Interstellar space is mostly a vacuum, so there is no medium that can carry sound. In other words, space is totally silent. But astronomers have often associated the movement of heavenly bodies with music. With the help of modern technology, one astronomer has turned the signals from the Milky Way into a funky tune.

“It was an idea that I had for a long time,” said University of Massachusetts Astronomy Research Professor Mark Heyer, “and only recently has some of the technology come about that somebody like me could access that.”

The visible light coming from distant worlds carries a lot of information that can be analyzed with a spectroscope. Heyer developed a computer program, or algorithm, to convert the movement of large clouds of atoms and molecules of different elements and compounds, into music.

“I take the spectrum and I, essentially, mathematically resample that to a musical scale and that gives that spectrum, which is inherently atonal, it gives it the tonality. And that is what really is the key stuff to make it sound nice,” he said.

Heyer randomly assigned different musical instruments to different gases, forming a combination consisting of a saxophone, a piano, an upright bass and some percussion woodblocks. For instance, a certain atomic gas, which fills much of the space between the stars, is represented by the upright bass.

“It gives you that driving pulse, I think, that drives the music forward. And the woodblocks sort of do that as well,” he said.

After some experimenting, Heyer decided to use the pentatonic minor blues scale.

“I was experimenting with the algorithm and I had major scales and simple minor scales, but when I first played the available segment of just one of the instruments, it sounded like that could be a very nice blues or jazzy sound to it,” he said. “So, I recrafted the algorithm so it could transform the data into a musical blues scale.”

Heyer says he was surprised when he realized for the first time that the rotation of our galaxy contains a rhythm — and that funky blues seemed to fit perfectly.
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The World Health Organization reports one confirmed case of the deadly Ebola virus in the city of Mbandaka, a city of more than one million 150 kilometers from Bikoro where the outbreak started.

WHO says as of May 15, 44 cases of Ebola have been reported in the DRC and more than 20 people have died. Except for the confirmed case in Mdbandaka, the other cases have been in Bikoro, a remote, northwestern area that is very hard to reach.

The Ebola virus is endemic in Congo, and despite Congo’s experience with the disease, the difference between this one and previous outbreaks is the location.

Bikoro lies near two major rivers that could transport infected people to urban areas including Kinshasa and Brazzaville. Mbandaka is also on the Congo River about 4,000 kilometers north of Kinshasa, the capital of the DRC, whose population is roughly ten million.

Dr. Peter Salama, WHO deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response, called this latest news “a game changer.”

WHO’s regional director for Africa said WHO and its partners, including Médecins Sans Frontières, or Doctors Without Borders, are working to rapidly scale up the search for all contacts of the confirmed case in Mbandaka as well as those in Bikoro. The WHO is holding an emergency meeting Friday to evaluate the situation.

The speed of the WHO’s involvement and those of its partners is one of the major differences between this Ebola outbreak and the one that ravaged West Africa between 2014 and 2016.

And, despite the arrival of Ebola in an urban area, Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General said “we now have better tools than ever before to combat Ebola. WHO and our partners are taking decisive action to stop further spread of the virus.”

Tedros led a delegation to the DRC May 13 that included Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO Regional Director for Africa, and Salama. They met with Congolese President Joseph Kabila and the country’s minister of health to evaluate the response and determine the next steps in stopping the virus.

Stephen Morrison, Director of the Global Health Policy Center at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conducted research on the West African outbreak that claimed more than 11,000 lives and is carefully watching the current outbreak in a rural area in the northeast of the DRC.

“I thought it was very commendable and a great sign of the change of outlook that Dr. Tedros was personally there on the ground, and that was very important,” Morrison said. “It rallies the troops, it shows determination and commitment and speed.”

One of the changes from the 2014 outbreak is that the WHO has an emergency fund to get experts and materials in place. The first batch of an experimental vaccine, which proved to be safe and effective at the end of the epidemic in West Africa, has already arrived in Congo. It will be administered to health care workers and those exposed to the virus in just days.

Merck, the pharmaceutical company that makes the vaccine, has promised to supply however much is needed for this outbreak. The vaccine is not licensed, and some argue that since it works, it is no longer experimental.

A multidisciplinary team has been in Bikoro, where the outbreak first occurred since May 10. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has personnel in place. In addition, the World Food Program is providing an air bridge to get the vaccine and supplies to the affected region with several flights a day. Treatment centers that isolate the sick are operational, as are hand washing stations containing a solution of bleach and water to kill the virus.

Morrison said what is unfolding in Central Africa “shows a lot of learning and a different pattern of response.”

In 2014, it took more than six months for the international community to address that outbreak. By then, it was already spreading in the three impoverished West African countries.

Another difference: Ebola was unknown in West Africa in 2014. This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in the DRC since 1974, when the country was named Zaire and the virus was named after the Ebola River near the source of the outbreak.

Morrison says the response to this outbreak shows no complacency.

“We are very concerned,” added Salama. “And we are planning for all scenarios, including the worst case scenario.” In the massive Ebola outbreak in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone in West Africa, the virus entered the capital cities in all three countries.

In Congo, the government, WHO and others are working to make sure, if at all possible, this doesn’t happen.
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A southern white rhino has become pregnant through artificial insemination at the San Diego Zoo Safari Park — giving hope for efforts to save a subspecies of one of the world’s most recognizable animals, researchers announced Thursday.

Scientists will be watching closely to see if the rhino named Victoria can carry her calf to term over 16 to 18 months of gestation.

If she does, researchers hope someday she could serve as a surrogate mother and could give birth to the related northern white rhino, whose population is down to two females after decades of decimation by poachers. The mother and daughter northern white rhinos live in a Kenya wildlife preserve but are not believed to be capable of bearing calves.

News of Victoria’s pregnancy was confirmed two months after the death of the last northern white male rhino named Sudan, who was also at the Kenya preserve and was euthanized because of ailing health in old age.

Victoria is the first of six female southern white rhinos the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research is testing to determine if they are fit to be surrogate mothers before using the limited sperm and eggs of the northern white rhino that are in storage to impregnate them.

The scientists want to use the frozen sperm and eggs that were taken from dead northern white rhinos to bring back a herd through artificial insemination, in vitro fertilization and embryo transfer.

“The confirmation of this pregnancy through artificial insemination represents an historic event for our organization but also a critical step in our effort to save the northern white rhino,” said Barbara Durrant, director of reproductive Sciences at the San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research.

But more challenges lie ahead, with artificial insemination of rhinos in zoos rare so far and resulting in only a few births.

Victoria and the other five female rhinos were relocated to San Diego’s Safari Park in 2015 and scientists will soon start developing artificial insemination techniques and embryo transfer techniques for them in their effort to produce northern white rhino calves.

“We will know that they have proven themselves to be capable of carrying a fetus to term before we would risk putting a precious northern white rhino embryo into one of these southern white rhinos as a surrogate,” Durrant said.

Once that happens, there will be more work to develop techniques that include maturing eggs, fertilizing eggs and growing embryos to the stage where they can be transferred into the surrogate rhinos. While embryos have been created for southern white rhinos, they haven’t been for northern white rhinos — so there’s no guarantee that the process will work.

The San Diego Zoo Institute for Conservation Research has the cell lines of 12 different northern white rhinos stored in freezing temperatures at its “Frozen Zoo.”

The ultimate goal is to create a herd of five to 15 northern white rhinos that would be returned to their natural habitat in Africa. That could take decades.

Some groups have said in vitro fertilization is being developed too late to save the northern white rhino, whose natural habitat in Chad, Sudan, Uganda, Congo and Central African Republic has been ravaged by conflicts in the region. They say the efforts should focus on other critically endangered species with a better chance at survival.

The southern white rhino and another species, the black rhino, are under heavy pressure from poachers who kill them for their horns to supply illegal markets in parts of Asia.

There are about 20,000 southern white rhinos in Africa.
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The deadly Ebola virus has broken out in the Democratic Republic of Congo, but things are very different this time in the speed of response and tools available for this outbreak versus the one that hit West Africa in 2014-2016. For one, the World Health Organization is already involved.

Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director of the WHO, led a delegation to the DRC May 13 that included Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, the WHO regional director for Africa, and Dr. Peter Salama, WHO deputy director-general for emergency preparedness and response. Tedros and the others went to personally evaluate the response to the country’s Ebola outbreak and meet with President Joseph Kabila and the country’s minister of health.

Stephen Morrison, director of the Global Health Policy Center at a Washington research organization, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, conducted research on the West African outbreak that claimed more than 11,000 lives and is carefully watching the current outbreak in a rural area of northeast DRC.

“I thought it was very commendable and a great sign of the change of outlook that Dr. Tedros was personally there on the ground, and that was very important,” Morrison said. “It rallies the troops, it shows determination and commitment and speed.”

​Rapid response

One of the changes from the 2014 outbreak is that the WHO has an emergency fund to get experts in place to start to contain the outbreak. 

A team left Wednesday for the country’s rural northwest. The first batch of experimental Ebola vaccines arrived in the Democratic Republic of Congo May 16 and will be administered to health care workers and those exposed to the virus in days. Merck, the pharmaceutical giant that makes the vaccine, has promised the WHO to supply whatever is needed for this outbreak. Although the vaccine is not licensed, and therefore is called “experimental,” it was proved safe and effective in West Africa.

A multidisciplinary team, including WHO experts and staff from Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders), has been in Bikoro, where the outbreak first occurred May 10. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also has personnel in place. In addition, the World Food Program is providing an air bridge to get the vaccine and supplies to the affected region with several flights a day. Treatment centers that isolate the sick are in place, as are hand-washing stations containing a solution of bleach and water to kill the virus.

‘A lot of learning’

Morrison said what is unfolding in Central Africa “shows a lot of learning and a different pattern of response. The response to this outbreak has been quite different from a very delayed response over a six month period in 2014 in the outbreak in West Africa.” 

That, and that this is the ninth Ebola outbreak in the DRC since 1974, when the country was named Zaire and the virus was named after the Ebola River, near the source of the outbreak. Morrison points out that Congo has a lot of experience in dealing with outbreaks of Ebola, but Sierra Leone, Guinea and Liberia in West Africa hadn’t experienced Ebola until 2014. The international response was slow, and more than 11,000 people died as a result.

Morrison says a lot of lessons were learned from that epidemic. Even though the virus is in a remote, rural area, no one involved is complacent. 

“We are very concerned, and we are planning for all scenarios, including the worst case scenario,” Dr. Salama said.

In that scenario, the virus could travel to heavily populated urban areas and get out of control. Bikoro is on a lake that feeds into rivers that connect to Kinshasa, Brazzaville and other major cities. In Congo the government, WHO and others are working to make sure, if at all possible, this doesn’t happen.
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The deadly Ebola virus has been confirmed in the Democratic Republic of Congo. A team of experts left Wednesday to visit the country’s rural northwest to help prevent its spread. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports on what’s different about the outbreak in Congo and the epidemic that swept through West Africa four years ago.
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U.S. birth rates declined last year for women in their teens, 20s and — surprisingly — their 30s, leading to the fewest babies in 30 years, according to a government report released Thursday.

 

Experts said several factors may be combining to drive the declines, including shifting attitudes about motherhood and changing immigration patterns. 

 

The provisional report, based on a review of more than 99 percent of the birth certificates filed nationwide, counted 3.853 million births last year. That’s the lowest tally since 1987.

 

Births have been declining since 2014, but 2017 saw the greatest year-to-year drop, about 92,000 less than the previous year.

 

That was surprising, because baby booms often parallel economic booms, and last year was a period of low unemployment and a growing economy. 

What’s causing this?

But other factors are likely at play, experts said.

 

One may be shifting attitudes about motherhood among millennials, who are in their prime child-bearing years right now. They may be more inclined to put off child-bearing or have fewer children, researchers said.

 

Another may be changes in the immigrant population, who generate nearly a quarter of the babies born in the U.S. each year. For example, Asians are making up a larger proportion of immigrants, and they have typically had fewer children than other immigrant groups.

 

Also, use of IUDs and other long-acting forms of contraception has been increasing.

Other findings

 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report also found: 

The rate of births to women ages 15 to 44, known as the general fertility rate, sank to a record low of about 60 per 1,000.  

 
Women in their early 40s were the only group with higher birth rates in 2017, up 2 percent from the year. The rate has been rising since the early 1980s. 

 
The cesarean section rate rose by a tiny amount after having decreased four years. Studies have shown C-sections are more common in first-time births involving older moms. 

 
Rates of preterm and low birth weight babies rose for the third straight year, possibly for the same reason. 

 
Birth rates for teens continued to nosedive, as they have since the early 1990s. In 2017, they dropped 7 percent from the year before. 

 
Rates for women in their 20s continued to fall and hit record lows. They fell 4 percent. 

 
Perhaps most surprising, birth rates for women in their 30s fell slightly, dipping 2 percent for women ages 30 to 34 and 1 percent for women 35 to 39.

 
Birth rates for women in their 30s had been rising steadily to the highest levels in at least half a century, and women in their early 30s recently became the age group that has the most babies. That decline caused some experts’ eyebrows to shoot up, but they also noted the dip was very small. 

“It’s difficult to say yet whether it marks a fundamental change or it’s just a blip,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania demographer who studies birth trends.

Generation can’t replace itself 

Another notable finding: The current generation is getting further away from having enough children to replace itself.

 

The U.S. once was among a handful of developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace it.

 

The rate in the U.S. now stands less than the standard benchmark for replacement. It’s still above countries such as Spain, Greece, Japan and Italy, but the gap appears to be closing. 

 

A decade ago, the estimated rate was 2.1 kids per U.S. woman. In 2017, it fell below 1.8, hitting its lowest level since 1978. 

“That’s a pretty remarkable decline,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics.
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Whenever the all-female Nigerian biker group D’Angels hits the streets, people would stare in amazement at the sight of women on motorbikes. So they made up their minds to use the attention for a good cause.

Enter the Female Bikers Initiative (FBI), which has provided free breast and cervical cancer screening to 500 women in Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos.

This August, D’Angels and another female biker group in Lagos, Amazon Motorcycle Club, plan to provide free screening to 5,000 women, a significant undertaking in a country where many lack access to proper health care.

“What touched us most was the women,” D’Angels co-founder Nnenna Samuila, 39, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation by phone from Lagos.

“Some asked if the bikes really belonged to us. Some asked if they could sit on our bikes. We decided to use the opportunity to do something to touch women’s lives.”

Major killers

Breast and cervical cancer are huge killers in Nigeria, accounting for half the 100,000 cancer deaths each year, according to the World Health Organization. Screening and early detection can dramatically reduce the mortality rate for cervical cancer in particular.

But oncologist Omolola Salako, whose Lagos charity partnered with the FBI last year, says there is not enough awareness of the need for screening.

“Among the 600-plus women we have screened since October, about 60 percent were being screened for the first time,” said Salako, executive director of Sebeccly Cancer Care. “It was the first time they were hearing about it.”

Even if women do know they should be screened, affordability is a barrier, said Salako, whose charity provides the service for free and also raises funds to treat cancer patients.

Raising awareness

This year the bikers will put on a week of awareness-raising and mobile screening, after which free screenings will be available at Sebeccly every Thursday for the rest of the year.

Members of the two clubs and any other female bikers who want to join in will ride through the streets, to schools, malls and other public places, distributing fliers and talking to women about the importance of screening.

“All the bikers turn up,” said Samuila, one of five women on the FBI’s board of trustees. “We just need to tell them, this is the location for the activity, and this is what we need you to do.”

Last year their funds, from private and corporate donors, could only stretch to two mastectomies, and they hope they will be able to sponsor more treatments this year.

“We encourage this person to come, and then she finds out that something is wrong and you abandon her,” said Samuila, a former telecoms executive who now runs her own confectionery and coffee company. “We would love to be able to follow up with whatever comes out of the testing.”

This is just the latest in a number of projects the bikers have organized.

In 2016 they launched Beyond Limits, a scheme to encourage young girls to fulfill their potential beyond societal expectations of marriage and babies. They travel to schools to give talks and invite senior women working in science, technology and innovation to take part.

Turning point

Samuila formed D’Angels with 37-year-old Jeminat Olumegbon in 2009 after they were denied entry to the established, all-male bikers’ groups in Lagos.

“They didn’t want us. They were like, ‘No, women don’t do this. Women are used to being carried around. Why don’t you guys just be on the sidelines?’ That sort of pissed us off and we then went on to form our own club,” Samuila said.

In 2010, the pair rode from Lagos to the southern city of Port Harcourt to attend a bikers’ event, a 617-km (383-mile) trip that the men had told them was impossible for a woman.

“That was the turning point in our relationship with the male bikers,” Samuila said.

The two-day ride earned them a new respect from the male riders, some of whom now take part in the screening awareness programs themselves.

Bigger challenges

In 2015 Olumegbon, also an FBI board member, took on an even bigger challenge riding 20,000 km through eight West African countries in 30 days to raise funds for children in orphanages.

“I’ve been riding since 2007. At first, I was the only female riding, then I found Nnenna and the other girls,” she said. “Because we started riding, more females decided to look inwards, and decided that they could do so as well.”

The bikers plan to extend their initiative to other parts of Nigeria, and have also received invitations from women riders in other West African countries.

For now though, they want to focus on making sure their efforts reach every woman in Lagos.

“When we speak to people on the streets, many don’t even know of cervical cancer,” Samuila said. “It’s so painful to hear that so many people are dying from the disease when it can be prevented.”
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After detecting a whiff of oxygen, astronomers have determined that stars in a faraway galaxy formed 250 million years after the Big Bang — a rather short time in cosmic terms — in a finding that sheds light on conditions in the early universe.

Their research, published on Wednesday, provides insight into star formation in perhaps the most distant galaxy ever observed. The scientists viewed the galaxy, called MACS1149-JD1, as it existed roughly 550 million years after the Big Bang, which gave rise to the universe about 13.8 billion years ago.

Light emitted by MACS1149-JD1 traveled 13.28 billion light years before reaching Earth. Looking across such distances lets scientists peer back in time. A light year is the distance light travels in a year, 5.9 trillion miles (9.5 trillion km).

The detection of oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 was particularly instructive. The universe initially was devoid of elements such as oxygen, carbon and nitrogen, which were first created in the fusion furnaces of the earliest stars and then spewed into interstellar space when these stars reached their explosive deaths.

The presence of oxygen showed that an even earlier generation of stars had formed and died in MACS1149-JD1 and that star formation in that galaxy began about 250 million years after the Big Bang when the universe was only about 2 percent of its current age, the researchers said.

The oxygen in MACS1149-JD1 was the most distant ever detected.

“Prior to our study, there were only theoretical predictions of the earliest star formation. We have for the first time observed the very early stage of star formation in the universe,” said astronomer Takuya Hashimoto of Osaka Sangyo University in Japan.

The study marked another step forward as scientists hunt for evidence of the first stars and galaxies that emerged from what had been total darkness in the aftermath of the Big Bang, a time sometimes called “cosmic dawn.”

“With these observations, we are pushing back the limit of the observable universe and, therefore, we are coming closer to the cosmic dawn,” University College London astronomer Nicolas Laporte said, adding that computer simulations suggest that the first stars appeared around 150 million years after the Big Bang.

The researchers confirmed the distance of the galaxy with observations from ground-based telescopes in Chile and reconstructed the earlier history of MACS1149-JD1 using infrared data from orbiting telescopes.

The research was published in the journal Nature.
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Testing advanced lung cancer patients for all of the possible genetic mutations that could be driving their cancer at once is more cost effective than testing for one or a limited number of genes at a time, U.S. researchers reported Wednesday.

There are eight targeted therapies doctors can use to treat nonsmall-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) patients based on genetic defects, and more treatments are in clinical trials or awaiting approval.

Companies such as Foundation Medicine Inc. and Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. offer genetic profiling tests using so-called next-generation sequencing that can identify hundreds of potential cancer-causing gene mutations from a small tissue sample at once. These tests are used to match patients to specific therapies targeting those genes or to clinical trials testing new drugs.

Insurance companies have been slow to pay for sequencing for all possible mutations at once, arguing such comprehensive testing amounts to funding research, not medical care. They often require doctors to test for individual genes sequentially or use a limited panel that looks for suspect genes associated with approved treatments.

“Our results showed there were substantial cost savings compared with all the other strategies,” Dr. Nathan Pennell of the Cleveland Clinic’s lung cancer program said in a telephone briefing Wednesday.

Last November, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration approved Foundation’s next-generation test, and the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services in March said it would pay for next-generation sequencing for Medicare-eligible patients with advanced cancer.

Often, tumor tissue from a biopsy is scarce, and sequential testing can sometimes require a second biopsy to gather more sections of the tumor.

In the study released ahead of the American Society of Clinical Oncology Meeting in Chicago next month, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic and colleagues modeled the cost of next-generation sequencing versus other types of testing to Medicare and to a commercial health plan with one million hypothetical members.

In the model, which was based on the number and age of NSCLC patients in the United States, next-generation sequencing saved as much as $2.1 million for Medicare, the government health plan for older Americans, and more than $250,000 for commercial providers.

The study did not factor in the cost of treatment.

The study was funded by Swiss drugmaker Novartis, maker of Zykadia, a drug that targets ALK mutations found in about 4 percent of NSCLC cases.
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For some lizards it’s easy being green. It’s in their blood. Six species of lizards in New Guinea bleed lime green thanks to evolution gone weird.

 

It’s unusual, but there are critters that bleed different colors of the rainbow besides red. The New Guinea lizards’ blood — along with their tongues, muscles and bones — appear green because of incredibly large doses of a green bile pigment. The bile levels are higher than other animals, including people, could survive.

 

Scientists still don’t know why this happened, but evolution is providing some hints into this nearly 50-year mystery.

 

By mapping the evolutionary family tree of New Guinea lizards, researchers found that green blood developed inside the amphibians at four independent points in history, likely from a red-blooded ancestor, according to a study in Wednesday’s journal Science Advances.

 

This isn’t a random accident of nature but suggests this trait of green blood gives the lizards an evolutionary advantage of some kind, said Christopher Austin of Louisiana State University.

 

“Evolution can do amazing things given enough time,” Austin said. “The natural world is a fascinating place.”

 

Austin first thought that maybe being green and full of bile would make New Guinea lizards taste bad to potential predators.

 

“I actually ate several lizards myself and they didn’t taste bad,” Austin said. He also fed plenty of them to a paradise kingfisher bird with no ill effects except maybe a fatter bird.

 

Understanding bile is probably key. Blood cells don’t last forever. After they break down, the iron is recycled for new red blood cells, but toxins are also produced, which is essentially bile.

 

In the New Guinea lizards, levels of a green bile pigment are 40 times higher than what would be toxic in humans. It’s green enough to overwhelm the color of the red blood cells and turn everything green, Austin said.

 

In people, elevated green bile pigment levels sometimes kill malaria parasites. Austin thinks that might be why lizards evolved to be green-blooded because malaria is an issue for New Guinea and lizards. It might be the result of evolution trying to kill the malaria parasite in lizards or it might be past lizards were infected so heavily that this was the body’s reaction, he said.

 

The next step is to search for the specific genes involved.

 

Michael Oellermann, a researcher at the University of Tasmania in Australia, praised Austin’s work and wondered if there is an evolutionary cost to having green blood.

 

Otherwise more critters would bleed green or another color, he said.

 

Many insects, spiders and molluscs have the copper-containing blood pigment that’s clear unless it attaches to oxygen and then it turns blue. Squids and octopuses have intense blue blood. Icefish in Antarctica have clear blood, while little crustaceans from Lake Baikal in Siberia have blood that’s blue or red or green.

 

Marine worms called lamp shells have violet to pink blood, according to the American Chemical Society.

 

“Biology is incredibly diverse,” Austin said.
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