Oct162022 DmediaNo Comments

Solar-Powered US Town Successfully Weathers Hurricane

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct152022 TechmanNo Comments

Indian Village Disconnects With ‘Daily Digital Detox’ Initiative

All, Business, News, Technology
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…
Read More
Oct152022 DmediaNo Comments

Astronomer Captivated by Brightest Flash Ever Seen

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct142022 DmediaNo Comments

Disaster Challenge Aids Australia’s Response to Natural Hazards

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct142022 DmediaNo Comments

Warmer-Than-Average Winter Ahead for Europe, Forecaster Says

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct142022 DmediaNo Comments

Ozone Hole Grows This Year but Still Shrinking in General

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct132022 DmediaNo Comments

Cameroon: Armed Separatists Prevent Health Workers From Assisting Monkeypox Patients

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct132022 DmediaNo Comments

Australia Investigates Impact of Long COVID

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct132022 DmediaNo Comments

Tourists Flock to Taiwan as COVID Entry Restrictions Ease

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct122022 DmediaNo Comments

Worldwide Monkeypox Cases Surpass 70,000, WHO Says

All, News
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,"…
Read More
Oct122022 DmediaNo Comments

Uganda, WHO to Try Two Vaccines for Rare Ebola Virus Strain

All, News
Uganda and the World Health Organization are planning to try out two vaccines for the Ebola Sudan virus to try and curb the spread of the rare strain.  The virus has so far killed 19 people and infected at least 54 people in five districts in Uganda. After meetings in Kampala, the WHO's director general described the new outbreak as troubling. Uganda hosted ministers from 11 countries in an emergency one-day meeting Wednesday to align their preparation for and response to Ebola outbreaks and agree on a strategy for collaboration. Speaking to journalists after the meeting, Dr. Jane Ruth Aceng, Uganda’s health minister, said the department is expecting two different types of vaccines for the Sudan virus of Ebola currently circulating in Uganda. Both vaccines, according to the WHO, are…
Read More
Oct122022 DmediaNo Comments

FDA Clears Updated COVID Boosters for Kids as Young as 5

All, News
The U.S. on Wednesday authorized updated COVID-19 boosters for children as young as 5, seeking to expand protection ahead of an expected winter wave. Tweaked boosters rolled out for Americans 12 and older last month, doses modified to target today's most common and contagious omicron relative. While there wasn't a big rush, federal health officials are urging that people seek the extra protection ahead of holiday gatherings. Now the Food and Drug Administration has given a green light for elementary school-age kids to get the updated booster doses, too — one made by Pfizer for 5- to 11-year-olds, and a version from rival Moderna for those as young as 6. There's one more step before parents can bring their kids in for the new shot: The Centers for Disease Control…
Read More
Oct122022 DmediaNo Comments

Scientists Grow Human Brain Cells in Rats to Study Diseases

All, News
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…
Read More
Oct122022 DmediaNo Comments

World’s 1st Space Tourist Signs Up for Flight Around Moon

All, News
The world's first space tourist wants to go back — only this time, he’s signed up for a spin around the moon aboard Elon Musk’s Starship. For Dennis Tito, 82, it’s a chance to relive the joy of his trip to the International Space Station, now that he's retired with time on his hands. He isn't interested in hopping on a 10-minute flight to the edge of space or repeating what he did 21 years ago. “Been there, done that.” His weeklong moonshot — its date to be determined and years in the future — will bring him within 125 miles (200 kilometers) of the lunar far side. He'll have company: his wife, Akiko, and 10 others willing to shell out big bucks for the ride. Tito won’t say how…
Read More
Oct112022 DmediaNo Comments

White House: Get New Booster by Halloween for Safer Holidays

All, News
The White House on Tuesday said eligible Americans should get the updated COVID-19 boosters by Halloween to have maximum protection against the coronavirus by Thanksgiving and the holidays, as it warned of a "challenging" virus season ahead. Dr. Ashish Jha, the White House COVID-19 coordinator, said the U.S. has the tools, both from vaccines and treatments, to largely eliminate serious illness and death from the virus, but he stressed that's only the case if people do their part. "We are not helpless against these challenges," he said. "What happens this winter is up to us." The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says only about 11.5 million Americans so far have received the updated shots, which are meant to provide a boost of protection against both the original strain of…
Read More
Oct112022 DmediaNo Comments

Smashing Success: NASA Asteroid Strike Results in Big Nudge

All, News
A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test. The space agency attempted the first test of its kind two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth's way. The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand kilometers. It took days of telescope observations to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 160-meter asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock. Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its…
Read More
Oct112022 DmediaNo Comments

Climate Extremes Pose as Big a Threat to Power System as Ukraine War, WMO Says

All, News
Energy infrastructure will become more vulnerable to extreme weather such as heatwaves and hurricanes, the World Meteorological Organization warned on Tuesday, with a senior official saying that climate change poses as big a threat to global energy security as the war in Ukraine. This year was illustrative of what the WMO says are the challenges ahead, with hot weather and drought hampering power production in parts of Europe and China. Russia's invasion of Ukraine, which Moscow calls a "special military operation," has led to deep cuts to European energy supplies, with possible power rationing and blackouts ahead. "I think that if we don't do anything, if we don't make our energy system more resilient to climate change, there will be as big a disruption in the energy system as the…
Read More
Oct102022 TechmanNo Comments

Some Airport Websites Go Offline; Cause Being Investigated

All, Business, News, Technology
The websites for some major U.S. airports went down early Monday in an apparent coordinated denial-of-service attack, although officials said flights were not affected.  The attacks followed a call by a shadowy group of pro-Russian hackers that calls itself Killnet for coordinated denial-of-service attacks on the targets. The group published a target list on its Telegram channel.  "We noticed this morning that the external website was down, and our IT and security people are in the process of investigating," said Andrew Gobeil, a representative for Atlanta's Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport. "There has been no impact on operations."  Portions of the public-facing side of the Los Angeles International Airport website were also disrupted, spokesperson Victoria Spilabotte said. "No internal airport systems were compromised and there were no operational disruptions."  Spilabotte said the…
Read More
Oct102022 DmediaNo Comments

Malawi Announces Rollout of Africa’s First Children’s Malaria Vaccine

All, News
Malawi's health ministry says it will soon roll out Africa's first malaria vaccine for children under age five. The RTS,S vaccine, which was tested in Ghana, Kenya and Malawi, took more than 30 years to develop. While the vaccine has a relatively low level of effectiveness, it has raised hopes of saving some of the more than 400,000 people who die annually from the mosquito-borne disease, most of them African children. The vaccine roll out, scheduled for next month, follows the completion of the pilot phase. Since 2019, the World Health Organization has vaccinated 360,000 children per year in Malawi, Ghana and Kenya, one-third of them in Malawi.   Khumbize Kandodo Chiponda, Malawi's minister of health, said children are especially at risk of malaria during the rainy season, in the…
Read More
Oct102022 DmediaNo Comments

‘Best Before’ Labels Scrutinized as Food Waste Concerns Grow

All, News
As awareness grows around the world about the problem of food waste, one culprit in particular is drawing scrutiny: "best before" labels. Manufacturers have used the labels for decades to estimate peak freshness. Unlike "use by" labels, which are found on perishable foods like meat and dairy, "best before" labels have nothing to do with safety and may encourage consumers to throw away food that's perfectly fine to eat. "They read these dates and then they assume that it's bad, they can't eat it and they toss it, when these dates don't actually mean that they're not edible or they're not still nutritious or tasty," said Patty Apple, a manager at Food Shift, an Alameda, California, nonprofit that collects and uses expired or imperfect foods. To tackle the problem, major…
Read More
Oct102022 DmediaNo Comments

World Mental Health Day Marked on Monday

All, News
Monday is World Mental Health Day. To mark the day, the World Health Organization has launched a campaign to “raise awareness and spur action” in regions where there are high rates of death by suicide. The world health body said that the pandemic has created “a global crisis for mental health,” in a statement Monday, adding that it is “fueling short- and long-term stresses and undermining the mental health of millions.”  “Estimates put the rise in both anxiety and depressive disorders at more than 25% during the first year of the pandemic,” the U.N. agency said. “At the same time, mental health services have been severely disrupted and the treatment gap for mental health conditions has widened.” The treatment of mental health issues is particularly acute in Africa where there…
Read More
Oct92022 DmediaNo Comments

Disasters Like Ian Pose Extra Risk for Fragile Older People

All, News
Older people with limited mobility and those with chronic health conditions requiring the use of electrically powered medical devices were especially vulnerable when Hurricane Ian slammed into Southwest Florida, and experts warn such risks to society's oldest are growing as disasters increase with the impact of climate change. Almost all of the dozens of people killed by Ian in hardest hit Lee County were 50 or older, with many in their 70s, 80s and even 90s. That's highlighted the rising dangers for those least likely to be able to flee such disasters and those most likely to be impacted by the aftermath. Climate change makes hurricanes wetter and more powerful, but it also increases the frequency of heat waves like ones that scorched the Pacific Northwest the last two summers,…
Read More
Oct82022 TechmanNo Comments

China Lashes Out at Latest US Export Controls on Chips

All, Business, News, Technology
China Saturday criticized the latest U.S. decision to tighten export controls that would make it harder for China to obtain and manufacture advanced computing chips, calling it a violation of international economic and trade rules that will “isolate and backfire” on the U.S. “Out of the need to maintain its sci-tech hegemony, the U.S. abuses export control measures to maliciously block and suppress Chinese companies,” said Foreign Ministry representative Mao Ning. “It will not only damage the legitimate rights and interests of Chinese companies, but also affect American companies’ interests,” she said. Mao also said that the U.S. “weaponization and politicization” of science and technology as well as economic and trade issues will not stop China’s progress. She was speaking after the U.S. on Friday updated export controls that included…
Read More
Oct82022 DmediaNo Comments

Philadelphia Apologizes for Experiments on Black Inmates

All, News
The city of Philadelphia issued an apology Thursday for the unethical medical experiments performed on mostly Black inmates at its Holmesburg Prison from the 1950s through the 1970s. The move comes after community activists and families of some of those inmates raised the need for a formal apology. It also follows a string of apologies from various U.S. cities over historically racist policies or wrongdoing in the wake of the nationwide racial reckoning after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.  The city allowed University of Pennsylvania researcher Dr. Albert Kligman to conduct the dermatological, biochemical and pharmaceutical experiments that intentionally exposed about 300 inmates to viruses, fungus, asbestos and chemical agents including dioxin — a component of Agent Orange. The vast majority of Kligman’s experiments were…
Read More
Oct72022 TechmanNo Comments

Biden Order Promises EU Citizens Better Data Privacy 

All, Business, News, Technology
U.S. President Joe Biden signed an executive order Friday designed to allay European concerns that U.S. intelligence agencies are illegally spying on them. It promises strengthened safeguards against data collection abuses and creates a forum for legal challenges.  The order builds on a preliminary agreement Biden announced in March with European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen in a bid to end a yearslong battle over the safety of EU citizens' data that tech companies store in the U.S. However, the European privacy campaigner who triggered the battle wasn't satisfied that it resolved core issues and warned of more legal wrangling.  The reworked Privacy Shield "includes a robust commitment to strengthen the privacy and civil liberties safeguards for signals intelligence, which should ensure the privacy of EU personal data," Commerce…
Read More