For more than 30 years, doctors have worked to save people’s arms and legs. VOA’s Carol Pearson reports, saving a limb after an accident or infection can take an entire team of specialists at a limb preservation center.
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Month: July 2018
Facebook to Remove ‘Fake News’ That Leads to Violence
Facebook says it will begin removing false information from its site that could lead to violence.
“There are certain forms of misinformation that have contributed to physical harm” in certain countries, the U.S. social media giant said in a statement Wednesday announcing the policy.
The company says it will work with local organizations to identify such information, including written posts and doctored photos.
Facebook has been accused for allowing users to spread hate speech and false information that has led to recent violence in Sri Lanka, Myanmar and India. Sri Lanka imposed a state of emergency in March after false news posted on Facebook led to deadly attacks on the country’s minority Muslim population by Buddhist mobs.
The California-based company was thrust into Russia’s meddling in the 2016 presidential campaign through the spread of misinformation among voters. It was revealed last September that Russians, using fake names, used social media to try to influence voters ahead of the election.
Facebook founder and chief operating officer Mark Zuckerberg sparked criticism Wednesday when he tried to explain the difference between misinformation and offensive speech.
In an interview published by the technology news site Recode, Zuckerberg said he would not ban people who deny the Holocaust, the mass genocide of 6 million European Jews carried out by Nazi Germany.
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Report: Asia-Pacific Factories Lead in Using Digital Technology
She may not be the warmest waitress, but she serves a nice, hot cup of “Joe” at a café on the outskirts of Ho Chi Minh City.
Though this robotic barista is still getting help from her human counterpart, she is a signal that Asia is ahead of the curve in embracing new technologies ahead of the Americas, Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
A recent report from PwC Global, a professional services firm, studied 1,155 manufacturing businesses based on how much they were embracing and incorporating innovations in technology, from drones to 3-D printing.
Across the board, companies in the Asia-Pacific region scored higher than their counterparts elsewhere in the world.
In Thailand, for instance, manufacturing companies have widely adopted new technologies to transform their operations.
“Many are using robots to assemble products at their factories to rely less on human labor, reduce costs, and boost overall efficiency,” said Vilaiporn Taweelappontong, consulting lead partner at PwC Thailand.
ASEAN catches up
The report graded firms based on questions about the kinds of tools they were introducing into their workplaces. For example, manufacturers were asked if they made use of virtual reality; 44 percent in the Asia Pacific said they did compared with 34 percent in the United States and 19 percent in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.
The regional group Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) reports that small and medium enterprises are using new technology to catch up to bigger rivals.
“Digitization is enabling SMEs across ASEAN to participate in cross-border trade, allowing them to grow and scale their businesses while reducing costs,” said Bidhan Roy, a general manager at Cisco Systems Pte Ltd.
Benefits of youth
Observers say the Asia-Pacific region benefits from its youth.
The relatively young population means people are amenable to different work environments and business operations, as well as having a keen interest in using new technology.
Another advantage? The region’s economies are also somewhat young, with many just opening up to global trade in the last two decades. In addition its underdeveloped infrastructure has the ability to adapt for future needs, like public transit or drone deliveries.
“Asian companies have the advantage of setting up robust digital operations from essentially a blank slate in terms of factory automation, workforce, and even organizational IT [information technology] networks as a whole,” the PwC report said.
Baby steps
But more is needed to make these companies successful.
Cisco Systems’ Roy noted that small and medium firms “are at varying stages of maturity in terms of digital adoption” and could use collaboration with governments and corporations.
PwC Thailand’s Vilaiporn agreed on the benefit of collaboration.
“Thailand 4.0 will only be successful if both the government and private sectors understand their roles in fostering investment and focusing on research and development, as well as equipping the workforce with necessary skill sets and capabilities,” he said.
The “4.0” refers to the latest industrial revolution, which goes beyond mechanization and automation. It entails business processes becoming more efficient through a comprehensive application of technology, from smart devices to machine learning.
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Artist Captures War as Seen by Children — Toys Included
Brian McCarty is a war photographer. But his pictures are not of bombed-out buildings or mangled bodies. His images show the horrors of war through the eyes of children and re-created with toy tanks and tiny dolls. Faith Lapidus has his story.
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Accordion Group Celebrating 80 Years, Sees Resurgence of Instrument
The American Accordionists’ Association celebrates its 80th anniversary this year, gathering in Alexandria, Virginia, to showcase performers of all ages and abilities. From Alexandria, VOA’s Jill Craig has more.
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Bezos’ Blue Origin Sends Spacecraft Higher Than Ever
Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin rocket company shot a capsule higher into space Wednesday than it’s ever done before.
The New Shepard rocket blasted off from West Texas on the company’s latest test flight. Once the booster separated, the capsule’s escape motor fired, lifting the spacecraft to an altitude of 389,846 feet. That’s 74 miles or 119 kilometers.
It’s part of a safety system intended to save lives once space tourists and others climb aboard for suborbital hops.
Wednesday’s passenger was Mannequin Skywalker, an instrumented dummy in a blue flight suit that’s flown before, plus science experiments.
The booster and capsule, both repeat fliers, landed successfully. It was the ninth test flight and lasted 11 minutes.
“Crew Capsule looks great even after it was pushed hard by the escape test. Astronauts would have had an exhilarating ride and safe landing,” Bezos said in a tweet. “Great engineering and the lucky boots worked again.”
Blue Origin has yet to announce when it will start selling tickets or how much flights will cost. Launch commentator Ariane Cornell promised it would be soon. “It’s coming,” she said.
Bezos, founder and chief executive of Amazon, aims to send people and payloads into orbit from Cape Canaveral. Those missions will rely on the bigger, more powerful New Glenn rocket still under development.
He’s named his rockets after NASA’s original Mercury astronauts Alan Shepard, the first American in space, and John Glenn, the first American to orbit the Earth.
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Thai Elephants Help Spread Jungle Fruit’s Seeds
Massive fruit trees in the Thailand evergreen forest need massive herbivores to help spread their seeds, according to a new study.
Based on the diets and habits of mammals, scientists found that elephants are the best allies for the Thai Annonaceae tree to spread its seeds.
In the diverse environment of Khao Yai National Park, there is a complex set of relationships between the plants and animals. Not every species of fruiting tree is an attractive meal to all herbivores. A team of researchers, led by Kim McConkey from the University of Nottingham, set out to study one particular tree, the Platymitra macrocarpa from the family of custard apple trees.
The p. macrocarpa produces 3-to-5-inch fruit that are ripe from May through August. McConkey tracked how often animals visited the trees and ate the fruit, including elephants, bears, monkeys, gibbons and Sambar deer. They measured the animals’ fruit consumption as well as the ensuing seed dispersal and seed viability.
Researchers found the seeds in the dung of some species while others like the Sambar deer regurgitated the large seeds. When asked about tracking animal poop, McConkey admitted, “I’ve got two boys so they just love what I do.”
As expected, the Asian elephants were the major seed dispersers for the p. macrocarpa. Elephants aren’t often seen in the area of the trees McConkey studied, but as she told VOA, “I thought if I’m going to see them feed on any fruit, it’s going to be this one.” Her hunch was borne out in the data, with elephants consuming only 3 percent of the fruit but producing 37 percent of the viable seedlings.
These findings regarding the Asian elephants point to the important role they play in the ecosystem. Jedediah Brodie, chair of conservation in the Wildlife Biology Program at the University of Montana, told VOA that “overhunting in the tropics often drives large animals locally extinct but leaves smaller species like rodents. And this study shows that those smaller animals just are not able to replicate the ecological role of the larger species.”
When looking at the performance of other species, the researchers were surprised by how effective Sambar deer were at dispersing seeds. “Sambar deer generally have quite a bad rap in these forests,” McConkey said. “People think they’re seed predators, but it turns out they actually do disperse a lot of seeds.” While the Sambar deer weren’t quite as effective seed dispersers as gibbons (21 percent), they still produced a respectable 17 percent.
Bruchid beetles were the primary challenge to producing viable seedlings. The beetles, which are known to infest all kinds of seeds and beans, spoiled most of the seeds left exposed on the forest floor. Unlike the regurgitated seeds of the sambar deer, the seeds went through the elephants’ digestive system and were covered by excrement. The seeds were protected from beetles and provided with an effective, natural fertilizer and were able to survive and grow into seedlings.
It is easy to think of animals adapting to their environment through evolution and behavioral change, but we rarely consider the same relationship in the opposite direction. The massive Platymitra macrocarpa has perhaps evolved to provide fruit that appeals to more than one frugivore.
As McConkey told VOA, “The husk of the fruit — it’s like the outer covering of the fruit — has become very thick, and it’s that outer covering that deer eat. But if you open up the fruit, each seed is covered by this juicy, soft pulp, and it’s that that the monkeys and gibbons like.” She thinks that this might be a case where the tree evolved to appeal to multiple animal species to increase the chance of spreading viable seeds.
Despite the variety of animals eating the seeds, elephants are still the tree’s best chance of producing viable seedlings. When asked what might happen if elephants were to disappear from the region, Brodie responded, “That’s the million-dollar question.”
This research is published in PLOS ONE.
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50 Years After Concorde, US Start-Up Eyes Supersonic Future
Luxury air travel faster than the speed of sound: A US start-up is aiming to revive commercial supersonic flight 50 years after the ill-fated Concorde first took to the skies.
Blake Scholl, the former Amazon staffer who co-founded Boom Supersonic, delivered the pledge this week in front of a fully-restored Concorde jet at the Brooklands aviation and motor museum in Weybridge, southwest of London.
The company aims to manufacture a prototype 55-seater business jet next year but its plans have been met with scepticism in some quarters.
“The story of Concorde is the story of a journey started but not completed — and we want to pick up on it,” Scholl said at an event that coincided with the nearby Farnborough Airshow.
“Today … the world is more linked than it’s ever been before and the need for improved human connection has never been greater.
“At Boom, we are inspired at what was accomplished half a century ago,” he added, speaking in front of a former British Airways Concorde.
Boom Supersonic’s early backers include Richard Branson and Japan Airlines, and other players are eyeing the same segment.
Speaking to AFP at Farnborough on Wednesday, Scholl indicated that the air tickets could be beyond the reach of some.
“What we’ve been able to do thanks to advances in aerodynamics and materials and engines is offer a high speed flight for the same price you pay in business class today,” he said.
He said this works out to around $5,000 (4,300 euros) round-trip across the Atlantic.
“Now I know that might sounds like a lot, because it is, but it’s actually the same price you pay for a lay flat bed on airlines today,” he said.
‘Baby Boom’
Boom Supersonic’s aircraft, dubbed Baby Boom, is expected by the company to fly for the first time next year.
The company is making its debut at Farnborough and hopes to produce its new-generation jets in the mid-2020s or later, with the aim of slashing journey times by half.
The proposed aircraft has a maximum flying range of 8,334 kilometres (5,167 miles) at a speed of Mach 2.2 or 2,335 kilometres per hour.
If it takes off, it would be the first supersonic passenger aircraft since Concorde took its final flight in 2003.
The Concorde was retired following an accident in 2000 in which a Concorde crashed shortly after takeoff from Paris, killing 113 people.
“The one accident that did happen on Concord actually happened on the runway,” Scholl told AFP on Wednesday.
“It had nothing to do with high-speed flight so there’s no actual barrier to creating a highly safe, efficient supersonic airplane and we have super high standards for safety.
“We’ll be going through the same safety testing process that every other aircraft goes through and the FAA (US Federal Aviation Administration) and EASA (European Aviation Safety Agency) will not let our airplane fly unless we pass a very high safety bar.”Some analysts meanwhile remain sceptical over the push back into supersonic, with consumer demand booming for cheap low-cost carriers.
“Supersonic is not what passengers or airlines want right now,” said Strategic Aero analyst Saj Ahmad.
Ahmad said supersonic jets were “very unattractive” because of high start-up development costs, considerations about noise pollution and high prices as well as limited capacity.
‘Untried and untested’
Independent air transport consultant John Strickland noted supersonic travel was unproven commercially.
“If there is an economic downturn or something happens where the market for business class traffic drains away, then you have nothing else left to do with that aircraft,” Strickland said.
“I think it’s going to be some time before we see whether it can establish a large viable market … in the way that Concorde never managed to do.”
These concerns have not stopped interest from other players.
US aerospace giant Boeing had last month unveiled its “hypersonic” airliner concept, which it hopes will fly at Mach 5 — or five times the speed of sound — when it arrives on the scene in 20 to 30 years.
And in April, NASA inked a deal for US giant Lockheed Martin to develop a supersonic “X-plane.”
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Critics See Japan Anti-Smoking Law as Lax
Japan on Wednesday approved its first national legislation banning smoking inside public facilities, but the watered-down measure excludes many restaurants and bars and is seen by critics as toothless.
The legislation aims to lower secondhand smoking risks ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics amid international calls for a smoke-free event. But ruling party lawmakers with strong ties to the tobacco and restaurant industries opted for a weakened version.
The upper house approved and enacted the bill into law Wednesday after it was approved earlier by the lower house.
Last month, Tokyo separately enacted a stricter ordinance banning smoking at all eateries that have employees, to protect them from secondhand smoke. The ordinance will cover about 84 percent of Tokyo restaurants and bars.
But the law still allows many exceptions and the Tokyo Games may not be fully smoke-free.
Japan often has been called a smokers’ paradise. Until now it has had no binding law controlling secondhand smoke and ranked among the least protected countries by the World Health Organization. That has brought pressure from international Olympic officials.
The new national law bans indoor smoking at schools, hospitals and government offices. Smoking will be allowed at existing small eateries, including those with less than 100 square meters (1,076 square feet) of customer space, which includes more than half of Japanese establishments. Larger and new eateries must limit smoking to designated rooms.
Violators can face fines of up to 300,000 yen ($2,700) for smokers and up to 500,000 yen ($4,500) for facility managers.
The law will be implemented in phases through April 2020.
’Too lenient’
The law allowing smoking at more than half of Japan’s restaurants as exceptions is inadequate, said Hiroyasu Muramatsu, a doctor serving on Tokyo’s anti-smoking committee. “The law is too lenient compared to international standards,” he told Japan’s NHK public television. “We need a full smoking ban.”
The health ministry’s initial draft bill called for stricter measures but faced opposition from lawmakers sympathetic to the restaurant industry. The government also was viewed as opposed to harsher measures because the former monopoly Japan Tobacco is still partly state-owned.
In Japan, almost a fifth of adults still smoke. The rate for men in their 30s to 50s is nearly twice as high, according to a government survey last year.
Most office workers now light up only in smoking rooms or outdoors, and cities are gradually imposing limits on outdoor smoking in public areas. But most restaurants and bars in Japan allow smoking, making them the most common public source of secondhand smoke.
“Secondhand smoking has been largely considered an issue of the manners, but it’s not,” Kazuo Hasegawa, 47, a nonsmoker who has developed lung cancer, told NHK. “It’s about health hazards. It harms people. And I don’t want younger generations to have to suffer like me.”
In Japan, about 15,000 people, mainly women and children, die annually as a result of secondhand smoke, according to government and WHO estimates.
your ads here!Elon Musk Apologizes for Comments About Cave Rescue Diver
Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has apologized for calling a British diver involved in the Thailand cave rescue a pedophile, saying he spoke in anger but was wrong to do so.
There was no immediate public reaction from diver Vern Unsworth to Musk’s latest tweets.
Musk’s initial tweet calling Unsworth a “pedo” was a response to a TV interview Unsworth gave. In it, he said Musk and SpaceX engineers orchestrated a “PR stunt” by sending a small submarine to help divers rescue the 12 Thai soccer players and their coach from a flooded cave. Unsworth said the submarine, which wasn’t used, wouldn’t have worked anyway.
“My words were spoken in anger after Mr. Unsworth said several untruths …” Musk tweeted.
“Nonetheless, his actions against me do not justify my actions against him, and for that I apologize to Mr. Unsworth and to the companies I represent as leader. The fault is mine and mine alone.”
Musk’s Sunday tweet, later deleted, had sent investors away from Tesla stock, which fell nearly 3 percent Monday but recovered 4.1 percent Tuesday. Unsworth told CNN earlier this week that he was considering legal action. He did not respond to requests for comment from The Associated Press.
In his latest tweets, Musk said the mini-sub was “built as an act of kindness & according to specifications from the dive team leader.”
Musk has 22.3 million followers and his active social media presence has sometimes worked well for Tesla. The company has said in its filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it doesn’t need to advertise because it gets so much free media attention.
But straying away from defending his companies into personal insult brought Musk some unfavorable attention at a time when Tesla, worth more than $52 billion, is deep in debt and struggling for profitability.
In northern Thailand on Wednesday, the 12 Thai soccer players and their coach answered questions from journalists, their first meeting with the media since their rescues last week. Doctors said all are healthy.
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Cute Robots Invade Smithsonian Museum
Known as the largest education, and research complex in the world, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is a collection of 19 museums that house more than 140 million unique items. It’s no wonder it’s been called “the nation’s attic.” But there’s a novel addition to the venerable complex — a smart new technology that interacts with visitors. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to the Smithsonian’s newest resident.
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China Looks to Stronger EU Trade Ties Against Threat of US Tariffs
China bolstered ties with the European Union this week with more large markets in the pipeline to keep its exports healthy as the United States levies import tariffs, analysts say.
At the 20th China-EU leaders’ meeting Monday in Beijing, Chinese President Xi Jinping said his country stands ready to promote bilateral economic development. Premier Li Keqiang noted at the summit China had recently cut import tariffs on autos, medicine and consumer goods from the EU.
The 28-member European Union, including some of the world’s wealthiest countries, received $437 billion in exports with China last year, which accounted for 20 percent of the bloc’s total shipments from overseas.
Officials in Beijing have also pledged to ease trade friction with India this year.
“The EU is the second largest trading partner to China,” said Felix Yang, an analyst with the financial advisory firm Kapronasia in Shanghai. “While Trump’s tariffs hit the prospects of the Chinese economy, the EU is becoming a more important market for China.”
A reserve in case of trade war
China and the United States have headed toward what economists call a “trade war” for much of the year. U.S. President Donald Trump believes China trades unfairly, giving it a $375 billion trade surplus in 2017.
This month Trump approved import tariffs of 25 percent on more than 800 Chinese products. The taxes, already in effect, hit Chinese goods worth about $34 billion. Trump has threatened tariffs on goods worth another $450 billion, and China’s commerce ministry said it would make a “necessary counterattack.”
China counts the United States as its No. 1 trading partner, but major markets such as the EU, India and Southeast Asia are high on the list. The summit on Monday with EU leaders should help China solidify EU trade, economists say.
“You have to explore opportunities to grow your next largest set of trading partners, and this is where it’s really all about,” said Song Seng Wun, an economist with the private banking unit of CIMB in Singapore. “In case the trade fight with the U.S. were to escalate, it’s good your trading relationship with your remaining partners can improve and hopefully over time pick up some of the slack.”
China will need Europe to buy technology that the United States might sell if relations were better, said Liang Kuo-yuan, president of Taipei-based think tank Polaris Research Institute. The threat of a trade war now “slows” China’s acquisition of tech for R&D, he said.
“If they can’t develop their own, they would still look for Western technology,” Liang said. “At that point, the EU becomes a major source. If the route to Europe hasn’t been blocked, then the slowdown wouldn’t be so slow.”
The European Union will avoid a trade war, European Council President Donald Tusk said after the summit. But the bloc that has its own trade deficit with China advocates new global trade rules and World Trade Organization reforms.
Europe, like the United States, worries about China’s protection of technology and other intellectual property rights. In April the EU brought a case to the World Trade Organization against Chinese legislation that it said “undermines the intellectual property rights” of European companies.
The EU wants to “bravely and responsibly reform the rules-based international order,” Tusk was quoted saying on the EU’s website. “This is why I am calling on our Chinese hosts… to jointly start this process from a reform of the WTO.”
China voiced support for the WTO reforms at the Monday summit, the European side said in a statement.
India and Southeast Asia
China’s commerce minister said in April his country would keep working with India to ease trade differences caused by market access issues — resulting in a deficit for India.
Southeast Asia might be next for lighter treatment, Song said. China and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations are finishing talks on a 16-nation Regional Cooperation Economic Framework, a trade pact that some see as an antidote to the Trans Pacific Partnership deal that Trump exited in 2017.
Eventually other countries may join China in facing the United States as many expect trade problems, said Zhao Xijun, associate dean of the School of Finance at Renmin University of China. A tariff battle with China could spill into other parts of Asia, and Trump has rattled other countries with an “America First” policy that’s often regarded abroad as protectionist.
China’s trade ties with Japan, South Korea, India and Southeast Asia will “continuously be promoted,” Zhao said. Those countries link to the same supply chain with its own “rules” that cannot be broken by a single country, he said.
“It’s not such a simple matter,” Zhao said. “The supply chain has its own rules. It’s not something the American government can break because it says it wants to break it.”
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Can Polio Workers Overcome Complacency, Conflict, Donor Fatigue to End the Virus?
The world is close to eliminating the threat from polio, but to eradicate the disease, it must be eliminated everywhere. Health officials say that’s the tricky part, because if the virus responsible for the crippling disease exists anywhere, it can still spread worldwide. Sadie Witkowski reports on the challenges that face polio eradication efforts.
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Can Polio Workers Overcome Complacency, Donor Fatigue to End Virus?
The move to end polio started in 1985 with Rotary International. At that time, polio paralyzed hundreds of thousands of children every year. There is still no cure, but two scientists developed vaccines against the virus in the 1950’s.
Dr. Jonas Salk produced one with an inactivated virus that could protect against polio without spreading the disease. Later, Dr. Albert Sabin developed an oral vaccine with weakened strains of the virus.
In 1988, public and private groups joined the effort in the Global Polio Eradication Program. Members included governments, the World Health Organization, the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.
Since then, the number of polio cases has dropped by 99.9 percent. Last year, 22 children were crippled by this disease. The wild polio virus exists in only three countries: Pakistan, Afghanistan and Nigeria, but it’s still a global threat.
Dr. John Vertefeuille, from the CDC said, “This last mile is a complicated mile.” It’s not just because of conflict or terrorism. “It’s extreme remoteness. It’s very fragile health systems.” And in these remote conflict prone areas gaining access to children can be a major problem.
If polio exists anywhere, it can once again spread everywhere.
Vertefeuille and other experts discussed strategies to realize a polio-free world July 10 at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington.
Widespread unrest in Afghanistan has kept thousands of children from receiving polio vaccines this year. Conflict in northern Nigeria does the same.
What’s more, the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan stretches for more than 2,000 kilometers. Thousands of people who cross this very porous border can easily transmit the virus in both countries.
While the funding and technical support has to come from large, private-public partnerships, immunization teams succeed best if they are local. Approaches have to take culture and customs into consideration.
In many places the vaccinators are women because women can go into the homes, talk to other women and gain access to the children.
Elsewhere, soldiers vaccinate children when they take over an area run by anti-government forces. Vaccination teams have to be prepared to move quickly when there is a lull in the fighting and to deliver multiple doses of vaccine in a short period of time.
Surveillance is just as critical. To end polio, you have to know where the outbreaks are. Community volunteers are a great resource. Some get cell phones so they can alert health officials if a child becomes paralyzed.
Another challenge is getting children in migrant groups vaccinated. Vertefeuille says this is where technology helps. The CDC uses satellites to see where people have moved and what areas are abandoned. Clues are where structures have been repaired, where the grass grows on roads, indicating abandoned areas, and where it doesn’t, indicating where people are living.
Dr. Andrew Etsana from the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies said these groups present a particular challenge because “you have people moving with a virus and it is difficult to track them and vaccinate the vulnerable children in this mobile population.”
Another issue is the nature of viruses themselves. Viruses mutate. So far, the polio vaccines have been effective, but if not enough children get vaccinated, the virus can change, and perhaps make the vaccine less effective. That’s why every child needs to be vaccinated.
Outbreaks that can be avoided by vaccinating the whole population so that there are no gaps for the mutated virus to slip through.
International experts are working with local leaders to close this gap.
Another issue is complacency. Etsana said, “People are getting tired. The program has been going on. They thought it would have ended.”
Rotary has pledged to continue its support, other groups as well. International support and funding is critical to ending polio, but after three decades, many people have never seen polio. Etsana says he sees complacency creeping into all areas of the program. “The funders of the program are also getting tired. The fund is drying up and if the fund dries up and the job is not done, we’re going to have a major problem. We may have reinfection.”
But, if people recognize the program’s value – it has united communities, established vaccine centers, created partnerships never before imagined – the world can not only end polio, but tackle other diseases as well. The polio program is widely credited with stopping the spread of Ebola in Nigeria while the disease ravaged other west African countries.
your ads here!Cute Robots Invade the Smithsonian
Known as the largest education, and research complex in the world, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC is a collection of 19 museums that house more than 140 million unique items. It’s no wonder it’s been called “the nation’s attic.” But there’s a novel addition to the venerable complex — a smart new technology that interacts with visitors. VOA’s Carolyn Presutti introduces us to the Smithsonian’s newest resident.
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Museum of Natural History Provides a Glimpse of New Dinosaur Display
The fossilized skeleton of a ferocious Tyrannosaurus Rex dinosaur will be on exhibit next year in the new fossil hall at the Museum of Natural History in Washington. Excavated in Montana, it is one of the largest and most complete T-rex skeletons ever discovered. The dinosaur, called the Nation’s T-rex, will become part of a larger showcase that explores billions of years of life on earth. VOAs Deborah Block takes us on a sneak peak.
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Why is Facebook Keen on Robots? It’s Just the Future of AI
Facebook announced several new hires of top academics in the field of artificial intelligence Tuesday, among them a roboticist known for her work at Disney making animated figures move in more human-like ways.
The hires raise a big question — why is Facebook interested in robots, anyway?
It’s not as though the social media giant is suddenly interested in developing mechanical friends, although it does use robotic arms in some of its data centers. The answer is even more central to the problem of how AI systems work today.
Today, most successful AI systems have to be exposed to millions of data points labeled by humans — like, say, photos of cats — before they can learn to recognize patterns that people take for granted. Similarly, game-playing bots like Google’s computerized Go master AlphaGo Zero require tens of thousands of trials to learn the best moves from their failures.
Creating systems that require less data and have more common sense is a key goal for making AI smarter in the future.
“Clearly we’re missing something in terms of how humans can learn so fast,” Yann LeCun, Facebook’s chief AI scientist, said in a call with reporters last week. “So far the best ideas have come out of robotics.”
Among the people Facebook is hiring are Jessica Hodgins , the former Disney researcher; and Abhinav Gupta, her colleague at Carnegie Mellon University who is known for using robot arms to learn how to grasp things.
Pieter Abbeel, a roboticist at University of California, Berkeley and co-founder of the robot-training company Covariant.ai, says the robotics field has benefits and constraints that push progress in AI. For one, the real world is naturally complex, so robotic AI systems have to deal with unexpected, rare events. And real-world constraints like a lack of time and the cost of keeping machinery moving push researchers to solve difficult problems.
“Robotics forces you into many reality checks,” Abbeel said. “How good are these algorithms, really?”
There are other more abstract applications of learnings from robotics, says Berkeley AI professor Ken Goldberg. Just like teaching a robot to escape from a computerized maze, other robots change their behavior depending on whether actions they took got them closer to a goal. Such systems could even be adapted to serve ads, he said — which just happens to be the mainstay of Facebook’s business.
“It’s not a static decision, it’s a dynamic one,” Goldberg said.
In an interview, Hodgins expressed an interest in a wide range of robotics research, everything from building a “compelling humanoid robot” to creating a mechanical servant to “load and unload my dishwasher.”
While she acknowledged the need to imbue robots with more common sense and have them learn with fewer examples, she also said her work in animation could lead to a new form of sharing — one in which AI-powered tools could help one show off a work of pottery in 3-D, for example.
“One thing I hope we’ll be able to do is explore AI support for creativity,” she said.
For Facebook, planting a flag in the hot field also allows it to be competitive for AI talent emerging from universities, Facebook’s LeCun said.
Bart Selman, a Cornell computer science professor AI expert, said it’s a good idea for Facebook to broaden its reach in AI and take on projects that might not be directly related to the company’s business — something that’s a little more “exciting” — the way Google did with self-driving cars, for example.
This attracts not just attention, but students, too. The broader the research agenda, the better the labs become, he said.
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Boeing Gets $3.9B Contract for New Air Force One Jets
Boeing has received a $3.9 billion contract to build two 747-8 aircraft for use as Air Force One by the U.S. president, due to be delivered by December 2024 and painted red, white and blue, officials said on Tuesday.
The Pentagon announced the decision on Tuesday, saying Seattle-based Boeing’s previously awarded contract for development work had been expanded to include design, modification and fielding of two mission-ready presidential 747-8 aircraft.
The contract followed the outlines of the informal deal reached between Boeing and the White House in February. That agreement came after President Donald Trump objected to the $4 billion price tag of a previous Air Force One deal, complaining in a Twitter post that “costs are out of control” and adding “Cancel order!”
The White House said in February the new deal would save taxpayers more than $1.4 billion, but those savings could not be independently confirmed.
Air Force budget documents released in February for fiscal year 2019 disclosed a $3.9 billion cost for the two-aircraft program. The same 2018 budget document, not adjusted for inflation, showed the price at $3.6 billion.
The Boeing 747-8s are designed to be an airborne White House able to fly in worst-case security scenarios, such as nuclear war, and are modified with military avionics, advanced communications and a self-defense system.
A congressional official briefed on Tuesday about the deal indicated it was little changed from the informal agreement reached in February, calling for two 747-8 aircraft to be built for $3.9 billion and delivered by December 2024.
Trump told CBS in an interview that aired on Tuesday that the new model Air Force One would be updated on the inside and have a different exterior color scheme from the current white and two shades of blue dating back to President John F. Kennedy’s administration.
“Red, white and blue,” Trump said. “Air Force One is going to be incredible. It’s going to be the top of the line, the top in the world. And it’s going to be red, white and blue, which I think is appropriate.”
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Fashion Firms Upend Design Routine to Focus on Speed, Trends
Prototypes? Passe. Fashion company Betabrand saw that knitwear was a hot style in sneakers and wanted to quickly jump on the trend for dressier shoes. It put a poll up on its website asking shoppers what style they liked, and based on that had a shoe for sale online in just one week.
What web shoppers saw was a 3-D rendering — no actual shoe existed yet. Creating a traditional prototype, tweaking the design and making a sample would have taken six to nine months, and the company might have missed out on the interest in knit.
“The web attention span is short,” said Betabrand CEO Chris Lindland. “So if you can develop and create in a short time, you can be a real product-development machine.”
Shoppers looking at the shoe online could examine the peekaboo detail or check out how the sole was put together, as they would from photos of a real product. They don’t get the actual shoes instantaneously — they have to wait a few months. But the use of digital technology in designing and selling means hot trends are still getting to people far faster than under the old system.
“Retailers and brands who are embracing this are going to be winners of the future,” said David Bassuk, managing director of consulting group AlixPartners. “This is flipping the business model on its head.”
It’s a big cultural change for clothing makers. For decades, the process meant designers sketched ideas on paper, a design got approved, and the sketches went to a factory that created prototypes. Designers and product developers made tweaks and sent prototypes back and forth. Once a final version was approved, it was sent to the factory to be copied for mass production. Getting something from design to a store could take at least a year.
Now, some companies have designers sketching on high-resolution tablets with software that can email 3-D renderings of garments with specifications straight to factories, as better technology makes the images look real and the pressure to get shoppers new products swiftly intensifies. The goal is to reduce to six months or less the time it takes to get to store shelves.
Even chains like H&M, which once set the standard for speed by flying in frequent small batches, are realizing that’s not fast enough. H&M, which has seen sales slow, is starting to digitize certain areas of its manufacturing process.
For clothing makers and retailers, the shift means design decisions can happen closer to when the fashions actually hit the shelves or website. That means less guessing so stores aren’t stuck with piles of unsold clothes that need to be discounted.
The 3-D technology is used in just 2 percent of the overall supply networks, estimates Spencer Fung, group CEO of Li & Fung, which consults with more than 8,000 retailers including Betabrand and 15,000 suppliers globally. But he believes that will change as retailers begin prioritizing speed and realize that cutting down on design time and prototypes saves money.
“You can actually essentially create an entire collection before you even cut one garment,” said Whitney Cathcart, CEO of the Cathcart Technologies consulting firm. “So it reduces waste, it reduces lead times, it allows decision making in real time, so the entire process becomes more efficient.”
Fung imagines a scenario where a social media post with a celebrity in a red dress gets 500,000 “likes.” An alert goes to a retailer that this item is trending. Within hours, a digital sample of a similar dress is on its website. A factory can start to produce the dress in days.
“Consumers see it and they want it now,” says Michael Londrigan of fashion college LIM in New York. “How do you bring it to market so you don’t miss those dollars?”
Nicki Rector of the Sonoma Valley area in California bought a pair of Betabrand’s Western-style boots last summer based on the 3-D rendering.
“It looked real,” said Rector, who examined the images of the heel and the insoles. She didn’t worry about buying off a digital image, reasoning that if you’re buying online you can’t really know how something’s going to fit until you put it on your feet. She said knowing it was designed from customer input also helped make the wait OK.
Betabrand has sold 40,000 pairs of shoes priced from $128 to $168 over the past year, all from digital renderings, and plans to add 15 to 20 such projects this year.
At a Levi Strauss & Co. research and development facility in San Francisco, designers use programs that offer the look of a finished garment and let them make changes like adding pockets quickly, rather than requiring a new prototype. When they’re set, they can send a file to the factory for mass production. Using digital samples can shorten the design time to one week or less from an eight-week timeframe, Levi’s says.
Few companies are yet selling directly to shoppers off digital renderings like Betabrand, and are instead showing them to store buyers or to factories rather than using traditional samples.
Xcel Brands uses them for its own brand of women’s tops and for the company’s Judith Ripka jewelry line. The company, which also makes clothes for Isaac Mizrahi and Halston, will start using them for other brands within the year. CEO Robert D’Loren hopes to start putting 3-D samples on its website next year.
Tommy Hilfiger has an interactive touchscreen table where buyers can view every item in the collection and create custom orders. And Deckers Brands, the maker of Ugg boots, is using digital renderings of the classic boot in 10 colors, eliminating the need for 10 prototypes for store buyers. That helps reduce cost and increases speed.
Using digital designs also mean the exact specifications for different Levi’s design finishes can be uploaded to a machine that uses lasers to scrape away at jeans. No need to teach employees how to execute a designer’s vision, in a minute and a half the lasers have given the jeans the exact weathered look that took workers wielding pumice stones twenty minutes to half an hour.
“Thirty years ago, jeans were only available in three shades — rinse, stonewash and bleach,” said Bart Sights, head of the Levi’s Eureka lab. “Our company now designs 1,000 finishes per season.” Such a long lead time “pushes production and creation too far away.” Levi’s latest technology alleviates this issue, he said.
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‘McQueen’ Examines Career of Brilliant, Troubled Designer
The London fashion world didn’t know quite what hit it when Alexander McQueen’s disheveled models staggered down the runway at his 1995 “Highland Rape” show, their Scottish-inspired clothing ripped to expose breasts and nether regions.
It was exactly the reaction that McQueen, then in his 20s and subsisting on fast food and unemployment checks, was seeking. “I don’t want a show where you come out feeling like you’ve just had Sunday lunch,” he said at the time. “I want you to come out either feeling repulsed or exhilarated.”
McQueen would go on to provoke, repulse, inspire and exhilarate — often simultaneously — until he was 40, when he tragically took his life.
How did a taxi driver’s son from working-class London make the unlikely journey to the top of the fashion world, and what made him end it all at the height of his powers?
For filmmakers Ian Bonhote and Peter Ettedgui, the two questions proved irresistible. Their resulting documentary, McQueen, opens this week.
Fashion is a compelling subject for documentaries; few subjects are so enticingly visual. But the challenge is always to peel away the well-polished, and well-guarded, facade.
“The fashion world is a bubble,” said Ettedgui, who wrote and co-directed the film. “They don’t necessarily take kindly to outsiders coming in and revealing their secrets.”
Candid interviews
The filmmakers approached close to 200 sources, Bonhote said. Finding footage was painstaking work, but they were fortunate to secure key parts of McQueen’s most dramatic runway shows, along with some strikingly candid interviews with the designer — a rarity at fashion shows.
They also found some valuable archival footage, including some private footage that McQueen and his associates captured for fun, trying out a new camera as they traveled to Paris for the designer’s new, high-profile post at Givenchy in 1996. They looked like grinning kids taking their parents’ car for a spin.
The filmmakers were also able to convince some key McQueen family members to speak, namely his older sister, Janet, and her son, Gary, a designer himself who worked for his uncle. And they interview some of McQueen’s former colleagues, though not all. Sarah Burton, who succeeded McQueen at his namesake label, doesn’t appear.
At the heart of the film, though, is McQueen’s work and the way his bracing talent reverberated through the fashion establishment. Watching now, one can almost feel the gasps in the audience as the designer places model Shalom Harlow on a revolving platform in a plain tulle dress in his show No. 13, then has two robots spray yellow and black paint on her as she turns and turns. It was a mesmerizing effect that brought McQueen himself to tears.
Film’s divisions
The film is divided into chapters, each focusing on a particularly influential McQueen show. The first, Jack the Ripper Stalks His Victims in 1992, was originally his final project at Central Saint Martin’s, the well-known London fashion school.
Even getting to the school was unlikely. The young Lee McQueen (he reverted to his middle name, Alexander, later because it sounded posh) was supposed to become “a mechanic or something,” but he was obsessed with drawing clothes. His mother encouraged him to knock on doors on Savile Row for an apprenticeship, and there, he became a superb craftsman.
Isabella Blow, a prominent fashion figure, bought up his entire Jack the Ripper collection and helped him make his way. But it’s clear that, as an associate says: “No one discovered Alexander McQueen. Alexander McQueen discovered himself.”
At first, there was no money. A friend describes how the two went to McDonald’s after a major show, dropped the food on the floor, but had to pick it up and eat it because they couldn’t afford to buy more.
Things changed radically when luxury conglomerate LVMH hired McQueen for Givenchy. But McQueen didn’t just sit back and enjoy his financial windfall — he poured it back into his own label. back home. It was a time of enormous pressure; McQueen says in one interview that he produced an astounding 14 collections in a year.
For a man often called the “bad boy” or “enfant terrible” of fashion, there was much else to learn about McQueen, the filmmakers say. Among the things that surprised them: his sheer technical craftsmanship, and a constantly developing business savvy.
‘Tender at times’
They were also struck by how McQueen’s personality contrasted with the myth. “He had this reputation for being abrasive, punk,” said Ettedgui. “But what we see in the archive is McQueen with friends, with his parents, even his beloved dogs, being very human and very tender at times.”
At the end of his life, two deaths devastated McQueen. Blow took her life in 2007 — we see him at her funeral, looking destroyed. And in early 2010, McQueen’s beloved mother died. Only days later, on the eve of her funeral, the designer killed himself.
The filmmakers can only speculate why McQueen, who struggled with drug addiction, took his life. “Fashion does come with a very unique set of pressures,” said Ettedgui. But, he added, “people we spoke to said, ‘Don’t try to make him a victim, because ultimately the person who put the most pressure on McQueen was McQueen.”
Bonhote also noted the designer’s ambivalence about the world he had chosen, clearly expressed in shows like his famous 2001 Voss, in which he forced the assembled fashion world to literally stare at itself for long minutes into a mirrored cube — which in turn represented an insane asylum.
“To some degree, he was always a misfit in the world he found himself in,” Bonhote said.
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Grandson Shares Mandela’s Life Lessons in New Book
An entire generation has been born since Nelson Mandela’s 1990 release from a South African prison, where he spent almost three decades for his anti-apartheid activism.
Ndaba Mandela wants to make sure those young people understand his grandfather’s role – and his values – in fighting for racial equality and later in trying to heal divisions as South Africa’s first black president.
“That is the very reason why I wrote this book,” Ndaba Mandela says of “Going to the Mountain” (Hachette). His goal with the memoir – released last month, in time for Wednesday’s 100th anniversary of the late leader’s birth – is to show the elder Mandela “not as this huge, great icon” but as a supportive grandfather figure they might relate to.
The 35-year-old shared views of his grandfather – who died in late 2013 at age 95 – both in the book and in a recent visit to VOA headquarters here. Ndaba describes him as “courageous” and “fearless” in his quest to end South Africa’s white minority rule, but says that commitment came at great personal cost.
“That is a man who went against the system, who sacrificed his family, sacrificed his own life for the greater good of his people,” Ndaba tells VOA, alluding to his grandfather’s 27 years in detention.
It’s a complicated, extended family, given Mandela’s three marriages and five children. Ndaba’s father was Makgatho Mandela, “the Old Man’s second son by his first wife, Evelyn Ntoko Mase,” he writes, using a term of affection.
Mandela was imprisoned while that son grew up and became a street hustler in Soweto. Ndaba says his own childhood was chaotic and impoverished, with his parents caught up in alcohol and sometimes fighting bitterly.
“A lot of the time, I would eat at my neighbors’ house, you know, when my parents couldn’t afford to get dinner for me,” he says. “… By any standard, I grew up in a broken home.”
In 1989, 7-year-old Ndaba met his grandfather at Victor Verster Prison, from which the leader was freed several months later. The boy was 11 when he moved in with Mandela and his staff in a house in Johannesburg’s Houghton suburb. He would spend much of the next two decades there – being cared about, and then caring for, the Old Man.
Subtitled “Life Lessons From My Grandfather,” the book explores the older man’s motivations and approaches.
Among those lessons:
“Nonviolence is a strategy,” Ndaba writes, quoting the Old Man. His grandfather subscribed to Gandhi’s strategy “of noncooperation and peaceful but unstoppable resistance. … He was a judicious leader who understood the power of doing the right thing until it overwhelms the wrong thing.”
Education is essential. Nelson Mandela “valued education because it was something that was stripped away” from blacks, says Ndaba, who admits he himself at one point “didn’t perform well at school” and had “a rocky adolescence.” Like his grandfather, he went on to earn a college degree.
Weeks after becoming president in 1994, Mandela established what became the Nelson Mandela Children’s Fund, donating about a third of his presidential salary every year, his grandson writes. As the elder man had told parliament, “The emancipation of people from poverty and deprivation is most centrally linked” to quality education.
Respect your heritage. The phrase “going to the mountain” refers to ceremonial circumcision – a monthlong rite of passage for young men in the Xhosa ethnic group. Ndaba was almost 21 when he underwent cutting and related psychological and spiritual testing. It was a turning point in his relationship with his grandfather, who then “expected critical thinking and welcomed civilized disagreements,” he writes. “… From the time I was a kid, I knew I could depend on him. This is when he knew he could depend on me.”
Don’t expect change all at once. When Ndaba eventually realized that his grandfather had orchestrated his parents’ separation and also kept them away from him, he writes, “I struggled to forgive him.”
Ndaba’s mother, Zondi, was already gravely ill when he learned that she had HIV/AIDS. She died of its complications in 2003, though a family press release attributed her death to pneumonia.
Ndaba writes that Mandela tried to address the country’s AIDS epidemic in 1991 by promoting safe-sex education, but backed off when accusations that he was “encouraging promiscuity” threatened his political prospects. When Ndaba’s father succumbed to the same disease in early 2005, Mandela called a press conference “to announce that my son has died of AIDS.”
“It’s impossible to overstate what this meant to the millions of people who live in fear of seeking help or disclosing their HIV status and to the millions more people who loved them,” writes Ndaba Mandela, now an ambassador for UNAIDS, the United Nations effort to curb the disease.
Show leadership through service. Mandela was a man of “integrity, humility,” one who “dived into public service,” his grandson says. “A leader is not someone who says, ‘Look at me, I’m the best’ – a leader is there to serve.”
For Ndaba, service comes through Africa Rising, a nonprofit that he and cousin Kweku Mandela formed in 2009 to improve the continent’s socioeconomics. “We need to empower young Africans,” he says, “to give them a heightened sense of pride and confidence in being African.”
This report originated in VOA’s English to Africa Service.
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Universal Music Group to Open Nigeria Division
Vivendi’s Universal Music Group (UMG) will launch a new division in Nigeria as part of efforts by the world’s largest music label to expand into Africa’s most populous nation and the wider region.
The music entertainment group said on Tuesday its new strategic division, Universal Music Nigeria, will operate from Nigeria’s commercial capital Lagos.
Nigerian music, much like its Nollywood film industry, is popular across much of Africa. Nigerian music artists have popularized the Afrobeat musical genre and gone on to sign record deals, sell out concerts and work with international artists to increase the global reach of African music.
Music revenue in Nigeria – mostly derived from sales of mobile phone ringtones – grew 9 percent in 2016, year-on-year, to reach $39 million and is expected to rise to $73 million by 2021, auditing firm Pricewaterhouse Coopers (PwC) said last year.
Sipho Dlamini, Managing Director of Universal Music South Africa and sub-Saharan Africa said that the Nigeria division will focus on developing artists and musicians from West Africa countries, particularly Nigeria, Ghana and Gambia.
“Our Nigeria team will support, nurture, and help develop artists, while creating opportunities for new talent from the region to reach the widest possible audience,” said Dlamini.
UMG said the new division will work alongside the label’s existing operations in Ivory Coast and Morocco.
Universal Music Nigeria also plans to open a recording studio in Lagos, which would be the label’s second fully purposed studio in Africa alongside another in Johannesburg, South Africa.
Nigeria’s music industry faces an array of challenges ranging from the lack of proper legal structures, to piracy and difficulties in distributing and monetizing content.
The country’s arts, entertainment and recreation sector contributed 0.29 percent to real GDP in the first quarter of this year, the statistics office said.
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