Month: January 2024

ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico — The Tyrannosaurus rex seemingly came out of nowhere tens of millions of years ago, with its monstrous teeth and powerful jaws dominating the end of the age of the dinosaurs. 

How it came to be is among the many mysteries that paleontologists have long tried to solve. Researchers from several universities and the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science say they now have one more piece of the puzzle. 

On Thursday, they unveiled fossil evidence and published their findings in the journal Scientific Reports. Their study identifies a new subspecies of tyrannosaur thought to be an older and more primitive relative of the well-known T. rex. 

There were oohs and ahs as the massive jaw bone and pointy teeth were revealed to a group of schoolchildren. Pieces of the fragile specimen were first found in the 1980s by boaters on the shore of New Mexico’s largest reservoir. 

The identification of the new subspecies came through a meticulous reexamination of the jaw and other pieces of the skull that were collected over years at the site. The team analyzed the specimen bone by bone, noting differences in numerous features compared with those synonymous with T. rex. 

“Science is a process. With each new discovery, it forces us to go back and test and challenge what we thought we knew, and that’s the core story of this project,” said Anthony Fiorillo, a co-author of the study and the executive director of the museum. 

The differences between T. rex and Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis are subtle. But that’s typically the case in closely related species, said Nick Longrich, a co-author from the Milner Centre for Evolution at the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. 

“Evolution slowly causes mutations to build up over millions of years, causing species to look subtly different over time,” he said. 

The analysis suggests the new subspecies Tyrannosaurus mcraeensis was a side-branch in the species’ evolution, rather than a direct ancestor of T. rex. 

The researchers determined it predated T. rex by up to 7 million years, showing that tyrannosaurs were in North America long before paleontologists previously thought.

T. rex has a reputation as a fierce predator. It measured up to 40 feet (12 meters) long and 12 feet (3.6 meters) high. Study co-author Sebastian Dalman and the other researchers say T. mcraeensis was roughly the same size and also ate meat. 

Thomas Richard Holtz, a paleontologist at the University of Maryland who was not involved in the study, said the tyrannosaur fossil from New Mexico has been known for a while but its significance was not clear. 

One interesting aspect of the research is that it appears T. rex’s closest relatives were from southern North America, with the exception of Mongolian Tarbosaurus and Chinese Zhuchengtyrannus, Holtz said. That leaves the question of whether these Asian dinosaurs were immigrants from North America or if the new subspecies and other large tyrannosaurs were immigrants from Asia. 

“One great hindrance to solving this question is that we don’t have good fossil sites of the right environments in Asia older than Tarbosaurus and Zhuchengtyrannus, so we can’t see if their ancestors were present there or not,” Holtz said. 

He and the researchers who analyzed the specimen agree that more fossils from the Hall Lake Formation in southern New Mexico could help answer further questions.
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geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month.

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information.

“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva.

He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines.

Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer.

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “we are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO.
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An estimated 130,000 people have descended on Las Vegas for CES 2024, the consumer technology show that attracts big and small companies alike. VOA’s Tina Trinh met with some of the more than 4,000 exhibitors for a look at emerging trends in artificial intelligence, digital health and more.
Camera: Tina Trinh
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Geneva — The World Health Organization is warning that millions of people caught in conflict-driven health emergencies risk dying from traumatic wounds and infectious diseases because life-saving humanitarian aid is not reaching those in need.

In one of his most forceful statements to date, the WHO’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, accused the Israeli government of blocking essential aid to Gaza.

In a briefing to journalists Wednesday, Tedros said a humanitarian mission to northern Gaza planned for that day, the sixth since December 26, had to be canceled because “our requests were rejected and assurances of safe passage were not provided.”

“Delivering humanitarian aid in Gaza continues to face nearly insurmountable challenges. Intense bombardment, restrictions on movement, fuel shortages, and interrupted communications make it impossible for WHO and our partners to reach those in need,” he said. “We call on Israel to approve requests by WHO and other partners to deliver humanitarian aid. … Health care must always be protected and respected; it cannot be attacked, and it cannot be militarized.”

WHO officials say Gaza is buckling under what they call a perfect storm for the proliferation of disease. As of January 1, it has documented nearly 200,000 respiratory infections and tens of thousands of cases of scabies, lice, skin rashes, and jaundice.

The agency says 2,140 cases of diarrhea among children under five in Gaza were reported in 2021-2022; by November 2023, that number had increased 20-fold to 42,655 cases.

“This is an underestimation,” said Rik Peeperkorn, WHO representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, speaking in Jerusalem. “We lack access to health facilities. …So, the situation is likely to be worse.

“If the situation is not improved, we can expect more outbreaks and deaths,” he warned.

Gaza’s Hamas-run Ministry of Health says at least 23,357 Palestinians have been killed and 59,410 injured since Hamas terrorists invaded Israel October 7, killing 1,200 people, and taking some 220 hostages.

The WHO says it is impossible to access the population in Gaza without an effective deconfliction system in place because of the massive destruction of Gaza’s public health infrastructure and continued intense hostilities.

“We have heard various comments that the U.N. isn’t doing enough,” said Michael Ryan, head of the WHO’s Health Emergencies Program.

“If you continue to destroy infrastructure, if you continue to destroy services at this rate, and then you blame the people who come in and support and provide life-saving assistance—who is to blame here?” he said. “We are on the ground, and we are serving. We can do much more. We must be given the means to do much more, but right now that is not possible.”

In a virtual briefing Friday, Col. Elad Goren, head of the civil department of COGAT, the Israeli agency that facilitates aid in Gaza, said the “narrative of blockade — that is completely false.”

He said that U.N. and other humanitarian agencies have told him that there was a “sufficient amount of food in Gaza and we continue to push the humanitarian agencies to collect more trucks at the borders and to distribute them.”

He added that “Israel has not and will not stand in the way of providing humanitarian aid to the people of Gaza that are not a part of terror. They are not our enemy.”

While Gaza continues to dominate headlines globally, WHO chief Tedros warned that millions of people in other countries in conflict, notably Sudan and Ethiopia, are threatened by increasing violence, mass displacement, spread of disease, famine, and death, and must not be forgotten.

In the past month, he said conflict has displaced half-a-million people from Al-Gezira state, which used to be a haven from the conflict in the Sudanese capital, Khartoum. 

“Due to security concerns, WHO has temporarily halted its operations in Al-Gezira,” he said. “The state is also considered the breadbasket of Sudan, and fighting there has disrupted the annual harvest, and increased the risk of food insecurity in conflict-affected areas.”

Tedros also said conditions have deteriorated especially for Sudanese children since war erupted in mid-April, noting an estimated 3.5 million children under the age of 5 — one in seven — are acutely malnourished, and “more than 100,000 are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, requiring hospitalization.”

Tedros expressed grave concern about the worsening health crisis in parts of Ethiopia, saying the northwestern region of Amhara has been badly affected by conflict since April and restrictions on movement were hampering efforts to deliver humanitarian assistance.

“Fighting is affecting access to health facilities, either through damage or destruction, roadblocks, and other obstacles,” he said. “Health authorities are unable to deliver training and supplies and are unable to transport samples for laboratory confirmation in many areas.

“Disease outbreaks are spreading in northern Ethiopia, as the result of conflict, drought, economic shocks, and malnutrition, especially in the Tigray and Amhara regions,” where many people reportedly were suffering from near-famine conditions, he said, adding that “the most pressing need is for access to the affected areas, so we can assess the need and respond accordingly.”
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sydney — Australian researchers have found that record heat profoundly affected the global water cycle in 2023, contributing to severe storms, floods and droughts. An Australian National University study published Thursday asserts that rising sea and air temperatures caused by the burning of fossil fuels have intensified monsoons, cyclones and other storm systems.

The world’s climate is increasingly lurching between extreme events, according to the study. It results in severe storms and cyclones dumping more water than they used to and droughts developing much faster.

The burning of fossil fuels is identified by the report’s authors as “by far the biggest contributor to global warming.”

They say that some of the worst disasters of 2023 were linked to unusually strong cyclones that brought massive rainfall to Libya, Mozambique, Myanmar, New Zealand and Australia. A lack of rainfall and high temperatures exacerbated long-standing droughts in South America, parts of Africa and the Mediterranean.

Lead author Albert Van Dijk, a professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University College of Science, told VOA climate change is deeply affecting the global water cycle.

“On the one hand, we see that severe storm and rainfall events carry more water than they used to,” he said. “So cyclones dump more water and start to behave in some erratic ways that causes them to slow down, which happened, for instance, in Australia, but also in other places, dumping a lot of water in one place and causing massive flooding. On the other hand, we’re seeing that droughts develop much faster.”

The research team in Australia used data from thousands of ground stations and satellites to provide real-time information on rainfall, air temperature and humidity in the air.

Severe storms have hit parts of eastern Australia in recent weeks, while other parts of the country have battled bushfires.

In the first few days of summer, in early December, a heat wave warning affected areas in every state and territory, apart from the island of Tasmania.

Increasing natural disasters in Australia have raised concerns among politicians, environmental activists and scientists about the impacts of climate change.

Australia’s government has legislated a target to cut carbon emissions by 43% from 2005 levels by 2030 and to achieve net zero emissions by 2050. 
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washington — An ancient species of great ape was likely driven to extinction when climate change put their favorite fruits out of reach during dry seasons, scientists reported Wednesday. 

The species Gigantopithecus blacki, which once lived in southern China, represents the largest great ape known to scientists — standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 650 pounds. 

But its size may also have been a weakness. 

“It’s just a massive animal – just really, really big,” said Renaud Joannes-Boyau, a researcher at Australia’s Southern Cross University and co-author of the study published in the journal Nature. “When food starts to be scarce, it’s so big it can’t climb trees to explore new food sources.” 

The giant apes, which likely resembled modern orangutans, survived for around 2 million years on the forested plains of China’s Guangxi region. They ate vegetarian diets, munching on fruits and flowers in tropical forests, until the environment began to change. 

The researchers analyzed pollen and sediment samples preserved in Guangxi’s caves, as well as fossil teeth, to unravel how forests produced fewer fruits starting around 600,000 years ago, as the region experienced more dry seasons. 

The giant apes didn’t vanish quickly, but likely went extinct sometime between 215,000 and 295,000 years ago, the researchers found. 

While smaller apes may have been able to climb trees to search for different food, the researchers’ analysis shows the giant apes ate more tree bark, reeds and other non-nutritious food. 

“When the forest changed, there was not enough food preferred by the species,” said co-author Zhang Yingqi of China’s Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology. 

Most of what scientists know about the extinct great apes comes from studying fossil teeth and four large lower jaw bones, all found in southern China. No complete skeletons have been found. 

Between around 2 and 22 million years ago, several dozen species of great apes inhabited Africa, Europe and Asia, fossil records show. Today, only gorillas, chimpanzees, bonobos, orangutans and humans remain. 

While the first humans emerged in Africa, scientists don’t know on which continent the great ape family first arose, said Rick Potts, who directs the Human Origins Program at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History and was not involved in the study. 
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Washington — Ancient DNA helps explain why northern Europeans have a higher risk of multiple sclerosis than other ancestries: It’s a genetic legacy of horseback-riding cattle herders who swept into the region about 5,000 years ago.

The findings come from a huge project to compare modern DNA with that culled from ancient humans’ teeth and bones — allowing scientists to trace both prehistoric migration and disease-linked genes that tagged along.

When a Bronze Age people called the Yamnaya moved from the steppes of what are now Ukraine and Russia into northwestern Europe, they carried gene variants that today are known to increase people’s risk of multiple sclerosis, researchers reported Wednesday.

Yet the Yamnaya flourished, widely spreading those variants. Those genes probably also protected the nomadic herders from infections carried by their cattle and sheep, concluded the research published in the journal Nature. 

“What we found surprised everyone,” said study co-author William Barrie, a genetics researcher at the University of Cambridge. “These variants were giving these people an advantage of some kind.”

It’s one of several findings from a first-of-its-kind gene bank with thousands of samples from early humans in Europe and western Asia, a project headed by Eske Willerslev of Cambridge and the University of Copenhagen who helped pioneer the study of ancient DNA. Similar research has traced even earlier cousins of humans such as Neanderthals.

Using the new gene bank to explore MS was a logical first step. That’s because while MS can strike any population, it is most common among white descendants of northern Europeans and scientists have been unable to explain why.

The potentially disabling disease occurs when immune system cells mistakenly attack the protective coating on nerve fibers, gradually eroding them. It causes varying symptoms — numbness and tingling in one person, impaired walking and vision loss in another — that often wax and wane.

It’s not clear what causes MS although a leading theory is that certain infections could trigger it in people who are genetically susceptible. More than 230 genetic variants have been found that can increase someone’s risk. 

The researchers first examined DNA from about 1,600 ancient Eurasians, mapping some major shifts in northern Europe’s population. First, farmers from the Middle East began supplanting hunter-gatherers and then, nearly 5,000 years ago, the Yamnaya began moving in — traveling with horses and wagons as they herded cattle and sheep.

The research team compared the ancient DNA to about 400,000 present-day people stored in a UK gene bank, to see the MS-linked genetic variations persist in the north, the direction the Yamnaya moved, rather than in southern Europe.

In what is now Denmark, the Yamnaya rapidly replaced ancient farmers, making them the closest ancestors of modern Danes, Willerslev said. MS rates are particularly high in Scandinavian countries.

Why would gene variants presumed to have strengthened ancient immunity later play a role in an autoimmune disease? Differences in how modern humans are exposed to animal germs may play a role, knocking the immune system out of balance, said study co-author Dr. Astrid Iversen of Oxford University.

The findings finally offer an explanation for the north-south MS divide in Europe, but more work is needed to confirm the link, cautioned genetic expert Samira Asgari of New York’s Mount Sinai School of Medicine, who wasn’t involved with the research, in an accompanying commentary.

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia.

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer.

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “We are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.”

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks, and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated.

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO. 
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Geneva — The head of the U.N. health agency said Wednesday holiday gatherings and the spread of the most prominent variant globally led to increased transmission of COVID-19 last month. 

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said nearly 10,000 deaths were reported in December, while hospital admissions during the month jumped 42% in nearly 50 countries — mostly in Europe and the Americas — that shared such trend information. 

“Although 10,000 deaths a month is far less than the peak of the pandemic, this level of preventable deaths is not acceptable,” the World Health Organization director-general told reporters from its headquarters in Geneva. 

He said it was “certain” that cases were on the rise in other places that haven’t been reporting, calling on governments to keep up surveillance and provide continued access to treatments and vaccines. 

Tedros said the JN.1 variant was now the most prominent in the world. It is an omicron variant, so current vaccines should still provide some protection. 

Maria Van Kerkhove, technical lead at WHO for COVID-19, cited an increase in respiratory diseases across the globe due to the coronavirus but also flu, rhinovirus and pneumonia. 

“We expect those trends to continue into January through the winter months in the northern hemisphere,” she said, while noting increases in COVID-19 in the southern hemisphere — where it’s now summer. 

While bouts of coughs, sniffling, fever and fatigue in the winter are nothing new, Van Kerkhove said this year in particular, “We are seeing co-circulation of many different types of pathogens.” 

WHO officials recommend that people get vaccinated when possible, wear masks, and make sure indoor areas are well ventilated. 

“The vaccines may not stop you being infected, but the vaccines are certainly reducing significantly your chance of being hospitalized or dying,” said Dr. Michael Ryan, head of emergencies at WHO. 
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Islamabad — A senior representative of Afghanistan’s Taliban government told a Pakistan-hosted international health conference Wednesday that his country had recorded an increase in mosquito-borne malaria and dengue fever cases, but infections caused by highly contagious poliovirus declined significantly.

Only 12 children around the world were paralyzed by wild poliovirus in 2023, all of them in Afghanistan and Pakistan — with six reported in each. The two countries, sharing a nearly 2,600-kilometer border, have not detected a polio infection this year.

“Polio is still a great challenge for both Afghanistan and Pakistan,” Qalandar Ebad, the Taliban health minister, said in his English-language speech at the first global health security summit in Islamabad.

Delegates from 70 countries worldwide, including those from the United States and the United Nations, are attending the summit in the Pakistani capital.

“We are trying our best to eradicate the polio virus from the country and fortunately we have good accomplishments in this area,” Ebad said.

The World Health Organization says the polio vaccination campaign in Afghanistan has improved in quality and outreach since the Taliban regained control of the war-ravaged country in August 2021, leading to the cessation of years of nationwide hostilities.

The Taliban minister noted that there was a “slight increase in HIV/AIDS cases” in the impoverished country, but he did not elaborate.

Ebad blamed climate change for some health emergencies facing his South Asian nation of more than 40 million people. He urged the need to assist Afghanistan and other developing countries in improving their national healthcare systems to enable them to utilize locally available expertise to combat infectious diseases.

“We are witnessing that the funding in Afghanistan is decreasing, but still, in our country, instead of national capacity [building], many international [workers] with higher salaries are recruited, though the national [workers] can perform the same tasks as internationals do,” the Taliban minister asserted.

No foreign country has recognized the Taliban, citing their bans on Afghan women’s access to education and work.

Afghanistan lost billions of dollars in foreign aid after the Taliban takeover as Western countries and international donors suspended their financial support for the country, where the health sector was primarily dependent on the funding.

In his address to Wednesday’s opening session of the summit, Pakistani Prime Minister Anwaar-ul-Haq Kakar urged collective efforts to fight global infectious diseases like COVID-19 and climate change-induced emergencies.

Kakar said that “no state in the world, no matter how powerful it is, can meet such challenges” alone.

While addressing the gathering, Donald Blome, the U.S. ambassador to Pakistan, backed calls for a collaborative international approach to global health security.

“Coordination with partners is the most effective way to address regional and global health threats,” Blome said. He added that halting infectious disease outbreaks at their point of origin is one of the best and most economical ways to save lives. “Health is the cornerstone to the future of any thriving nation, and the United States will be a strong partner to build this future.”
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