Day: July 20, 2017

A bag containing traces of moon dust sold for $1.8 million at an auction Thursday following a galactic court battle.

The collection bag, used by astronaut Neil Armstrong during the first manned mission to the moon in 1969, was sold at a Sotheby’s auction of items related to space voyages. The buyer declined to be identified. The pre-sale estimate was $2 million to $4 million.

The artifact from the Apollo 11 mission had been misidentified and sold at an online government auction, and NASA had fought to get it back. But in December, a federal judge ruled that it legally belonged to a Chicago-area woman who bought it in 2015 for $995.

Sotheby’s declined to identify the seller. However, details of the 2015 purchase were made public during the court case.

Investigators unknowingly hit the moon mother lode in 2003 while searching the garage of a man later convicted of stealing and selling museum artifacts, including some that were on loan from NASA.

The 12-by-8-inch (30-by-20-centimeter) bag was misidentified and sold at an online government auction.

Nancy Carlson of Inverness, Illinois, got an ordinary-looking bag made of white Beta cloth and polyester with rubberized nylon and a brass zipper.

Legal fight

Carlson, a collector, knew the bag had been used in a space flight, but she didn’t know which one. She sent it to NASA for testing, and the government agency, discovering its importance, fought to keep it.

The artifact “belongs to the American people,” NASA said then.

U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Marten, in Wichita, Kansas, said that while it shouldn’t have gone up for auction he didn’t have the authority to reverse the sale. He ordered the government to return it.

The judge said the importance and desirability of the bag stemmed solely from the efforts of NASA employees whose “amazing technical achievements, skill and courage in landing astronauts on the moon and returning them safely have not been replicated in the almost half a century since the Apollo 11 landing.”

When it comes to moon landings, Thursday’s auction is far from the final frontier.

A group called For All Moonkind Inc. mentioned the moon bag this week while campaigning for “measures to preserve and protect the six Apollo lunar landing sites.” It plans to take up the issue next month at the Starship Congress 2017 in California.
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A pilot program that paid landowners in Uganda to not cut down trees was successful, according to researchers looking for ways to try to reduce carbon emissions.

The researchers used interviews, periodic inspections and satellite images to monitor forests around 121 villages over two years. In 60 villages, they offered landowners $28 every year for each hectare of forest they preserved.

Deforestation is responsible for about one-tenth of global carbon emissions, according to the Union of Concerned Scientists, and leaving trees in place is one of the most cost-efficient options for capturing carbon. But it is hard to show it is effective.

“If you put up solar panels, you can say, ‘Ha! I put in those solar panels. Please give me my credits towards my target.’ If you slow deforestation … it’s harder to really know what impact you had,” co-author Seema Jayachandran, an economist at Northwestern University, told VOA.

Uganda deforestation

The study was conducted by researchers at Northwestern and a Dutch organization named Porticus. Uganda was an ideal location to attempt the program because between 2005-2010, the country had one of the highest rates of deforestation in the world, with a 2.7 percent loss each year.

Researchers wanted to address concerns that payments wouldn’t actually reduce deforestation, either because participants in the program wouldn’t have harvested trees anyway, they would just harvest more from other unprotected forest or they would quickly harvest immediately after the end of the program.

The study, published in the journal Science, found that there was less than half as much deforestation around villages in the program than around the control villages. Researchers found that villages in the payment program had preserved 5.5 more hectares of forestland than other villages.

And after the program ended, there was not a rush to cut down trees, so the benefits of the program lasted.

However, because the study was small, relative to the size of the national timber and charcoal markets, researchers were not able to see its effect on those markets. Without that information, they were not able to demonstrate that reduced deforestation in the study region didn’t lead to increased deforestation elsewhere.

Reasons for deforestation

Jayachandran said a program like this would do best if it was paired with efforts to address the reasons for deforestation. These could be helping people in cities get stoves, so they aren’t cooking with charcoal, or teaching farmers how to grow more food in less space, so they don’t need to clear as much forest for crop land.

The researchers hope that governments trying to meet their carbon emission targets under the 2015 Paris Agreement will consider paying poorer countries to reduce deforestation. The Paris accord on climate change aims to keep average world temperatures from rising more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times.

Program was popular

Jayachandran told VOA that humanity can’t afford to ignore any opportunity to reduce carbon emissions.

The program was administered by the Chimpanzee Sanctuary and Wildlife Conservation Trust. The Chimpanzee trust talked to participants about other ways to make a livelihood from the forest such as bee keeping or growing mushrooms, and about the benefits of preserving forest land.

Lilly Ajarova, executive director of the trust, said the program was very popular with participants.

“The challenge we have at this point is that there has been no continuity,” Ajarova said. The program will need to be more long term in order for it to have “real economic benefits, not just for the people involved but for the whole nation.”
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European explorers had long speculated about the existence of an Arctic route that connected the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans and would avoid the long journey around South America’s Cape Horn.

For centuries, able seafarers failed to find the Northwest Passage, among them John Cabot, Henry Hudson, Francis Drake and James Cook.

Harsh weather, thick ice and treacherous shallows forced many expeditions to turn back. Those that didn’t ended in disaster, such as the expedition led by British naval officer John Franklin in 1845.

Franklin’s men perished from scurvy, starvation and apparent lead poisoning from food tins, with some resorting to cannibalism toward the end. The wrecks of their formidable ships, HMS Erebus and HMS Terror, were found in 2014 and 2016.

Rescue parties sent to find Franklin’s expedition made key discoveries about the passage’s maritime geography, eventually paving the way for the first successful transit.

In 1903, Norwegian explorer Roald Amundsen and six other men set out in a tiny ship, the Gjoa. Sailing from east to west, they drew on the expertise of indigenous Inuit people to brave the dangerous conditions and reached Alaska in 1906.

The next recorded transit of the Northwest Passage, this time from west to east, was completed by the Canadian RCMP vessel St. Roch in 1942.

Over the years, there have been 410 recorded transits, mostly by Canadian icebreakers and small adventure yachts. The first cargo ship to achieve a transit was the SS Manhattan, a reinforced tanker accompanied by several icebreakers in 1969.

In 1984, the Lindblad Explorer became the first cruise ship to complete the passage, carrying 104 passengers on a trip from New York to the Japanese port of Yokohama. Thirty-two years later, the Crystal Serenity set a new record, carrying 1,100 cruise passengers through the passage at once.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) reports a survey of 11 countries finds evidence that HIV drug resistance is growing, posing a potential threat to the prevention and treatment of AIDS.

According to the WHO, 36.7 million people are living with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS. More than half that number are on life-saving antiretroviral therapy.

In what it calls a wake-up call, the WHO says more than 10 percent of people starting antiretroviral therapy in six of the 11 countries surveyed in Africa, Asia and Latin America were resistant to the drugs. It warns this potentially could undermine progress in controlling and reducing the spread of this disease.

Sub-Saharan Africa has the highest number of HIV cases and accounts for nearly two-thirds of the global total of new HIV infections; but, the WHO coordinator for HIV treatment and care, Meg Doherty, told VOA other parts of the world, especially eastern Europe and central Asia, have some of the highest incidences of drug resistance.

She added some of the higher incidences are in places with the lowest amount of antiretroviral coverage.

“So, we know in most of Africa, in sub-Saharan Africa, that there is very good and the highest coverage of treatment. So, it is a good news story. But, once we have more people on therapy and more people who are potentially taking drugs that could alter the virus, the risk of this resistance can go up,” Doherty said.

The World Health Organization is issuing new guidelines to help countries address HIV drug resistance. It recommends countries monitor the quality of their treatment programs and as soon as resistance is detected, people should be switched to a different drug treatment regimen.

The U.N. agency warns increasing HIV drug resistance could lead to an additional 135,000 deaths and 105,000 new infections in the next five years if no action is taken.  It projects the cost of HIV treatment could increase by $650 million during this time.
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U.S. Senator John McCain is being treated for glioblastoma multiforme, one of the most aggressive forms of brain cancer.

It is a malignant tumor that grows at a very rapid rate and is able to shift to new locations within the brain, according to the Mayo Clinic, a non-profit medical research group.

Glioblastomas generate microscopic roots that penetrate brain tissue, making complete surgical removal impossible, Mayo says.

McCain’s doctors at the Mayo Clinic Hospital in southwestern city of Phoenix, Arizona said they removed all of the tumor that was visible on brain scans and that the senator’s treatment options may include a mix of radiation and chemotherapy.

Mayo Clinic says the average survival rate for glioblastoma patients who receive aggressive treatment combining surgery, radiation and chemotherapy is about 14 months, with only 27-percent surviving two years.

For patients who respond favorably to initial treatment, the cancer can return frequently within one to two years.  The American Cancer Society estimates the survival rate for patients older than 55 at about four percent.

The tumors, which are rare, usually develop in adults.  The American Brain Tumor Association expects nearly 12,400 new cases this year.

Scientists are attempting new treatments for glioblastomas, including one that leverages the patient’s immune system to invade the cancer.  The treatment has been used for blood cancers, but its effectiveness on solid brain and other tumors is unknown at this time.

A device that creates electric fields to attack cancer has improved the survival chances of glioblastoma patients.
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“That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.”

The immortal words of American astronaut Neil Armstrong, uttered on July 20, 1969, when he became the first man to set foot on the moon.

Along with astronauts Buzz Aldrin and Mike Collins aboard Apollo 11, NASA made history this day 48 years ago, inspired by a 1961 speech by then President John F. Kennedy Jr., who made the challenge during an address to Congress at the height of the Cold War:

“I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to Earth.” 

Armstrong changed the world that day, and himself, according to a BBC documentary.  

In it, friends and family describe how the fame of that moment was overwhelming.  

Shy by nature, Armstrong would rarely would speak of his achievement over the years, adding mystery and a certain enigmatic quality to his public personality.  Armstrong didn’t like being singled out, noting the Moon mission was a team effort.

“He really didn’t know what he wanted to do,” Neil’s sister, June Armstrong says in the BBC piece. “‘What am I going to do now? What can I do?’”

He became reclusive. But in 2005, Armstrong appeared in an interview with CBS’s Ed Bradley on 60 Minutes, where he described the feeling of that famed moon walk.

“It’s a brilliant surface in that sunlight. The horizon seems quite close to you because the curvature is so much more pronounced than here on Earth. It’s an interesting place to be. I recommend it.”

Armstrong died August 25, 2012, at the age of 82.
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There are no proven ways to stave off Alzheimer’s, but a new report raises the prospect that avoiding nine key risks starting in childhood just might delay or even prevent about a third of dementia cases around the world.

How? It has to do with lifestyle factors that may make the brain more vulnerable to problems with memory and thinking as we get older. They’re such risks as not getting enough education early in life, high blood pressure and obesity in middle age, and being sedentary and socially isolated in the senior years.

Thursday’s report in the British journal Lancet is provocative – its authors acknowledge their estimate is theoretical, based on statistical modeling. A recent U.S. report was much more cautious, saying there are encouraging hints that a few lifestyle changes can bolster brain health but little if any proof.

Still, it’s never too early to try, said Lancet lead author Gill Livingston, a psychiatry professor at University College London.

“Although dementia is diagnosed in later life, the brain changes usually begin to develop years before,” she noted.

Early next year, a $20 million U.S. study will begin rigorously testing if some simple day-to-day activities truly help older adults stay sharp. In the meantime, Alzheimer’s specialists say there’s little down side to certain common-sense recommendations.

“Increased health of the body supports increased health of the brain,” said cognitive neuroscientist Laura Baker of Wake Forest School of Medicine in North Carolina, who will lead the upcoming U.S. study.

Consider physical activity, crucial for heart health. “If in fact it should also improve the prospects for cognitive function and dementia, all the better,” said Dr. Richard Hodes, director of the U.S. National Institute on Aging and an avid exerciser.

Here’s the latest from this week’s Alzheimer’s Association International Conference on possible ways to guard your brain:

Key risks

A Lancet-appointed panel created a model of dementia risks throughout life that estimates about 35 percent of all cases of dementia are attributable to nine risk factors – risks that people potentially could change.

Their resulting recommendations: Ensure good childhood education; avoid high blood pressure, obesity and smoking; manage diabetes, depression and age-related hearing loss; be physically active; stay socially engaged in old age.

The theory: These factors together play a role in whether your brain is resilient enough to withstand years of silent damage that eventually leads to Alzheimer’s.

Does changing these or other lifestyle factors really help?

Last month, the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine reported there’s little rigorous proof. That report found some evidence that controlling blood pressure, exercise and some forms of brain training – keeping intellectually stimulated – might work and couldn’t hurt.

Why? What’s good for the heart is generally good for the brain. In fact, high blood pressure that can trigger heart attacks and strokes also increase risk for what’s called “vascular dementia.”

And exercising your gray matter may bulk up the brain, whether it’s from childhood education or learning a new language as an adult. The more you learn, the more connections your brain forms, what scientists call cognitive reserve. Some U.S. studies have suggested that generations better educated than their grandparents have somewhat less risk of dementia.

Other factors have less scientific support. Studies show people with hearing loss are more likely to experience memory problems, and have speculated that it’s because hearing loss leads to depression and social isolation – or even makes the brain work harder to deal with garbled sound, at the expense of other thinking skills. But so far there aren’t studies proving hearing aids reverse that risk.

In fact, the strongest evidence that lifestyle changes help comes from Finland, where a large, randomized study found older adults at high risk of dementia scored better on brain tests after two years of exercise, diet, cognitive stimulation and social activities.

Hunting proof

Would those strategies help Americans, who tend to be sicker, fatter and more sedentary than Scandinavians? The Alzheimer’s Association is funding a study to find out, with enrollment of 2,500 cognitively healthy but high-risk older adults to begin next year.

Want to try on your own? They’ll test:

-Walking – supervised, so no cheating. Wake Forest’s Baker puts seniors on treadmills at the local YMCA to avoid bumpy sidewalks. She starts exercise-newbies at 10 minutes a day for two days a week and works up to longer walks on more days.

-A diet that includes more leafy greens, vegetables, whole grains, fish and poultry than the typical American menu.

-Certain brain games and what Baker called an “intellectual stimulation barrage,” outings and other steps that keep people social, not sitting home on a computer, while they exercise their brains.

-Improving control of medical conditions like high blood pressure and diabetes that are toxic to the brain.

 
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For the first time in the global AIDS epidemic that has spanned four decades and killed 35 million people, more than half of all those infected with HIV are on drugs to treat the virus, the United Nations said in a report released Thursday.

AIDS deaths are also now close to half of what they were in 2005, according to the U.N. AIDS agency, although those figures are based on estimates and not actual counts from countries.

Experts applauded the progress, but questioned if the billions spent in the past two decades should have brought more impressive results. The U.N. report was released in Paris where an AIDS meeting begins this weekend.

“When you think about the money that’s been spent on AIDS, it could have been better,” said Sophie Harman, a senior lecturer in global health politics at Queen Mary University in London. 

She said more resources might have gone to strengthening health systems in poor countries.

“The real test will come in five to 10 years once the funding goes down,” Harman said, warning that countries might not be able to sustain the U.N.-funded AIDS programs on their own.

The Trump administration has proposed a 31 percent cut in contributions to the U.N. starting in October.

According to the report, about 19.5 million people with HIV were taking AIDS drugs in 2016, compared to 17.1 million the previous year.

UNAIDS also said there were about 36.7 million people with HIV in 2016, up slightly from 36.1 million the year before.

In the report’s introduction, Michel Sidibe, UNAIDS’ executive director, said more and more countries are starting treatment as early as possible, in line with scientific findings that the approach keeps people healthy and helps prevent new infections. Studies show that people whose virus is under control are far less likely to pass it on to an uninfected sex partner.

“Our quest to end AIDS has only just begun,” he wrote.

The report notes that about three-quarters of pregnant women with HIV, the virus that causes AIDS, now have access to medicines to prevent them from passing it to their babies. It also said five hard-hit African countries now provide lifelong AIDS drugs to 95 percent of pregnant and breast-feeding women with the virus.

“For more than 35 years, the world has grappled with an AIDS epidemic that has claimed an estimated 35 million lives,” the report said. “Today, the United Nations General Assembly has a shared vision to consign AIDS to the history books.” The death toll from AIDS has dropped dramatically in recent years as the wide availability of affordable, life-saving drugs has made the illness a manageable disease.

But Harman said that “Ending AIDS” — the report’s title — was unrealistic.

“I can see why they do it, because it’s bold and no one would ever disagree with the idea of ending AIDS, but I think we should be pragmatic,” she said. “I don’t think we will ever eliminate AIDS so it’s possible this will give people the wrong idea.”
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