an estimate that at least 14 million infants were not vaccinated each of those years.“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunized than ever before,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.But the pandemic has slowed production of the vital preventative vaccines, and stay-at-home orders, economic hardships and other obstacles have hindered access to doctor’s offices and clinics.For example, new data released by the WHO indicates the first four…

President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new federal rule to speed up the environmental review process for proposed highways, gas pipelines and other major infrastructure, a move that critics are describing as the dismantling of a 50-year-old environmental protection law.   Trump will travel to Atlanta on Wednesday to announce the federal rule as he seeks to make it easier to meet some of the country's infrastructure needs. When he first announced the effort in January, the administration set a two-year deadline for completing full environmental impact reviews while less comprehensive assessments would have to be completed within one year. The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America.   Critics call the Republican president's efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public's ability…

Researchers have taken a scientific look at why people love the music they do and how it connects to important times in their lives. The study, published last week in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, sought to look at music people hear in their teenage years and how that music becomes intrinsically linked to a person’s “sense of themself.” Researchers with the University of Westminster School of Social Sciences in London analyzed 80 guests on the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) show Desert Island Discs in which celebrities select eight pieces of music that they would take with them to a desert island. The researchers found half of the songs participants chose were selected because they were linked to important memories from when they were either between the ages of 10 and 19 or…

It is commonly accepted that the human senses are limited — what can be seen through the eyes, heard through the ears. Sound is created when things vibrate. We hear it through our ears. Researchers have developed a wearable device that augments the reality of users by allowing them to “hear” through their skin in the form of vibrations. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Camera: Elizabeth Lee   Produced by: Elizabeth Lee  ...

Pakistan said Tuesday it would relaunch door to door vaccinations of children against polio next week after a four-month suspension due to the coronavirus outbreak.     The announcement comes amid a substantial decline in daily COVID-19 infections across Pakistan, one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its war-torn neighbor Afghanistan.     Pakistani officials have so far recorded 58 new polio cases this year from across the country amid warnings by the World Health Organization that “transmission continues to be widespread.”    The anti-polio drive, starting July 20, initially aims to vaccinate about 800,000 children under the age of five in high-risk Pakistani districts, including Karachi and Quetta, to protect them against the crippling disease.     The special assistant to the prime minister on health, Zafar Mirza,…

Growing threats imperil life in the world’s oceans and seas. Scientists say warming waters endanger young and unborn fish more than previously thought while a newly discovered species of seaweed suffocates life in Pacific waters. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi reports on threats to waters both local and global.Produced by: Arash Arabasadi  ...

With the number of confirmed coronavirus infections around the world topping 13 million, including more than 570,000 deaths, the United States says it expects to start producing potential vaccine doses by the end of the summer, even as more and more governments are imposing, or re-imposing, strict quarantine and social distancing guidelines to blunt the spread of the disease.  The U.S.-based cable financial news channel CNBC reported Monday that a senior Trump administration official told reporters the manufacturing process is already underway even though they aren’t sure which vaccine – if any – will work.  The official is quoted as saying they are already buying equipment, securing manufacturing sites, and acquiring raw materials.CNBC says two companies involved in the development of a potential new vaccine, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson, are…

In Ghana and West Africa, organic food is growing in popularity as people try to stay healthy during the COVID-19 pandemic. But organic produce is not easily regulated, and some consumers are paying extra for unverified claims. Farmers across the region are creating their own system, with support from international bodies, to certify organic produce. Stacey Knott reports from Accra.Camera: Stacey Knott  Produced by: Stacey Knott    ...