Early in World War II, the U.S. Navy battled Nazi U-boats off the East Coast of the United States in an area that came to be known as the “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” For VOA, Genia Dulot takes us on an underwater tour of some of those wrecks, which are now artificial reefs popular with sharks and with scuba divers.
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Day: October 12, 2022
Case numbers in the global monkeypox outbreak have now topped 70,000, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced Wednesday as it warned that a decline in new cases did not mean people should drop their guard.
The WHO said that case numbers last week were on the rise in several countries in the Americas and it stressed that a slowdown worldwide in new cases could be the “most dangerous” time in the outbreak.
WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said more than 70,000 cases have now been reported to the U.N. health agency this year, with 26 deaths.
“Globally, cases are continuing to decline, but 21 countries in the past week reported an increase in cases, mostly in the Americas, which accounted for almost 90 percent of all cases reported last week,” he told a press conference in Geneva.
“A declining outbreak can be the most dangerous outbreak, because it can tempt us to think that the crisis is over, and to let down our guard,” he said.
He said the WHO was working with countries to increase their testing capacity and to monitor trends.
“We are concerned about reports of cases in Sudan, including in refugee camps near the border with Ethiopia,” Tedros added.
“Like COVID-19, monkeypox remains a public health emergency of international concern, and WHO will continue to treat it as such,” he said.
A surge in monkeypox infections has been reported since early May among men who have sex with men, outside the African countries where it has long been endemic.
More than 42,000 cases have now been reported from the Americas and nearly 25,000 from Europe.
Cases have been reported from 107 WHO member states this year, though 39 have registered no new cases in the past 21 days.
The 10 countries with the highest total number of cases are: the United States (26,723); Brazil (8,147); Spain (7,209); France (4,043); Britain (3,654); Germany (3,640); Peru (2,587); Colombia (2,453); Mexico (1,968); and Canada (1,400).
These countries account for nearly 87% of global cases.
Where the given data was known, 97% were men, with a median age of 35 years old; 90% identified as men who had sex with men; and 49% were HIV-positive, according to the WHO’s case dashboard.
The disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.
Scientists have transplanted human brain cells into the brains of baby rats, where the cells grew and formed connections.
It’s part of an effort to better study human brain development and diseases affecting this most complex of organs, which makes us who we are but has long been shrouded in mystery.
“Many disorders such as autism and schizophrenia are likely uniquely human” but “the human brain certainly has not been very accessible,” said said Dr. Sergiu Pasca, senior author of a study describing the work, published Wednesday in the journal Nature.
Approaches that don’t involve taking tissue out of the human brain are “promising avenues in trying to tackle these conditions.”
The research builds upon the team’s previous work creating brain “organoids,” tiny structures resembling human organs that have also been made to represent others such as livers, kidneys, prostates, or key parts of them.
To make the brain organoids, Stanford University scientists transformed human skin cells into stem cells and then coaxed them to become several types of brain cells. Those cells then multiplied to form organoids resembling the cerebral cortex, the human brain’s outermost layer, which plays a key role in things like memory, thinking, learning, reasoning and emotions.
Scientists transplanted those organoids into rat pups 2 to 3 days old, a stage when brain connections are still forming. The organoids grew so that they eventually occupied a third of the hemisphere of the rat’s brain where they were implanted. Neurons from the organoids formed working connections with circuits in the brain.
Human neurons have been transplanted in rodents before, but generally in adult animals, usually mice. Pasca, a psychiatry professor at the Stanford School of Medicine, said this is the first time these organoids have been placed into early rat brains, creating “the most advanced human brain circuitry ever built from human skin cells and a demonstration that implanted human neurons can influence an animal’s behavior.”
To examine a practical use of this approach, scientists transplanted organoids into both sides of a rat’s brain: one generated from a healthy person’s cells and another from the cells of a person with Timothy syndrome, a rare genetic condition associated with heart problems and autism spectrum disorder.
Five to six months later, they saw effects of the disease related to the activity of the neurons. There were differences in the two sides’ electrical activity, and the neurons from the person with Timothy syndrome were much smaller and didn’t sprout as many extensions that pick up input from nearby neurons.
Researchers, whose study was funded partly by the National Institutes of Health, said they could do the same sorts of experiments using organoids made from the cells of people with disorders such as autism or schizophrenia — and potentially learn new things about how these conditions affect the brain, too.
Dr. Flora Vaccarino of Yale University – who previously grew lumps containing cerebral cortex that were made with DNA from people with autism – said the study moves the field forward.
“It’s extremely impressive what they do here in terms of what these cells can actually show us in terms of their advanced development … in the rat,” said Vaccarino, who wasn’t involved with the study.
Such experiments in animals raise ethical concerns. For example, Pasca said he and his team are cognizant of the rats’ well-being and whether they still behave normally with the organoids inside them, which he says they do. Still, Pasca does not believe this should be tried in primates. Ethicists also wonder about the possibility of brain organoids in the future attaining something like human consciousness, which experts say is extremely unlikely now.
Some scientists are studying human brain organoids outside of animals. For example, researchers at ETH Zurich in Switzerland published a study in Nature earlier this month describing how they are growing brain-like tissue from stem cells in the lab and then mapping the cell types in various brain regions and genes regulating their development. Some are using these structures to study autism.
Pasca said brain organoids could also be used to test new treatments for neuropsychiatric disorders, the largest cause of disability worldwide. Such research, he said, should help scientists make strides that have been extremely difficult until now because it’s so hard to get at the human brain – which is “the reason why we’re so much more behind in psychiatry compared to any other branch of medicine in terms of therapeutics.”
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Qatar World Cup organizers on Wednesday warned fans to brace for “congestion” in the first two weeks of the tournament when the peak number of supporters will be packing the Gulf state’s capital.
Private cars will be banned from many streets and residents near some stadiums will need permits to get to their homes, organizers and government officials told a press conference as they outlined measures to avoid a World Cup jam.
The tiny state of 2.9 million people will be the smallest to hold the World Cup that starts November 20.
Qatar has spent billions of dollars on a state-of-the-art driverless metro rail network that serves five of the eight stadiums and will also have 3,200 extra buses and 3,000 taxis on the road.
More than one million fans are expected to visit during the 29 days. But there will be four group matches a day during the first two weeks of the tournament and officials are predicting more than 300,000 fans could be milling around the streets of Doha at the same time during the most intense days.
Organizers are pressing local residents to take “private transportation,” including their own cars, if they go to matches.
They are “encouraged to drive where possible” and leave trains and buses to the million-plus foreign fans expected to visit during the tournament, said an organizing committee statement.
“We expect congestion,” said Abdulaziz al-Mawlawi, mobility director for the Qatar organizing committee.
“Having four matches in one day is a challenge in a region or city like Doha,” declared Mawlawi, who added that there were “solutions” to get to stadiums and for daily life.
Mawlawi said organizers wanted to “warn fans to abide by restrictions,” leave early to reach World Cup matches on time and avoid having one person in a car.
“These things will reduce the expected congestion. Whether in Qatar or any country in the world, congestion is expected in a tournament such as the World Cup.”
Most private cars will be banned from around central Doha for the tournament with a $140 fine for offenders. Residents around four of the eight stadiums will need a permit to be able to drive to and from their homes.
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The world’s first space tourist wants to go back — only this time, he’s signed up for a spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship.
For Dennis Tito, 82, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip to the International Space Station, now that he’s retired with time on his hands. He isn’t interested in hopping on a 10-minute flight to the edge of space or repeating what he did 21 years ago. “Been there, done that.”
His weeklong moonshot — its date to be determined and years in the future — will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side. He’ll have company: his wife, Akiko, and 10 others willing to shell out big bucks for the ride.
Tito won’t say how much he’s paying; his Russian station flight cost $20 million.
The couple recognize there’s a lot of testing and development still ahead for Starship, a shiny, bullet-shaped behemoth that’s yet to even attempt to reach space.
“We have to keep healthy for as many years as it’s going to take for SpaceX to complete this vehicle,” Tito said in an interview this week with The Associated Press. “I might be sitting in a rocking chair, not doing any good exercise, if it wasn’t for this mission.”
Tito is actually the second billionaire to make a Starship reservation for a flight around the moon. Japanese fashion tycoon Yusaku Maezawa announced in 2018 he was buying an entire flight so he could take eight or so others with him, preferably artists. The two men both flew to the space station, from Kazakhstan atop Russian rockets, 20 years apart.
Tito kicked off space tourism in 2001, becoming the first person to pay his own way to space and antagonizing NASA in the process. The U.S. space agency didn’t want a sightseer hanging around while the station was being built. But the Russian Space Agency needed the cash and, with the help of U.S.-based Space Adventures, launched a string of wealthy clients to the station through the 2000s and, just a year ago, Maezawa.
Well-heeled customers are sampling briefer tastes of space with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company. Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic expects to take paying passengers next year.
Starship has yet to launch atop a Super Heavy booster from the southern tip of Texas, near the Mexican border. At 394 feet (120 meters) and 17 million pounds (7.7 million kilograms) of liftoff thrust, it’s the biggest and most powerful rocket ever built. NASA already has contracted for a Starship to land its astronauts on the moon in 2025 or so, in the first lunar touchdown since Apollo.
Tito said the couple’s contract with SpaceX, signed in August 2021, includes an option for a flight within five years from now. Tito would be 87 by then and he wanted an out in case his health falters.
“But if I stayed in good health, I’d wait 10 years,” he said.
Tito’s wife, 57, said she needed no persuading. The Los Angeles residents are both pilots and understand the risks. They share Musk’s vision of a spacefaring future and believe a married couple flying together to the moon will inspire others to do the same.
Tito, who sold his investment company Wilshire Associates almost two years ago, said he doesn’t feel guilty splurging on spaceflight versus spending the money here on Earth.
“We’re retired and now it’s time to reap the rewards of all the hard work,” he said.
Tito expects he’ll also shatter preconceived notions about age, much as John Glenn’s space shuttle flight did in 1998. The first American to orbit the Earth still holds the record as the oldest person in orbit.
“He was only 77. He was just a young man,” Tito said. “I might end up being 10 years older than him.”
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