Day: July 19, 2017

SpaceX’s chief said Wednesday that the first launch of its big new rocket is risky and stands “a real good chance” of failure.

Founder Elon Musk told a space station research conference Wednesday that he wants to set realistic expectations for the flight later this year from Cape Canaveral. The Falcon Heavy will have three boosters instead of one, and 27 engines instead of nine, all of which must ignite simultaneously. No one will be aboard the initial flights. When it comes time to add people, Musk said, “no question, whoever’s on the first flight, brave.”

SpaceX plans to fly two paying customers to the moon late next year, using a Falcon Heavy.

While the moon may not be in Musk’s personal travel plans, he said in response to a question that he’d like to ride one of his smaller Falcon rockets to the International Space Station in maybe three or four years. SpaceX plans to start ferrying NASA astronauts to the orbiting outpost, using Falcon 9 rockets and enhanced Dragon capsules, by the middle of next year. SpaceX now uses the Dragon capsule to deliver supplies to the space station.

“All right, we’ll put you on the manifest,” said NASA’s space station program manager Kirk Shireman.

​’Major pucker factor’

​Speaking for over an hour at the Washington conference, Musk encouraged people to go to Cape Canaveral for the Falcon Heavy launch. “It’s guaranteed to be exciting,” he promised, getting a big laugh.

“There’s a lot of risk associated with Falcon Heavy, real good chance that that vehicle does not make it to orbit,” he said. “Major pucker factor, really, is like the only way to describe it.”

Building the Falcon Heavy has proven harder than SpaceX envisioned, according to Musk. But it will be capable of lifting more than double the amount of payload into orbit than the current Falcon 9, and also hoisting a SpaceX Dragon capsule into a loop around the moon.

As for Mars, Musk said he favored friendly competition for getting astronauts to the red planet. NASA for years has supported an international effort. Musk said it would be better to have at least two or three-country coalitions striving to get there first and making the most progress.

Praise for NASA

He praised the model used by NASA in the commercial crew program, in which both SpaceX and Boeing are developing capsules for flying space station astronauts. Americans have not launched from home soil since the last shuttle flight in 2011, instead forced to use Russian rockets. The crew Dragons will parachute into the ocean just like the cargo Dragons; land landings were scrapped because of the work needed to make everything safe.

Musk said he’s updated his long-term plan for colonizing Mars to make it more economically feasible. The vehicles will be smaller, although still big. He promised to share his evolving ideas at a September conference in Australia.

“Going to Mars is not for the faint of heart,” Musk stressed. “It’s risky, dangerous, uncomfortable and you might die. Now do you want to go? For a lot of people, the answer is going to be hell no, and for some, it’s going to be hell yes.”

 
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Congressional Republicans are moving forward with legislation to roll back the Endangered Species Act, amid complaints that the landmark 44-year-old law hinders drilling, logging and other activities.

At simultaneous hearings Wednesday, House and Senate committees considered bills to revise the law and limit lengthy and costly litigation associated with it.

The bills come as a federal court lifted federal protections for gray wolves in Wyoming and the Trump administration moved to lift protections for grizzly bears in and near Yellowstone National Park. Interior Secretary Ryan Zinke also is reviewing federal efforts to conserve the imperiled sage grouse in 11 Western states.

House Natural Resources Committee Chairman Rob Bishop said the bills would curb excessive litigation and allow officials to focus on actual species conservation.

All too often, the endangered species law “has been misused to control land, block a host of economic activities important for jobs … [and] proliferate costly litigation that drains taxpayer resources away from actual conservation efforts,” said Bishop, a Utah Republican.

‘Meddling’ opposed

Arizona Representative Raul Grijalva, the panel’s senior Democrat, said the law “does not need congressional meddling to work better. What it needs is congressional support.”

Despite years of Republican efforts to pass bills weakening the species law and cut funding for agencies responsible for protecting and recovering imperiled American wildlife, “99 percent of listed species have continued to survive, and 90 percent are on schedule to meet their recovery goals,” Grijalva said.

Environmental groups called the simultaneous hearings a “one-two punch” on threatened wildlife.

“While nine out of ten Americans want to protect endangered species and their habitat, congressional leaders are spending their time dismantling the ESA in favor of special interests,” said Jamie Rappaport Clark, president and CEO of Defenders of Wildlife. “Enactment of any of these bills will only hasten the disappearance of endangered and threatened species from our planet.”

Five bills were being considered by the House panel, and a sixth bill was being heard in the Senate Environment and Public Works Committee. One of the bills would allow economic factors to be considered in species-listing decisions, while another would cap attorneys’ fees in endangered species cases.

Gray wolves

Both the House and Senate would “delist” the gray wolf as a protected species in the western Great Lakes and Wyoming, with management turned over to state officials in Wyoming, Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan. The bills also would block further judicial review of a 2011 decision by the Fish and Wildlife Service to remove federal protections for the wolves.

Gray wolves were once hunted to the brink of extinction in most of the country, but now number over 5,500 in the lower 48 states, including nearly 3,800 in Minnesota, Wisconsin and Michigan and nearly 400 in Wyoming.

Representative Collin Peterson, a Minnesota Democrat, said the current law prevents Midwest farmers from killing wolves even if they attack cattle or pets.

“The states, not the federal government, are best equipped to manage their gray wolf populations by balancing safety, economic and species-management issues,” he said.

Senator John Barrasso, a Wyoming Republican who is chairman of the Senate environment panel, said the bipartisan Senate bill would enhance recreational hunting and sport fishing, ensure common-sense environmental regulation, and protect wildlife and wildlife habitat. The bill would reauthorize several environmental programs, promote construction and expansion of public target ranges for recreational shooting, and allow fishermen to continue using lead tackle, among other provisions.

“This bill is another example of how we can all work together, both Democrat and Republican, to help protect the environment and grow our economy,” Barrasso said.

Gregory Sheehan, acting director of the Fish and Wildlife Service, said the Trump administration generally supports the House bills, with “some technical modifications.”

His agency plays a key role in preventing extinctions and aiding recovery, Sheehan said, “but states and the people on the ground who have long been stewards of the land are in the best position to be the primary caretakers of species over the long-term.”
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Kathy Holbrook was at home one night last year when she started having chest pains, so the 63-year-old former office manager drove to a hospital near her home in the eastern Kentucky mountains.

“I am a Christian lady, so I believe in the power of prayer and I was just praying to God to give me the strength to get there,” she said.

She made it, and doctors treated her for a small blockage in her heart. Because Holbrook has Medicaid, the hospital got paid for its services, helping it keep its doors open and preventing Holbrook from a more perilous drive to the next nearest hospital more than 30 miles away.

Millions of Americans got health insurance through the expansion of Medicaid programs in 31 states under the Affordable Care Act. Though efforts in Congress to overhaul the law collapsed, many remain nervous as some Republicans, including President Donald Trump, say they haven’t given up on repealing the law.

People who work at hundreds of rural hospitals are also watching closely. Those hospitals have struggling budgets that were propped up by the massive influx of poor people who gained taxpayer-funded health insurance.

‘Financial buoy’

The transformation has been especially dramatic in Kentucky, where rural hospitals are not just a lifeline for patients who may not have the means to travel far for the help they need. They also sustain local economies, providing jobs and services that people there have come to see as indispensable in some of the nation’s poorest and most isolated communities.

“It’s been a financial buoy for them to help keep them afloat,” said Steve Williams, the former CEO of Norton Healthcare who now is an adviser for the 22-bed Livingston Hospital in Salem, Kentucky. “The reality is there are 400,000 people on the rolls in Kentucky that weren’t there, and a lot of them [are] rural.”

Just two years ago, 15 of Kentucky’s 65 rural hospitals were in danger of closing. Since then, more than 440,000 Kentuckians — nearly 10 percent of the state’s population — got health coverage through Medicaid after the state chose to expand the program under the Affordable Care Act. In 2012, Kentucky hospitals provided $2.4 billion worth of “uncompensated care.” Three years later, it was $786 million, a 67 percent drop.

“It has helped them tremendously,” said Mike Rust, president and chief executive officer of the Kentucky Hospital Association.

Medicaid expansion at risk

But the Medicaid expansion could disappear under Republican proposals. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimates as many as 23 million Americans could lose their health insurance under a House-approved bill. Despite Republicans’ failure so far to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, Rust said hospitals are still “very nervous.”

“There is still a lot of uncertainty going on with what’s going to come out of Washington,” he said.

Rural hospitals in states that chose to expand Medicaid would be the most vulnerable. An analysis by The Commonwealth Fund, a health care advocacy group, showed the uncompensated care costs could rise 123 percent for those hospitals by 2026. In six states — California, Kentucky, Nevada, Oregon and Washington — the costs could rise more than 200 percent. Of the top 10 counties in the country with the highest percentage of adults relying on Medicaid, six are in Kentucky.

“An increase of uncompensated care of this level may not be sustainable for these vulnerable hospitals,” according to the report.

Nationwide, 81 of the more than 1,800 rural hospitals in America have closed since 2010, according to research from the North Carolina Rural Health Research Program. They include 12 closures in Texas, the most of any state.

‘Devastating effect’ on community

While a closed hospital would be bad for doctors and patients, it would also do disproportionate damage to delicate rural economies where the local hospital is often one of the largest employers along with the public school system.

When Parkway Regional Medical Center in Fulton, Kentucky, closed in 2015, the city lost $200,000 in tax revenue, or about 8 percent of its annual budget. City leaders responded by raising a tax on alcoholic beverages so they could continue to fund their police department.

“It had a devastating effect on our community,” Fulton City Manager Cubb Stokes said.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, noted that rural hospitals “are in trouble already,” adding to the challenges of crafting a health care bill. He said his “principle concern is the collapsing private health insurance market.” Last month, insurance regulators in Kentucky announced individual rates could increase by as much as 34 percent next year.

“That’s the immediate emergency,” McConnell said.

Costs are rising for taxpayers, too. The Medicaid expansion is expected to cost Kentucky nearly $300 million by 2020, adding pressure to a state budget already stressed by a multibillion public pension debt. That’s why Ralph Alvarado, a Republican state senator and an emergency room doctor, supports the GOP health care bill. He said if states have more authority over Medicaid spending, they can design a program to protect rural hospitals.

“Give us the power to do what we think is best,” Alvarado said. “The one size fits all from the feds doesn’t work.”

Some Kentuckians say the stakes are too high to take a chance on anything that could hurt local hospitals. Jonathan Nickell, a 29-year-old machinist from Mount Sterling, recently stood outside the St. Joseph Mount Sterling hospital while his wife was having surgery. He voted for Donald Trump in the presidential election, but said he would not support him anymore if the Medicaid expansion were to disappear.

“Most people live off Medicaid. If they don’t have that, they don’t have nothing,” he said. “You will be sending them to their deathbeds.”
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Thirty-five European children have died from measles in the past 12 months in what the World Health Organization calls an “unacceptable” tragedy. The deaths could have been prevented by a vaccine. A measles outbreak in Minnesota sent many to the hospital. Still, some parents in developed countries continue to believe false reports that the measles vaccine causes autism. Some parents are refusing to get their children vaccinated for other diseases as well. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports.
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Laughter can combat trauma. Spiritual cleansings could be used to fight an opioid addiction. Cactus extract may battle diabetes and obesity.

These insights are from curanderismo — traditional indigenous healing from the American Southwest and Latin America.

University of New Mexico professor Eliseo “Cheo” Torres’ has included these thoughts in a new, unique textbook connected to his internationally-known annual course on curanderismo.

“Curanderismo: The Art of Traditional Medicine Without Borders,” released last week, coincides with Torres’ annual gathering of curandero students and healers around the world at the University of New Mexico. For nearly 20 years, healers and their students have come to Albuquerque to meet and exchange ideas on traditional healing that for many years were often ignored and ridiculed.

Torres, who is also the university’s vice president for student affairs, said the popularity of the annual course and a similar online class he teaches convinced him that there needed to be a textbook on curanderismo.

“This textbook came out of the experience of this class and the ideas that have been shared through the years,” Torres said during a special morning ceremony with Aztec dancers on campus. “From healers in Mexico to those in Africa, many have long traditions of healing that are being rediscovered by a new generation.”

Curanderismo is the art of using traditional healing methods like herbs and plants to treat various ailments. Long practiced in Native American villages of Mexico and other parts of Latin America, curanderos also are found in New Mexico, south Texas, Arizona and California.

Anthropologists believe curanderismo remained popular among poor Latinos because they didn’t have access to health care. But they say the field is gaining traction among those who seek to use alternative medicine.

“I believe people are disenchanted with our health system,” Torres said. “Some people can’t afford it now, and they are looking for other ways to empower themselves to heal.”

The textbook gives a survey of medicinal plants used to help digestive systems and how healers draw in laugh therapy to cope with traumatic experiences.

Ricardo Carrillo, a licensed psychologist and a healer based in Oakland, California, said he’s seeing younger people look to curanderismo to help with challenges like addiction and physical pain.

“Yes, you have to go through detox and do all that you are supposed to do to get yourself clean,” said Carrillo, who came to the Albuquerque workshop to speak. “Curanderismo can give you the spiritual tools to keep yourself clean and look to a higher power.”

Among the ailments curanderos treat are mal de ojo, or evil eye, and susto, magical fright.

Mal de ojo is the belief that an admiring look or a stare can weaken someone, mainly a child, leading to bad luck, even death.

Susto is a folk illness linked to a frightful experience, such as an automobile accident or tripping over an unseen object. Those who believe they are inflicted with susto say only a curandero can cure them.
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