Day: July 26, 2017

When astronaut John Glenn became the first man to set foot on the moon 48 years ago this month, the scene transfixed a small girl in Costa Rica watching on a neighbor’s TV.

“I was 7 years old when I saw the Apollo landing. … I told Mami, ‘I want to reach the moon,’ ” Sandra Cauffman recalled.

Since seeing that 1969 event, Cauffman has watched rockets roar into space carrying the Mars-orbiting MAVEN satellite and other exploratory equipment she has worked on while leading or supporting teams as a NASA engineer. “I marvel at my own journey, and how I came to help probe the mysteries of outer space,” Cauffman said in a 2014 TED Talk.

Cauffman, deputy director of NASA’s Earth Science division, is believed to be among a handful of Hispanic women leaders at the space agency she joined as a contractor in 1988. While she’s proud to have worked on the Hubble space telescope and other high-profile projects, she’s also committed to another mission: encouraging young people – especially girls – to pursue careers in science and technology.

“What I have been trying to do for a long time now is to plant those seeds in those little girls that just because you’re a girl doesn’t mean that you cannot be a scientist or an engineer,” she told VOA in an interview earlier this month at NASA headquarters. “And just because your parents didn’t go to school doesn’t mean you cannot go to school.”

WATCH: Sandra Cauffman talks about her work

Struggles in early life

Cauffman grew up in poverty, and even briefly was homeless – but she got a wealth of encouragement from her mother. María Jerónima Rojas worked two and sometimes three jobs at a time to support her daughter and younger son, insisting that they concentrate on schoolwork.

Jerónima Rojas eventually married a U.S. citizen, who brought the family to the eastern U.S. state of Virginia. “When I arrived in the USA, I spoke no English and had to study a lot,” Cauffman recalled. She wasn’t good at math initially, “but I kept going.”

That persistence helped the young Sandra overcome the sexism she faced in college.

At the University of Costa Rica, a counselor convinced her that industrial engineering was more “ladylike” than the electrical engineering she wanted to study. But three years later, when she enrolled in northern Virginia’s George Mason University, she switched course and majored in both electrical engineering and physics. A male teacher predicted that she and the two other female students would not complete his class – “but we finished it, of course.”

Soon after graduation, she landed a contracting position at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center near Washington.

“Working at NASA has enabled me to design and test hardware, work side by side with talented scientists and design new missions for space exploration,” Cauffman told the TED audience. “I work with so many amazing people who think of things nobody had ever done before, and they inspire me so much every day.”

The engineer has become a source of inspiration herself. In March, Cauffman was among three women that Costa Rica honored with postage stamps for contributions in their respective fields.

Supportive presence

Cauffman champions engineering and science, fields in which women are sorely underrepresented. While women account for half of the overall U.S. workforce, they make up just 28 percent of science and engineering workers, the National Girls Collaborative Project reports.

“We need their diversity,” Cauffman says of women. “We think differently, we look at things differently. We also need role models. You know, we also need to encourage the flow of girls” into science and tech.

Married and with two sons in their early 20s – the elder working on a Ph.D. in applied cognition, the younger studying electrical engineering – Cauffman, 55, understands how family obligations can constrain women’s career goals.

“We are the caregivers – we have to take care of the kids, we have to take care of the house, we take care of our parents, so that kind of stalls our careers,” said Cauffman, who nonetheless earned her master’s degree in electrical engineering while working full time and starting her family. “And as you go higher in the organization, there are more demands on your time.”  

Cauffman also tended to her mother, who was ailing for a time and lives near the family. “I waited until my sons grew up and my mother was well before I attempted applying for positions of more responsibility and visibility,” she explained.

Urges setting goals

Now Cauffman plans to set up a foundation to help young people surmount stereotypes and other obstacles.

As she said in her TED Talk, “Life is never easy. But the circumstances of your birth should not dictate the kind of person that you can become. You have control of your destiny, so set lofty goals with intermediate goals along the way.”

Cauffman reached one such goal in March. In Costa Rica for the postage stamp ceremony, she was accepted into the country’s electrical engineering society – which once refused to admit women.

VOA Spanish Service’s Mitzi Macias contributed to this report.
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As the world’s AIDS experts meet at a conference this week in Paris, health workers in Cameroon still struggle to identify and treat HIV-positive mothers and babies.

Myriam Anang lost her husband and three-month-old baby two years ago to HIV. Now, Anang works as a peer educator in a government-initiated program to help others become better informed.

She was among the speakers in northern Cameroon at a gathering addressing AIDS and HIV.

Anang said that when she tries to persuade sick villagers to go with their babies for HIV screening, they argue that they are not ill, but bewitched by their relatives. She said she knows three men who died of HIV, yet their wives have refused to take their babies to the hospital, claiming the families are suffering from a spell.

Anang did not have prenatal care. She delivered her baby at a traditional birth attendant’s home. It was only afterward, when she became sick, that she went to a hospital and found out she had HIV.

In 2016, the government found that seven out of 10 women in the northern part of the country were not visiting hospitals when they were pregnant. About a third of those who did go to a hospital never returned for postnatal visits, even if they had tested positive for HIV.

The job of the peer educators is to identify pregnant women in their villages and encourage them to get medical care, even reminding them of their hospital appointments.

The government says that since the start of the program, seven out of 10 pregnant women identified by peer educators now visit a hospital.

Obstacles for care

The results of a mother’s HIV test take a day. However, newborns need a special screening, and the bloodwork can only be processed a thousand kilometers away in the capital Yaounde, says Georgette Wekang, head of HIV Control and People Living with AIDS in Cameroon’s Ministry of Health.

Wekang says it takes between six and seven months for the results to be brought back from Yaounde and that, at times, those results are delivered after the babies have died. In addition, she says, fear of stigma prevents some women from returning with their babies for follow-up appointments.

The U.N. Children’s Fund estimates that in northern Cameroon, 40 percent of HIV-positive children do not receive treatment.

Health officials say it is important to begin treatment as soon as possible after diagnosis.

The government of Cameroon has begun trials with new testing machines to reduce the time parents must wait for a baby’s test results. While antiretroviral drugs are provided for free, patients are requested to pay for laboratory tests.

In northern Cameroon, parents are told they can take their children to the town of Garoua for treatment. However, Mireille Yaki, the medical officer in charge of the hospital, says the facility regularly runs short of the antiretroviral drugs, and many parents stop bringing their children for treatment.
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Forty-eight years ago this month (July), U.S. astronaut Neil Armstrong became the first human to set foot on the moon. That image transfixed a little Costa Rican girl as she watched on a neighbor’s TV.  VOA Vero Balderas explains how that moon walk launched Sandra Cauffman’s journey to a leadership role at the U.S. space agency.
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Tests on deceased former professional American football players showed nearly all of them had a chronic traumatic brain disease, according to scientific research published Tuesday in the JAMA medical journal.

The disease, called chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is believed to be caused by repeated head trauma and has been known to cause memory loss, disorientation, depression and impaired judgement, among other symptoms.

Of the 202 total deceased former players studied for the report, which included high school, college and professional players, 177 were diagnosed with CTE. National Football League players seemed particularly prone to CTE, with 110 of the 111 former NFL players examined in the study being diagnosed with the disease.

“There’s no question that there’s a problem in football. That people who play football are at risk for this disease,” study author and director of Boston University’s CTE Center Dr. Ann McKee said. “And we urgently need to find answers for not just football players, but veterans and other individuals exposed to head trauma.”

The study marks the most recent research published linking head trauma sustained while playing football to chronic brain injuries, though it is by no means conclusive.

As pointed out in the study, the brains examined for the research were donated by family members of football players who may have exhibited symptoms of chronic brain injury prior to death. This creates a selective sample that may not be representative of all football players.

The NFL released a statement praising the study for its role in advancing the science related to chronic head injuries and said it is working with “a wide range of experts to improve the health of current and former NFL athletes.”

“There are still many unanswered questions relating to the cause, incidence and prevalence of long-term effects of head trauma such as CTE,” the statement read.

Last year, the NFL acknowledged for the first time publicly a link between head blows sustained on the football field and brain disease and agreed to a $1 billion settlement to compensate former players who suffer from head trauma-related injuries.
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German automaker Daimler’s profits barely rose and were short of market expectations as its Mercedes-Benz luxury car division boomed while earnings lagged at its truck, van and bus businesses.

The second-quarter results were overshadowed by the growing controversy over diesel technology hanging over the automaker — and the auto industry in general — ahead of a meeting in Germany of carmakers and government officials next week.

The Stuttgart-based company reported Wednesday that net profit was up a scant 2 percent compared with a year ago, to 2.51 billion euros ($2.9 billion). Revenue increased 7 percent to 41.16 billion euros ($48 billion).

The profit was short of analyst estimates for 2.61 billion as compiled by financial information provider FactSet. On the bright side, the Mercedes division had its best quarter for unit sales ever and 2.4 billion euros ($2.8 billion) in operating profit. Mercedes division profits were boosted by strong sales of the E-Class sedan, which is equipped with extensive driver assistance technology, and of the company’s SUVs, which bring high profits per vehicle.

But operating earnings fell 13 percent in its truck business, and also lagged at the van and bus divisions.

The company reiterated that profits would “increase significantly” once again in 2017. Daimler shares traded 0.1 percent higher at 61.06 euros in Frankfurt.

The earnings announcement takes place amid extensive public discussion of the future of diesel and what to do about excessive pollution emissions. The government has summoned carmakers to a diesel summit on Aug. 2 to try to lower pollution levels and ensure the technology has a future. There have been calls for diesel bans in several German cities.

CEO Dieter Zetsche said during a conference call with journalists that the company’s new generation of diesel engines offered lower emissions and that diesel can make an important contribution to reducing emissions of carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas blamed for global warming.

He said he saw “no reason to forego the advantages” of diesel in reaching goals for lowering carbon dioxide emissions. Automakers must meet new, tighter carbon dioxide emissions limits imposed by the European Union by 2021.

Daimler has said it will update engine software on 3 million diesel cars to improve their emissions performance and reduce customer uncertainty about the technology. Zetsche said customers were responding positively to the service action.

Diesel vehicles need pollution controls to limit emissions of nitrogen oxide, a pollutant that harms people’s health, but they emit less carbon dioxide than do gasoline motors.

Der Spiegel reported Friday that German automakers including Daimler had colluded for years on diesel technology and other issues and had agreed to limit the size of the tanks for the urea solution used to reduce emissions of nitrogen oxides. The European Commission, the EU’s executive body, is assessing the matter. The company has said it cannot comment on “speculation.”  An antitrust ruling that the companies illegally restrained competition could lead to heavy fines.

German prosecutors have searched Daimler offices as part of a probe into possible emissions manipulation, and U.S. authorities have asked Daimler to conduct an internal investigation into its emissions certification procedures. The company said Wednesday it could not answer questions about either investigation.

Diesel was subjected to new scrutiny after Volkswagen was discovered in September 2015 to have equipped 11 million cars with illegal software that cheated on U.S. emissions tests by turning emissions controls on during lab examinations and off during every day driving to improve performance.

The company has pleaded guilty to criminal charges in the U.S. and agreed to more than $20 billion in civil and criminal settlements and penalties.

 
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“It was the fair and right thing to do,” former President George H. W. Bush said in an interview in 1999 when asked why he supported the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA), which he signed into law on July 26, 1990.

“I think there are a lot of people who, if given access to the workplace, for example, can achieve things,” Bush continued. “But if they are denied that, they won’t have a shot at the American dream.”

In his remarks at the signing ceremony, Bush noted that there were 43 million Americans living with disabilities. 

​The ADA bars discrimination against Americans with disabilities in jobs, schools, transportation, and all public and privately-owned places that are open to the general public.

The signing of the legislation marked a rare moment of bipartisanship in Washington politics.

 Even the most hardened politicians, such as Lee Atwater, a senior Bush adviser who was considered a key architect of the “negative campaign” concept, supported the measure.

A priest with no arms attended the signing ceremony, using his feet to hand the president a pen to sign the bill.

​Before becoming law, the ADA faced some resistance, mostly by small business owners concerned about the cost of outfitting workspaces with the proper facilities to accommodate disabled workers.  

Since 1990, the ADA has been retooled, by former Presidents Bill Clinton and Barack Obama, as medical treatment for some chronic conditions like muscular sclerosis have dramatically improved.

In the digital era, the challenges for disabled employees have shifted from building ramps for those in wheelchairs and making other office accommodations to unmet technical needs for others who cannot use computers without assistance.

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