Month: April 2023

Babies born to opioid users had shorter hospital stays and needed less medication when their care emphasized parent involvement, skin-to-skin contact and a quiet environment, researchers reported Sunday.

Newborns were ready to go home about a week earlier compared to those getting standard care. Fewer received opioid medications to reduce withdrawal symptoms such as tremors and hard-to-soothe crying, about 20% compared to 52% of the standard-care babies.

Babies born to opioid users, including mothers in treatment with medications such as methadone, can develop withdrawal symptoms after exposure in the womb.

Typically, hospitals use a scoring system to decide which babies need medicine to ease withdrawal, which means treatment in newborn intensive care units.

“The mom is sitting there anxiously waiting for the score,” said the study’s lead author Dr. Leslie Young of the University of Vermont’s children’s hospital. “This would be really stressful for families.”

In the new approach — called Eat, Sleep, Console — nurses involve mothers as they evaluate together whether rocking, breastfeeding or swaddling can calm the baby, Young said. Medicine is an option, but the environment is considered too.

“Is the TV on in the room? Do we need to turn that off? Are the lights on? Do we need to turn those down?” Young said.

About 5,000 nurses were trained during the study, published Sunday by the New England Journal of Medicine.

Researchers studied the care of 1,300 newborns at 26 U.S. hospitals. Babies born before training were compared to babies born after.

The National Institutes of Health funded the work as part of an initiative to address the U.S. opioid addiction crisis.

“One of the great strengths of the study is its geographic diversity,” said Dr. Diana Bianchi, director of the branch that researches child health and human development. “We’ve had newborns enrolled from sites as varied as Sioux Falls, South Dakota; Kansas City, Missouri; and Spartanburg, South Carolina.”

Many U.S. hospitals have adopted the new approach, Bianchi said, adding she hopes the research will lead to recommendations from pediatrics groups.

Researchers followed the babies for three months and found no difference in urgent care or emergency room visits or hospitalizations — reassuring evidence about the safety of shorter hospital stays.

The new approach could yield “tremendous savings” in hospital resources, Young said, although the study didn’t estimate cost.

Researchers will follow the babies until age 2 to monitor their health.

Mothers want to be involved, Young said.

“For the first time, they feel like their role as a mom is valued and like they’re important,” she said. “We know that those first moments of a mom and a baby being together are really critical to bonding.”
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Chinese authorities were preparing Sunday to release a man who disappeared three years ago after publicizing videos of overcrowded hospitals and bodies during the COVID-19 outbreak, a relative and another person familiar with his case said.

Fang Bin and other members of the public who were dubbed citizen journalists posted details of the pandemic in early 2020 on the internet and social media, embarrassing Chinese officials who faced criticism for failing to control the outbreak. The last video Fang, a seller of traditional Chinese clothing, posted on Twitter was of a piece of paper reading, “All citizens resist, hand power back to the people.”

Fang’s case is part of Beijing’s crackdown on criticism of China’s early handling of the pandemic, as the ruling Communist Party seeks to control the narrative of the country.

He was scheduled to be released Sunday, according to two people who did not want to be identified for fear of government retribution. One of them said Fang was sentenced to three years in prison for “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” a vague charge traditionally used against political dissidents.

The Associated Press could not independently confirm his release and could not confirm the details with the authorities.

Two offices of Wuhan’s public security bureau did not provide a phone number of their information office or answer any questions. Phone calls to a court that reportedly sentenced Fang rang unanswered Sunday afternoon. A woman from another court that had reportedly handled Fang’s appeal said she was not authorized to answer questions.

In early 2020, the initial COVID outbreak devastated the city of Wuhan, home to 11 million residents, in central China’s Hubei province. Under a 76-day lockdown, its streets were deserted for months, apart from ambulances and security personnel.

At that time, a small number of citizen journalists tried to tell their stories and those of others with smart phones and social media accounts, defying the Communist Party’s tightly policed monopoly on information. Although their movement was small, the scale was unprecedented in any previous major disease outbreak or disaster in China.

But the information they posted soon got them into trouble. Fang and another citizen journalist, Chen Qiushi, disappeared in February.

Chen in September 2021 resurfaced on his friend’s live video feed on YouTube, saying he had suffered from depression. But he did not provide details about his disappearance.

Another citizen journalist, Zhang Zhan, who had also reported on the early stage of the outbreak, was sentenced to four years in prison on charges of picking fights and provoking trouble in December 2020. About eight months later, her lawyer said she was in ill health after staging a long-running hunger strike.
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The European Union is likely to reach a political agreement this year that will pave the way for the world’s first major artificial intelligence (AI) law, the bloc’s tech regulation chief, Margrethe Vestager, said on Sunday.

This follows a preliminary deal reached on Thursday by members of the European Parliament to push through the draft of the EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act to a vote on May 11. Parliament will then thrash out the bill’s final details with EU member states and the European Commission before it becomes law.

At a press conference after a Group of Seven digital ministers’ meeting in Takasaki, Japan, Vestager said the EU AI Act was “pro-innovation” since it seeks to mitigate the risks of societal damage from emerging technologies.

Regulators around the world have been trying to find a balance where governments could develop “guardrails” on emerging artificial intelligence technology without stifling innovation.

“The reason why we have these guardrails for high-risk use cases is that cleaning up … after a misuse by AI would be so much more expensive and damaging than the use case of AI in itself,” Vestager said.

While the EU AI Act is expected to be passed by this year, lawyers have said it will take a few years for it to be enforced. But Vestager said businesses could start considering the implication of the new legislation.

“There was no reason to hesitate and to wait for the legislation to be passed to accelerate the necessary discussions to provide the changes in all the systems where AI will have an enormous influence,” she told Reuters in an interview.

While research on AI has been going on for years, the sudden popularity of generative AI applications such as OpenAI’S ChatGPT and Midjourney have led to a scramble by lawmakers to find ways to regulate any uncontrolled growth.

An organization backed by Elon Musk and European lawmakers involved in drafting the EU AI Act are among those to have called for world leaders to collaborate to find ways to stop advanced AI from creating disruptions.

Digital ministers of the G-7 advanced nations on Sunday also agreed to adopt “risk-based” regulation on AI, among the first steps that could lead to global agreements on how to regulate AI.

“It is important that our democracy paved the way and put in place the rules to protect us from its abusive manipulation – AI should be useful but it shouldn’t be manipulating us,” said German Transport Minister Volker Wissing.

This year’s G-7 meeting was also attended by representatives from Indonesia, India and Ukraine.
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Turkey’s first astronaut will travel to the International Space Station by the end of the year, President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday.

Air force pilot Alper Gezeravci, 43, was selected to be the first Turkish citizen in space. His backup is Tuva Cihangir Atasever, 30, an aviation systems engineer at Turkish defense contractor Roketsan.

Erdogan made the announcement at the Teknofest aviation and space fair in Istanbul, the president’s first public appearance since falling ill during a TV interview on Tuesday. He appeared alongside Azerbaijan’s president, Ilham Aliyev, and Libya’s interim prime minister, Abdul Hamid Dbeibeh.

“Our friend, who will go on Turkey’s first manned space mission, will stay on the International Space Station for 14 days,” Erdogan said. “Our astronaut will perform 13 different experiments prepared by our country’s esteemed universities and research institutions during this mission.”

Erdogan described Gezeravci as a “heroic Turkish pilot who has achieved significant success in our Air Force Command.”

The Turkish Space Agency website describes Gezeravci as a 21-year air force veteran and F-16 pilot who attended the U.S. Air Force Institute of Technology.

Wearing a red flight jacket, Erdogan appeared in robust health as he addressed crowds at the festival. Turkey’s presidential and parliamentary elections are scheduled for May 14, and opinion polls show Erdogan in potentially his toughest race since he came to power two decades ago.

Turkey is dealing with a prolonged economic downturn, and the government received criticism after a February earthquake killed more than 50,000 in the country. Experts blamed the high death toll in part on shoddy construction and law enforcement of building codes.

While campaigning for reelection, Erdogan has unveiled a number of prestigious projects, such as Turkey’s first nuclear power plant and the delivery of natural gas from Black Sea reserves.
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A walrus that became a global celebrity last year after it was seen frolicking and basking in a Oslo fjord before it was euthanized by the authorities has been honored with a bronze sculpture in Norway. 

The life-size sculpture by Norwegian artist Astri Tonoian was unveiled Saturday at the Oslo marina not far from the place where the actual 600-kilogram (1,300-pound) mammal was seen resting and relaxing during the summer of 2022. 

The walrus, named Freya, quickly became a popular attraction among Oslo residents but Norwegian authorities later made a decision to euthanize it — causing public outrage — because they said people hadn’t followed recommendations to keep a safe distance away from the massive animal. 

Norwegian news agency NTB said a crowdfunding campaign was kicked off last fall to finance the sculpture. The private initiative managed to gather about 270,000 Norwegian kroner ($25,000) by October, NTB said. 
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By comparing the genetic blueprints of an array of animals, scientists are gaining new insights into our own species and all we share with other creatures. 

One of the most striking revelations is that certain passages in the instructions for life have persisted across evolutionary time, representing a through line that binds all mammals – including us. 

The findings come from the Zoonomia Project, an international effort that offers clues about human traits and diseases, animal abilities like hibernation and even the genetics behind a sled dog named Balto who helped save lives a century ago. 

Researchers shared some of their discoveries in 11 papers published Thursday in the journal Science. 

David O’Connor, who studies primate genetics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said the studies tackle deep questions. 

“It’s just the wonder of biology, how we are so similar and dissimilar to all the things around us,” said O’Connor, who wasn’t involved in the research. “It’s the sort of thing that reminds me why it’s cool to be a biologist.” 

The Zoonomia team, led by Elinor Karlsson and Kerstin Lindblad-Toh at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard, looked at 240 species of mammals, from bats to bison. They sequenced and compared their genomes — the instructions organisms need to develop and grow. 

They found that certain regions of these genomes have stayed the same across all mammal species over millions of years of evolution. 

One study found that at least 10% of the human genome is largely unchanged across species. Many of these regions occur outside the 1% of genes that give rise to proteins that control the activity of cells, the main purpose of DNA. 

Researchers theorized that long-preserved regions probably serve a purpose and are likely what they call “regulatory elements” containing instructions about where, when and how much protein is produced. Scientists identified more than 3 million of these in the human genome, about half of which were previously unknown. 

Scientists also focused on change within the animal kingdom. When they aligned genetic sequences for species and compared them with their ancestors, Karlsson said, they discovered that some species saw a lot of changes in relatively short periods of time. This showed how they were adapting to their environments. 

“One of the really cool things about mammals is that at this point in time, they’ve basically adapted to survive in nearly every single ecosystem on Earth,” Karlsson said. 

One group of scientists looked for genes that humans don’t have but other mammals do. 

Instead of focusing on new genes that might create uniquely human traits, “we kind of flipped that on its head,” said Steven Reilly, a genetics researcher at Yale University. 

“Losing pieces of DNA can actually generate new features,” Reilly said. 

For example, he said, a tiny DNA deletion between chimps and humans caused a cascade of changes in gene expression that may be one of the causes of prolonged brain development in humans. 

Another study focused on the fitness of one well-known animal: Balto. 

Scientists sequenced the genome of the sled dog, who led a team of dogs carrying a lifesaving diphtheria serum to Nome, Alaska, in 1925. His story was made into a 1995 animated feature film and a statue of the pup stands in New York’s Central Park. 

By comparing Balto’s genes to those of other dogs, researchers found he was more genetically diverse than modern breeds and may have carried genetic variants that helped him survive harsh conditions. One of the authors, researcher Katherine Moon of the University of California, Santa Cruz, said Balto “gives us this guide through comparative genomics,” showing how genetics can shape individuals. 

O’Connor said he expects Zoonomia to yield even more insights in the future. 

“To have these tools and to have the sort of audacity to ask these big questions” helps scientists and others “learn more about life around us,” he said. 
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Water may be more widespread and recent on Mars than previously thought, based on observations of Martian sand dunes by China’s rover. 

The finding highlights new, potentially fertile areas in the warmer regions of Mars where conditions might be suitable for life to exist, though more study is needed. 

Friday’s news came days after mission leaders acknowledged that the Zhurong rover had yet to wake up since going into hibernation for the Martian winter nearly a year ago. 

Its solar panels are likely covered with dust, choking off its power source and possibly preventing the rover from operating again, said Zhang Rongqiao, the mission’s chief designer. 

Before Zhurong fell silent, it observed salt-rich dunes with cracks and crusts, which researchers said likely were mixed with melting morning frost or snow as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago. 

Their estimated date range for when the cracks and other dune features formed in Mars’ Utopia Planitia — a vast plain in the northern hemisphere — is sometime after 1.4 million to 400,000 years ago or even younger. 

Conditions during that period were similar to what they are now on Mars, with rivers and lakes dried up and no longer flowing as they did billions of years earlier. 

Studying the structure and chemical makeup of these dunes can provide insights into “the possibility of water activity” during this period, the Beijing-based team wrote in a study published in Science Advances. 

“We think it could be a small amount … no more than a film of water on the surface,” co-author Xiaoguang Qin of the Institute of Geology and Geophysics said in an email. 

The rover did not directly detect any water in the form of frost or ice. But Qin said computer simulations and observations by other spacecraft at Mars indicated that even nowadays at certain times of year, conditions could be suitable for water to appear. 

What’s notable about the study is how young the dunes are, said planetary scientist Frederic Schmidt at the University of Paris-Saclay, who was not part of the study. 

“This is clearly a new piece of science for this region,” he said in an email. 

Small pockets of water from thawing frost or snow, mixed with salt, likely resulted in the small cracks, hard crusty surfaces, loose particles and other dune features like depressions and ridges, the Chinese scientists said. They ruled out wind as a cause, as well as frost made of carbon dioxide, which makes up the bulk of Mars’ atmosphere. 

Martian frost has been observed since NASA’s 1970s Viking missions, but these light dustings of morning frost were thought to occur in certain locations under specific conditions. 

The rover has now provided “evidence that there may be a wider distribution of this process on Mars than previously identified,” said Trinity College Dublin’s Mary Bourke, an expert in Mars geology. 

However small this watery niche is, it could be important for identifying habitable environments, she added. 

Launched in 2020, the six-wheeled Zhurong — named after a fire god in Chinese mythology — arrived at Mars in 2021 and spent a year roaming around before going into hibernation last May. The rover operated longer than intended, traveling nearly 2,000 meters.
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The discovery of DNA’s double helix structure 70 years ago opened up a world of new science — and also sparked disputes over who contributed what and who deserves credit.

Much of the controversy comes from a central idea: that James Watson and Francis Crick — the first to figure out DNA’s shape — stole data from a scientist named Rosalind Franklin.

Now, two historians are suggesting that while parts of that story are accurate — Watson and Crick did rely on research from Franklin and her lab without permission — Franklin was more a collaborator than just a victim.

In an opinion article published Tuesday in the journal Nature, the historians say the two different research teams were working in parallel toward solving the DNA puzzle and knew more about what the other team was doing than is widely believed.

“It’s much less dramatic,” said article author Matthew Cobb, a zoologist at the University of Manchester who is working on a biography of Crick. “It’s not a heist movie.”

Photograph 51

The story dates back to the 1950s, when scientists were still working out how DNA’s pieces fit together.

Watson and Crick were working on modeling DNA’s shape at Cambridge University. Meanwhile, Franklin — an expert in X-ray imaging — was studying the molecules at King’s College in London, along with a scientist named Maurice Wilkins.

It was there that Franklin captured the iconic Photograph 51, an X-ray image showing DNA’s crisscross shape.

Then, the story gets tricky. In the version that’s often told, Watson was able to look at Photograph 51 during a visit to Franklin’s lab. According to the story, Franklin hadn’t solved the structure, even months after making the image. But when Watson saw it, “he suddenly, instantly knew that it was a helix,” said author Nathaniel Comfort, a historian of medicine at Johns Hopkins University who is writing a biography of Watson.

At about the same time, the story goes, Crick also obtained a lab report that included Franklin’s data and used it without her consent.

And according to this story, these two “eureka moments” — both based on Franklin’s work — Watson and Crick “were able to go and solve the double helix in a few days,” Comfort said.

This “lore” came in part from Watson himself in his book “The Double Helix,” the historians say. But they suggest this was a “literary device” to make the story more exciting and understandable to lay readers.

After digging in Franklin’s archives, the historians found new details that they say challenge this simplistic narrative — and suggest that Franklin contributed more than just one photograph along the way.

The proof? A draft of a Time magazine article from the time, written “in consultation with Franklin” but never published, described the work on DNA’s structure as a joint effort between the two groups. And a letter from one of Franklin’s colleagues suggested Franklin knew her research was being shared with Crick, the authors said.

Taken together, this material suggests the four researchers were equal collaborators in the work, Comfort said. While there may have been tensions, the scientists were sharing their findings more openly — not snatching them in secret.

“She deserves to be remembered not as the victim of the double helix, but as an equal contributor to the solution of the structure,” the authors conclude.

Howard Markel, a historian of medicine at the University of Michigan, said he’s not convinced by the updated story.

Markel — who wrote a book about the double helix discovery — believes that Franklin got “ripped off” by the others and they cut her out in part because she was a Jewish woman in a male-dominated field.

Franklin’s work critical 

In the end, Franklin left her DNA work behind and went on to make other important discoveries in virus research, before dying of cancer at age 37. Four years later, Watson, Crick and Wilkins received a Nobel prize for their work on DNA’s structure.

Franklin wasn’t included in that honor. Posthumous Nobel prizes have always been extremely rare, and now aren’t allowed.

What exactly happened, and in what order, will likely never be known for sure. Crick and Wilkins both died in 2004. Watson, 95, could not be reached, and Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory, where he served as director, declined to comment on the paper.

But researchers agree Franklin’s work was critical for helping unravel DNA’s double helix shape — no matter how the story unfolded.

“How should she be remembered?” asked Markel. “As a great scientist who was an equal contributor to the process. It should be called the Watson-Crick-Franklin model.”
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The world record for the least sleep in a day among mammals goes to elephant seals, according to new research.
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Snake experts in South Africa say an energy crisis is partly to blame for a shortage of antivenom in sub-Saharan Africa that has left at least three people dead in the past three weeks. South Africa supplies antivenom to the region, but frequent power cuts have made it harder to store the refrigerated supplies. Vicky Stark reports from Cape Town, South Africa.
Camera: Shadley Lombard 
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Scientists at New York University have untangled what they believe is the mystery behind the graying of hair. The discovery offers hope to individuals who spend considerable time and money at hair salons to ward off this evidence of aging, but hair colorists say they don’t think they will be put out of business. Aron Ranen reports from New York City.
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The first thing 11-year-old Mia Rodriguez says she did with her new prosthetic hands was draw a picture of a kitten.

The Uruguayan girl, whose fingers never fully developed, put on the prosthetic hands and demonstrated the grasping movement she can now make.

“Now I can hold the pencil with one hand. Before, I had to do it with both hands because my fist wouldn’t close,” she said, while her mother, Ana Van López, watched excitedly.

Rodriguez received the prostheses from the Uruguayan Manos de Heroes foundation, which designs and prints hands and arms with 3D technology for children and adults across the South American country.

Since 2020, the foundation has provided more than 100 free prostheses, most of them for families in vulnerable situations.

Van Lopez, 28, lives with her partner and their four children in an abandoned factory in Salinas, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from Montevideo, and her income comes from informal work such as selling firewood or pineapples. The family has a monthly income of about $200, or 8,000 pesos.

“I am very grateful; I thought my daughter was the only one with this problem. She had never come across someone like her in the hospital or on the street. It’s very difficult for us,” said Lopez, who is trying to obtain a state disability benefit for the girl equivalent to a little more than $380, or 15,000 pesos a month. In addition, they receive a similar amount of state support, she said.

Almost 16% of the Uruguayan population registers some level of disability, the majority mild, according to a 2011 census by the National Statistics Institute.

Rodriguez’s prosthetic hands move with threads that are taut from the motion of her wrists. They are violet with pink, colors she said she chose because they go well together, and are decorated with unicorn decals. Other children prefer the colors of their favorite soccer club or superhero.

The prostheses can be mechanical or electronic. They are placed on the hands, forearm, elbow or shoulder, according to the needs of each person.

Designing a hand, printing it and putting it together takes a couple of weeks, said Andrea Cukerman, an electrical engineer and founder of Manos de Heroes, or Hands of Heroes.

The prostheses are free, and the foundation is financed with contributions from private companies and donations. In Europe, a prosthetic hand with much more advanced technology can cost as much as $100,000, the foundation said.

On one of the walls of the foundation’s office there are photos of children and adults who have received prostheses. The images show children striking poses with hands and arms in vibrant colors — orange, green — or like those of Spider-Man.

“The idea is that they don’t feel alone,” Cukerman said.

The photos of adults are more subdued; most of their prostheses imitate the color and details of the skin.

Cukerman shows the prostheses she is currently printing: the arm of an adult who had an accident.

The day of the test, Rodriguez kept looking at everything in front of her, Cukerman recalled.

“When we showed her her hands, her face lit up, her big eyes, she hardly spoke,” she said.

They explained how the prosthetic hands worked, what movement she had to make to open and close her fist, and warned that some adjustments might have to be made.

Rodriguez put her hands on and began to try movements.

“It took a few seconds; they were perfect,” said her mother.
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