Day: June 13, 2021

A report published in The New England Journal of Medicine shows the potentially lifesaving results of lab-grown mosquitos. Infected with bacteria, the insects may no longer have the ability to transmit dengue. VOA’s Arash Arabasadi has more. 
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A mystery bidder paid $28 million at auction Saturday for a seat alongside Jeff Bezos on board the first crewed spaceflight of the billionaire’s company Blue Origin next month.The Amazon founder revealed this week that both he and his brother Mark would take seats on board the company’s New Shepard launch vehicle on July 20, to fly to the edge of space and back.The Bezos brothers will be joined by the winner of Saturday’s charity auction, whose identity remains unknown, and by a fourth, as yet unnamed space tourist.”The name of the auction winner will be released in the weeks following the auction’s conclusion,” tweeted Blue Origin following the sale.”Then, the fourth and final crew member will be announced — stay tuned.”Saturday’s successful bidder beat out some 20 rivals in an auction launched on May 19 and wrapped up with a 10-minute, livecast frenzy.Bidding had reached $4.8 million by Thursday, but shot up spectacularly in the final live auction, rising by million-dollar increments.The proceeds — aside from a 6% auctioneer’s commission — will go to Blue Origin’s foundation, Club for the Future, which aims to inspire future generations to pursue careers in STEM — science, technology, engineering and mathematics.Taking off from a desert in western Texas, the New Shepard trip will last 10 minutes, four of which passengers will spend above the Karman line that marks the recognized boundary between Earth’s atmosphere and space.After lift-off, the capsule separates from its booster, then spends four minutes at an altitude exceeding 100 kilometers, during which time those on board experience weightlessness and can observe the curvature of Earth.The booster lands autonomously on a pad 3.2 kilometers from the launch site, and the capsule floats back to the surface with three large parachutes that slow it down to about 1.6 kph when it lands.Lifelong dreamBezos, who announced earlier this year he is stepping down as Amazon’s chief executive to spend more time on other projects including Blue Origin, has said it was a lifelong dream to fly into space.Blue Origin’s New Shepard has successfully carried out more than a dozen uncrewed test runs from its facility in Texas’ Guadalupe Mountains.”We’re ready to fly some astronauts,” said Blue Origin’s director of astronaut and orbital sales, Ariane Cornell, on Saturday.The reusable suborbital rocket system was named after Alan Shepard, the first American in space 60 years ago.The automated capsules with no pilot have six seats with horizontal backrests placed next to large portholes, in a futuristic cabin with swish lighting. Multiple cameras help immortalize the few minutes the space tourists experience weightlessness.Private space raceBlue Origin’s maiden crewed flight comes in a context of fierce competition in the field of private space exploration — with Elon Musk’s SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic, founded by British billionaire Richard Branson, all jostling for pole position.Bezos has a very public rivalry with Musk, whose SpaceX is planning orbital flights that would cost millions of dollars and send people much further into space.SpaceX has already begun to carry astronauts to the International Space Station and is a competitor for government space contracts.Virgin Galactic, meanwhile, hopes to begin regular commercial suborbital flights in early 2022, with eventual plans for 400 trips a year.Some 600 people have booked flights, costing $200,000 to $250,000 — and there has been talk of Branson himself taking part in a test flight this summer, although no date has been set.
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Saudi Arabia announced Saturday this year’s Hajj pilgrimage will be limited to no more than 60,000 people, all of them from within the kingdom, due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic.The announcement by the kingdom comes after it ran an incredibly pared-down pilgrimage last year over the virus, but still allowed a small number of the faithful to take part in the annual ceremony.A statement on the state-run Saudi Press Agency quoted the kingdom’s Hajj and Umrah Ministry making the announcement. It said this year’s Hajj, which will begin in mid-July, will be limited to those ages 18 to 65.Those taking part must be vaccinated as well, the ministry said.”The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, which is honored to host pilgrims every year, confirms that this arrangement comes out of its constant concern for the health, safety and security of pilgrims as well as the safety of their countries,” the statement said.In last year’s Hajj, as few as 1,000 people already residing in Saudi Arabia were selected to take part. Two-thirds were foreign residents from among the 160 different nationalities that would have normally been represented at the Hajj. One-third were Saudi security personnel and medical staff.Each year, up to 2 million Muslims perform the Hajj, a physically demanding and often costly pilgrimage that draws the faithful from around the world. The Hajj, required of all able-bodied Muslims to perform once in their lifetime, is seen as a chance to wipe clean past sins and bring about greater humility and unity among Muslims.The kingdom’s Al Saud ruling family stakes its legitimacy in this oil-rich nation on overseeing and protecting the Hajj sites. Ensuring the Hajj happens has been a priority for them.Disease outbreaks have always been a concern surrounding the Hajj. Pilgrims fought off a malaria outbreak in 632, cholera in 1821 killed an estimated 20,000, and another cholera outbreak in 1865 killed 15,000 before spreading worldwide.More recently, Saudi Arabia faced danger from a different coronavirus, one that causes the Middle East respiratory syndrome, or MERS. The kingdom increased its public health measures during the Hajj in 2012 and 2013, urging the sick and the elderly not to take part.In recent years, Saudi officials also instituted bans on pilgrims coming from countries affected by the Ebola virus.Saudi Arabia had closed its borders for months to try and stop the spread of the coronavirus. Since the start of the pandemic, the kingdom has reported more than 462,000 cases of the virus with 7,500 deaths. It has administered some 15.4 million doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to the World Health Organization. The kingdom is home to more than 30 million people.
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The recent breakup of an Antarctic ice shelf is speeding up the ocean-bound descent of a glacier holding back at least a meter of sea level rise, Ice front of the ice shelf in front of Pine Island Glacier, a major glacier system of West Antarctica.”The real question is, how fast is that going to happen, and how much time do we have to adapt?” said Pierre Dutrieux, an oceanographer at the British Antarctic Survey and a co-author of the study. When ice from the ice sheet enters the ocean, it raises sea levels, which will eventually make coastal cities unlivable.The worrying activity prompted researchers at the University of Washington and British Antarctic Survey to study the reasons behind the glacier’s accelerated movement. They shared their results June 11 in Science Advances.”We naively thought that the ocean was going to be the main driver of the retreat and the acceleration,” Dutrieux said. “And maybe at some point the atmosphere, if it continues to warm up, was going to play a role.”The authors first used satellite images to observe changes in how fast the ice was moving. When they ran a computer model to simulate ice flow, the results suggested that the loss of the ice shelves could better explain the glacier’s speedup than warming ocean temperatures.”Ice shelves tend to hold back the flow of ice into the ocean. So if you remove an ice shelf, the glaciers will move faster,” said Ian Joughin, a glaciologist at the University of Washington’s Polar Science Center and lead author of the study. “I wasn’t expecting the part that we lost to have such a big impact on the glacier,” Joughin added.Identifying this additional factor that contributes to glacier speedup could help improve models for studying their movements.”That is fundamental physics knowledge for us to be able to predict what’s going to happen in the future,” said Andrea Dutton, who studies sea level rise at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and was not involved in the study.Initially, researchers expected oceans warmed by climate change to gradually melt the glacier over centuries. But if the rapid collapse continues, the glacier could disappear faster than coastal communities could prepare for rising sea levels.”Based on these results, I want to look more into taking the model and seeing what happens if we remove larger parts of that ice shelf,” Joughin said.For now, the study concludes that Pine Island Glacier’s ice shelf could be entering another long phase of stability. Or the edge could begin retreating even more abruptly than before. Either scenario will still warrant close observation.Human-caused warming of the ocean will also continue to thin the underside of the glacier, potentially destabilizing it more.”We have enough knowledge to understand that we need to do everything in our power to reduce emissions and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere to prevent this from becoming an unstoppable sea-level rise scenario,” Dutton said.
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