Month: October 2022

Sitting on a 7,000-hectare stretch of land in southwest Florida, Babcock Ranch has made a name for itself as the first solar-powered town in the United States. Its power comes from nearly 700,000 solar panels that supply energy to more than 2,000 homes and other buildings, including a health center and schools.

Syd Kitson, founder of the planned community, envisioned an environmentally friendly energy-efficient city. His dream became a reality in 2018.

“I believe deeply in respecting the environment and wanted to prove that you could build this new city and work hand-in-hand with the environment,” said Kitson, CEO of the real estate firm Kitson & Partners. “Our water management system is based around natural floodways. We also have 7,000 hectares we are preserving.”

The preserve protects natural habitats, scenic landscapes and water resources.

“It was just the kind of community my husband and I were looking for,” Shannon Treece told VOA. “We liked that the town was built for sustainability, including solar energy.”

Today, Babcock Ranch is also known as the town that came out practically unscathed Sept. 28, when Hurricane Ian came roaring through the area bringing record-breaking storm surges and winds over 160 kph.

Nearby Fort Myers by the Gulf of Mexico was devastated.

Babcock Ranch was built on a higher elevation to be above the storm surge. And the buildings were constructed to withstand hurricane-force winds.

Because of that, Shannon Treece and her family are among the 4,600 residents who decided to ride out the storm.

“It was a little scary,” she said of being in a hurricane for the first time. “We couldn’t see anything since we had blocked all the windows with storm shutters, but we could hear debris hitting the house. I am glad our house held up.”

Nancy Chorpenning and her husband also decided to stay put.

“The hurricane sounded like a locomotive coming through. But we never lost our electricity, access to the internet or our water,” she told VOA.

That’s because power lines from Babcock Ranch’s solar array and utility plants are underground, which shields them from high winds and bad weather, Kitson said.

Huge retaining ponds protect the homes from flooding, and the streets are designed to soak up floodwaters.

When building the town, “we spent a lot of time making sure Babcock Ranch was storm ready,” Kitson said. “We had minor damage from Hurricane Ian, like some downed small trees and torn roof shingles, but within a day, we were almost back to normal.”

Chorpenning thinks there are lessons to be learned from Babcock Ranch.

“We can be a model for other communities, showing the importance of water management and using solar energy,” she said. “We’re also showing how neighborhoods can live in concert with nature, partly by requiring that native plant species be planted in the community.”

The blueprint for the town is to grow into a much larger city. The developers have their sights set on constructing thousands more of the environmentally friendly homes, which would increase the population to 50,000 residents.

“I hope we are setting a good example for others to follow as we continue to protect the natural environment at the same time,” Kitson said.  
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In a remote village in India, a siren can be heard from the local temple every night at 7 p.m. — signaling the commencement of a daily “digital detox.” For the next 90 minutes, the population of 3,000 in Sangli district’s Mohityanche Vadgaon lays aside all the electronic gadgets in the vicinity, including mobile phones and television sets.

The second siren goes off at 8:30 p.m., indicating the end of the intermission. Until then, the villagers are encouraged to focus on activities such as reading, studying and engaging in verbal conversation with one another.

Proponents of the initiative carried out at a village in the Maharashtra state of India say it is the solution to the “screen addiction” afflicting residents in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic and brings back the value of human connection.

The tactic was devised by Vijay Mohite, “the sarpanch” (Indian head of the village council) at Mohityanche Vadgaon.

Jitender Dudi, the chief administrator of district development in Sangli, brought Mohite’s idea into fruition.

‘Mobile phone addicts’

Jayawant Mohite, who retired from teaching at school in the village two months ago said that the children turned into what he called “mobile phone addicts” after the COVID-lockdowns started and they were made to attend classes online, using mobile phones, in 2020.

“Students were found engrossed in their mobile phones for hours, even after online classes ended for the day. Once regular offline classes began last year, most of them were very inattentive in the classes and were found losing interest in academics,” the former teacher told VOA.

“After interacting with the families of the students, we discovered that they were still spending long hours on their mobile phones before and after school hours. We counselled them and their families, but could not wean the students off their mobile phones. Finally, we approached the ‘sarpanch’ of our village and apprised him of the situation,” Mohite said.

The concerned schoolteachers of the village also told the sarpanch that if the habit of overusing or misusing mobile phones by the students was not controlled swiftly, the future of the students would be doomed.

Dr. J.R. Ram, a clinical psychiatrist in Kolkata, said, “extended screen time can result in several adverse effects, but during the pandemic, the forced incarceration of young people at home has amplified its impact.”

He said that it becomes an obstacle for students’ progress in learning.

“Surfing on the internet—that is, multi-tasking deprives students of their ability to concentrate for longer periods when they need to study,” Ram said. “They get used to scrolling on social media, watching videos and exchanging text messages during classes. Such a situation can have negative consequences on one’s cognition or thinking ability.”

Sarpanch Mohite told VOA that he held meetings with other village leaders and started devising strategies to stop the misuse and overuse of the technology by the students.

“Some leaders said that it was impossible to distance the children from their mobile phones, adding that they had never heard of any community that had succeeded in such an initiative. Some other leaders said that we should try to do something. ‘There’s nothing to lose, in case we fail,’ they said,” Mohite said.

The villagers, however, were won over by the collaborative awareness program orchestrated by the village council employees, retired schoolteachers, anganwadi (rural childcare center) workers and members of Accredited Social Health Activist- a nation-wide community health service network, or ASHA, composed of female community health workers.

The women in the village played a crucial role in the digital detox initiative.

“We gathered the village women, including the mothers of the students, and explained to them how the misuse of mobiles was destroying the future of the children,” Sarpanch Mohite told VOA. “When we proposed the idea of a digital detox, they all agreed with our concerns about the children and supported our idea, too.”

ASHA workers, who were also instrumental in persuading the villagers to embrace the idea of a digital detox, are local women trained to create awareness on health issues in their communities, according to the National Institute of Health and Welfare, India.

‘Mandatory practice’

The daily digital detox is now observed as a mandatory practice by the residents of Mohityanche Vadgaon, with a locality-wise team ensuring that every villager is adhering to the discipline.

“In August, we made a public announcement, requesting the villagers to help implement the ‘No Mobile, No TV, for 1.5 Hours Daily’ proposal. On August 15—observed as Independence Day in India—we introduced Digital Detox at our village in our style.

“Initially, some families were not cooperating. But, in such cases, their neighbors would report the cases to our village leaders, and our volunteers would immediately arrive at the houses of those families to convince them otherwise.

Every family at the village is now complying with our digital detox rule,” Vijay Mohite told VOA.

“After we have got a very good response from the villagers, we are pondering over an idea to extend the ‘No mobile, No TV’ time to two or even 2.5 hours in near future,” the sarpanch added.

Word on the initiative at Mohityanche Vadgaon has traveled fast that five other villages in Sangli district have emulated Mohite’s concept and implemented similar steps.

Rajubhai Mujawar, a resident of a nearby Nerli village, said that a daily ban on mobile and TV for 90 minutes will be introduced where he lives soon.

“The children have become mobile addicts. We have decided to introduce the rule of ‘No mobile, No TV’ for 1.5 hours daily in our village soon, following what Mohityanche Vadgaon village has done,” he said.
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Astronomers have observed the brightest flash of light ever seen, from an event that occurred 2.4 billion light-years from Earth and was likely triggered by the formation of a black hole. 

The burst of gamma rays — the most intense form of electromagnetic radiation — was first detected by orbiting telescopes Sunday, and its afterglow is still being watched by scientists across the world. 

Astrophysicist Brendan O’Connor told AFP that gamma ray bursts that last hundreds of seconds, as this one did, are thought to be caused by dying massive stars, greater than 30 times bigger than our sun. 

The star explodes in a supernova, collapses into a black hole, then matter forms in a disk around the black hole, falls inside, and is spewed out in a jet of energy that travels at 99.99% the speed of light. 

The flash released photons carrying a record 18 teraelectronvolts of energy — that’s 18 with 12 zeros behind it — and it has impacted longwave radio communications in Earth’s ionosphere. 

“It’s really breaking records, both in the amount of photons, and the energy of the photons that are reaching us,” said O’Connor, who used infrared instruments on the Gemini South telescope in Chile to take fresh observations early Friday. 

“Something this bright, this nearby, is really a once-in-a-century event,” he added. 

“Gamma ray bursts in general release the same amount of energy that our sun produces over its entire lifetime in the span of a few seconds — and this event is the brightest gamma ray burst.” 

The gamma ray burst, known as GRB 221009A, was first spotted by telescopes including NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope, the Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory, and the Wind spacecraft Sunday morning Eastern time.  

1.9 billion-year-old movie

It originated from the direction of the constellation Sagitta and traveled an estimated 1.9 billion years to reach Earth — less than the current distance of its starting point, because the universe is expanding. 

Observing the event now is like watching a 1.9 billion-year-old recording of those events unfold before us, giving astronomers a rare opportunity to glean new insights into things like black hole formation. 

“That’s what makes this sort of science so addictive — you get this adrenaline rush when these things happen,” said O’Connor, who is affiliated with the University of Maryland and George Washington University. 

He added that though the initial burst may have been visible to lucky amateur astronomers, it has since faded out of their view. 

Over the coming weeks, he and others will continue watching for the signatures of supernovas at optical and infrared wavelengths, to confirm that their hypothesis about the origins of the flash are correct, and that the event conforms to known physics.

Supernova explosions are also predicted to be responsible for producing heavy elements — such as gold, platinum, uranium — and astronomers will also be on the hunt for their signatures. 

Astrophysicists have written in the past that the sheer power of gamma ray bursts could cause extinction-level events here on Earth. 

But O’Connor pointed out that because the jets of energy are very tightly focused, and aren’t likely to arise in our galaxy, this scenario is not something we should worry much about. 
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Cybersecurity experts say that the October 10 attack on at least 14 U.S. airport websites, including those in Los Angeles and Chicago, appears to be the work of the Russian hacking group Killnet. As Mike O’Sullivan reports, the disruptions were a minor inconvenience for airline passengers, but experts say they highlight a major threat.
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Young researchers and students are competing in a disaster challenge at a natural hazards forum in the Australian city of Brisbane.

The government-funded organization Natural Hazards Research Australia has said more Australians “than ever before are exposed to the damage and destruction of floods, bushfires, cyclones, heatwaves and storms.”

It reported that Australia has experienced 28 disasters that have cost more than $630 million, and 16 of these have occurred since 2000.

Experts have said that research is essential to improve Australia’s readiness for natural calamities.

At the inaugural Natural Hazards Research Forum in Brisbane, young researchers have been asked to solve a key conundrum in preparing communities for floods, fires and storms; how can disaster authorities get potentially life-saving advice to the “unengaged, the moving,” such as tourists or “the hard to reach”?

The winning entry aims to reach international tourists through Wi-Fi — essentially captive portals that compel visitors in flood or fires zones, for example, to watch a survival video before they can log onto the Internet at hotels, cafes or other destinations.

Mark Owens from the Country Fire Authority, an emergency service in the Australians state of Victoria, told VOA that the videos would be tailored for various locations and seasons.

“Making sure the message we actually get to them will actually change their behavior but also get them to do that for the future again and again, and that is why the videos will be tailored and changed seasonally, or, you know, if there is a La Niña coming through again,” he said. “So, you know, it might then really focus on floods for a big period of time instead of bushfire.”

Parts of Victoria state are currently facing one of the biggest floods in decades.

There have been rescues and evacuations along the Maribyrnong River in the city of Melbourne.

Thousands of people are also under evacuation orders for flooding in the states of New South Wales and Tasmania.

Two climatic phenomena — La Niña and the Indian Ocean Dipole — are fueling the flooding. Both occur naturally and are influenced by warmer ocean temperatures.  They are dumping above-average rainfall across much of Australia, and experts say they are being super-charged by climate change.

Sydney is having its wettest year on record. More than 2 meters of rain have fallen on Australia’s biggest city, breaking the previous record set in 1950.
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Europe faces a higher-than-usual chance of a cold blast of weather before the end of the year, but the winter overall is likely to be warmer than average, the continent’s long-range weather forecaster said Thursday.

Temperatures this winter will be crucial for homeowners worried about the record cost of heating their homes, and for European policymakers seeking to avoid energy rationing because of reductions in Russian gas supplies.

“We see the winter as being warmer than usual,” said Carlo Buontempo, director of the Copernicus Climate Change Service that produces seasonal forecasts for the European Center for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF).

“Nevertheless, there is a still a significant chance of a block situation, which can lead to cold temperatures and low wind over Europe,” he told AFP as the service issued a monthly update to its forecasts.

A so-called block or blocking pattern in the winter can bring stable, often wind-free weather accompanied by freezing temperatures.

“This was looking more likely in November, but there now looks like a pronounced probability of a cold outbreak in December,” Buontempo added.

The ECMWF produces weather modelling with data from a range of national weather services around Europe.

Its forecasts are based on indicators such as ocean and atmospheric temperatures, as well as wind speeds in the stratosphere, but do not have the accuracy of short-range reports.

The models provide the “best information possible, to give a hint, to guide our decisions,” Buontempo said.

The European winter was expected to be warmer than usual because of the La Nina global weather phenomenon, which is related to cooling surface temperatures in the central and eastern equatorial Pacific Ocean.

“We know that in a La Nina year, the latter part of the European winter tends to favor westerly winds, so warm and wet,” Buontempo said.

The agency will update its winter season forecast next month when it will have greater confidence because “all the drivers for the winter will be more active,” he said.

Independent energy experts expect Europe to be able to withstand Russia’s gas cuts this winter, providing temperatures stay in line with or above the long-term average.

Governments have almost filled their strategic gas reserves and consumers are being urged to reduce their consumption.

The International Energy Agency, a Paris-based energy consultancy, believes that temperatures about 10% below average over the winter would put strain on the European gas system.

It has also said a late cold spell, when gas stocks are expected to be low, could be the “Achilles heel of European gas supply security.” 
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The Antarctic ozone hole last week peaked at a moderately large size for the third straight year — bigger than North America — but experts say it’s still generally shrinking despite recent blips because of high altitude cold weather.

The ozone hole hit its peak size of more than 26.4 million square kilometers on October 5, the largest it has been since 2015, according to NASA. Scientists say because of cooler than normal temperatures over the southern polar regions at 12-20 kilometers high, where the ozone hole is, conditions are ripe for ozone-munching chlorine chemicals.

“The overall trend is improvement. It’s a little worse this year because it was a little colder this year,” said NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Chief Earth Scientist Paul Newman, who tracks ozone depletion. “All the data says that ozone is on the mend.”

Just looking at the maximum ozone hole size, especially in October, can be misleading, said top ozone scientist Susan Solomon of MIT.

“Ozone depletion starts LATER and takes LONGER to get to the maximum hole and the holes are typically shallower” in September, which is the key month to look at ozone recovery, not October, Solomon said Thursday in an email.

Chlorine and bromine chemicals high in the atmosphere eat at Earth’s protective ozone layer. Cold weather creates clouds that release the chemicals, Newman said. More cold means more clouds and a bigger ozone hole.

Climate change science says that heat-trapping carbon from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas makes Earth’s surface warmer, but the upper stratosphere, above the heat-trapping, gets cooler, Newman said. However, the ozone hole is slightly lower than the region thought to be cooled by climate change, he said. Other scientists and research do connect cooling in the area to climate change.

“The fact that the stratosphere is showing signs of cooling due to climate change is a concern,” said University of Leeds atmospheric scientist Martyn Chipperfield. The worry is that climate change and efforts to reduce the ozone hole become intertwined.

Decades ago, atmospheric chemists noticed that chlorine and bromine was increasing in the atmosphere, warning of massive crop damage, food shortages and huge increases in skin cancer if something wasn’t done. In 1987, the world agreed to a landmark treaty, the Montreal Protocol, that banned ozone-munching chemicals, often hailed as an environmental success story.

It’s a slow process because one of the chief ozone-munching chemicals, CFC11, can stay in the atmosphere for decades, Newman said. Studies also show that CFC11 levels going into the air were rising a few years ago with scientists suspecting factories in China.

Chlorine levels are down almost 30% compared to their peak 20 years ago, Newman said. If these cool temperatures had occurred with chlorine levels of the year 2000 “it would have been a very, very large hole, much, much bigger than it is now.”

It’s the third straight year of an ozone hole peaking at more than 24.8 million square kilometers, which Solomon called very unusual and worthy of extra study.

University of Colorado’s Brian Toon points to large fires in Australia and injection of massive amounts of water from January’s undersea volcano eruption as new phenomena that could be having impacts.
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Still, just 6.9% of those eligible have gotten the omicron-tailored vaccine
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A monkeypox outbreak has been confirmed in the town of Mbonge, health authorities in Cameroon say, but armed separatists are preventing workers from investigating suspected cases.

Cameroon government officials say health workers have been deployed to the districts of Kumba and Mbonge to communicate to hundreds of civilians with suspected monkeypox infections to immediately isolate and avoid contact with other people and animals, including pets. 

Kumba and Mbonge are districts located in Cameroon’s English-speaking southwest region near the border with Nigeria. 

Emmanuel Lenya Nefenda, the highest ranking Cameroon public health official in Kumba, said civilians are being educated after a suspected monkeypox infection was confirmed in Kumba. He said the case was reported after the confirmation by Cameroon public health officials of a monkeypox outbreak in Bole Bakundu, a village in Mbonge. 

In order to prevent the spread of the highly contagious monkeypox, Nefenda said people should avoid contact with wild animals, avoid eating wild animals, and wear clean clothes, as opposed to “bush clothes” that may have had contact with rats or other animals.

Nefenda spoke from Kumba via the messaging app WhatsApp. 

The government says one case of monkeypox was confirmed in Kumba, and the patient is receiving treatment in a hospital isolation ward. Several dozen specimens have been collected from suspected patients and sent to specialized laboratories in Cameroon’s capital, Yaounde, for laboratory examinations. 

Health officials are warning civilians to take suspected patients to hospitals, and not to herbalists or African traditional healers in villages. But villagers say ongoing battles between separatists and government troops make it impossible for suspected patients to be transported to hospitals, which are far from towns. 

Separatists on social media platforms, including Facebook and WhatsApp, say any health worker sent by Cameroon’s central government in Yaounde should obtain an authorization from fighters. 

But the government says only Cameroon state officials can assure the safety of health workers assisting people suspected of monkeypox infections. 

Eko Eko Filbert, the highest government official in charge of public health in Cameroon’s English-speaking Southwest region where Kumba and Mbonge are located, said armed groups should allow medical staff members to render humanitarian services. 

Monkeypox is contagious, he said, but can be contained with the help of health workers.

Eko said no health official deployed to assist civilians suspected of monkeypox infection has been attacked, but that frightened health workers are scared of going out to search for patients and suspected patients. 

The government says it will protect both its citizens and health workers. 

The U.N. says Cameroon is a monkeypox endemic country but displacement away from established surveillance systems due to armed conflicts increase the risk of undetected transmission. 

On Wednesday, the World Health Organization said 21 countries in the past week reported an increase in monkeypox cases, mostly in the Americas, which accounted for almost 90% of all cases reported last week. 

The WHO says cases in the global monkeypox outbreak have topped 70,000 and warned that a decline in new cases does not mean people should drop their guard, as the slowdown in new cases worldwide could be the most dangerous time in the outbreak.

The U.N. says the disease causes fever, muscular aches and large boil-like skin lesions.  

 
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As Australia prepares to end mandatory coronavirus isolation rules Friday, new research shows that almost a third of adults have had symptoms of long COVID. In Canberra, a parliamentary health committee has heard clinics are being contacted by more patients struggling with ongoing ailments.

COVID-19 cases reported in Australia continue to fall, but the consequences of infection are still being felt.

A study published Wednesday by the Australian National University said that about one in three adults who have had the virus had symptoms that lasted for longer than four weeks, a common indicator of so-called “long COVID.”

Symptoms include extreme fatigue, heart palpitations, joint and muscle pain as well as insomnia and a cough. The study also stated that many patients with long COVID also experienced “low mood.”

In parliament in Canberra, the House of Representatives Health Committee started Wednesday an inquiry into long COVID and repeated COVID infections.

Melissa McIntosh, a lawmaker and deputy chair of the committee, told reporters in Canberra that the investigation would be thorough.

“We are hearing so much anecdotal reporting when it comes to long COVID and I, myself, experienced some form of long COVID after contracting COVID and still have the effects today many months after COVID as do many other Australians,” she said. “So, we want to collect the evidence, speak to people who have experienced long COVID and also to speak to their families, to speak to researchers and to organizations. Even mental health organizations.”

The Australian National University study has shown that females, young Australians, and those living in middle-income households have the highest probability of contracting the virus.

Australia on Friday will end compulsory five-day isolation for people who test positive to COVID-19, removing one of the country’s last remaining disease-control restrictions.

Australia did have some of the world’s toughest coronavirus measures. It closed its borders to most foreign nationals for more than two years and had some of the world’s longest lockdowns.

Government data shows around 5,000 COVID infections are now being reported each week on average, compared to more than 110,000 in mid-January 2022.
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Taiwan lifted all its COVID-19 entry restrictions Thursday, allowing tourists unfettered access to the self-ruled island after more than 2 1/2 years of border controls.

Hong Kong and Taiwan, together with mainland China, required most visitors to complete a mandatory quarantine period throughout the pandemic, even as most countries reopened their borders to tourists.

Visitors are no longer required to quarantine upon entry, or take any PCR tests. Instead, they will need to monitor their health for a week after arriving, and obtain a negative result on a rapid antigen test the day they arrive. If people want to go out during the weeklong monitoring period, they need a negative test from either that day or the day before.

There are also no longer any restrictions on certain nationalities being allowed to enter Taiwan.

Dozens of visitors from Thailand were among the first to arrive under the new rules at Taiwan’s Taoyuan International Airport, which serves the capital Taipei, on a Tiger Air flight that landed shortly after midnight.

Tourists like 32-year-old Mac Chientachakul and his parents were excited to visit the island.

“Hot pot is my favorite dish in Taiwan,” Chientachakul said. “It’s my first thing to do … I miss it so much.”

Sonia Chang, a travel agent, said the changes are good for both the tourism industry and Taiwanese residents, who can now travel abroad without having to quarantine when they get home.

Valaisurang Bhaedhayajibh, a 53-year-old business development director of a design firm, called the new rules convenient.

“We don’t have to do the test before coming here, and also after arriving,” he said. “We are still required to do the self-test every two days, and everything has been provided” by Taiwanese authorities, including the rapid testing kits.

At a welcome ceremony in the Taoyuan airport’s arrival hall, the travelers from Thailand were met by the Taiwan Tourism Bureau’s director, Chang Shi-chung, who handed out gifts.

Taiwan’s tourism bureau estimated that a total of 244 tourists from some 20 tour groups will arrive Thursday.

With both Hong Kong and Taiwan getting rid of restrictions and welcoming back tourists, mainland China remains one of the few places in the world adamant in keeping borders closed and sticking to a “zero-COVID” strategy to stamp out the virus. Hong Kong ended its mandatory quarantine policy for inbound travelers late last month, requiring just a three-day self-monitoring period.
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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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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. 

 
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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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