Month: June 2017

Two major studies into how bees are affected by a group of pesticides banned in Europe gave mixed results on Thursday, fueling a row over whether the chemicals, called neonicotinoids, are safe.

The studies, one conducted across three European countries and another in Canada, found some negative effects after exposure to neonicotinoids in wild and honeybee populations, but also some positives, depending on the environmental context.

Scientists who conducted the European research – in Britain, Hungary and Germany – told reporters their overall findings suggested neonicotinoids are harmful to honeybee and wild bee populations and are “a cause for concern.”

But scientists representing companies who funded the work – Germany’s Bayer AG and Switerland’s Syngenta AG – said the results showed “no consistent effect.”

Several independent experts said the findings were mixed or inconclusive.

The European Union has since 2014 had a moratorium on use of neonicotinoids – made and sold by various companies including Bayer and Syngenta – after lab research pointed to potential risks for bees, crucial for pollinating crops.

But crop chemical companies say real-world evidence is not there to blame a global plunge in bee numbers in recent years on neonicotinoid pesticides alone. They argue it is a complex phenomenon due to multiple factors.

A spokesman for the EU’s food safety watchdog EFSA, said the agency is in the process of assessing all studies and data for a full re-evaluation of neonicotinoids, expected in November.

EFSA’s scientific assessment will be crucial to a European Commission decision in consultation with EU states on whether the moratorium on neonicotinoid use should remain in place.

The two studies published on Thursday, in the peer-reviewed journal Science, are important because they were field studies that sought to examine the real-world exposure of bees to pesticides in nature.

Researchers who led the Canadian study concluded that worker bees exposed to neonicotinoids – which they said often came from contaminated pollen from nearby plants, not from treated crops – had lower life expectancies and their colonies were more likely to suffer from a loss of queen bees.

On the findings of the European study, researchers told a briefing in London that exposure to neonicotinoid crops harmed honeybee colonies in two of the three countries and reduced the reproductive success of wild bees across all three.

They noted, however, that results from Germany showed a positive effect on bees exposed to neonicotinoids, although they said this was temporary and the reasons behind it were unclear.

“This represents the complexity of the real world,” said Richard Pywell, a professor at Britain’s Center of Ecology and Hydrology who co-led the work. “In certain circumstances, you may have a positive effect … and in other circumstances you may have a negative effect”

Overall, however, he said: “We are showing significant negative effects on [bees’] critical life-cycle stages, which is a cause for concern.”

Several specialists with no direct involvement in the study who were asked to assess its findings said they were mixed.

Rob Smith, a professor at Britain’s University of Huddersfield, said the results were “important in showing that there are detectable effects of neonicotinoid treatments on honeybees in the real world”, but added: “These effects are not consistent.”

Lynn Dicks at the University of East Anglia said the findings “illustrate the complexity of environmental science.”

“If there was a really big effect of neonicotinoids on bees, in whatever circumstances they were used, it would have shown up in both of these studies,” she said.

Norman Carreck, an insect expert at Britain’s Sussex University, said: “Whilst adding to our knowledge, the study throws up more questions than it answers.”
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Climate change will have an impact, not just on the temperature, but on the economy, according to a new analysis. A group of researchers has just released a study focused on the future economic effects of climate change in the U.S. Using six different economic variables, the team is predicting, with county by county accuracy, how a warming climate will rapidly change American society over the next century. VOA’s Kevin Enochs reports.
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Coral reefs are diverse underwater ecosystems often called “rainforests of the sea.” They are habitats for a wide variety of marine life.

So it’s good news for the fishing and tourism industries that widespread coral bleaching — a process that turns the reefs white, weak and vulnerable to breaking down — has stopped in all three ocean basins, according to the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

The coral bleaching event of the last two years, triggered by high water temperatures, has had far-reaching effects, said Mark Eakin, NOAA research scientist and Coral Reef Program coordinator.

“There are islands in the central Pacific Ocean…where the entire coral reef has been bleached,” he told VOA. The bleaching drove the fish away, and “the people who relied on fish for food or their businesses, their livelihood just disappeared.”

He added that in many places, the bleaching began to kill and disintegrate the coral reefs, which protect shorelines from beach erosion and often draw tourists who don diving gear to see the reefs’ unique underwater beauty.

“In many of those places, people are dependent on coral reefs for income, because they are popular tourist attractions,” Eakin said. “If the bleaching happens, people don’t come to visit dead coral reefs.”

High temps kill coral

Coral bleaching has been a recurring problem in recent decades, as water temperatures have risen worldwide, a result of global warming. One of the worst bleaching events began in late 2014. Since then, more than 70 percent of coral reefs around the world have experienced prolonged high temperatures.

The heat makes coral expel tiny organisms, called zooxanthellae, that provide the coral with its nutrients. If the organisms do not return, the coral can starve and die. In time, the coral skeletons crumble, causing the entire reef to collapse

The first global bleaching event noticed by scientists happened in 1998 during a strong El Nino — the phenomenon that makes Pacific ocean waters warmer than normal, often wreaking havoc on weather patterns.

The latest bleaching also coincided with a strong El Nino.

But “coral reef are not beyond help,” said Jennifer Koss, director of the NOAA Coral Reef Conservation Program.

She said scientists are taking steps to protect the reefs, in part by identifying coral species “that are more resilient to rising ocean temperatures and acidified waters.”

According to the NOAA report, areas of the U.S. hit by severe bleaching are Florida, Hawaii, the Pacific territory of Guam and the Mariana Islands.

“And we have also seen bleaching all the way from the east coast of Africa all the way around and back again to the west coast of Africa,” Eakin said.

For now, the bleaching has eased or stopped in most areas. “There may be some bleaching later this year in the north Pacific and in the Caribbean but its not as widespread as it had been,” he said.

Long-term, scientists will be watching closely to see if the reefs regain their strength. If they don’t, the oceans and those who depend on them for a living could be in trouble.
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Minnesota has had 78 cases of measles so far this year, eight more than in the entire United States in 2016.

There have been no new cases in the state since June 16, but health officials are waiting for two 21-day incubation periods to pass without new infections before they declare the outbreak over.

The virus broke out in the Somali-American community in Minneapolis. No one knows how measles came to Minnesota, since the disease no longer occurs naturally in the U.S.

State health workers identified nearly 9,000 people who were exposed to the measles infection. Those people had to be watched, immunized, if they were not vaccinated, and isolated if they became sick. Most of those who were exposed had already been vaccinated.

“It tells us that the vaccine works really, really well,” said Patsy Stinchfield, an infectious disease nurse practitioner who said she worked in “the eye of the storm” at Children’s Minnesota hospital.

Previous outbreak

Stinchfield has been involved in vaccine work since a measles outbreak in 1990 claimed the lives of three children, two at Children’s Minnesota.

“Measles is such a highly contagious disease; all you have to do is be in the same room with someone who is breathing it,” Stinchfield said during an interview with VOA via Skype. Ninety percent of those exposed will go on to develop the disease unless they have been vaccinated or have already suffered the infection.

Stinchfield described efforts at Children’s Minnesota to contain the infectious disease. She said nurses wearing face masks met people at the doors of the hospital emergency room and at the facility’s clinics. They also required the patients to do the same.

All but two of those who contracted measles were children. Twenty-one were hospitalized, mostly for dehydration. There is no treatment for measles, only for its symptoms.

The virus broke out in the mostly Muslim Somali-American community so health workers met with the community’s religious leaders, who invited Stinchfield and others to provide information to their followers about the vaccine and measles itself. The imams also encouraged parents to have their children vaccinated.

Stinchfield said Somali-Americans, at one time, had the highest rates of vaccinations against measles in the entire state. Then, she said, the vaccination rate dropped dramatically after anti-vaccination groups told the community that the MMR vaccine, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella, could cause autism.

“I would say almost exclusively the whole responsibility lands on the anti-vaccine movement, and the reason is misinformation and myths spread about a link between MMR and autism, of which there is none, and science has proven that not to be true,” Stinchfield said.

In interviews with Somali mothers last month, VOA’s Somali Service found that anti-vaccine views in the state are widespread.

Known history with measles

In Somalia, measles is widespread, Stinchfield said, and those in the Somali-American community are familiar with the disease and know that it can kill.

“They did not think that measles would be in the United States, and so the level of fear was greater for autism,” Stinchfield said. “This has now shifted, because the level of fear and the level of fear for measles is great because these families know measles. They’ve had loved ones die of measles in Somalia.”

Measles can cause a number of medical problems.

“The people who decline vaccines are actually increasing their risk for neurological problems … encephalitis, brain infections, developmental delay, and it is absolutely taking a risk to do nothing, to decline vaccines,” Stinchfield said.

Some researchers, such as Daniel Salmon at the Johns Hopkins University’s Institute for Vaccine Safety, maintain that the rubella vaccine can prevent autism. Rubella, which is also prevented by the MMR vaccine, is generally a mild disease, but 90 percent of infants suffer complications, including brain damage, if a pregnant woman contracts it during her first trimester.

Members of anti-vaccine groups, however, say that vaccines expose children to health risks and can cause harm. But, Stinchfield cites the higher health risks of not being vaccinated.

“Anything that can cause neurological impairment should be avoided and so, for example, with measles disease, one in a thousand cases from measles can have encephalitis with permanent brain damage, whereas one in one million doses of measles, mumps, rubella vaccine can have anaphylaxis,” a severe, potentially life-threatening allergic reaction to the vaccine, “and so it really is important to prevent the disease, which is a greater chance of having brain issues.”
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This year’s World Food Prize has been awarded to African Development Bank President Akinwumi Adesina, for his work to improve the lives of millions of small farmers across the African continent —  especially in Nigeria, where he was once the agriculture minister.

Kenneth Quinn, president of the World Food Prize Foundation, based in Des Moines, Iowa, said the $250,000 award reflected Adesina’s “breakthrough achievements” in Nigeria and his leadership role in the development of AGRA — the nonprofit Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa.

For example, Quinn said, “our laureate introduced the E-Wallet system, which broke the back of the corrupt elements that had controlled the fertilizer distribution system for 40 years. The reforms he implemented increased food production by 21 million metric tons and led to and attracted $5.6 billion in private-sector investments that earned him the reputation as the ‘farmers’ minister.'”

Adesina is the sixth African to win what some consider the Nobel Prize for food and agriculture. He will accept the prize in October in the Midwestern state of Iowa, where farming is a mainstay of the economy.

Challenges ahead

As president of the African Development Bank, the 57-year-old economist said he is honored by the recognition of decades of work, but he noted to VOA that the challenges ahead in Africa are quite immense.

“The big issue is how we’re going to make sure that 250 million people that still don’t have food in Africa get access to food,” Adesina said. “The other one is, we still have 58 million African children that are stunted today and, obviously, stunted children today are going to lead us to stunted economies tomorrow.”

Almost 30 percent of the 795 million people in the world who do not have enough to eat are in Africa, according to the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.

While Africa imports $35 billion worth of food every year, Adesina says the money spent on food imports should instead go into food production.

“Our task ahead is to make sure that Africa fully feeds itself,” the bank president said. “That Africa conserves that $35 billion and Africa transforms its rural economies and creates new hope and prosperity for a lot of the young people.”

Agriculture as ‘cool’ career

Adesina said he has worked to promote agriculture as a “cool” career for young people, so they can see their future in agriculture as a business, not just a way of life.

Gold lying in the ground in the rough can look like a clump of dirt, and won’t look like the extremely valuable metal it is unless it is cleaned and polished, Adesina said, and “that’s how it is with agriculture.”

“The size of the food and agribusiness market in Africa will rise to $1 trillion by 2030,” he added, “so this should be the sector where the millionaires and billionaires of Africa are coming out of.”

The African Development Bank launched an almost $800 million initiative last year called “Enable Youth.” The aim, Adesina said, “is to develop a new generation of young commercial farmers in both production, logistics, processing, marketing and all of that, all across the value chain.”
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The Dead Sea, the lowest spot on earth, is getting lower. With less rainfall than average this year, experts say the water level could drop more than one and a third meters by October. But the lake’s shrinkage is not just a reflection of drier weather and increased water use. It’s a prediction of a future mega-drought. Faith Lapidus reports.
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