Researchers believe they have identified the area of the brain that determines a preference for alcohol, perhaps the first step in an eventual treatment for alcoholism.In a study published Monday in the Society for Neuroscience journal eNeuro, researchers said they were trying to determine why some people can consume alcohol every day without developing dependence while less frequent drinkers develop a dependence.The researchers, from the University of Massachusetts, offered a test group of rats intermittent access to a 20 percent alcohol solution, then trained them to self-administer both 10 and 20 percent solutions of alcohol, as well as a sugar solution as a reward. They then were able to determine which rats were high or low alcohol consumers and divide them accordingly.The researchers monitored the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity in rats as they consumed the alcohol. The OFC is the brain region associated with impulsivity, reward and decision-making. They found OFC activity in spiked in rats that preferred to consume higher levels of alcohol when they consumed it than in rats who did not prefer it as much.The researchers said the strength of the OFC activity was directly linked to how much the rats preferred drinking the stronger alcohol solution, suggesting the OFC is the portion of the brain that encodes individual preferences for alcohol.The researchers stressed that further human research was needed to determine whether these findings would translate exactly to people. And they have not yet determined the root developmental, environmental and genetic causes driving these preferences for alcohol.But they said understanding the underlying mechanisms in the brain had the potential to target more precisely what happens when a person has problems controlling alcohol consumption.
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The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are calling for a renewed push for vaccinations, as the numbers of vaccinations fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.In a statement issued Wednesday, the non-profits say child vaccination rates plateaued at 85 percent in the decade prior to the outbreak, with an estimate that at least 14 million infants were not vaccinated each of those years.“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunized than ever before,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.But the pandemic has slowed production of the vital preventative vaccines, and stay-at-home orders, economic hardships and other obstacles have hindered access to doctor’s offices and clinics.For example, new data released by the WHO indicates the first four months of 2020 saw a significant drop in in children completing the recommended number of vaccination doses against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis (DTP3). Such a decline would be the first in nearly three decades, the WHO said.In a poll conducted in June by the WHO, UNICEF and Garvi, in collaboration with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, the Sabin Vaccine Institute and Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, three-quarters of 82 countries that responded reported COVID-19-related disruptions in their immunization services.A majority of the countries reporting disruptions were located in Africa, the Americas and the Eastern Mediterranean, the data shows.UNICEF Executive Director Henrietta Fore urged governments to continue to support their vaccination programs, even as scientists race to discover a treatment and vaccine for COVID-19.“We must prevent a further deterioration in vaccine coverage and urgently resume vaccination programs before children’s lives are threatened by other diseases. We cannot trade one health crisis for another,” she said. 
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President Donald Trump is expected to announce a new federal rule to speed up the environmental review process for proposed highways, gas pipelines and other major infrastructure, a move that critics are describing as the dismantling of a 50-year-old environmental protection law.
 
Trump will travel to Atlanta on Wednesday to announce the federal rule as he seeks to make it easier to meet some of the country’s infrastructure needs. When he first announced the effort in January, the administration set a two-year deadline for completing full environmental impact reviews while less comprehensive assessments would have to be completed within one year. The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America.
 
Critics call the Republican president’s efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to review, comment on and influence proposed projects under the National Environmental Policy Act, one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws.
 
“This may be the single biggest giveaway to polluters in the past 40 years,” said Brett Hartl, government affairs director at the Center for Biological Diversity, an environmental group that works to save endangered species.
 
Trump has made slashing government regulation a hallmark of his presidency and held it out as a way to boost jobs. But environmental groups say the regulatory rollbacks threaten public health and make it harder to curb global warming. With Congress and the administration divided over how to boost infrastructure investment, the president is relying on his deregulation push to demonstrate progress.
 
“The United States can’t compete and prosper if a bureaucratic system holds us back from building what we need,” Trump said when first announcing the sweeping rollback of National Environmental Policy Act rules.
 
Georgia is emerging as a key swing state in the general election. Trump won the Republican-leaning state by 5 percentage points in 2016, but some polls show him trailing former Vice President Joe Biden, the presumptive Democratic nominee. This will be Trump’s ninth trip to Georgia and his sixth visit to Atlanta during his presidency.
 
The president’s trip also comes as the state has seen coronavirus cases surge and now has tallied more than 12,000 confirmed cases and more than 3,000 deaths.
 
Jon Ossoff, a Democrat who is running against incumbent Republican Sen. David Perdue, said Trump’s decision to come to Georgia to discuss infrastructure as the state’s coronavirus crisis worsens demonstrates that the president is “in denial and out of control.”
 
“Coming here for a routine photo-op is, frankly, bizarre, surreal against this unprecedented health and economic crisis,” Ossoff said.
 
Judd Deere, a White House spokesman, said that if Ossoff views a major policy announcement to expedite critical infrastructure projects as anything other than about job growth and economic expansion, then it might explain why he lost an election two years ago.
 
The White House said the administration’s efforts will expedite the expansion of Interstate 75 near Atlanta, an important freight route where traffic can often slow to a crawl. The state will create two interstate lanes designed solely for commercial trucks. The state announced last fall, before the White House unveiled its proposed rule, that it was moving up the deadline for substantially completing the project to 2028.
 
Thousands of Americans on both sides of the new federal rule wrote to the Council on Environmental Quality to voice their opinions.
 
The U.S. Chamber of Commerce cited a North Carolina bridge in its letter as an example of unreasonable delays, saying the bridge that connected Hatteras Island to Bodie Island took 25 years to complete, but only three years to build. “The failure to secure timely approval for projects and land management decisions is also hampering economic growth,” the business group wrote.
 
The Natural Resources Defense Council said that when Congress passed the National Environmental Policy Act 50 years ago, it did so with the understanding that environmental well-being is compatible with economic well-being. The proposed rule, it said, would lead federal agencies to make decisions with significant environmental impacts without ever considering those impacts in advance.
 
“At the end of the day, it would lead to poor decision, increased litigation and less transparency,” said Sharon Buccino, a senior director at the environmental group.
 
Trump’s trip to Georgia comes one day after Biden announced an infrastructure plan that places a heavy emphasis on improving energy efficiency in buildings and housing as well as promoting conservation efforts in the agriculture industry. In the plan, Biden pledges to spend $2 trillion over four years to promote his energy proposals.
 
Trump’s push to use regulatory changes to boost infrastructure development also comes as the House and Senate pursue starkly different efforts. The Democratic-controlled House passed a $1.5 trillion plan that goes beyond roads and bridges and would fund improvements to schools, housing, water and sewer, and broadband. A GOP-controlled Senate panel passed a bill last year setting aside $287 billion for roads and bridges, but other committees are still working on the measure, including how to pay for it.
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The era of expanding human populations may be ending, according to a new study, with major implications for societies, the economy and the environment. The world’s population may top out at roughly 9.7 billion around 2064, up from about 7.8 billion today, before shrinking to 8.8 billion by the end of the century, according to estimates published in the journal FILE PHOTO: A combo shows buildings on Nov. 8, 2018 and after air pollution level started to drop during a 21-day nationwide lockdown to slow the spreading of coronavirus disease (COVID-19), in New Delhi, India, April 8, 2020.It would be great news for the environment. Fewer people would generate fewer greenhouse gases and other pollutants, for example. It would lower demand for food, reducing the pressure that agriculture puts on land and water.  But it would turn the economy on its head.  Declining populations mean fewer workers, which means lower GDP. It also means fewer consumers, the bedrock of the global economy.  “What happens when you don’t have young people buying their first house, buying their first refrigerator, buying the first car?” said Darrell Bricker, co-author of the book, “Empty Planet: The Shock of Global Population Decline.” Bricker was not involved in the study. Also, populations age as fertility rates drop.  “This is actually more serious than just simple population decline,” said Brown University sociology professor Zhenchao Qian, who was not involved with the research.  A smaller workforce would be supporting a larger elderly population, Qian noted, raising political and fiscal questions about how to pay for health care and social security systems.  Population declines could also have geopolitical consequences. Fewer workers also mean fewer potential soldiers, Murray noted. “The balance of power between nation-states has always been related in some ways to the size of the working-age population,” he said. Anti-government protesters wear hazmat suits and gas masks during a rally demanding women’s rights during the International Women’s Day in Tahrir square in Baghdad, Iraq, March 8, 2020.Female empowerment Fertility rates have been declining worldwide mainly because women are getting more education and better access to birth control.  “It’s really a story about female empowerment,” Bricker, the “Empty Planet” author, said. The main difference between the new forecast and the U.N.’s is what they expect to happen after fertility rates bottom out.  Populations hold steady when women have an average of just over two children each. Tourists practice social distancing as they wait to extend their visa at Immigration Bureau in Bangkok, Thailand, March 27, 2020.’Great uncertainty’ The U.N.’s Wilmoth notes that both groups are basing their assumptions on “what’s still early experience in the lives of a few countries. So, I have to confess there’s great uncertainty about that,” he said. “We will know much more about that in 10 or 20 years,” he added. “But for now, we’re both guessing to some extent.” If populations do shrink, Murray said countries have three options to keep themselves afloat.  “One is to make it easier for women to work and have children,” he said, including generous parental leave and support for working mothers with young children.  Most countries that have implemented these policies have found they can help, he added, “but they don’t bring fertility back to (the) replacement (rate).” The second option is to open their borders to immigration.  Public sentiment currently is against this option in parts of the West. The Trump administration, for example, has sought to curb immigration into the United States. Opposition to European Union migration policies helped drive Britain’s Brexit vote. However, “if Murray and colleagues’ predictions are even half accurate, migration will become a necessity for all nations and not an option,” Ibrahim Abubakar, director of the University College London Institute for Global Health, wrote in a commentary accompanying the Lancet article.    A third scenario, “one that we think is a real risk,” Murray said, is countries would be “tempted to roll back women’s reproductive health rights in order to put pressure on them to have more children for the sake of the nation-state,” a situation he called “very undesirable.” The major exception to Murray’s group’s shrinkage predictions is sub-Saharan Africa.  “Education for women is growing, but it’s still at a very low level in many countries, and it’s growing slowly,” he said.  There is a lot of uncertainty in the longer term, however.  “Birth rates are still really high,” Bricker noted, “but they’re coming down, and urbanization is starting to take place there, too, at a really rapid rate,” which tends to lower fertility rates. On the other hand, the U.N.’s Wilmoth noted, “we’ve consistently had to up the estimates. … I worry about underestimating the future population of Africa, not overestimating it.” 
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It is commonly accepted that the human senses are limited — what can be seen through the eyes, heard through the ears. Sound is created when things vibrate. We hear it through our ears. Researchers have developed a wearable device that augments the reality of users by allowing them to “hear” through their skin in the form of vibrations. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.Camera: Elizabeth Lee   Produced by: Bronwyn Benito 
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Researchers have taken a scientific look at why people love the music they do and how it connects to important times in their lives. The study, published last week in the Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, sought to look at music people hear in their teenage years and how that music becomes intrinsically linked to a person’s “sense of themself.” Researchers with the University of Westminster School of Social Sciences in London analyzed 80 guests on the British Broadcasting Company (BBC) show Desert Island Discs in which celebrities select eight pieces of music that they would take with them to a desert island. The researchers found half of the songs participants chose were selected because they were linked to important memories from when they were either between the ages of 10 and 19 or between 20 and 29. They theorize it is during those years that people are forming the essential sense of themselves.  Researchers found the songs on Desert Island Discs were all tied to key transitions in participants’ lives such as meeting a partner, attending college or some other life-altering event. Lead researcher University of Westminster neuropsychologist Catherine Loveday said those songs tend to influence a person’s taste in music for years to come. She said the memories people form in their teenage and early adult years are what she and her fellow researchers call “the self-defining period” in which the brain is “taking snapshots” of episodes more than any other time in a person’s life. 
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Pakistan said Tuesday it would relaunch door to door vaccinations of children against polio next week after a four-month suspension due to the coronavirus outbreak.  
 
The announcement comes amid a substantial decline in daily COVID-19 infections across Pakistan, one of the two polio-endemic countries in the world along with its war-torn neighbor Afghanistan.  
 
Pakistani officials have so far recorded 58 new polio cases this year from across the country amid warnings by the World Health Organization that “transmission continues to be widespread.” 
 
The anti-polio drive, starting July 20, initially aims to vaccinate about 800,000 children under the age of five in high-risk Pakistani districts, including Karachi and Quetta, to protect them against the crippling disease.  
 
The special assistant to the prime minister on health, Zafar Mirza, acknowledged the outbreak of coronavirus pandemic and ensuing lockdowns to prevent its spread have had a significant impact on Pakistan’s already under-resourced and deteriorating public health care systems.   
 
“With the disruption of essential immunization services due to the COVID-19 pandemic, children are continuously at a higher risk of contracting polio and other vaccine-preventable diseases,” an official statement quoted Mirza as saying.   FILE – Health workers arrive to collect at a drive-through testing and screening facility for the coronavirus, in Islamabad, Pakistan, June 6, 2020.The coronavirus reached Pakistan in late February, prompting the government to redirect all health program strengths and capacities to support COVID-19 surveillance and response efforts. Mirza announced last week he had tested positive for the virus. 
 
The national tally of coronavirus infections has hit at least 254,000, including more than 5,300 deaths.  Officials reported less than 2,000 new cases on Tuesday, showing a consistent and substantial decrease in daily infections.  
 
“The door to door campaigns will also be utilized to raise awareness on COVID preventive measures and referring mothers and children for other essential vaccinations as well as the antenatal care services,” said Rana Mohammad Safdar, who oversees Pakistan’s polio eradication program. 
 
Pakistan’s efforts to rid the country of polio have lately suffered setbacks due to attacks on vaccinators and police personnel guarding them. The deadly violence is also cited a factor for the upsurge in new cases that had dropped to only 12 cases in 2018. 
 
In traditionally conservative parts of majority-Muslim Pakistan, religious fanatics see the vaccine as a Western-led conspiracy to sterilize children. Militant groups operating in these areas also condemn the drive against polio as an effort to collect intelligence on their activities.  
 FILE – Pakistani police officers attend the funeral for their colleagues in Lower Dir, Dec. 18, 2019. Gunmen shot and killed the two policemen who were part of an anti-polio drive in the volatile northwest.Officials say attacks on polio teams have particularly increased since 2011 when the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency organized a fake vaccination campaign with the help of a local doctor, enabling U.S. forces to locate and kill fugitive al-Qaida chief Osama bin Laden in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad. 
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Politicians and public health leaders have publicly committed to equitably sharing any coronavirus vaccine that works, but the top global initiative to make that happen may allow rich countries to reinforce their own stockpiles while making fewer doses available for poor ones.
 
Activists warn that without stronger attempts to hold political, pharmaceutical and health leaders accountable, vaccines will be hoarded by rich countries in an unseemly race to inoculate their populations first. After the recent uproar over the United States purchasing a large amount of a new COVID-19 drug, some predict an even more disturbing scenario if a successful vaccine is developed.
Dozens of vaccines are being researched, and some countries — including Britain, France, Germany and the U.S. — already have ordered hundreds of millions of doses before the vaccines are even proven to work.  
While no country can afford to buy doses of every potential vaccine candidate, many poor ones can’t afford to place such speculative bets at all.
The key initiative to help them is led by Gavi, a public-private partnership started by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation that buys vaccines for about 60% of the world’s children.
In a document sent to potential donors last month, Gavi said those giving money to its new “Covax Facility” would have “the opportunity to benefit from a larger portfolio of COVID-19 vaccines.” Gavi told donor governments that when an effective vaccine is found within its pool of experimental shots, those countries would receive doses for 20% of their population. Those shots could be used as each nation wished.
That means rich countries can sign deals on their own with drugmakers and then also get no-strings-attached allocations from Gavi. The donor countries are “encouraged (but not required) to donate vaccines if they have more than they need,” the document says.  
“By giving rich countries this backup plan, they’re getting their cake and eating it too,” said Anna Marriott of Oxfam International. “They may end up buying up all the supply in advance, which then limits what Gavi can distribute to the rest of the world.”  
Dr. Seth Berkley, Gavi’s CEO, said such criticisms were unhelpful.
Right now there’s no vaccine for anyone, he said, and “we’re trying to solve that problem.”  
Berkley said Gavi needed to make investing in a global vaccine initiative attractive for rich countries. Gavi would try to persuade those countries that if they ordered vaccines already, they should not attempt to obtain more, he said.  
But he acknowledged there was no enforcement mechanism.  
“If, at the end of the day, those legal agreements are broken or countries seize assets or don’t allow the provision of vaccines (to developing countries), that’s a problem,” Berkley said.
Gavi asked countries for an expression of intent from those interested in joining its initiative by last Friday. It had expected about four dozen high and middle income countries to sign up, in addition to nearly 90 developing countries.  
Dr. Richard Hatchett, CEO of the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovations, which is working with Gavi and others, said they would be talking in the coming weeks with countries who had signed deals with drug companies to secure their own supplies.  
One possibility: They might ask countries to contribute their private vaccine stockpile to the global pool in exchange for access to whichever experimental candidate proves effective.
“We’ll have to find a solution because some of these arrangements have been made and I think we have to be pragmatic about it,” he said.
After a vaccine meeting last month, the African Union said governments should “remove all obstacles” to equal distribution of any successful vaccine.
Africa Centers for Disease Control and Prevention chief John Nkengasong said Gavi should be “pushing hard” on convincing companies to suspend their intellectual property rights.  
“We don’t want to find ourselves in the HIV drugs situation,” he said, noting that the life-saving drugs were available in developed countries years before they made it to Africa.
Shabhir Mahdi, principal investigator of the Oxford vaccine trial in South Africa, said it was up to African governments to push for more vaccine-sharing initiatives, rather than depending on pharmaceutical companies to make their products more accessible.
“If you expect it to be the responsibility of industry, you would never get a vaccine onto the African continent,” Mahdi said.  
Last month, Gavi and CEPI signed a $750 million deal with AstraZeneca to give developing countries 300 million doses of a shot being developed by Oxford University. But that deal happened after the drug company had already signed contracts with Britain and the U.S., who are first in line to get vaccine deliveries in the fall.  
“We are working tirelessly to honor our commitment to ensure broad and equitable access to Oxford’s vaccine across the globe and at no profit,” said AstraZeneca CEO Pascal Soriot. He said its contract with Gavi and CEPI marked “an important step in helping us supply hundreds of millions of people around the world, including to those in countries with the lowest means.”
Chinese President Xi Jinping has also vowed to share any COVID-19 vaccine it develops with African countries — but only once immunization has been completed in China.  
The World Health Organization has previously said it hopes to secure 2 billion doses for people in lower-income countries by the end of 2021, including through initiatives like Gavi’s. About 85% of the world’s 7.8 billion people live in developing countries.
Kate Elder, senior vaccines policy adviser at Doctors Without Borders, said Gavi should try to extract more concessions from pharmaceutical companies, including compelling them to suspend patents on the vaccines.  
“Gavi is in a very delicate position because they’re completely reliant on the goodwill” of drug companies, said Elder. She said the system of how vaccines are provided to developing countries needed to be overhauled so that it wasn’t based on charity, but on public health need.
“We’re just having our governments write these blank checks to industry with no conditions attached right now,” she said. “Isn’t now the time to actually hold them to account and demand we as the public, get more for it?”
Yannis Natsis, a policy official at the European Public Health Alliance, said the last thing on the minds of officials in rich countries is sharing with poor ones.  
“Politicians are scared if they don’t throw money at companies, the citizens in the next country over will get the vaccines first and they will look very bad,” Natsis said. 
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