Month: September 2020

Many robots are being developed and used these days to maximize speed so factories can efficiently make more products.  One robot developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology is celebrated for how slow it is.  It’s called a SlothBot and visitors can see it working at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Camera: Carlos Andres Cuervo
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China’s foreign minister announced Tuesday the start of a global data security initiative, outlining principles that should be followed in areas ranging from personal information to espionage.Wang Yi announced the initiative in a video as part of conference on international cooperation. The initiative comes as the U.S. continues to put pressure on China’s largest technology companies and tries to convince countries around the world to block them.  China’s initiative has eight key points including not using technology to impair other countries’ critical infrastructure or steal data and making sure service providers don’t install backdoors in their products and illegally obtain user data.Wang, speaking in Beijing, also said the initiative seeks an end to activities that “infringe upon personal information” and opposes using technology to conduct mass surveillance against other states.The initiative says companies should also respect the laws of host countries and stop coercing domestic firms to store data generated overseas in their own territory.  U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month unveiled the “Clean Network” program, saying it is aimed at protecting citizen privacy and sensitive information from “malign actors, such as the Chinese Communist Party.”  Many points of the initiative appear to address some of those accusations.  In an apparent reference to Pompeo’s comments, Zhao said,” China has always been broad and level, open and cooperative. If all countries, especially those intentionally smearing and slandering China with wild allegations, could make such a promise like China, it will be beneficial to the mutual trust and cooperation on digital security issues among all countries.”The U.S. has accused China’s technology companies of posing national security threats by collecting user data and sending it back to Beijing. Companies, including Huawei and ByteDance, have denied those allegations.It is unclear if any other countries have signed on to China’s initiative and how it will be implemented and policed. 
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The Lost Summer of 2020 drew to a close Monday with many big Labor Day gatherings canceled across the U.S. and health authorities pleading with people to keep their distance from others so as not to cause another coronavirus surge like the one that followed Memorial Day.
Downtown Atlanta was quiet as the 85,000 or so people who come dressed as their favorite superheroes or sci-fi characters for the annual Dragon Con convention met online instead. Huge football stadiums at places like Ohio State and the University of Texas sat empty. Many Labor Day parades marking the unofficial end of summer were called off, and masks were usually required at the few that went on.
“Please, please do not make the same mistakes we all made on Memorial Day weekend. Wear your masks, watch your distance and wash your hands,” said Dr. Raul Pino, state health director in Orange County, Florida, which includes the Orlando area.A few people are seen on the beach on the first day of a record heat wave, amid the global outbreak of coronavirus disease, in Hermosa Beach, near Los Angeles, Calif., Sept. 4, 2020.The U.S. had about 1.6 million confirmed COVID-19 cases  around Memorial Day, before backyard parties and other gatherings contributed to a summertime surge. It now has more than 6.2 million cases, according to the count kept by Johns Hopkins University. Deaths from the virus more than doubled over the summer to nearly 190,000.
In New Orleans, which had one of the largest outbreaks outside of New York City this spring, city officials reminded residents that COVID-19 doesn’t take a holiday after they received 36 calls about large gatherings and 46 calls about businesses not following safety rules on Friday and Saturday.
“This is not who we are, and this is not how we — as a community — get back to where we want to be,” the city said.
In South Carolina, which was a hot spot of contagion over the summer before cases started to decline in early August, 8,000 fans, including Gov. Henry McMaster, were allowed to attend the NASCAR race at the Darlington Raceway on Sunday. State officials approved a socially distant attendance plan at the track, which can hold 47,000 people.
It was the biggest gathering in the state since the outbreak started six months ago. Many rows and seats were kept empty to keep groups of fans apart, and people were asked to wear masks.
Debbie Katsanos drove down from New Hampshire with her husband, her father and a friend. It was their first trip out of state since COVID-19 started spreading. They had time off because the Labor Day weekend fair where they typically sell concessions canceled this year.
Katsanos said they wore masks at all times when they were away from their motor home, ate in a restaurant only once on the way down and tried to stay socially distant when visiting with other people at their campground.
“It’s probably our only chance to get somewhere before the summer ends, ” Katsanos said Monday as she sat in traffic on Interstate 95 in North Carolina on the long trip home. “I saw it as the turning of the corner. We survived this. Let’s live life a little.”
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Many robots are being developed and used these days to maximize speed so factories can efficiently make more products.  One robot developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology is celebrated for how slow it is.  It’s called a SlothBot and visitors can see it working at the Atlanta Botanical Garden.  VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.VIDEOGRAPHER: Carlos Andres Cuervo, Georgia Institute of Technology
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Spain has become the first nation in Western Europe to exceed a half-million COVID-19 total infections, as the total number of cases around the world surged to 27.3 million, including 893,000 deaths.Data from Spain’s Health Ministry showed a total of 525,549 cases as of Tuesday, including 29,516 deaths.  In comparison, France has recorded 367,174 total infections and 30,732 deaths, while Britain has 352,451 total cases, including 41,643 deaths, according to Johns Hopkins University’s coronavirus tracking project.    Social culture
Spain imposed one of the world’s strictest lockdowns at the pandemic’s peak back in March, when the country’s hospitals were overwhelmed with new coronavirus patients and the number of fatalities exceeded more than 800 on a daily basis. The outbreak eventually was brought under control, but the number of new infections has steadily risen since the country began relaxing restrictions in July.  Some experts believe the rising COVID-19 infections are due to the country’s highly social culture, while others blame the recent surge on a lack of widespread contact tracing and a premature exit from lockdown.  FILE – Visitors wearing masks to avoid the spread of COVID-19 fill out a form which is mandatory to get into a hospital in Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 26, 2020.South Korea
In South Korea, thousands of physician trainees returned to work Tuesday after a nearly three-week walkout that has complicated the nation’s efforts to contain a new wave in COVID-19 infections.The trainees went on strike on August 21 to protest the government’s medical reform scheme, which called for increasing the number of medical school students and opening new public medical schools.  The walkout caused delays at major hospitals where new and resident doctors play a crucial role in emergency rooms and intensive care units.  South Korea has posted daily new COVID-19 infections in the hundreds since mid-August, averaging well over 300 a day at one point, but have fallen below 200 for the sixth consecutive day Tuesday.People wearing face masks walk on Jinli Ancient Street, following the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Chengdu, Sichuan province, China, Sept. 8, 2020.In China, cause for celebration
Meanwhile, Chinese President Xi Jinping is praising the country’s response to the pandemic, which was first detected late last year in the central city of Wuhan.Speaking during a ceremony in Beijing’s Great Hall of the People Tuesday honoring four officials for their contributions during the outbreak, President Xi said China acted quickly to combat the virus in “an open, transparent, and responsible manner,” contradicting accusations by the United States and other Western nations that Beijing either downplayed or possibly covered-up the severity of the virus until it was too late and had spread beyond China’s borders.
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In April, during the height of the coronavirus lockdown, Trump administration health experts hailed a test that would confirm if someone had already had the virus and therefore couldn’t get sick again. The antibody test would show who might have “the wonderful, beautiful immunity,” President Donald Trump said was needed to get the nation working again. Months later, the tests exist but haven’t fulfilled their promise of allowing Americans to reclaim their lives, said Dr. Jennifer Rakeman of New York City’s Public Health Laboratory. In fighting off the virus, the body makes antibodies, which the tests measure. Unfortunately, scientists are still figuring out how well and for how long antibodies provide the immunity that protects against another infection by the coronavirus.  An Indian girl cries as a medical worker collects her swab sample for a COVID-19 test at a rural health center in Bagli, outskirts of Dharmsala, India, Sept. 7, 2020.In truth, “there’s no easy path to this knowledge” about immunity, Marc Jenkins of the University of Minnesota said. Long-term human or animal studies are usually needed to reach answers about immunity. Much of that work is done by the National Institutes of Health and universities, but they are occupied developing a vaccine against the coronavirus. Until more is known, antibody tests should not be used to determine when it is safe to return to work or school, says the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the American Medical Association. But the tests are useful in large studies to see how widely the coronavirus has spread and to screen people who have recovered and could donate their blood plasma for use as a treatment for those in the throes of COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus. WHO: Learn from pandemicEarlier Monday the World Health Organization (WHO) said that countries that built up their health care systems in recent years fared better amid the COVID-19 pandemic. People pack the Ipanema beach amid the new coronavirus pandemic in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Sept.6, 2020.As of Monday, the United States leads the world with about 6.3 million confirmed cases and more than 189,000 deaths, according to the A nurse prepares an injection for a COVID-19 patient in the ICU of the National Hospital in Itagua, Paraguay, Sept. 7, 2020.The other vaccine is a joint project between AstraZeneca and Oxford University currently in late-stage trials. Morrison said Monday that CSL will manufacture that vaccine as well for distribution in Australia, and that he expects 3.8 million doses to be available in January or February 2021. Israel is beginning partial nighttime lockdowns in 40 cities and towns with the country’s highest infection rates. Schools in those areas will also be closed, and gatherings will be limited to 10 people inside and 20 outdoors. “I know that these restrictions are not easy but in the current situation there is no avoiding them,” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in a statement. 
 
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Researchers in Australia say they have developed a technique to make coal-fired power plants run without coal. They say new thermal energy storage blocks can heat water, which, in turn, produces steam to power turbines using existing power station infrastructure. Researchers at the University of Newcastle in New South Wales say their thermal blocks would allow coal-fired power stations to run coal-free, delivering clean, renewable electricity.   The bricks are made of graphite and metals, including zinc and aluminum, plus other undisclosed materials.   The Australian team says they store energy from solar and wind farms in the form of heat, which can make steam to run electricity-generating turbines.   The aim is to fit the technology to existing power stations where, instead of burning coal, the blocks would generate power without pollution.     Professor of engineering at Australia’s University of Newcastle Erich Kisi says the technology would allow coal-fired stations to phase out the use of the fossil fuel. “As coal burning is reduced, storage of renewable as thermal energy is ramped up.  The final thermal energy storage volume is comparable in size to the existing boiler houses, and that these massive power stations were themselves built with six or seven decade-old technology, I do not think we should baulk at the challenge of renewing their vitality with 21st century technology,” Kisi said.  Engineers believe the Australian-made blocks could be used in combination with other energy storage options, such as lithium batteries and hydroelectricity, to provide reliable power.    The university team says its graphite and metal invention has been proven in the laboratory.   In 2019, it set up the company MGA Thermal, which aims to sell the technology. In partnership with a Swiss company, a full-scale trial of the bricks at a modified power plant is expected to start next year.  Like any new technology, the blocks’ inventors concede they must be financially viable before they could be expected for wide use in commercial projects. Australia is one of the world’s worst per capita emitters of greenhouse gases. That’s in large part because of its reliance on cheap supplies of domestic coal to generate its electricity.   
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Bright green stalks of weeds are sprouting from the ground where planes were supposed to take off at a new Mexico City airport as officials let nature take over in their bid to transform the marshy swath of an ancient lake into a giant park. The ghostly skeletons of a partly built control tower and flight terminal are recognizably in the style of Norman Foster, the British architect commissioned by Mexico’s last president to build a futuristic international airport at a cost of $13 billion on 4,800 hectares just east of the capital. Upon taking office in December 2018, President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador axed the project, citing the results of an informal referendum, after arguing it would be costly to prevent sinking on the waterlogged soil. Instead of the slick design from Foster, whose award-winning glass and steel weblike buildings dot the globe, Lopez Obrador opted to expand an existing military airport. Workers prepare native plants at the garden center near the canceled airport zone as part of a project to conserve 12,200 hectares of land in Texcoco on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 3, 2020.The abandoned construction zone is now part of a project to conserve 12,200 hectares of marsh on what was once massive Lake Texcoco before Spanish colonizers in the 1600s began draining the water to prevent flooding in their burgeoning settlement. About half that area is slated for public use, including sports and events space more than twice the size of New York’s Central Park. Architect Iñaki Echeverria, who is overseeing the project, aims to open a portion of the park by March next year and offer full access by 2024. “The restoration began the moment the construction stopped. This shows nature’s incredible resiliency,” he said. Officials point to recent flooding as proof that maintenance would have been difficult and say less than 20% of construction was completed. They paid about $603 million to cancel more than 600 contracts left in limbo. During a recent visit, a moat of green water had risen around a flying-saucer-like building where a control tower juts 20 meters high, less than a third of its intended height. Unfinished parts of the flight terminal at an abandoned construction site of a Mexico City airport are now flooded by summer rains, in Texcoco on the outskirts of Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 4, 2020.Birds glided in a pond beneath columns of crisscrossing steel bars that were meant to become a terminal greeting 70 million passengers a year. The steel will be sold as scrap. Conservation efforts in the area date to the 1970s, when the government grappled with how to contain dust storms that swept from the dry lake basin over Mexico City. The current project has been hailed by Lopez Obrador as a “new Tenochtitlan,” referring to the centuries-old Aztec capital built in the middle of a sprawling lake, where Mexico City is today. Part of Echeverria’s work is convincing city dwellers that the wetlands are worth visiting. “People who think there’s nothing there, don’t know it well,” he said.   
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Bulked-up, mutant “mighty mice” held onto their muscle during a monthlong stay at the International Space Station, returning to Earth with ripped bodybuilder physiques, scientists reported Monday.  The findings hold promise for preventing muscle and bone loss in astronauts on prolonged space trips like Mars missions, as well as people on Earth who are confined to bed or need wheelchairs. A research team led by Dr. Se-Jin Lee of the Jackson Laboratory in Connecticut sent 40 young female black mice to the space station in December, launching aboard a SpaceX rocket.  In a paper published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Lee said the 24 regular untreated mice lost considerable muscle and bone mass in weightlessness as expected — up to 18%. But the eight genetically engineered “mighty mice” launched with double the muscle maintained their bulk. Their muscles appeared to be comparable to similar “mighty mice” that stayed behind at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.  FILE – In this photo released by NASA on Oct. 17, 2019, U.S. astronauts Jessica Meir, left, and Christina Koch pose for a photo in the International Space Station. The two, along with Andrew Morgan, looked after the space mice.In addition, eight normal mice that received “mighty mouse” treatment in space returned to Earth with dramatically bigger muscles. The treatment involves blocking a pair of proteins that typically limit muscle mass. A SpaceX capsule brought all 40 mice back in good condition, parachuting into the Pacific off the California coast in January. Some of the ordinary mice were injected with the “mighty mice” drug after returning and quickly built up more muscle than their untreated companions, Lee said. The scientists completed the experiment just as the coronavirus was hitting the U.S. “The only silver lining of COVID is that we had time to write it up very intensively” and submit the results for publication, said Dr. Emily Germain-Lee of Connecticut Children’s Medical Center, Lee’s wife who also took part in the study. Both are affiliated with the University of Connecticut.  While encouraged by their findings, the couple said much more work needs to be done before testing the drug on people to build up muscle and bone, without serious side effects. “We’re years away. But that’s how everything is when you go from mouse to human studies,” Germain-Lee said. Lee said the experiment pointed out other molecules and signaling pathways worth investigating — “an embarrassment of riches … so many things we’d like to pursue.” His next step: possibly sending more “mighty mice” to the space station for an even longer stay. Three NASA astronauts looked after the space mice, performing body scans and injections: Christina Koch and Jessica Meir, who performed the first all-female spacewalk last fall, and Andrew Morgan. They are listed as co-authors. 
 
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Suellen de Souza could no longer endure the confinement. After six months of precautions, the Brazilian nursing technician decided that Sunday would be her first day at the beach since the pandemic began.
“This week it was very hot … the truth is I really wanted to come” to the beach, said the 21-year-old at Rio de Janeiro’s Ipanema beach, which is technically still closed to sun-bathers though few respect the prohibition and authorities seldom enforce it.
Under a burning midday sun, she had difficulty finding an empty space in the sand as thousands crowded the famed beach, which was dotted with hundreds of umbrellas and families sunning themselves. Beach-goers were packed close together with few wearing face masks.
With tentative signs the coronavirus pandemic is easing, Brazilians exhausted with quarantine measures and social distancing are increasingly relaxing precautions and flooding beaches as if the pandemic were over. They are being urged to do so – and violate the recommendations of health experts – by President Jair Bolsonaro, who has resisted many lockdown measures and pressed for a return to normal life from the beginning, famously calling the novel coronavirus a “little flu.”
“It is like a rain that is going to reach you,” Bolsonaro said of the virus on July 7, the day he confirmed his own infection from which he has since recovered.
In Rio, recommendations by health experts to remain isolated are being challenged even by people like Souza, a nursing technician who worked in a field hospital for coronavirus patients.
“The coronavirus is being controlled a little more, that gave me security to go out,” she said.
The same scenario is playing out in Sao Paulo, Brazil’s worst-hit state with more than 855,000 confirmed infections and 31,000 deaths. Thousands of residents took advantage of the long weekend to travel to the coast.
“If you stay indoors for a long time, you will go crazy. I was like that. The moment I found out the beach was open, I decided to come,” said Josy Santos, a 26-year-old teacher who spent the day in Guarujá, a seaside resort an hour from Sao Paulo.
With more than 4,100,000 confirmed infections and 126,000 deaths from the virus, Brazil has the second highest totals in both figures behind only the United States. In recent weeks, Latin America’s largest country has left a new case number plateau that had dragged on from almost three months and started seeing a reduction in the number of new confirmed cases. But with an average of 820 deaths per day, its numbers are still considered high by health experts.
Patricia Canto, a pulmonologist at Brazil’s premier biomedical research and development lab, the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation, or Fiocruz, warned that if Brazilians are negligent the country could see a repeat of what happened in Europe, especially Spain, where second waves of new cases were seen.
“Spain controlled the pandemic, but there were new outbreaks when many young people were negligent during the summer,” Canto said. If Brazil’s “population is not conscientious and continues to frequent beaches and bars without precautions, it might mirror this.”
Geraldo Tadeu, political scientist and coordinator of the Center for Studies and Research on Democracy, said the lack of coordination among levels of government in the COVID-19 fight demoralized many Brazilians.
“After six months, no one can stand to stay indoors seeing how there are no clear guidelines for fighting the virus,” said Tadeu. “As there is no serious policy, the population is exhausted. People head out to the streets when they see that others are not complying and the effort of staying home is no longer worth it.”
More than 6 months after the start of the pandemic, Brazilians seem increasingly relaxed about taking precautions to fight the virus’ spread. Some attribute this to Bolsonario’s denial rhetoric.
Souza said many do not believe in taking precautions because “Bolsonaro did not believe in the disease … He did not set an example.”
But Sao Paulo Gov. Joao Doria, who clashed with Bolsonaro over quarantine measures, does not think this is necessarily the case. The congestion and vehicle flow on Sao Paulo’s highways this weekend exceeded that seen during Carnival in February.
“We see the same problem (of full beaches) in Spain, the United States and England, which do not see these speeches against social distancing,” Doria told The Associated Press.
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