Month: September 2020

Pregnant women living in bushfire-prone areas in Australia are being urged to protect themselves and their unborn babies from smoke as the fire season returns. Doctors in the worst-affected regions say they are horrified by the effects of the smoke from last summer’s catastrophic conditions.Doctors have said particles from bushfire smoke in Australia have left placentas that nourish an unborn child resembling those in women who are heavy smokers. Instead of being a healthy shade of pink, distressed organs are left grey and grainy.The result can be premature and underweight babies. One specialist said some were “unexpectedly and unpredictably small.”There’s a warning that newborns could suffer the consequences throughout their entire lives.General practitioner Rebecca McGowan said she believes global warming is exacerbating Australia’s bushfire danger and that babies are at risk of harm.“This is the canary in the coal mine,” she said. “We are starting to see literally the effects. It is not a sci-fi movie. This is happening in real life. We are starting to see the effects on the unborn, and we are starting to see these babies born now with major effects of climate change and we cannot deny it anymore. It is happening in front of us.”There is not a large amount of scientific knowledge on the long-term effects of bushfire smoke on pregnant women. Some experts have suggested that stress could also lead to premature births and smaller newborns. Australian health authorities have said there was no data or evidence to gauge the risk to babies in the womb. They do acknowledge, however, that smoke can aggravate existing lung and heart conditions in adults.A government inquiry into the Black Summer fires was told that the smoke they generated has been linked to the deaths of more than 445 people. It was estimated that 4,000 people were admitted to the hospital due to the smoke.Air quality in Sydney, Australia’s largest city, exceeded “hazardous” levels on several occasions. Other major cities, including the capital, Canberra, and Adelaide, were also shrouded in a toxic haze.Bushfire smoke is made up of very small particles and gases. Environmental groups have said it also contains cancer-causing substances, including formaldehyde and benzene. 
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Nearly half of Americans, or 49%, said they definitely or probably would not get an inoculation if a coronavirus were available today, while 51% said they would, according to a Pew Research Center poll conducted earlier this month.The 49% who lean toward rejecting the inoculation cited concerns about side effects from the vaccine.The public’s trust in a safe COVID-19 vaccine coming to market has taken a tumble. In May, a Pew survey revealed 72% of Americans said they would be inoculated if the vaccine were available.Only 21% in this month’s poll said they would definitely get the vaccine.The recent Pew survey found that 77% of Americans believe the vaccines in development in the United States would likely be approved before their safety and effectiveness are completely understood.Sorry, but your browser cannot support embedded video of this type, you can
A young woman wearing a face mask walks across the medieval Charles Bridge in Prague, Czech Republic, Sept. 18, 2020.A further breakdown of the numbers shows that Hispanic children made up 44% of the fatalities, and Black children made up 29%, compared with 14% for white children. American Indian and Alaska Natives accounted for 4% of COVID-19 deaths, with Asian and Pacific Islanders making up the same amount.The CDC report also found that 75% of those who died had at least one underlying health condition such as asthma, obesity, neurologic and developmental conditions or cardiovascular conditions. Researchers pointed out that certain social conditions, including crowded living environments, food and housing insecurity, and wealth and education gaps, could be contributing factors in the high fatality rates among minority children.The CDC on Wednesday outlined details of a plan to begin distributing a vaccine within 24 hours of official approval. Under the plan, the drug would be distributed once the Food and Drug Administration authorizes either an emergency use order or full formal approval, and would likely be administered first to essential personnel such as health care workers.The agency said the vaccine would be administered free of charge to all Americans once it becomes widely available.The announcement of the plan came on the same day President Donald Trump contradicted CDC Director Robert Redfield on when Americans would get a reliable COVID-19 vaccine.Redfield told a Senate committee that a vaccine could be generally available to the American public in the second or third quarter of next year, with those most at risk such as the elderly and those with preexisting health conditions to be prioritized for vaccination.In a news conference hours later, Trump made clear he did not like Redfield expressing a more cautious timeline.“I think he made a mistake when he said that. That’s just incorrect information,” Trump told reporters. “Under no circumstance will it be as late as the doctor said.”  
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President Donald Trump has threatened a US ban on TikTok could happen as early as next week
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A Chinese firm with suspected ties to the Chinese government has been amassing a database of detailed personal information on 2.4 million people, including more than 50,000 Americans, according to findings by an independent researcher and an Australia-based cybersecurity firm.       Christopher Balding, an American professor who taught at Peking University’s HSBC School of Business in Shenzhen for nine years, analyzed the data with Internet 2.0, a cybersecurity firm based in Canberra. They published their findings this week.      Balding said the database was leaked to him in 2019.   The cache, called the Overseas Key Information Database (OKIDB), contains the personal information of roughly 2.4 million people. Many of them are influential policymakers who can exert influence in their fields of specialty.   According to their report, the database was compiled by China’s Zhenhua Data Information Technology Co. The company was founded in 2017 and had offices in Shenzhen and Beijing. Its mission, according to a screen shot of their website, which was deleted not long ago, is to “aggregate global data and help the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.”  Zhenhua Data’s marketing and recruiting documents characterize the company as a patriotic firm, with the military as its primary target customer.  Cybersecurity firm Internet 2.0 was able to recover the records of about 250,000 people from the leaked data, including 52,000 Americans, 35,000 Australians and nearly 10,000 British citizens. These include politicians and businessmen, scientists, tech experts, academics, bankers, journalists and lawyers. Information about family members, such as the 11-year-old daughter of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, was also recovered. FILE – An iPhone with Twitter, Facebook and other apps, May 21, 2013.Analysts say the data was extracted from social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn, as well as news reports and criminal records.  Balding told VOA that apart from open source, there was also data extracted from illegal sources.  “We estimate about 80 percent of the data is what we call open source. There’s also data that appears to be hacked or stolen data that comes from other sources, nonpublic sources,” Balding said.  In a FILE – The logo for LinkedIn Corporation, a social networking networking website for people in professional occupations, is shown in Mountain View, California, Feb. 6, 2013.”It allows China to know which institutions or individuals they should be targeting. This is why, for instance, intelligence agencies in multiple countries have warned about Chinese recruitment through platforms such as LinkedIn,” Balding told VOA.  He added that the database also appears to be targeting policymakers, including influential figures in think tanks and relatives of key politicians. By doing this, China hopes to exert influence on these individuals and possibly shift policies to its liking, Balding said.  According to The Washington Post, which obtained part of OKIDB, the database also targets military officials.   For example, there is detailed information on former Chief of Naval Operations John Richardson; his service history and complete training were highlighted in Chinese.   Former U.S. Acting Secretary of the Navy Thomas Modly is also in the database, along with the names of his wife and four children, his educational background and his work history in the private sector.  A representative from Zhenhua Data told The Guardian that “the report is seriously untrue,” adding “there is no database of 2 million people,” while denying any links to the Chinese government or military.   Analysts say it is not surprising that a consultancy would collect detailed data on prominent figures in different sectors. What matters is how the data is used.  Arun Vishwanath, chief technology officer at Avant Research Group, a cybersecurity research firm, told VOA there are two concerns with a data operation of such scale and scope.  “One is propaganda, information and disinformation, and the other is being used for targeted attacks, which could have all manner of consequences,” Vishwanath said.  “We all need to have better cyber hygiene. We all need to be safer with how we share information online to store information about ourselves online. So this is a responsibility that each of us as individuals share,” he said. 
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Researchers on a quest to find life in the universe got promising news this week.  Space agencies are joining forces to defend the planet from an aggressive asteroid, and a look at one of the best places on Earth to view the stars.  VOA’s Arash Arabasadi brings us “The Week in Space.”Producer: Arash Arabasadi.
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The British auction house Christie’s announced this week that it would sell the largest and most complete known skeleton of a Tyrannosaurus rex in early October.The auction house said the dinosaur skeleton is nearly 12 meters long and just under 5 meters tall. It has been known as Stan, named after amateur paleontologist Stan Sacrison, who discovered it in the upper Midwestern U.S. state of South Dakota in 1987.Christie’s science and natural history specialist James Hyslop said scientists that looked at the bones initially misidentified them as belonging to a triceratops, a more common dinosaur discovery.It was not until Sacrison took the remains to the Black Hills Institute of Geological Research in 1992 that anyone realized what he had found.A detail of the teeth of Stan, one of the largest and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex fossils discovered, is pictured Sept. 15, 2020, at Christie’s in New York.Hyslop said the paleontologists from the institute carefully excavated and reassembled the skeleton, ultimately finding 188 of the estimated 300 total bones in a T. rex, more than for any previously found specimen.Hyslop said Stan eventually went on tour to Japan between 1995 and 1996, and he later went on permanent display in Hill City, South Dakota.Complete T. rex skeletons are very rare, and the last time one was put up for auction was in 1997, when the Field Museum in Chicago bought the now-famous Sue for $8.36 million. Hyslop said Christie’s hopes to beat that price when Stan goes up for auction October 6.Christie’s will display the dinosaur until mid-October at its Manhattan auction house, making Stan visible to the public through Christie’s windows.
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Experts from the U.S. National Atmospheric and Oceanic Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) say the sun is in the first year of a new cycle of activity, and they are watching it closely in an effort to guard against solar storms that could cause problems on Earth.Officials at NOAA explain that the sun, just like Earth, goes through “seasonal” cycles, which astronomers have been recording since 1755. The Solar Prediction Panel, chaired by experts from NOAA and the NASA space agency, monitors these cycles that last about 11 years. They report a solar minimum between Solar Cycle 24 and 25 — the period when the sun is least active — happened in December 2019, putting Earth eight months into the first year of Solar Cycle 25. The panel expects sunspot or solar flare activity to peak over the next five years.  Elsayed Talaat, NOAA’s director of planning and analysis, said if solar flares — bursts of electromagnetic energy out of the sun — are big enough, they can cause serious problems on Earth, including high frequency communication used by airlines or emergency responders, satellites, GPS navigation systems, cellphones, solar panels and more. Radiation from solar flares can also be dangerous for astronauts, especially those working outside the International Space Station, and for future explorers to the moon.Talaat said NASA and NOAA have developed the National Space Weather Strategy and Action Plan to help mitigate these events. “We have instituted space weather as part of the international, national emergency and local, state and local emergency management exercises,” he said.NOAA has also established the Space Weather Prediction Center (SWPC) in Boulder, Colorado, to monitor solar activity, much the way NOAA’s National Hurricane Center monitors tropical storms. Using NASA’s satellites and solar observatories can give forecasts and warnings of solar activity that could impact the Earth.Last month, the SWPC closely watched a minor solar flare, or “coronal mass ejection,” (CME) as it occurred on the sun, and the resulting electromagnetic material as it approached Earth. Luckily, that potential solar storm mostly missed the planet, but forecasters say it gave them valuable experience for future events.
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As if the COVID-19 pandemic isn’t bad enough, flu season is about to begin in the Northern Hemisphere, adding millions of illnesses, hundreds of thousands of hospitalizations and tens of thousands of deaths to the already-strained American health care system.”We really, really want to emphasize the potential for disaster, actually,” said Jeanne Marrazzo, director of the Division of Infectious Diseases at the University of Alabama at Birmingham and a member of the Infectious Diseases Society of America board of directors, at a recent briefing for reporters.Experts are urging everyone to get flu shots in order to take some of the load off of health workers and hospitals.FILE – A general view of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) headquarters in Atlanta, Georgia, Sept. 30, 2014.Each year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates, up to 61,000 people A women reacts to getting an influenza vaccine shot at Eastfield College in Mesquite, Texas, Jan. 23, 2020.It’s not clear how much the weather affects the spread of the COVID-19 virus. It’s a question scientists are actively studying.But the coronavirus is related to other viruses that cause the common cold, and “what we see with those viruses is that come October, November, December they skyrocket,” Mina said.”I hope that for some reason this virus behaves differently, but I don’t anticipate that it will,” he added.Get your flu shotWhile a safe coronavirus vaccine is still months away, health officials are urging everyone to get a flu shot.In most years, Dr. William Schaffner, a professor of preventive medicine at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, speaks to members of the Tennessee House of Representatives on March 16, 2020, in Nashville, Tenn.The vaccine helps, even if it does not stop the infection, noted Vanderbilt University infectious diseases professor William Schaffner.”Even if you get influenza after you’ve had the vaccine, that illness is likely to be less severe,” he said. “You’re less likely to need to go to the emergency room, less likely to be hospitalized, less likely to die.”That’s good for patients, and it’s also good for the health care system.”The last thing we need is a huge surge of flu cases now,” he added.Manufacturers are expecting to produce a record supply of nearly 200 million doses this year. However, the conditions making flu shots so important are the same conditions that make them harder to distribute, Schaffner noted.Fewer people will get flu shots at work because more people are working from home. Many public health clinics are closed or reassigned to handle COVID-19. Many people are avoiding doctor’s offices out of fear of contracting the virus there.Pharmacies, grocery stores and other venues are still good options, noted IDSA’s Marrazzo. “People will probably need to be perhaps a little bit more creative,” she said.Luckily, the steps taken to limit the spread of the coronavirus, including masks, hand washing and social distancing, also seem to work against the flu. Influenza rates fell by two-thirds in China when COVID-19 lockdowns and restrictions went into place, according to a new study.  The World Health Organization (WHO) says these measures have likely played a role  in the milder-than-expected flu season currently winding down in the Southern Hemisphere.”But we really can’t be complacent about this,” Marrazzo said. “If there was ever a year that you need to get your flu vaccine, and get your kids vaccinated, this is the year.”
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