Month: March 2023

The white-colored humanoid "Garmi" does not look much different from a typical robot — it stands on a platform with wheels and is equipped with a black screen on which two blue circles acting as eyes are attached. But retired German doctor Guenter Steinebach, 78, said: "For me, this robot is a dream." Not only is Garmi able to perform diagnostics on patients, it can also provide care and treatment for them. Or at least, that is the plan. Garmi is a product of a new sector called geriatronics, a discipline that taps advanced technologies like robotics, IT and 3D technology for geriatrics, gerontology and nursing. About a dozen scientists built Garmi with the help of medical practitioners like Steinebach at the Munich Institute of Robotics and Machine Intelligence. Part…

The U.N.’s premiere global body fighting for gender equality on Saturday called for wide-ranging efforts to close the gap between men and women in today’s technology-driven world and urged zero tolerance for gender-based violence and harassment online. In a document approved by consensus after all-night negotiations at the end of a two-week meeting, the Commission on the Status of Women expressed grave concern at the interrelation between offline and online violence, harassment and discrimination against women and girls — and it condemned the increase in these acts. It called for a significant increase in investments by the public and private sector to bridge the gender digital divide. It also called for the removal of barriers to equal access to digital technology for all women and girls, and new policies and…

Barbara Washington is a lifelong resident of Convent, Louisiana, a town of fewer than 500 residents along the Mississippi River that has been hit hard by cancer. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven … about eight,” she told VOA, counting the number of people on her street who have died from cancer in recent years. “And my sister died from lung cancer at just 57 years old. She didn’t smoke. She just worked at one of the chemical plants at night.” Convent is in the southeastern part of the state, part of a corridor surrounded by chemical plants. U.S. first lady Jill Biden’s recent visit to the nearby city of New Orleans highlighted the region’s dubious distinction of having some of the highest cancer rates in the nation. It’s…

Advisers to the World Health Organization urged China to release all information related to the origin of the COVID-19 pandemic Saturday after new findings were briefly shared on an international database used to track pathogens. New sequences of the SARS-CoV-2 virus as well as additional genomic data based on samples taken from a live animal market in Wuhan, China, in 2020 were briefly uploaded to the GISAID database by Chinese scientists earlier this year, allowing them to be viewed by researchers in other countries, according to the statement from the WHO's Scientific Advisory Group for the Origins of Novel Pathogens (SAGO). The sequences suggested that raccoon dogs were present in the market and might have also been infected by the coronavirus, providing a new clue in the chain of transmission…

Burundi has declared a national public health emergency after polio was detected in a 4-year-old and two other children who had been in contact with the child.   The polio outbreak is Burundi's first in more than 30 years.  The landlocked African country is preparing a vaccination campaign targeting eligible children, from newborns to 7-year-olds. It will be ready in a few weeks.  In addition to the children, health officials found five polio samples in its surveillance of wastewater, confirming the presence of circulating poliovirus type 2.  Early detection is critical in containing an outbreak of the disease. Type 2 infections can occur when the weakened strain of the virus contained in the oral polio vaccine circulates among under-immunized populations for long periods.  The highly infectious disease is also spread through…

The COVID-19 pandemic could settle down this year to a point where it poses a threat similar to flu, the World Health Organization said Friday. The WHO voiced confidence that it will be able to declare an end to the emergency sometime in 2023, saying it was increasingly hopeful about the pandemic phase of the virus coming to a close. Last weekend marked three years since the U.N. health agency first described the situation as a pandemic — though WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus insists countries should have jolted into action several weeks before. "I think we're coming to that point where we can look at COVID-19 in the same way we look at seasonal influenza," WHO emergencies director Michael Ryan told a press conference. "A threat to health, a…

The Southern Nevada Water Authority on Thursday voted to accept a $2.4 million grant from the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation to fund cloud seeding in other Western states whose rivers feed the parched desert region.  The weather modification method uses planes and ground-based cannons to shoot silver iodide crystals into clouds, attracting moisture to the particles that fall as additional snow and rain.  The funding comes as key reservoirs on the Colorado River hit record lows and booming Western cities and industries fail to adjust their water use to increasingly shrinking supplies.  "This money from Reclamation is wonderful. We just have to decide how exactly it's going to benefit us," said Andrew Rickert, who coordinates Colorado's cloud seeding for the Colorado Water Conservation Board.  The federal funding will go toward…

Health officials in Tanzania are investigating an illness that killed five people in the country's northwest with Ebola-like symptoms, raising fears that it could be the deadly virus.  Tanzania’s Ministry of Health late Thursday issued a statement saying seven people in northwest Kagera region showed symptoms such as fever, vomiting, bleeding and kidney failure. The ministry sent audio comments by Chief Medical Officer Tumaini Nagu to media. She said rapid response teams at the regional and council level have been sent to probe the unknown disease to understand and analyze it further. Nagu said samples have been taken from patients to identify the source of the disease. Social media posts in Tanzania noted the symptoms were like those for Ebola, a deadly virus that causes high fevers, severe bleeding, and…

Mozambique’s health minister said Friday a cholera outbreak in the area hit by Cyclone Freddy killed eight people this week and hospitalized 250 – part of 600 sickened since the record storm made landfall in February. Health Minister Armindo Tiago told state-run Radio Mozambique the cholera victims were in the port city of Quelimane, capital of Zambezia province, the area most affected by the cyclone. Tigao said cholera prevention is focused on 133 centers in the city that are sheltering up to 50,000 people displaced by flooding. He added that more work is needed in other provinces hit by Cyclone Freddy, a record storm that hammered the region since February. Tiago said everyone must work to control the outbreak by boiling drinking water, cleaning and washing food, and disposing of…

Lack of access to clean drinking water is being exacerbated by climate change. In fact, less than 1% of the world's water is fresh and accessible, according to Melissa Ho, senior vice president of freshwater and food at the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). "Although we see water all around the planet, we do not necessarily realize what a precious and finite resource it is," she said. Ho cited that statistic during "This is Climate: Water," a Washington Post event that featured leaders at the forefront of water crisis initiatives discussing possible solutions to address global water inequities and the role of water in sustainable development. Ahead of Wednesday’s World Water Day, Colorado Sen. John Hickenlooper outlined growing demands on the Colorado River, which drains a watershed from seven Western U.S.…

U.S. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered a number of improvements in access to mental health care on Thursday to reduce suicides in the military but held off on endorsing more controversial recommendations to restrict gun and ammunition purchases by young troops, sending them to another panel for study. An independent committee in late February recommended that the Defense Department implement a series of gun safety measures, including waiting periods for the purchase of firearms and ammunition by service members on military property and raising the minimum age for service members to buy guns and ammunition to 25. In a memo released Thursday, Austin called for the establishment of a suicide prevention working group to "assess the advisability and feasibility" of recommendations made by the initial study committee — which would…

Deaths of pregnant women in the United States fell in 2022, dropping significantly from a six-decade high during the pandemic, new data suggests. More than 1,200 U.S. women died in 2021 during pregnancy or shortly after childbirth, according to a final tally released Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 2022, there were 733 maternal deaths, according to preliminary agency data, though the final number is likely to be higher. Officials say the 2022 maternal death rate is on track to get close to pre-pandemic levels. But that's not great: The rate before COVID-19 was the highest it had been in decades. "From the worst to the near worst? I wouldn't exactly call that an accomplishment," said Omari Maynard, a New Yorker whose partner died after childbirth…

For the first time, scientists have created baby mice from two males.  This raises the distant possibility of using the same technique for people — although experts caution that very few mouse embryos developed into live mouse pups, and no one knows whether it would work for humans.  Still, "It's a very clever strategy," said Diana Laird, a stem cell and reproductive expert at the University of California, San Francisco, who was not involved in the research. "It's an important step in both stem cell and reproductive biology."  Scientists described their work in a study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.  First, they took skin cells from the tails of male mice and transformed them into "induced pluripotent stem cells," which can develop into many different types of cells or…

In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, nurses, truck drivers, grocery clerks and other essential workers were hailed as heroes. "Now we are vilifying them … and this has long-term ramifications for our well-being," said Manuela Tomei, International Labor Organization assistant director-general for governance, rights, and dialogue. "The work that these persons perform is absolutely essential for families and societies to function," she said, speaking Wednesday in Geneva. "So, the non-availability of their services would really result into a loss of well-being and the impossibility of ensuring safe lives to society at large." And yet a new study by the International Labor Organization (ILO) finds essential workers are undervalued, underpaid and laboring under poor working conditions, exposed to treatment that "exacerbates employee turnover and labor shortages, jeopardizing the provision…

Every month, young girls in Ghana are forced to miss school days due to menstruation. But a schoolteacher is working to find a solution by providing reusable sanitary pads. Hamza Adams visited a school in Afari, Ghana, and has this story narrated by Salem Solomon. ...

The Webb Space Telescope has captured the rare and fleeting phase of a star on the cusp of death. NASA released the picture Tuesday at the South by Southwest conference in Austin, Texas. The observation was among the first made by Webb following its launch in late 2021. Its infrared eyes observed all the gas and dust flung into space by a huge, hot star 15,000 light years away. A light year is about 5.8 trillion miles. Shimmering in purple like a cherry blossom, the cast-off material once comprised the star's outer layer. The Hubble Space Telescope snapped a shot of the same transitioning star a few decades ago, but it appeared more like a fireball without the delicate details. Such a transformation occurs only with some stars and normally…