The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency this week released proposals for the most aggressive vehicle emission standards in the country’s history, with the expectation that electric cars will account for two of every three cars being produced in the U.S. by 2032. Keith Kocinski reports.
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Day: April 13, 2023
An activist in Ghana is swimming the nearly 500-kilometer-long Volta River, including Lake Volta, to bring attention to worsening water pollution. Yvette Tetteh is also collecting water samples along the way to test for pollution. Senanu Tord reports from Lake Volta, Ghana.
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The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Climate Prediction Center on Thursday issued an El Nino watch for the next six months, a climate pattern that is likely to play a role in this year’s Atlantic hurricane season.
In a statement, NOAA said the indications are favorable — a 62% chance — for an El Nino pattern to form sometime from May to July. The pattern is characterized by warmer ocean temperatures and higher than normal precipitation in the central to eastern Pacific Ocean.
The El Nino pattern would follow nearly two continuous years of La Nina conditions in the Pacific.
El Nino and La Nina are opposite extremes of the El Nino-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) climate pattern that occur across the equatorial Pacific and can influence weather across the United States and around the world. NOAA monitors ENSO and issues monthly outlooks on the patterns.
The agency’s El Nino watch comes as the first forecast for the 2023 Atlantic hurricane season was issued by Colorado State University (CSU), led by meteorologist Philip Klotzbach.
The CSU forecast calls for a slightly below normal hurricane season but cautions there is a great deal of uncertainly as the forecast depends heavily on the likelihood of El Nino forming and how strong it might be. The warmer than normal ocean temperatures associated with El Nino are conducive to an active hurricane season.
The CSU forecast predicts 13 named storms to form during the 2023 season compared with the annual average of 14.4. Of those, CSU predicts six would become hurricanes, compared with the annual average of 7.2.
The forecasters predict two of those will become major hurricanes — those with winds topping 179 kilometers per hour — compared with the average of three.
The official Atlantic hurricane season of the U.S. National Weather Service, which is part of NOAA, runs from June 1 to November 30 each year.
Some information for this report came from Reuters.
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Ghana has become the first country to approve a new malaria vaccine described as a “world changer” by scientists who developed it at the University of Oxford.
The mosquito-spread parasitic disease kills more than 600,000 people every year. The majority are children in sub-Saharan Africa.
A statement issued Wednesday by Oxford University says its new malaria vaccine called R21 has secured regulatory approval by Ghanaian officials for use in the age group at highest risk of death from malaria — children age 5-to-36 months.
Malaria is an endemic disease in Ghana. The West African country’s health service says it accounts for 38% of all outpatients, with the most vulnerable groups being children younger than 5 years old.
“We have tested a lot of vaccines — and to be here now, to have a vaccine that is being approved first for use in Ghana — is fantastic. It is what we’ve all been working hard towards,” said Dr. Katie Ewer, head of malaria immunology and professor of vaccine immunology at the Jenner Institute at the University of Oxford.
Ewer said R21 has higher efficacy — about 75% in the data from the phase two trial. “We think perhaps the durability of the response has been better as well,” she said.
Some hesitant to accept vaccine
Ghana was one of three African countries in 2019 to have piloted the first malaria vaccine, known as RTS,S. But public acceptance of the vaccine, according to health officials, was somewhat below target due to hesitancy among parents linked to a fear of the unknown.
Ewer says having more malaria vaccines on the market helps parents make a better choice.
“It’s good news that we’ve now got a second malaria vaccine approved,” said Ewer. “And so, people can trust that these vaccines are safe to use. And I hope that people trust the vaccine and will take it up and see for themselves the effect it has.”
The World Health Organization says a child dies every minute from malaria in Africa, where it is estimated that nine out of 10 malaria deaths occur. It is hoped that the new vaccine will help Ghanaian and African children combat malaria.
Vaccine reduces risk
Dr. Nana Yaw Peprah, the head of the National Malaria Control Program in Ghana, told VOA that the Oxford vaccine is coming at the right time.
“The vaccine has a role in the elimination agenda because it reduces the risk of people having the disease and also its severe form,” said Peprah. “The vaccines are for children. If you allow your child to be given this vaccine, the risk of this child, who is actually in the vulnerable group and the risk of getting malaria, really reduces.”
Nearly half of the world’s population is at risk of malaria. In 2020, an estimated 241 million people in 85 countries contracted malaria. That same year, the WHO says the disease claimed approximately 627,000 lives.
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The first image of a black hole captured four years ago revealed a fuzzy, fiery doughnut-shaped object. Now, researchers have used artificial intelligence to give that cosmic beauty shot a touch-up.
The updated picture, published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, keeps the original shape, but with a skinnier ring and a sharper resolution.
The image released in 2019 gave a peek at the enormous black hole at the center of the M87 galaxy, 53 million light-years from Earth. A light-year is 5.8 trillion miles. It was made using data gathered by a network of radio telescopes around the world, showing swirling light and gas.
But even with many telescopes working together, gaps remained in the data. In the latest study, scientists relied on the same data and used machine learning to fill in the missing pieces.
The resulting picture looks similar to the original, but with a thinner “doughnut” and a darker center, researchers said.
“For me, it feels like we’re really seeing it for the first time,” said lead author Lia Medeiros, an astrophysicist at the Institute for Advanced Study in New Jersey.
Medeiros said the team plans to use machine learning on other images of celestial objects, including possibly the black hole at the center of our Milky Way galaxy.
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ChatGPT could return to Italy soon if its maker, OpenAI, complies with measures to satisfy regulators who had imposed a temporary ban on the artificial intelligence software over privacy worries.
The Italian data protection authority on Wednesday outlined a raft of requirements that OpenAI will have to satisfy by April 30 for the ban on AI chatbot to be lifted.
The watchdog last month ordered the company to temporarily stop processing Italian users’ personal information while it investigated a possible data breach. The authority said it didn’t want to hamper AI’s development but emphasized the importance of following the European Union’s strict data privacy rules.
OpenAI, which had responded by proposing remedies to ease the concerns, did not reply immediately to a request for comment Wednesday.
Concerns about boom grow
Concerns are growing about the artificial intelligence boom, with other countries, from France to Canada, investigating or looking closer at so-called generative AI technology like ChatGPT. The chatbot is “trained” on huge pools of data, including digital books and online writings, and able to generate text that mimics human writing styles.
Under Italy’s measures, OpenAI must post information on its website about how and why it processes the personal information of both users and non-users, as well as provide the option to correct or delete that data.
The company will have to rely on consent or “legitimate interest” to use personal data to train ChatGPT’s algorithms, the watchdog said.
Regulators question legal basis
The Italian regulators had questioned whether there’s a legal basis for OpenAI to collect massive amounts of data used to teach ChatGPT’s algorithms and raised concerns the system could sometimes generate false information about individuals.
San Francisco-based OpenAI also will have to carry out a publicity campaign by May 15 through radio and TV, newspapers and the internet to inform people about how it uses their personal data for training algorithms, Italy’s watchdog said.
There’s also a requirement to verify users’ ages and set up a system to filter out those who are under 13 and teens between 13 and 18 who don’t have parental consent.
“Only in that case will the Italian SA (supervisory authority) lift its order that placed a temporary limitation on the processing of Italian users’ data … so that ChatGPT will be available once again from Italy,” the watchdog said on its website.
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