Tag: Science

Experts: Lake Mead brain-eating amoeba death among few in US

LAS VEGAS — The death of a Las Vegas-area teenager from a rare brain-eating amoeba that investigators think he was exposed to in warm waters at Lake Mead should prompt caution, not panic, among people at freshwater lakes, rivers and springs, experts said Friday.

“It gets people’s attention because of the name,” former public health epidemiologist Brian Labus said of the naturally occurring organism officially called Naegleria fowleri but almost always dubbed the brain-eating amoeba. “But it is a very, very rare disease.”

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has tallied just 154 cases of infection and death from the amoeba in the U.S. since 1962, said Labus, who teaches at the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas. Almost half those cases were in Texas and Florida. Only one was reported in Nevada before this week.

“I wouldn’t say there’s an alarm to sound for this,” Labus said. “People need to be smart about it when they’re in places where this rare amoeba actually lives.” The organism is found in waters ranging from 77 degrees Fahrenheit (25 Celsius) to 115 degrees (46 C), he said.

The Southern Nevada Health District did not identify the teen who died, but said he may have been exposed to the microscopic organism during the weekend of Sept. 30 in the Kingman Wash area on the Arizona side of the Colorado River reservoir behind Hoover Dam. The district publicized the case on Wednesday, following confirmation of the cause from the CDC.

The district and the Lake Mead National Recreation Area, which oversees the lake and the Colorado River, noted the amoeba only infects people by entering the nose and migrating to the brain. It is almost always fatal.

“It cannot infect people if swallowed, and is not spread from person to person,” news releases from the two agencies said. Both advised people to avoid jumping or diving into bodies of warm water, especially during summer, and to keep the head above water in hot springs or other “untreated geothermal waters” that pool in pocket canyons in the vast recreation area.

“It is 97% fatal but 99% preventable,” said Dennis Kyle, professor of infectious diseases and cellular biology and director of the Center for Tropical and Emerging Global Diseases at the University of Georgia. “You can protect yourself by not jumping into water that gets up your nose, or use nose plugs.”

The amoeba causes primary amebic meningoencephalitis, a brain infection with symptoms resembling meningitis or encephalitis that initially include headache, fever, nausea or vomiting — then progress to stiff neck, seizures and coma that can lead to death.

Symptoms can start one to 12 days after exposure, and death usually occurs within about five days.

There is no known effective treatment, and Kyle said a diagnosis almost always comes too late.

Kyle, who has studied the organism for decades, said data did not immediately suggest that waters warmed by climate change affected the amoeba. He said he knew of fewer than four cases nationwide.

A survey of news reports found cases in Northern California, Nebraska and Iowa. A CDC map showed most cases during the last 60 years in Southern U.S. states, led by 39 cases in Texas and 37 in Florida.

“I think this year is sort of an average year for cases,” Kyle said. “But this was a very warm summer. The key point is that warmer weather tends to generate more amoeba in the environment.”

Not many labs regularly identify the organism, Kyle noted. He said that AdventHealth Central Florida recently joined the CDC with programs able to identify it.

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October 21, 2022
Cell biologist from Duke named new president of MIT

CAMBRIDGE, Mass. — While there were myriad reasons Sally Kornbluth felt pulled to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, it was the chance to help address some of the world’s greatest challenges that played perhaps the biggest role, the school’s new president said at an introductory news conference on Thursday.

“Maybe above all, I was drawn here because this is a moment when humanity faces huge global problems, problems that urgently demand the world’s most skillful minds and hands,” she said. “In short, I believe this is MIT’s moment. I could not imagine a greater privilege than helping the people of MIT seize its full potential.”

Kornbluth, a cell biologist who has spent the past eight years as provost at Duke University, was elected MIT’s 18th president on Thursday by the MIT Corporation, the school’s governing body.

She will officially take over on Jan. 1, succeeding L. Rafael Reif, who in February announced that he planned to step down after 10 years on the job. She is the second woman to lead MIT.

Kornbluth has been on the Duke faculty since 1994, and is currently a professor of biology. As provost at the North Carolina school since 2014, Kornbluth was responsible for carrying out Duke’s teaching and research missions; developing its intellectual priorities; and partnering with others to improve faculty and students.

It was her accomplishments at Duke that made her the clear frontrunner out of the four finalists for the MIT presidency, said Diane Greene, chair of the MIT Corporation.

“Dr. Kornbluth is an extraordinary find for MIT,” Greene said, noting that the vote was unanimous. “She’s an exceptional administrator, widely respected for her ability to create an environment that breaks barriers, and importantly, enables every student, faculty and staff member to contribute at their highest levels. She is known for her judgment, plain-spokenness, and integrity.”

Kornbluth also pledged to keep MIT a welcoming and comfortable environment where everyone can reach their potential.

“I’m absolutely committed to building a more diverse and increasingly inclusive environment here at MIT,” she said.

Kornbluth already has one strong tie to MIT. Her son, Alex, is a Ph.D. student in electrical engineering and computer science at the school. Her husband, Daniel Lew, is a professor of pharmacology and cancer biology at the Duke School of Medicine, and her daughter, Joey, is a medical student at the University of California at San Francisco.

She grew up in Fair Lawn, New Jersey, and has degrees from Williams College, Cambridge University, and Rockefeller University.

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October 20, 2022
Study: Cancer-causing gas leaking from CA stoves, pipes

Gas stoves in California homes are leaking cancer-causing benzene, researchers found in a new study published on Thursday, though they say more research is needed to understand how many homes have leaks.

In the study, published in Environmental Science and Technology on Thursday, researchers also estimated that over 4 tons of benzene per year are being leaked into the atmosphere from outdoor pipes that deliver the gas to buildings around California — the equivalent to the benzene emissions from nearly 60,000 vehicles. And those emissions are unaccounted for by the state.

The researchers collected samples of gas from 159 homes in different regions of California and measured to see what types of gases were being emitted into homes when stoves were off. They found that all of the samples they tested had hazardous air pollutants, like benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene and xylene (BTEX), all of which can have adverse health effects in humans with chronic exposure or acute exposure in larger amounts.

Of most concern to the researchers was benzene, a known carcinogen that can lead to leukemia and other cancers and blood disorders, according to the National Cancer Institute.

The finding could have major implications for indoor and outdoor air quality in California, which has the second highest level of residential natural gas use in the United States.

“What our science shows is that people in California are exposed to potentially hazardous levels of benzene from the gas that is piped into their homes,” said Drew Michanowicz, a study co-author and senior scientist at PSE Healthy Energy, an energy research and policy institute. “We hope that policymakers will consider this data when they are making policy to ensure current and future policies are health-protective in light of this new research.”

Homes in almost every region in the study — Greater Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Sacramento and Fresno — had benzene levels that far exceed the limit determined to be safe by the California Office of Environmental Health Hazards Assessment. But the region with the highest benzene levels by far was the North San Fernando and Santa Clarita valleys.

This finding in particular didn’t surprise residents and health care workers in the region who spoke to The Associated Press about the study. That’s because many of them experienced the largest-known natural gas leak in the nation in Aliso Canyon in 2015.

Back then, 100,000 tons of methane and other gases, including benzene, leaked from a failed well operated by Southern California Gas Co. It took nearly four months to get the leak under control and resulted in headaches, nausea and nose bleeds.

Dr. Jeffrey Nordella was a physician at an urgent care in the region during this time and remembers being puzzled by the variety of symptoms patients were experiencing. “I didn’t have much to offer them,” except to help them try to detox from the exposures, he said.

That was an acute exposure of a large amount of benzene, which is different from chronic exposure to smaller amounts, but “remember what the World Health Organization said: there’s no safe level of benzene,” he said.

Kyoko Hibino was one of the residents exposed to toxic air pollution as a result of the Aliso Canyon gas leak. After the leak, she started having a persistent cough and nosebleeds and eventually was diagnosed with breast cancer, which has also been linked to benzene exposure. Her cats also started having nosebleeds and one recently passed away from leukemia.

“I’d say let’s take this study really seriously and understand how bad (benzene exposure) is,” she said.

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 20, 2022
Mysterious breeding habits of aquarium fish vex experts

PENYABANGAN, Indonesia — It took a broken air conditioner for Tom Bowling to figure out — after nearly eight months of failure — how to breed the coveted pink-yellow tropical fish known as blotched anthias.

Bowling, an ornamental fish breeder based in Palau, had kept the fish in cool water, trying to replicate the temperatures the deep-water creatures are usually found in. But when the air conditioner broke the water temperature rose by a few degrees overnight — with surprising results. “They started spawning — they went crazy, laying eggs everywhere,” said Bowling.

Experts around the world tinker over water temperature, futz with lights, and try various mixes of microscopic food particles in hopes of happening upon the particular and peculiar set of conditions that will inspire ornamental fish to breed. Experts hope to steer the aquarium fish trade away from wild-caught fish, which are often caught with poisons that can hurt coral ecosystems.

PROPER AMBIANCE REQUIRED

Most of the millions of glittering fish that dart around saltwater aquariums in the U.S., Europe, China and elsewhere are taken from coral reefs in the Philippines, Indonesia and other tropical countries.

Trappers often stun them using chemicals like cyanide. They are then transferred to middlemen and then flown across the globe, ending up in aquariums in homes, malls, restaurants and medical offices. Experts estimate “large percentages” die on the way.

Part of the problem: only about 4% of saltwater aquarium fish can be bred in captivity, largely because many have elaborate reproductive cycles and delicate early life stages that require sometimes mysterious conditions that scientists and breeders struggle to reproduce.

For decades experts have been working to unlock the secrets of marine fish breeding. Breakthroughs don’t come quickly, said Paul Andersen, head of the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign, which works to support sustainable coral reef aquarium fisheries.

“It requires years of investment, research and development, oftentimes to make incremental steps,” he said. And then even longer, he said, to bring newly captive-bred species to market.

The Moorish idol, a black-and-yellow striped fish with a mane-like dorsal fin spine, requires lots of space. Squiggle-striped green mandarins prefer to spawn just before the sun sets, requiring very particular lighting cycles to breed in captivity. As Bowling discovered in Palau, blotched anthias require very specific temperatures.

“You’ve got to pay attention to all the parameters that will make a fish happy,” said Andersen. “Some species are really gentle, delicate and sensitive to these kinds of things.”

FRAGILE EARLY DAYS

After fish spawn, breeders often find themselves facing the most challenging part of the process: the larval period, which is the time just after the fish hatches, before it develops into a juvenile. The flow of water has to be just right, but they are so fragile they have to be protected from filters and even tank walls.

The first feeding is also crucial, said Andrew Rhyne, a marine biology professor at Roger Williams University in Rhode Island. During the first days many larval fish don’t have eyes or mouths, instead living off their yolk.

“When they finally do form eyes or mouths it’s so important to have created an environment that allows them to get a first bite of zooplankton so they can get a little stronger and continue to grow,” said Rhyne. “That’s kind of been the magic for all of this.”

Often that first bite is a critical part of the ocean food system that harbors its own mysteries: called copepods, they are microscopic crustaceans that provide vital nutrients to larval fish and are key for breeders around the world.

At the University of Florida Tropical Aquaculture Laboratory in Ruskin — where the blue tang “Dory” fish popularized by the movie Finding Nemo was successfully bred for the first time — associate professor Matt DiMaggio and his students have been working to produce copepods. But even the copepods haven proven to be difficult to raise.

Mort than 10,000 miles away from the Florida lab, on the tropical northern coast of Bali, Indonesia, renowned fish breeder Wen-Ping Su walks between large cement fish tanks, his own zooplankton recipe churning in a circular tank nearby.

Su said he has 10 different keys to success that he’s been developing for nearly two decades. Those keys have enabled him to breed fish that no one else has, including striped regal angelfish and frilly black-bodied, orange-rimmed pinnatus batfish.

VALUABLE SECRETS

But asking Wen-Ping Su if he’ll share details, his answer comes quickly, with his hands crossing to form an X in front of his big smile: “No.”

It’s the same sentiment echoed by Bowling, who pauses when asked about sharing the secrets to his most high-profile successes. “That’s the part I really don’t want to tell you,” he laughs.

Those secrets are their livelihoods. The blotched anthias Bowling bred after the broken air conditioner are listed for $700 on his company’s website. Fish bred by Su also sell for hundreds of dollars online.

But in the past five years there are some organizations — such as Rising Tide Conservation, a non-governmental organization dedicated to developing and promoting aquaculture — that have worked to promote information sharing, said DiMaggio.

“That’s helped to accelerate the number of species that we’ve been able to raise in during that time and the variety of species too,” he said, highlighting species such as wrasses, butterflyfish and tangs.

Rhyne’s research lab — which includes breeding toothy queen triggerfish and red-striped yasha gobies— has been working to share his research with breeders as well.

But Rhyne and other breeders concede that it’s unlikely all aquarium fish will be raised in captivity because some are just too difficult, while others are so abundant in nature.

And breeding a fish doesn’t guarantee it will make it to or do well on the market, said Rhyne. Captive bred fish cost more, and experts in the fish industry recognize that it will take time to convince consumers should pay more for them.

“How do we market aquaculture fish the way that we market organic foods, you know, and demand that premium price point?” said Andersen, from the Coral Reef Aquarium Fisheries Campaign. “The marketing is really important.”

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Associated Press video journalist Marshall Ritzel reported from Florida. Kathy Young contributed to this report from New York. Andi Jatmiko, Edna Tarigan and Tatan Syuflana contributed from Indonesia.

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Follow Victoria Milko on Twitter: @thevmilko

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 19, 2022
Genetic twist: Medieval plague may have molded our immunity

Our Medieval ancestors left us with a biological legacy: Genes that may have helped them survive the Black Death make us more susceptible to certain diseases today.

It’s a prime example of the way germs shape us over time, scientists say in a new study published Wednesday in the journal Nature.

“Our genome today is a reflection of our whole evolutionary history” as we adapt to different germs, said Luis Barreiro, a senior author of the research. Some, like those behind the bubonic plague, have had a big impact on our immune systems.

The Black Death in the 14th century was the single deadliest event in recorded history, spreading throughout Europe, the Middle East and northern Africa and wiping out up to 30% to 50% of the population.

Barreiro and his colleagues at the University of Chicago, McMaster University in Ontario and the Pasteur Institute in Paris examined ancient DNA samples from the bones of more than 200 people from London and Denmark who died over about 100 years that stretched before, during, and after the Black Death swept through that region.

They identified four genes that, depending on the variant, either protected against or increased susceptibility to the bacteria that causes bubonic plague, which is most often transmitted by the bite of an infected flea.

They found that what helped people in Medieval times led to problems generations later — raising the frequency of mutations detrimental in modern times. Some of the same genetic variants identified as protective against the plague are associated with certain autoimmune disorders, such as Crohn’s disease, rheumatoid arthritis and lupus. In these sorts of diseases, the immune system that defends the body against disease and infection attacks the body’s own healthy tissues.

“A hyperactive immune system may have been great in the past but in the environment today it might not be as helpful,” said Hendrik Poinar, an anthropology professor at McMaster and another senior author.

Past research has also sought to examine how the Black Death affected the human genome. But Barreiro said he believes theirs is the first demonstration that the Black Death was important to the evolution of the human immune system. One unique aspect of the study, he said, was to focus on a narrow time window around the event.

Monica H. Green, an author and historian of medicine who has studied the Black Death extensively, called the research “tremendously impressive,” bringing together a wide range of experts.

“It’s extremely sophisticated” and addresses important issues, such as how the same version of a gene can protect people from a horrific infection and also put modern people — and generations of their descendants — at risk for other illnesses, said Green, who was not involved in the study.

All of this begs the question: Will the COVID-19 pandemic have a big impact on human evolution? Barreiro said he doesn’t think so because the death rate is so much lower and the majority of people who have died had already had children.

In the future, however, he said more deadly pandemics may well continue to shape us at the most basic level.

“It’s not going to stop. It’s going to keep going for sure.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 19, 2022
Ancient DNA gives rare snapshot of Neanderthal family ties

NEW YORK — A new study suggests Neanderthals formed small, tightknit communities where females may have traveled to move in with their mates.

The research used genetic sleuthing to offer a rare snapshot of Neanderthal family dynamics — including a father and his teenage daughter who lived together in Siberia more than 50,000 years ago.

Researchers were able to pull DNA out of tiny bone fragments found in two Russian caves. In their study, published Wednesday in the journal Nature, they used the genetic data to map out relationships between 13 different Neanderthals and get clues to how they lived.

“When I work on a bone or two, it’s very easy to forget that these are actually people with their own lives and stories,” said study author Bence Viola, an anthropologist at the University of Toronto. “Figuring out how they’re related to each other really makes them much more human.”

Our ancient cousins, the Neanderthals, lived across Europe and Asia for hundreds of thousands of years. They died out around 40,000 years ago, shortly after our species, the Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe from Africa.

Scientists have only recently been able to dig around in these early humans’ DNA. New Nobel laureate Svante Paabo — who is an author on this latest study — published the first draft of a Neanderthal genome a little over a decade ago.

Since then, scientists have sequenced 18 Neanderthal genomes, said lead author Laurits Skov, a geneticist at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. But it’s rare to find bones from multiple Neanderthals from the same time and place, he said — which is why these cave discoveries were so special.

“If there was ever a chance to find a Neanderthal community, this would be it,” Skov said.

The caves, located in remote foothills above a river valley, have been a rich source of materials from stone tools to fossil fragments, Viola said. With their prime view of migrating herds in the valley below, researchers think the caves might have served as a short-term hunting stop for Neanderthals.

Archaeologists excavating the caves have found remains from at least a dozen different Neanderthals, Viola said. These remains usually come in small bits and pieces — “a finger bone here, a tooth there” — but they’re enough for scientists to extract valuable DNA details.

The researchers were able to identify a couple of relatives among the group. Along with the father and daughter, there was a pair of other relatives — maybe a boy and his aunt, or a couple of cousins.

Overall, the analysis found that everyone in the group had a lot of DNA in common. That suggests that at least in this area, Neanderthals lived in very small communities of 10 to 20 individuals, the authors concluded.

But not everyone in these groups stayed put, according to the study.

Researchers looked at other genetic clues from mitochondrial DNA, which is passed down on the mother’s side, and the Y chromosome, which is passed down on the father’s side.

The female side showed more genetic differences than the male side — which means females may have moved around more, Skov said. It’s possible that when a female Neanderthal found a mate, she would leave home to live with his family.

University of Wisconsin anthropologist John Hawks, who was not involved in the study, said the research was an exciting application of ancient DNA evidence, even as many questions remain about Neanderthal social structures and lifestyles.

Figuring out how early humans lived is like “putting together a puzzle where we have many, many missing pieces,” Hawks said. But this study means “somebody’s dumped a bunch more pieces on the table.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 19, 2022
World’s Biggest Bony Fish Is Found. Guess How Much It Weighs?

They’re gonna need a bigger boat.

Researchers in Portugal have discovered the largest recorded bony fish ever, weighing in at an impressive 3 tons.

The giant ocean sunfish (Mola mola) was found dead and afloat near Faial Island. Researchers from the Atlantic Naturalist Association and the Azores University were able to move the fish ashore, then needed a forklift and crane to lift it to a scale.

One of the researchers, José Nuno Gomes-Pereira, told CNN Tuesday that he was sad “to see the animal in this situation as it must have been a king of the open ocean.”

Previously, the heaviest reported sunfish, and Guinness Book of World Records holder, was found in Japan in 1996. But she only weighed a diminutive 2.5 tons.

The Portuguese sunfish was 10 feet long and 11 feet high. The silvery-gray fish has a tiny mouth and big eyes that vanish into an even bigger body with a truncated tail. Its gender has not been identified yet.

The Mola species is the world’s heaviest bony fish. But there are bigger fish in the sea with cartilage instead of bones, such as sharks and rays. For example, the whale shark is ten times bigger than the sunfish.

^{Photo by Alexis Rosenfeld/Getty Images}

Jonathan Small

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October 18, 2022
A lot of cookie dough: MacKenzie Scott gives Girl Scouts $85 million

Philanthropist MacKenzie Scott donated $84.5 million to Girl Scouts of the USA and 29 of its local branches, the 110-year-old organization said Tuesday, calling it a vote of confidence. The donation comes as the scouting group is coping with a loss of membership during the pandemic.

“Her support of our organization means honestly just as much as the donation,” Sofia Chang, CEO of GSUSA, said in an interview.

We are honored that Girl Scouts has received a record-breaking donation from philanthropist Mackenzie Scott. 💚 This generous gift will significantly advance our mission to provide life-changing experiences, mentorship, and programming to all girls. https://t.co/2pMKjPcYQv

— Girl Scouts (@girlscouts) October 18, 2022

Scott’s gift marks the largest donation the Girl Scouts have received from an individual since their founding in 1912, she said. The funds will help the organization recover from the impact of the pandemic, the group said in a Tuesday statement. During the crisis, its membership dropped by almost 30%, from about 1.4 million in 2019- 2020 to just over 1 million in 2021-2022.

The donation will also be used to support volunteers and staff, make camp properties more resistant to the impacts of climate change, improve science and technology education for youth members and develop diversity and inclusion programming to make their troops more accessible, the group said.

Chang acknowledged the membership drop but made the case that the organization’s programs consistently help girls build confidence and tackle problems in their community.

“Our traditional way of supporting girls was really upended during the pandemic as troops couldn’t really meet in person,” Chang said. “So to build back stronger than we ever had before, we’re really listening to our Girl Scouts, listening to their families and to our volunteers to really ensure that what comes next for us is truly impactful in this moment.”

More than cookies

The Girl Scout council in Southern Arizona decided to use the $1.4 million it received from Scott to elevate the work they are already doing rather than to start a new program or initiative, said its CEO Kristen Garcia-Hernandez.

“We are a small council and we’re certainly not in a major metropolitan hub. So for us, gifts of this magnitude don’t come around very often,” Garcia-Hernandez said.

The gift accelerates their plan to hire more staff to reach most places in the seven counties they serve in under an hour and provide programming year-round. The council will also outfit a van as a mobile science and technology classroom, a project they have tried to fund for a year and a half. Many local funders seem to think that the Girl Scout’s cookie sales cover their expenses, she said.

“While the cookie program sustains us certainly and it’s wonderful and the girls are part of that process, which makes it even more beautiful, we certainly need more from the community,” Garcia-Hernandez said.

Giving to groups serving women and girls

Philanthropic giving to organizations that specifically serve women and girls represents less than 2% of all donations, according to a research project of the Women’s Philanthropy Institute at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. The institute found that proportion has not changed significantly between 2012 and 2019, the years the study has tracked.

Tessa Skidmore, research associate at the institute, said major gifts from women like philanthropists Melinda French Gates, Sheryl Sandberg and Scott could inspire other donors.

“Those are the types of things that have the potential to change that number,” she said.

The institute partnered with Pivotal Ventures, the investment firm founded by French Gates, and others to promote giving to women and girls on the International Day of the Girl, marked on Oct. 11 each year. It also shares its giving data in the hopes that donors or researchers will use it as one way to evaluate gender equity in donations.

Scott communicates infrequently about her giving, which has totaled around $12 billion since 2019. She has donated large, unrestricted grants to many different kinds of organizations, though her gifts have had a special focus on racial equity.

“Helping any of us can help us all,” Scott said in a blog post about her giving earlier this year.

Scott also made a blockbuster $275 million gift to the Planned Parenthood Federation of America and its affiliates this year.

In September, Scott filed for divorce from her second husband, Dan Jewett, whose profile was also removed from website of The Giving Pledge, a group that asks billionaires to give more than half their wealth away in their lifetimes. The former couple had jointly written on the site last year about their intention to give away Scott’s fortune, which largely comes from her divorce from Amazon founder Jeff Bezos.

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October 18, 2022
Russian cosmonaut runs over colleague after space return

MOSCOW — After three missions in space, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev ran into difficulty on Earth when he drove over a colleague on a dark road outside Moscow less than three weeks after returning from his latest orbiting mission.

Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos said Artemyev didn’t see an employee of the Star City cosmonaut training center who was crossing the road in the dark late Monday.

It said in a statement Tuesday that Artemyev immediately provided first aid assistance to the victim, Anatoly Uronov, who was hospitalized with several fractures. Roscosmos emphasized that Artemyev was sober and immediately called police and an ambulance.

On Sept. 29, the 51-year-old Artemyev returned from his third mission to the International Space Station, which brought his total time spent in orbit to 561 days.

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October 18, 2022
Russian cosmonaut runs over colleague after space return

MOSCOW — After three missions in space, Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev ran into difficulty on Earth when he drove over a colleague on a dark road outside Moscow less than three weeks after returning from his latest orbiting mission.

Russia’s state space corporation Roscosmos said Artemyev didn’t see an employee of the Star City cosmonaut training center who was crossing the road in the dark late Monday.

It said in a statement Tuesday that Artemyev immediately provided first aid assistance to the victim, Anatoly Uronov, who was hospitalized with several fractures. Roscosmos emphasized that Artemyev was sober and immediately called police and an ambulance.

On Sept. 29, the 51-year-old Artemyev returned from his third mission to the International Space Station, which brought his total time spent in orbit to 561 days.

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October 18, 2022
Vilcek Foundation Awards $250,000 in Prizes to Leading Immigrant Scientists

Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado, Edward Chouchani, Biyu J. He, and Shixin Liu are honored with the 2023 Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science

Press Release
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Oct 18, 2022

NEW YORK, October 18, 2022 (Newswire.com)
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The Vilcek Foundation has announced the recipients of the 2023 Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science. Awarded annually since 2006, the prizes recognize immigrant scientists at the forefront of their fields, and celebrate the importance of immigrant contributions to scientific research and discovery in the United States. In 2023, the foundation awards a total of $250,000 to Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado (b. Venezuela), Edward Chouchani (b. Canada), Biyu J. He (b. China), and Shixin Liu (b. China).

The prizes comprise the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science, and three Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science. The Vilcek Prize is a $100,000 award bestowed on an immigrant scientist whose career achievements demonstrate a legacy of major accomplishment in their area of study. The Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise are $50,000 prizes given to immigrant scientists and researchers whose early career work represents a significant contribution to their field.

The Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science is awarded to Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado. Edward Chouchani, Biyu J. He, and Shixin Liu receive Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise.

The Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science

Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado is executive director and chief scientific officer of the Stowers Institute for Medical Research, and a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Investigator. He receives the Vilcek Prize in Biomedical Science for his contributions to the field of regeneration—from the identification of crucial genes that control regeneration in living organisms to the potential for regenerative medicine to address how we treat disease in humans. Born in Caracas, Venezuela, Sánchez Alvarado immigrated to the United States to pursue his bachelor’s at Vanderbilt University before going on to complete his Ph.D. in pharmacology and cell biophysics at the University of Cincinnati School of Medicine.

“Alejandro Sánchez Alvarado has devoted his career to understanding the fundamental molecular and cellular bases of regeneration, from the specific genes responsible for regeneration to epigenetic regulators that compel the expression of these genes,” said Vilcek Foundation Chairman and CEO Jan Vilcek. “Using a freshwater flatworm—an organism called Schmidtea mediterranea—as a powerful experimental tool to study the molecular mechanisms of tissue regeneration, he has pioneered and expanded the field of regeneration. His work has broad applications for our understanding of the pathology of degenerative disease.”

The Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science

Edward Chouchani, Biyu J. He, and Shixin Liu are the recipients of the 2023 Vilcek Prizes for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science.

Edward Chouchani is an associate professor of cancer biology at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an associate professor of cell biology at Harvard Medical School. He is a cofounder and board member of Matchpoint Therapeutics, a biotechnology company focused on the development of precision medicine. Born in Ottawa, Canada, Chouchani earned his bachelor’s at Carleton University and his Ph.D. in biological sciences at the University of Cambridge. He receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for his work to decipher the molecular mechanisms that drive metabolic disease, with the aim of developing therapeutic interventions targeted at the molecular drivers of metabolism within cells.

Biyu J. He is an assistant professor of neurology, neuroscience and physiology, and radiology at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, and principal investigator of the Perception and Brain Dynamics Laboratory at NYU Langone Health. Born in Xinxiang, China, Biyu J. He immigrated to the United States to pursue her Ph.D. in neuroscience at Washington University in St. Louis. She receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise in Biomedical Science for her research leadership in the field of cognitive neuroscience, and for her groundbreaking work on the biological bases of perceptual cognition and subjective experience.

Shixin Liu receives the Vilcek Prize for Creative Promise for applying cutting-edge biophysical tools to directly visualize, manipulate, and understand the physiological function of nanometer-scale biomolecular machines including DNA replication and transcription complexes at the single-molecule level. Liu is an associate professor at The Rockefeller University, where he has been the head of the Laboratory of Nanoscale Biophysics and Biochemistry since 2016. Born in Anhui province in China, he immigrated to the United States to pursue his Ph.D. in chemistry at Harvard University.

The 2023 Vilcek Foundation Prizes

In addition to the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Biomedical Science, in 2023 the foundation is awarding $250,000 in prizes to immigrant musicians with the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Music. The recipients of the Vilcek Foundation Prizes in Music are Du Yun, Angélique Kidjo, Arooj Aftab, Juan Pablo Contreras, and Ruby Ibarra.

The Vilcek Foundation

The Vilcek Foundation raises awareness of immigrant contributions in the United States and fosters appreciation for the arts and sciences. The foundation was established in 2000 by Jan and Marica Vilcek, immigrants from the former Czechoslovakia. The mission of the foundation was inspired by the couple’s respective careers in biomedical science and art history. Since 2000, the foundation has awarded over $7 million in prizes to foreign-born individuals and has supported organizations with over $5.8 million in grants.

The Vilcek Foundation is a private operating foundation, a federally tax-exempt nonprofit organization under IRS Section 501(c)(3). To learn more, please visit vilcek.org.

Source: The Vilcek Foundation

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October 18, 2022
Astronaut James McDivitt, Apollo 9 commander, dies at 93

WASHINGTON — James A. McDivitt, who commanded the Apollo 9 mission testing the first complete set of equipment to go to the moon, has died. He was 93.

McDivitt was also the commander of 1965’s Gemini 4 mission, where his best friend and colleague Ed White made the first U.S. spacewalk. His photographs of White during the spacewalk became iconic images.

He passed on a chance to land on the moon and instead became the space agency’s program manager for five Apollo missions after the Apollo 11 moon landing.

McDivitt died Thursday in Tucson, Arizona, NASA said Monday.

In his first flight in 1965, McDivitt reported seeing “something out there’’ about the shape of a beer can flying outside his Gemini spaceship. People called it a UFO and McDivitt would later joke that he became “a world-renowned UFO expert.” Years later he figured it was just a reflection of bolts in the window.

Apollo 9, which orbited Earth and didn’t go further, was one of the lesser remembered space missions of NASA’s program. In a 1999 oral history, McDivitt said it didn’t bother him that it was overlooked: “I could see why they would, you know, it didn’t land on the moon. And so it’s hardly part of Apollo. But the lunar module was … key to the whole program.”

Flying with Apollo 9 crewmates Rusty Schweickart and David Scott, McDivitt’s mission was the first in-space test of the lightweight lunar lander, nicknamed Spider. Their goal was to see if people could live in it, if it could dock in orbit and — something that became crucial in the Apollo 13 crisis — if the lunar module’s engines could control the stack of spacecraft, which included the command module Gumdrop.

Early in training, McDivitt was not impressed with how flimsy the lunar module seemed: “I looked at Rusty and he looked at me, and we said, ‘Oh my God! We’re actually going to fly something like this?’ So it was really chintzy. … it was like cellophane and tin foil put together with Scotch tape and staples!”

Unlike many of his fellow astronauts, McDivitt didn’t yearn to fly from childhood. He was just good at it.

McDivitt didn’t have money for college growing up in Kalamazoo, Michigan. He worked for a year before going to junior college. When he joined the Air Force at 20, soon after the Korean War broke out, he had never been on an airplane. He was accepted for pilot training before he had ever been off the ground.

“Fortunately, I liked it,” he later recalled.

McDivitt flew 145 combat missions in Korea and came back to Michigan where he graduated from the University of Michigan with an aeronautical engineering degree. He later was one of the elite test pilots at Edwards Air Force Base and became the first student in the Air Force’s Aerospace Research Pilot School. The military was working on its own later-abandoned human space missions.

In 1962, NASA chose McDivitt to be part of its second class of astronauts, often called the “New Nine,” joining Neil Armstrong, Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and others.

McDivitt was picked to command the second two-man Gemini mission, along with White. The four-day mission in 1965 circled the globe 66 times.

Apollo 9’s shakedown flight lasted 10 days in March 1969 — four months before the moon landing — and was relatively trouble free and uneventful.

“After I flew Apollo 9 it was apparent to me that I wasn’t going to be the first guy to land on the moon, which was important to me,” McDivitt recalled in 1999. “And being the second or third guy wasn’t that important to me.”

So McDivitt went into management, first of the Apollo lunar lander, then for the Houston part of the entire program.

McDivitt left NASA and the Air Force in 1972 for a series of private industry jobs, including president of the railcar division at Pullman Inc. and a senior position at aerospace firm Rockwell International. He retired from the military with the rank of brigadier general.

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October 17, 2022
Official: China mining more coal but increasing wind, solar

BEIJING (AP) — China plans to boost coal production through 2025 to avoid a repeat of last year’s power shortages, an official said Monday, adding to setbacks in efforts to cut climate-changing carbon emissions from the biggest global source.

China is a big investor in wind and solar, but jittery Communist Party leaders called for more coal-fired power after economic growth slumped last year and shortages caused blackouts. That prompted warnings that carbon emissions will rise faster through 2030, when they government says they should peak.

The ruling party aims for annual coal production to rise to 4.6 billion tons in 2025, a deputy director of the Cabinet’s National Energy Administration, Ren Jingdong, said at a news conference held during a ruling party congress. That would be a 12% increase over last year’s 4.1 billion tons.

Ensuring an adequate power supply is especially sensitive after economic growth slid to 2.2% over a year earlier in the first six months of this year, less than half the official target of 5.5%. The ruling party earlier called for this year’s production to rise by 300 million tons, or about 7% of last year’s output.

The challenges of relying on renewable sources were highlighted by a dry summer that left reservoirs in China’s southwest too low to generate hydropower. That forced power cuts in Sichuan province and the major city of Chongqing.

Beijing will “give full play to the ‘ballast role’ of coal and the basic regulating role of coal power,” Ren said. He said the country will “vigorously enhance oil and gas exploration and development.”

Ren said officials are trying to ensure China meets targets in the ruling party’s latest five-year development plan for non-fossil fuel sources to supply 20% of power by 2025 and 25% by 2030. He said that includes wind, solar, hydro, nuclear and geothermal.

China will “comprehensively build a clean energy supply system,” Ren said.

Another official, Zhao Chenxin, deputy director of the Cabinet’s planning agency, the National Development and Reform Commission, said plans include building 450 million kilowatts of “large-scale wind and solar bases” in the Gobi Desert in China’s north.

Beijing has spent tens of billions of dollars on solar and wind farms to reduce reliance on imported oil and gas and clean up its smog-choked cities. China accounted for about half of global investment in wind and solar in 2020.

Still, coal is expected to supply 60% of its power in the near future.

Authorities say they are shrinking carbon emissions per unit of economic output. The government reported a reduction of 3.8% last year, an improvement over 2020′s 1% gain but down from a 5.1% cut in 2017.

Last year’s total energy use increased 5.2% over 2020 after a revival of global demand for Chinese exports propelled a manufacturing boom, according to the National Bureau of Statistics.

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October 16, 2022
A Katrina survivor with a disability tells her story

Karen Nix was working at Tulane Medical Center, monitoring the vitals of patients, when the levees failed and Hurricane Katrina flooded New Orleans on August 29, 2005.

By evening the medical center was inundated – water rose several feet into the first floors of buildings. Everyone in the hospital spent the night on upper floors, waiting for their chance to get out. Nix, who usually worked the night shift on the fifth floor, continued to attend to patients. Then the backup generators began to fail.

Conditions deteriorated, especially for Nix, who has mobility issues caused by cerebral palsy. “I remember that it was hot and we didn’t have power, so it was miserable,” she said. Medical staff began gathering in pockets of the hospital where it was cooler. That crowded Nix, who uses a walker.

The next day patients started climbing stairs to the seventh floor of the parking garage, where Blackhawk and Chinook helicopters waited. As part of the hospital staff, Nix stayed behind another night, caring for patients that remained.

When it looked like her turn had finally come, Nix needed help climbing two flights of stairs. The elevators weren’t running. Nix and other medical staff ended up spending a third night in the parking garage, using a makeshift bathroom, before finally boarding helicopters that took them to a shelter in Lafayette, Louisiana.

Using that commode chair, surrounded by borrowed emergency room curtains for privacy – is burned into her memory.

“I worked the whole time and it was horrible …. That was a difficult time for me because of my disability,” she said.

Nix, 59, has lived with cerebral palsy most of her life. She was diagnosed when she was six and said because it isn’t as severe as for some people, she has been able to work, go to school and graduate from college.

Still, she imagines a world where she would not have to work when hurricanes and storm surges are on the horizon, but would instead get some type of disability pay since most places she’s worked, even hospitals, become inaccessible during disasters.

That way, she could spend more time making preparations to get out of town. She can’t board up the windows of her house in New Orleans East to withstand potential wind damage. And in the event that rain and wind damage her home, she can’t do the cleanup.

She has support, though. She is married and has children, so her family are often the ones to fortify the house before a storm and clean up the damage.

But not all disabled people in regions getting hit by climate-related disasters have that support. She said local, state and federal governments don’t create adequate emergency plans for people with disabilities, whether for hurricanes, floods or wildfires.

“I think you get left out of the equation if you’re not self-sufficient or don’t know how to get the resources you need,” Nix said, “or if you don’t have someone to be a voice for you.”

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 16, 2022
People with disabilities left out of climate planning

When the inevitable hurricanes threaten New Orleans, it’s hard for India Scott to figure where to go. In the city where she was born and raised, she’s stayed in hotels, relief shelters and, during Hurricane Katrina, in the famously overcrowded Superdome.

But it is always a gamble choosing where to seek refuge. A lot of places that are safe for most people aren’t safe for her because they aren’t accessible to people like her, people living with disabilities.

Scott has used a wheelchair her entire life; she was born with a disability. Even when the weather is calm in New Orleans she is reluctant to leave home to visit friends or go out to shop or eat, because places outside her house can’t guarantee that she’ll be able to maneuver even basic things like using the restroom, passing through an entryway or getting into bed.

Scott’s house in the Algiers neighborhood of New Orleans is comfortable with features that are required by code yet often missing, like widened entryways for her wheelchair. It has a bed lower to the ground that’s easier to get in and out of it. But because she lives near a levee, she leaves that comfort behind whenever a major hurricane or tropical storm is forecast because rising floodwater that would challenge anyone would surely be fatal for her.

“I try my best to make my home comfortable,” she said, “but if that water ever comes through, I’m in trouble.”

Scott said she can’t rely on the city, state or federal government when storms come, only friends. She said there is inadequate support for disabled people before, during and after disasters, from emergency management agencies at all levels of government.

“We’re on our own,” she said, through tears, to The Associated Press.

Experts and activists echoed her view, telling the AP people with disabilities are left out of emergency and disaster planning, and face hurdles that able-bodied people don’t when disasters strike.

As climate-related disasters become more common and more severe, most countries in the world are “ neglecting their obligations to respect, protect, and fulfill the rights of persons with disabilities in their responses to the climate crisis,” according to a June report from the Disability Inclusive Climate Action Research Program at McGill University and the International Disability Alliance.

The researchers found that only 32 of the 192 countries that are signatories to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change’s Paris climate accords in 2015 refer to people with disabilities in their official climate plans. Forty-five countries refer to disabled people in their climate adaptation policies and no country mentions disabled people in its climate mitigation plans. Many of the world’s biggest contributors to climate change – the United States, China, Russia, Brazil, Germany, Japan and the United Kingdom – don’t figure people with disabilities into any of these plans, according to the report.

That is despite the fact that 185 countries ratified the United Nations’ Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, drafted in 2006, which says that countries will take “all necessary measures to ensure the protection and safety of persons with disabilities in …. humanitarian emergencies and the occurrence of natural disasters.” The U.S. was one of eight countries that signed the treaty but haven’t ratified it.

People who are disabled are not a small segment of the population. According to the World Health Organization, there were over a billion people in the world living with a disability in 2011, which was 15% of the global population at the time. The organization plans to release an update on disability prevalence in December.

More recently, researchers with the Disability Data Initiative estimated the percentage of people with disabilities averages 12.6% across 41 countries for which they have data, as of 2021. One of them, Sophie Mitra, said the WHO figure of one billion is likely to have grown since 2011.

“We are still failing people with disabilities, especially multiply-marginalized people, before, during and after disasters,” Marcie Roth, CEO of the World Institute on Disability, told the U.S. Congress during testimony in July. “We need your help to address urgent, immediate, lifesaving steps (government agencies) can take to serve disaster-impacted people and communities being left out and left behind.”

A clear example of this failure took place at the U.N. Climate Change Conference (COP26) in November 2021. Israeli Energy Minister Karine Elharrar, who uses a wheelchair, was prevented from entering a conference event by police officers. A day later, after the incident was publicized, conference organizers and the British government constructed a ramp so she could attend.

“What happened to the minister of energy happens to us all the time,” said Yolanda Muñoz, a professor at McGill University and co-founder of the Disability Inclusive Climate Action Research Program that co-authored the June report. “But, of course, it doesn’t make headlines.”

Another climate activist, Pauline Castres, who previously worked for the United Nations and has a disability, mourned the return to in-person climate talks that came with COP26 in Glasgow. “I’ve always found those meetings to be quite restrictive in terms of who can attend and who can take part,” she said. “We called (virtual events) one of the few good things that came out of the pandemic.”

But the problems people face go beyond access at international conferences and happen on the national, state and local level. When people can’t access climate planning talks, it’s more likely they won’t be figured into emergency management plans.

And the climate crisis isn’t only affecting people with physical disabilities, Grace Krause, policy officer for Learning Disability Wales, said in a 2019 blog post. Krause said it was “alarming” how little information on climate change was presented in an “easy read” format for people with certain cognitive disabilities. That format uses short sentences, active voice and explanation of any complex words and ideas in a separate sentence.

Font choices that make text easier to read for people with dyslexia is another way climate communications can be more accessible.

In 2019, the UN Human Rights Council adopted a resolution calling on governments to take climate action that is inclusive of people with disabilities, but there still isn’t much action from the UN’s official climate policy arm, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.

There were two disability-related events at COP26 – one on designing cities that are both climate resilient and accessible and another on mental health and climate action – but they were side events. Disability inclusion in climate action has rarely taken the main stage.

Julia Watts Belser, a Georgetown University professor who uses a wheelchair, said the inclusion of people with disabilities in climate mitigation and adaptation planning “matters deeply” to her. She leads an initiative exploring the intersection of climate change and disability at Georgetown and teaches a class called Disability, Ethics, Ecojustice.

“I think about wanting us as a society to invest in the infrastructure for our communities so that we are better able to adapt and respond,” she said, “so we aren’t leaving people behind, so we aren’t leaving people to die.”

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Follow Drew Costley on Twitter: @drewcostley.

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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October 16, 2022
US opts to not rebuild renowned Puerto Rico telescope

SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico (AP) — The National Science Foundation announced Thursday that it will not rebuild a renowned radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which was one of the world’s largest until it collapsed nearly two years ago.

Instead, the agency issued a solicitation for the creation of a $5 million education center at the site that would promote programs and partnerships related to science, technology, engineering and math. It also seeks the implementation of a research and workforce development program, with the center slated to open next year in the northern mountain town of Arecibo where the telescope was once located.

The solicitation does not include operational support for current infrastructure at the site that is still in use, including a 12-meter radio telescope or the Lidar facility, which is used to study the upper atmosphere and ionosphere to analyze cloud cover and precipitation data.

The decision was mourned by scientists around the world who used the telescope at the Arecibo Observatory for years to search for asteroids, planets and extraterrestrial life. The 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) dish also was featured in the Jodie Foster film “Contact” and the James Bond movie “GoldenEye.”

The reflector dish and the 900-ton platform hanging 450 feet above it previously allowed scientists to track asteroids headed to Earth, conduct research that led to a Nobel Prize and determine if a planet is potentially habitable.

“We understand how much the site has meant to the community,” said Sean Jones, assistant director for directorate of mathematical and physical sciences at NSF. “If you’re a radio astronomer, you’ve probably spent some time of your career at Arecibo.”

But all research abruptly ended when an auxiliary cable snapped in August 2020, tearing a 100-foot hole in the dish and damaging the dome above it. A main cable broke three months later, prompting the NSF to announce in November 2020 that it was closing the telescope because the structure was too unstable.

Experts suspect that a possible manufacturing error caused the cable to snap, but NSF officials said Thursday that the investigation is still ongoing.

Jones said in a phone interview that the decision to not rebuild the telescope comes in part because the U.S. government has other radar facilities that can do part of the mission that Arecibo once did. He added that the NSF also envisions a five-year maintenance contract to keep the site open, which would cost at least $1 million a year.

“This is a pivotal time. The education component is very important,” said James Moore, assistant director for education and human resource directorate at NSF.

He said by phone that one of the agency’s priorities is to make STEM more accessible and inclusive and that the proposed education center would fill that need.

“It’s a way to augment some of the things that young people are getting in their schools or not getting,” he said.

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October 16, 2022
Billions of snow crabs have disappeared from the waters around Alaska. Scientists say overfishing is not the cause | CNN

CNN
—

The Alaska snow crab harvest has been canceled for the first time ever after billions of the crustaceans have disappeared from the cold, treacherous waters of the Bering Sea in recent years.

The Alaska Board of Fisheries and North Pacific Fishery Management Council announced last week that the population of snow crab in the Bering Sea fell below the regulatory threshold to open up the fishery.

But the actual numbers behind that decision are shocking: The snow crab population shrank from around 8 billion in 2018 to 1 billion in 2021, according to Benjamin Daly, a researcher with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game.

“Snow crab is by far the most abundant of all the Bering Sea crab species that is caught commercially,” Daly told CNN. “So the shock and awe of many billions missing from the population is worth noting – and that includes all the females and babies.”

The Bristol Bay red king crab harvest will also be closed for the second year in a row, the agencies announced.

Officials cited overfishing as their rationale for canceling the seasons. Mark Stichert, the groundfish and shellfish fisheries management coordinator with the state’s fish and game department, said that more crab were being fished out of the oceans than could be naturally replaced.

“So there were more removals from the population than there were inputs,” Stichert explained at Thursday’s meeting.

Between the surveys conducted in 2021 and 2022, he said, mature male snow crabs declined about 40%, with an estimated 45 million pounds left in the entire Bering Sea.

“It’s a scary number, just to be clear,” Stichert said.

But calling the Bering Sea crab population “overfished” – a technical definition that triggers conservation measures – says nothing about the cause of its collapse.

“We call it overfishing because of the size level,” Michael Litzow, the Kodiak lab director for NOAA Fisheries, told CNN. “But it wasn’t overfishing that caused the collapse, that much is clear.”

Litzow says human-caused climate change is a significant factor in the crabs’ alarming disappearance.

Snow crabs are cold-water species and found overwhelmingly in areas where water temperatures are below 2 degrees Celsius, Litzow says. As oceans warm and sea ice disappears, the ocean around Alaska is becoming inhospitable for the species.

“There have been a number of attribution studies that have looked at specific temperatures in the Bering Sea or Bering Sea ice cover in 2018, and in those attribution studies, they’ve concluded that those temperatures and low-ice conditions in the Bering sea are a consequence of global warming,” Litzow said.

Temperatures around the Arctic have warmed four times faster than the rest of the planet, scientists have reported. Climate change has triggered a rapid loss in sea ice in the Arctic region, particularly in Alaska’s Bering Sea, which in turn has amplified global warming.

“Closing the fisheries due to low abundance and continuing research are the primary efforts to restore the populations at this point,” Ethan Nichols, an assistant area management biologist with the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, told CNN.

Stichert also said that there might be some “optimism for the future” as a few, small juvenile snow crabs are starting to appear in the system. But it could be at least three to four more years before they hit maturity and contribute to the regrowth of the population.

“It is a glimmer of optimism,” Litzow said. “That’s better than not seeing them, for sure. We get a little bit warmer every year and that variability is higher in Arctic ecosystems and high latitude ecosystems, and so if we can get a cooler period that would be good news for snow crab.”

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October 16, 2022
Man plays his saxophone through 9-hour,

A photo provided by the Paideia International Hospital in Rome, Italy, shows a 35-year-old male patient playing the saxophone as he has open brain surgery to remove a tumor, October 10, 2022.

Courtesy of Paideia International Hospital

Rome — A musician had a brain tumor removed in Italy this week in a nine-hour surgery that he spent not only awake and fully conscious, but playing his saxophone. The 35-year-old male patient had the procedure at Rome’s Paideia International Hospital on Monday and was discharged early Thursday morning.

Dr. Christian Brogna, a neurosurgeon and expert in awake surgery, told CBS News the tumor was removed successfully, and that there were no negative impacts on the patient. Brogna led a highly specialized 10-member international team for the procedure, using state-of-the-art technology.

“The tumor was located in a very, very complex area of the brain,” said Brogna. “Moreover, the patient is left-handed. This makes things more complicated because the neural pathways of the brain are much more complicated.”

The doctor said his patient, who has been identified only as C.Z., played the theme song from the 1970 movie “Love Story,” and the Italian national anthem, at various times throughout the surgery.

During the meticulous preparation for the surgery, C.Z. had told the medical team that preserving his musical ability was essential to him. It was also very useful to the surgeon, because his patient playing the sax during surgery allowed Brogna to map different functions of the brain as he operated.

Neurosurgeon Dr. Christian Brogna operates on a male patient, who is fully awake, to remove a brain tumor at the Paideia International Hospital in Rome, Italy, October 10, 2022.

Courtesy of Paideia International Hospital

“To play an instrument means that you can understand music, which is a high cognitive function. It means you can interact with the instrument, you can coordinate both hands, you can exercise memory, you can count — because music is mathematics — you can test vision because the patient has to see the instrument, and you can test the way the patient interacts with the rest of the team,” he said.

Brogna, who has performed hundreds of awake brain surgeries, said the key to pulling off such a complex operation, was preparation.

“Every patient is unique, every brain is unique, so we really need to know the patient very well,” he told CBS News.

Over a period of about 10 days before the operation, the patient met with the medical team six or seven times. He said it was important to the surgeons to respect the patient’s wishes as to which functions they felt were most important to preserve. The process led to what Brogna called “a massively tailored surgery.”

During the preparations for this and any other brain surgery, Brogna said the team looks at the entire person, not just the pathology.

Dr. Christian Brogna, a neurosurgeon and expert in awake surgery, is seen outside Rome’s Paideia International Hospital in a handout photo.

Courtesy of Paideia International Hospital

“When we operate on the brain, we are operating on the sense of self, so we need to make sure that we do not damage the patient as a person — their personality, the way they feel emotions, the way they get through life. The patient will tell you what is important in his life and it is your job to protect his wishes,” he said.

The preparation period also ensures the patient knows every detail of the procedure before it happens. During surgery, that helps ensure they remain quiet and collaborative, not scared, said Brogna, adding that that there is an atmosphere of “great calm, great silence” in the operating room during the procedure. Apart from the saxophone, of course, in this case.

Brogna said he was proud that his patient had been able to go back to his normal life, and proud that with each operation, knowledge of this branch of medicine is advancing.

“Every surgery is a window on the brain, on how it works, and while we are learning, we are taking the whole of the person — his life, his passion, his hobbies, his job — into account,” said the surgeon. “That is the goal.”

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October 15, 2022
5.0 earthquake hits during Hawaii’s Mauna Loa volcano unrest

HONOLULU — A magnitude 5.0 earthquake was the strongest of a series of temblors that struck Friday on Hawaii‘s Mauna Loa, the largest active volcano on the planet that scientists say is in a “state of heightened unrest.”

Smaller aftershocks followed, according to the U.S. Geological Survey.

The series started with a 4.6 magnitude quake seconds before the larger one, which the USGS previously reported as having magnitude of 5.1.

The first one was slightly offshore and south of the town of Pahala, followed by the larger quake just south of Pahala beneath a highway, the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a statement.

Hawaii County Mayor Mitch Roth said there were no immediate reports of major damage or injuries. He said later there was some minor damage in Pahala, including tiles that fell in a county building.

“Shaking from the larger earthquakes may have been strong enough to do minor local damage, especially to older buildings,” the observatory’s statement said. “The two earthquakes occurred within 24 seconds of each other creating shaking of longer duration and possibly greater intensity than either of the earthquakes would have created on their own.”

The aftershocks could continue for several days to possibly weeks and may be large enough to be felt, the observatory said.

Mizuno Superette, the only grocery store in rural Pahala, closed for about an hour and a half after the shaking left broken jars on the floor and knocked out electricity, said cashier Laurie Tackett.

“The ground was just shaking,” she said by phone while ringing up purchases after the small store reopened. “It was a little scary.”

Mauna Loa is not erupting and there are no signs of an imminent eruption at this time.

“This sequence of earthquakes appears to be related to readjustments along the southeast flank of Mauna Loa volcano,” the observatory said. “On several occasions large earthquakes have preceded past eruptions of Mauna Loa, though these have typically been larger than today’s earthquakes. It is not known at this time if this sequence of earthquakes is directly related to the ongoing unrest on Mauna Loa.”

Scientists at the observatory were monitoring Mauna Loa closely for changes.

Hundreds of responses on the USGS earthquakes website reported feeling varying degrees of shaking across the vast island. Those near Pahala reported strong shaking, while others further away felt weaker tremors.

The Pacific Tsunami Warning Center said there was no tsunami threat to Hawaii.

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October 14, 2022
Cities ban natural gas appliances to curb emissions

Cities ban natural gas appliances to curb emissions – CBS News

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In order to fight climate change, some local governments are mandating that new homes and businesses run their appliances on electricity rather than gas. But the switch to electric isn’t cheap, leaving people wondering what to do. Ben Tracy takes a look.

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October 14, 2022