In the coming week, we could see five launches from various countries and companies including China, SpaceX, and OneWeb. The two aforementioned companies will send up some of their respective internet satellites while China will re-attempt to launch the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft which will try to dock with the Tianhe module of the new Chinese Space Station.

After outlining the launches scheduled for the upcoming week, there will be a recap section with launches and other events from the past week.

Tuesday, May 25

The only mission penned in for Tuesday is the Tactically Responsive Launch 2 (TacRL-2) mission which we have mentioned several times before. Now, as was the case before, the mission is marked as No Earlier Than so it may not even launch. The mission will see Northrop Grumman’s Pegasus XL rocket launch from the L-1011 Stargazer aircraft. The mission has been called a technology demonstration and an orbital launch service mission and is part of a U.S. Space Force programme.

Wednesday, May 26

SpaceX is set to launch a further 60 Starlink satellites on Wednesday at 6:59 p.m. UTC as part of its Starlink 28 mission. The firm launches Starlink satellites almost every week without issue although the weather does sometimes cause a launch to be delayed. The satellites will be carried into orbit on a Falcon 9 Block 5 rocket and will join in with the rest of the Starlink constellation to beam internet connectivity back down to Earth. The launch will be streamed on SpaceX’s website and a recap video will be available post-launch.

Thursday, May 27

We’ve got two launches planned for Thursday, the first is a Long March CZ-3B/E carrying the Fengyun 4B geostationary weather satellite for the China Meteorological Administration and the other is the launch of 36 OneWeb satellites aboard a Starsem Soyuz 2.1b rocket.

The Fengyun 4B has been designed to collect images of storm systems, take atmospheric sounding measurements, help to create lightning maps, and observe space weather events. The OneWeb satellites, similarly to Starlink, will beam the internet back to Earth for use on aeroplanes, by governments, and more. Once complete, the OneWeb constellation may consist of 7088 satellites.

Saturday, May 29

The final launch of the week will take place at the Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Saturday at 12:56 p.m. UTC. The China National Space Administration will attempt to launch the Tianzhou-2 cargo craft to the Tianhe module of the Chinese Space Station to deliver three months worth of personal supplies for three astronauts. This supply mission is critical for China so that it can send up three of its Taikonauts to the new space station in the near future.

Recap

The first mission we mentioned last week was the launch of the Space Based Infrared System Geosynchronous (SBIRS GEO 5) satellite. You can watch the event below:

China’s ocean observation satellite, Haiyang 2D, was also successfully orbited by a Long March CZ-4B rocket, you can see a short clip of the launch footage below:

Finally, in This Week in Rocket Launch 12, we mentioned that Virgin Galactic was looking to launch the VSS Unity rocketplane but that it was marked as No Earlier Than. The mission finally went ahead yesterday (May 22). You can see coverage below:

Source: TWIRL 14: SpaceX and OneWeb to orbit more internet satellites

The agency granted a permit for certain streets in Fremont, Milpitas, and Irvine

Chinese autonomous vehicle startup Pony.ai has received a permit from California’s Department of Motor Vehicles to test its driverless cars without human safety drivers behind the wheel on specified streets in three cities.

Pony has been authorized to test autonomous vehicles with safety drivers in California since 2017, but the new permit will let it test six autonomous vehicles without safety drivers on specific streets in Fremont, Alameda County; Milpitas, Santa Clara County; and Irvine, Orange County. According to the DMV, the vehicles are designed to be driven on roads with speed limits of 45 miles per hour or less, in clear weather and light precipitation. The first testing will be in Fremont and Milpitas on weekdays between 10AM and 3PM.

A total of 55 companies have active permits to test driverless vehicles in California according to the DMV, but Pony is only the eighth company to receive a driverless testing permit, joining fellow Chinese companies AutoX, Baidu, and WeRide, along with US companies Cruise, Nuro, Waymo, and Zoox. Nuro is the only company so far to receive a deployment permit that allows it to operate its autonomous vehicles in California commercially.

Pony.ai, which is based in Guangzhou and Silicon Valley, was valued at $3 billion after a $400 million investment from Toyota last year. The company said earlier this month its robotaxis will be ready for customers in 2023. Pony claims it’s the first company to launch autonomous ride-hailing and provide self-driving car rides to the general public in China.

Source: Chinese startup Pony.ai gets approval to test driverless vehicles in California

Electric vehicles must account for 90 percent of ride-hailing vehicle miles traveled in California by 2030.

Story at a glance

• California's clean-air regulator on Thursday unanimously approved new rules for ride-sharing companies Thursday.
• The companies will have to begin the electrification of their fleets in 2023.
• Both Uber and Lyft have already committed to converting their fleets entirely to electric vehicles by 2030.

California is requiring ride-sharing companies such as Uber and Lyft to transition from gasoline to electric vehicles (EVs) in their networks by the end of this decade. 

The state’s clean-air regulator on Thursday unanimously approved the Clean Miles Standard mandating that EVs account for 90 percent of ride-hailing vehicle miles traveled in California by 2030.

The ride-share companies will have to begin the electrification of their fleets in 2023. 

The move by the California Air Resources Board (CARB) is part of California’s effort to phase out gas-powered vehicles and reduce greenhouse gas emissions and become carbon neutral by 2045. Gov. Gavin Newsom (D-Calif.) last year signed an executive order requiring all new cars and passenger trucks sold in the state of nearly 40 million residents be zero-emission by 2035. 

“The transportation sector is responsible for nearly half of California’s greenhouse gas emissions, the vast majority of which come from light-duty vehicles,” CARB Chair Liane M. Randolph said in a statement. 

“This action will help provide certainty to the state’s climate efforts and improve air quality in our most disadvantaged communities,” Randolph said. 

Both Uber and Lyft have already committed to converting their fleets entirely to EVs by 2030 and have made efforts to help drivers make the shift. The companies have said, however, California needs to spend more money to help drivers afford the zero emissions vehicles, according to Reuters. 

“Lyft supports CARB’s EV and [greenhouse gas] targets for TNCs [ridesharing companies] and advocated for aggressive targets throughout the process,” Paul Augustine, senior manager of Sustainability at Lyft, told Changing America in a statement. 

Uber applauded the rule as “one of the first emissions policies in the world based on real-world vehicle use.”

“With ridehail trips accounting for just 1% of California’s light-duty vehicle emissions, we hope [Clean Miles Standard] becomes a useful template for examining the other 99 percent,” Adam Gromis, global head of sustainability for Uber, said in a statement. 

Source: California will require Uber, Lyft drivers to transition to electric cars

The Atlantic hurricane season’s first storm forms early—again

Ana's formation is part of a trend toward earlier storms in the Atlantic.

The National Hurricane Center said that a low-pressure system to the northwest of Bermuda had become sufficiently organized on Saturday morning to become a subtropical storm. It will be named Ana.

 

Although Ana has some tropical characteristics, it is considered "subtropical" because it is associated with a low-pressure system in the upper atmosphere, and its maximum winds are located farther from its center. Ana should not strengthen significantly above its current maximum of 45 mph winds and should dissipate by early next week as it moves away from Bermuda.

 

Despite its relative weakness, Ana is notable for a couple of reasons. This is the seventh consecutive year, dating to 2015, in which a "named" storm has formed in the Atlantic basin—which includes the northern Atlantic Ocean, Caribbean Sea, and Gulf of Mexico—before June 1. The beginning of June traditionally marks the official start of the Atlantic hurricane season.

 

Due to this trend toward earlier storms, which is at least partly attributable to climate change and the Atlantic Ocean warming earlier, the US government's National Hurricane Center has considered moving the start date of the season to May 15. However, in something of a compromise, the agency decided to begin forecasting storms earlier but not declare an earlier, official start.

 

"To provide more consistent information on the potential for late May and early June systems," the agency said, it would begin to provide tropical weather outlooks four times daily, beginning on May 15.

 

Those outlooks have been needed this year. In addition to Ana, forecasters tracked another disturbance on Friday and early Saturday in the Gulf of Mexico that showed some signs of organizing. However, it moved inland, into the Central Texas coast, early on Saturday before attaining status as a tropical depression.

 

One surprising thing about Ana and this Gulf system is that they both developed circulations outside of the area where May storms have historically formed. This suggests the possibility that, in addition to more named storms forming earlier in the season, the area in which they may potentially form is also expanding.

 

Historically, the presence of named storms in May has not necessarily presaged an overly busy Atlantic hurricane season. However, this year forecasters at NOAA and elsewhere are nonetheless anticipating a busier than normal season due to the lack of an El Niño, which tends to dampen Atlantic activity, as well as warmer than normal Atlantic sea surface temperatures. NOAA predicted 13 to 20 named storms will form this year. One is already in the books.

The Atlantic hurricane season’s first storm forms early—again

400-year-old sunken warships aren’t the sisters of doomed Vasa after all

Wood analysis shows the wrecks discovered in 2019 are the warships Apollo and Maria

Back in 2019, Swedish maritime archaeologists discovered the wrecks of two 17th-century ships at the bottom of a busy Swedish shipping canal near Vaxholm. Initially they suspected these might be the sister ships of the doomed warship Vasa, which sank in 1628 on her first trip out of port. Thanks to analysis of wood samples obtained from the wrecks, we now know they are actually two slightly younger warships, the Apollo and Maria.

 

Wooden sailing ships were the high-tech military vehicles of their day, and Vasa and her sisters—Äpplet, Kronan, and Scepter, all built on the order of King Gustav II Adolf (1594-1632)—were among the earliest to carry large numbers of heavy cannon. The Vasa set sail for the first time on August 10, 1628, but as she sailed down the harbor, a strong gust of wind filled the sails and caused the ship to tip so far over to her port side that water poured into the open gunports on the lower deck.

 

The Vasa sank within minutes, and 30 crew members and guests perished with her, trapped inside the sinking ship. The catastrophe was largely due to a flaw in the Vasa's design: the hull's upper works were too tall and heavy, so its center of gravity was so far above the water, the ship would heel in response to even a relatively slight gust of wind. She might have yet survived had the gunports not been open. The wreckage of the Vasa was salvaged in 1961 and is now housed in the Vasa Museum in Stockholm.

 

The sister ships, built shortly after the sinking, had somewhat longer careers. As Kiona Smith reported for Ars in 2019, Äpplet sailed with the Swedish fleet to invade Germany in 1630, and Kronan and Scepter sailed against a combined Danish-Norwegian fleet in the 1644 battle of Kolberger Heide.

 

In the late 1600s, the Swedish navy scuttled the three aging warships to help control access to a narrow sea channel approaching Stockholm. A complex network of channels and straits weaves among the islands, but only two routes offer access to Stockholm by sea. The channel where the wrecked warships now rest is the larger of those two routes, and it's still in use today. Ferries and cargo ships now unwittingly pass within a few dozen meters of the 17th-century wrecks.

 

The area has seen almost constant construction since the 1500s to maintain the busy shipping channel and control access to the capital. In the years after the warships were scuttled, harbor defenses took the form of "stone coffins," which are enormous boxes built out of several whole logs and filled with large rocks. One of those coffins landed on the stern of the first wreck, smashing the timbers beneath it. And at some point, dynamite blasting farther out in the channel destroyed the port side of the second wreck.

 

In the late 1600s, the Swedish navy scuttled three aging warships to help control access to a narrow sea channel approaching Stockholm

First image of article image gallery. Please visit the source link to see all images.

There has never been a sonar survey of the area, so archaeologists had no idea what was down there. Project head Jim Hansson, a maritime archaeologist with Vrak—Museum of Wrecks in Sweden, and his colleagues braved the frigid water and the strong currents anyway in 2019. On one dive, the broad curves of a wooden hull suddenly emerged from the gloom before them. The next day, diving further out in the channel, they found a second wreck about 5 meters away from the first, end-to-end across the channel.

The divers took extensive measurements of the deck beams and frames, and they collected wood samples from both wrecks, which were sent off for radiocarbon analysis. That analysis concluded that the winter of 1646/1647 was the likely date when the oak trees used to make the ships were felled.

"When we dived on the ships, we got 'a Vasa feeling'—the timbers were huge, so one clue pointed to the possibility of finding some of Vasa's sister ships, which we know were sunk outside Vaxholm," said Hansson. "But the dates didn't add up. Vasa's sister ships, Äpplet, Kronan, and Scepter, were built shortly after Vasa sank in 1628. We wondered if the samples we had taken could have possibly come from parts of the ships that had been repaired, in the 1640s."

So they went diving again, bringing back more samples, and the analysis came to the same conclusion. Furthermore, one ship used wood from northern Germany, while the other used wood from eastern Sweden. The two wrecks couldn't be Vasa's sister ships. The team was able to use its measurements to get a solid estimate of the size and shape of the ships, sufficient to create digital reconstructions. A search of the archives turned up two likely matches, both warships built in 1648: the Apollo, built in Germany, and the Maria, built in Stockholm. Both ships were deliberately sunk at Vaxholm in 1677.

Maybe go smaller?

"The really big ships of the same type as Vasa were primarily King Gustav II Adolf's idea, and that idea died with him in 1632," said Patrik Höglund, assistant project manager. "After his death, medium-sized warships were built instead, since they could be used for many different purposes and were more seaworthy than the bigger unwieldy ships." Despite their smaller size, such ships were well-built to handle the weight of artillery. Both Apollo and Maria transported troops to Poland as part of a planned invasion by Charles X Gustav, and they took part in both the 1657 Battle of Møn and the Battle of the Sound the following year.

Many more shipwrecks are hiding in Vaxholm, including Vasa's sister ships, so there will continue to be diving expeditions and investigations—all part of an ongoing research project focused on Sweden's so-called "lost Navy." But for now, "The type of ships that Apollo and Maria represent have never before been documented archaeologically, and they have so much knowledge to convey," said Hansson.

400-year-old sunken warships aren’t the sisters of doomed Vasa after all

(To view the article's image gallery, please visit the above link)

The company is finally edging closer to its space tourism goal.

Virgin Galactic's private spaceflight program is back on track. As promised, the company completed a rocket-powered test flight on May 22nd that saw VSS Unity, its two pilots and NASA experiments reach space. It's the first human spaceflight out of Virgin's New Mexico-based Spaceport America.

The flight was originally slated for December 2020, but failed when a computer glitch halted ignition of the rocket motor. Virgin initially delayed the flight to February, but pushed it back again due to technical checks. This latest mission tested the solution to that issue in addition to its originally intended objectives, including data collection for the last two reports Virgin needs for the FAA's commercial reusable spacecraft license.

The success arguably comes too late — Virgin has delayed its first space tourism flights to 2022. That could be painful for a company that continues to bleed cash while it waits for its first trips with paying passengers. The test lets Virgin overcome a significant hurdle, though, and it can focus on its next test flight (timing yet to come) instead of dwelling on the past.

Source: Virgin Galactic completes rocket-powered test flight after months of delays

Bob McDonald's blog: Canadian researchers highlight concerns about the dangers of overcrowding orbit

A new report by two Canadian researchers is highlighting the growing hazard of space debris. It warns that the new mega-constellations of tens of thousands of communication satellites could pose a new kind of danger that could ultimately threaten other satellites, astronauts, our ability to use space and could even have an impact on the climate.  

Recently, the uncontrolled fall from space of a large Chinese rocket booster gained worldwide attention as no one could predict where it would come crashing to Earth. Fortunately, it came down in the Indian Ocean and no one was injured. That was just one booster.

But the amount of stuff — satellites, discarded boosters and other debris in Earth orbit — is huge.  And this new report warns that with projects like the SpaceX Starlink satellite constellation, the issue of space debris could approach a critical turning point.

I spoke with Astronomer Aaron Boley from the University of British Columbia, who co-wrote the new study with legal scholar Michael Byers. 

SpaceX Starlink satellites are seen in the sky above Denmark, April 21, 2020. (Ritzau Scanpix/Mads Claus Rasmussen via Reuters)

He told me: "Right now, Starlink has full approval within the current legal system to go ahead and launch 12,000 satellites, and they want to put up 30,000 more, so there will be 42,000 satellites. With Starlink alone, there will be more satellites in the sky than there are naked eye visible stars."

And that's not all. Others have similar plans, including OneWeb, Amazon, Telesat, and GW, which is a Chinese state-owned company. 

This astounding number of satellites will outnumber the total number of objects orbiting the Earth today and form shells around the planet in low Earth orbit up to about 750 km altitude.  

One problem with these enormous constellations is the visual pollution they can cause in the night sky. You might have even seen them — strings of these fast-moving satellites can be seen under the right conditions. 

Around 19 Starlink satellites were imaged shortly after launch in November 2019 by the Inter-American Observatory. Many astronomers are concerned about what tens of thousands of new satellites will do to their observations. (NSF’s National Optical-Infrared)

Astronomers are not happy about this, and some groups have called for legal action to stop Starlink and its competitors. The scientists would prefer to look at the real constellations rather than a constellation of satellites that can pass through a telescope's frame of view, ruining photographs of the cosmos.

But Aaron Boley has highlighted what could be a bigger issue. The more objects placed in orbit, the greater the chance of collision between them, other working satellites, astronauts working in space, and people on the ground when the objects fall out of orbit. 

The new satellites launched by SpaceX and other companies are not just thrown up willy-nilly. They're placed in careful orbits meant to minimize risks of collision, and modern satellites are designed to be de-orbited when they die, not just abandoned as space junk.  The commercial space companies must have plans to do this in an organized and safe way. This is all good and responsible.

But what Boley is concerned about is the possibility and implications of accidents. Random pieces of untracked space debris, or even meteors, could disable these satellites, disrupting their careful orbits and the deorbiting plans. The sheer number of these new satellites increases the risk. 

A SpaceX video shows a Falcon rocket as it blasts off carrying 60 Starlink satellites into orbit on Nov. 11, 2019. (SpaceX)

And this could lead to a runaway disaster. Relative speeds are so fast in space that objects running into each other tend to be blown to bits, and those bits add to the problem. With every collision, more debris is added, increasing the risk even more in what could become a runaway cascade of collisions that could make the valuable real estate of low Earth orbit incredibly dangerous.

Another possible unintended consequence of these satellite constellation raised by Boley and Byers is that even without accidents, as these thousands of satellites age out and are deorbited, this rain of dead satellites could have an impact on the climate. 

When an object from space is incinerated, it doesn't disappear completely. Satellites are made mostly of aluminum and that material remains at high altitude for a period of time. High altitude particles of aluminum have been proposed as one of the strategies for geoengineering, in which particles reflect sunlight back to space and cool the climate. 

SpaceX is just one of several companies planning satellite constellations that could include many tens of thousands of satellites each. (Heavens Above)

You apparently don't need to leave the planet to experience dangerous cosmic radiation.

It turns out that traveling in a passenger airplane could expose you to dangerous levels of cosmic radiation — under specific circumstances.

A team of scientists from the University of Toulouse modeled existing flight plans and found that they would be exposed to the cosmic rays given off by particularly severe radiation storms, according to a research summary in Eos. The research shows that, given the right conditions, violent space weather could put actual people at risk without them needing to leave the planet — or, at least, without traveling too far above its surface.

It’s worth clarifying that this doesn’t mean air travel is dangerous on a regular day. The study was more focused on extreme events than everyday risk.

The scientists studied the possible impacts of two specific radiation storms that likely happened in the years 774 and 993, and built models of how they may have impacted Earth based on the behavior of a less severe storm from 2005, according to the paper they published in the journal Space Weather. During an event as severe as those two historic storms, it seems that passengers on transatlantic flights could be exposed to dangerous levels of cosmic rays.

The two researchers behind the paper suggest that their study should be taken into consideration as the aerospace industry designs new planes, in order to protect both crewmembers and passengers as well as hardware and electronics that might get damaged if exposed to radiation. As Eos put it, this study shines light onto a “rare, but important, space weather risk.”

Source: Passenger Jets May Get Blasted by Dangerous Radiation, Scientists Warn

The crisis in Flint wasn’t enough, but the pandemic might have finally redefined the terms of the US water debate

If you ride a motorcycle, you may have noticed that the cost of airbag vests has dropped. In one case, something very different is going on here. As reported by Motherboard, you can pick up a KLIM Ai-1 for $400 but the airbag built into it will not function until unlocked with an additional purchase, and a big one at that. So do you really own the vest for $400?

Given the nature of the electronics and computer business lately, we spend a good bit of time thinking of what it means to own a piece of technology. Do you own your cable modem or cell phone if you aren’t allowed to open it up? Do you own a piece of software that wants to call home periodically and won’t let you stop it?  Sometimes it makes sense that you are paying for a service. But there have been times where, for example, a speaker company essentially bricks devices that could work fine on their own even though you — in theory — own the device.

NICE AIRBAG YOU GOT THERE; BE A SHAME IF IT DIDN’T GO OFF

The Klim airbag vest has two components that make it work. The vest itself is from Klim and costs $400 and arrives along with the airbag unit. But if you want it to actually detect an accident and inflate, you need load up a smartphone app and activate a small black box made by a different company: In&Motion. That requires your choice of another $400 payment or you can subscribe at $12 a month or $120 a year. If you fail to renew, the vest is essentially worthless.

To put this in electronics terms, it is one thing to realize your oscilloscope no longer does I2C protocol decoding because accounting screwed up paying the bill. It is another thing to suffer life-changing or life-ending injuries due to an accident. Granted, you get a 30 day grace period to correct any problems with payment, but still.

PARDON ME WHILE I FEED THE METER ON MY CRITICAL SAFETY DEVICE

I can’t really decide how I feel about this. The capitalist in me knows that you need to make a profit. However, this seems like putting coin-operated oxygen on a commercial airliner. Especially since the vest apparently can work fine with no external support as long as you paid the extra $400. In all fairness, indicator lights which must be verified before every ride will alert you if the vest is locked for non-payment (or any other problem), so there’s little chance you’d drive with it thinking you had protection that you didn’t.

So maybe this is defensible, but you have to wonder where this trend will take us. Will we see cars that require a subscription to use advanced safety features the way automotive companies already upsell some non-critical software features?

What do you think? Do you own a vest that needs a subscription? Some things are incapable of working without backend support (for example, your cell phone or cable modem). Is it more defensible to cut those off? Even so, many areas require all cell phones to be capable of calling emergency services (like 911 in the US) no matter the state of their associated account. That’s a crucial safety feature of a phone and all it requires is that you have the device, not the subscription.

Source: Do You Really Own It? Motorcycle Airbag Requires Additional Purchase To Inflate

A consent decree order stopped the production and distribution of the product whose packaging touted its healthy detoxifying properties

Federal authorities have ordered a complete recall of the Las Vegas-based bottled water brand Real Water and ordered the company to surrender records in investigations of at least one death and multiple cases of liver illness among people who reported drinking it.

The product is sold as premium alkalized drinking water in distinctive boxy blue bottles touting “E2 Electron Energized Technology.” Labels say it is “infused with negative ions” and offers healthy detoxifying properties.

Brent Jones, the company’s president, and attorneys for the company and the bottler, AffinityLifestyles.com, did not immediately respond Friday to email messages about a US district court order issued Wednesday. The order stopped the production and distribution of the product marketed primarily in Nevada, Arizona, Utah and California.

Jones and the company did not contest the order, called a consent decree, or admit wrongdoing pending further hearings. Telephone numbers for Jones and the company were no longer in service.

The federal complaint refers to the product brand as “Re2al Water Drinking Water”. It alleges the “manufacture and distribution of adulterated and/or misbranded bottled drinking water and chemical concentrate” that “may have been rendered injurious to health”.

The consent decree requires the company to recall and destroy all its product produced before Wednesday; to turn over to the FDA records about processing, bottling and distribution; and to submit to unannounced inspections of company facilities in Las Vegas; Henderson, Nevada; and Mesa, Arizona.

The company is committed to paying the cost of FDA activities at a rate of more than $100 per hour, and it must notify the agency before any change of ownership, reorganization or bankruptcy.

Documents say the commercial product is drawn from the Las Vegas-area municipal water supply, filtered and processed with potassium hydroxide, commonly called lye, the chemical potassium bicarbonate and a mineral salt, magnesium chloride.

“Defendants claim to use a proprietary ‘ionizer’ apparatus to apply an electrical current to this mixture, which allegedly creates positively charged and negatively charged solutions,” the federal civil complaint says.

It says the negatively charged solution is marketed as “E2 Concentrate” taste-enhancer for coffee, tea and wine – and diluted in tanks and packaged for home delivery and commercial sales as “alkaline” Real Water.

The Las Vegas-based Southern Nevada Health District on Thursday reported five more cases of liver illness believed to be linked to Real Water, including the death of a Clark county woman in her 60s who had underlying medical conditions. The report brought to 16 the number of acute non-viral hepatitis cases tied by the district to the product.

Several negligence and deceptive trade practices lawsuits in state court allege many more injuries. They accuse Jones, Real Water and Affinitylifestyles.com Inc. of causing a woman’s death, liver damage to children and internal organ damage to adults leading to hospitalizations and at least one liver transplant.

A case pending in US district court in Las Vegas seeks class-action status on the behalf of anyone injured in the US after buying Real Water.

In court filings, the company acknowledges the FDA investigation but not that Real Water caused illnesses.

Jones, a former Nevada state Republican lawmaker, issued an apology in mid-March on the company’s drinkrealwater.com website and an assurance that “the lessons learned in this will drive further improvement in the brand”.

The FDA issued a statement in April calling it “crucial” for people not to “drink, cook with, sell or serve ‘Real Water’ alkaline water”.

Source

(CNN)Ledell Lee maintained his innocence until the end.

Before he was executed by the state of Arkansas in April 2017, Lee gave some of his last words to the BBC, telling the broadcaster, "My dying words will always be, as it has been: I am an innocent man."

Now, four years after Lee was put to death for the 1993 murder of Debra Reese, attorneys for his family say someone else's DNA was found on the murder weapon, raising new questions about Lee's conviction.

"I think if those results had been had before he was executed, he'd still be alive," Lee Short, who had been Ledell Lee's attorney, told CNN.

Attorneys representing Lee's family, including those with the Innocence Project and the American Civil Liberties Union, commissioned DNA testing of the handle of the wooden club that was used to kill Reese.

Last month, they said the results showed the DNA of an unknown man.

That DNA appears to match DNA also found on a bloody white shirt that had been wrapped around the murder weapon, the attorneys said, but it's unclear if that DNA was from the blood or other biological material like skin cells.

The attorneys also had DNA testing done for six hairs that were found at the crime scene and presented at trial in the state's case against Lee. The summary says that testing ruled Lee out as a potential source in five of the six hairs.

The Innocence Project previously said in a January 2020 statement that there was "no physical evidence directly (connecting) Lee to Reese's murder." On Friday, the Innocence Project told CNN the results of the DNA testing also did not show an "absolute or conclusive" connection to Lee.

Nina Morrison, senior litigation counsel at the Innocence Project, said in a statement last month that while the results were "incomplete and partial, it is notable that there are now new DNA profiles that were not available during the trial or post-conviction proceedings in Mr. Lee's case."

Morrison said attorneys had entered that DNA in the national DNA database in hopes of identifying the unknown male, but there have been no potential matches.

The DNA was finally tested after attorneys filed a lawsuit in January 2020 on behalf of Lee's family, seeking to have the DNA samples from the case released. They received the results last month.

Citing the ongoing investigation, Lee's family, the Innocence Project and the ACLU turned down interview requests from CNN. Lee's sister, Patricia Young, provided a statement through the Innocence Project, saying this was a "difficult time of year" for the family as they mourned the loss of her brother.

"We are glad there is new evidence in the national DNA database and remain hopeful that there will be further information uncovered in the future," Young said. "We ask for privacy for our family in this difficult time."

Earlier requests to test DNA were denied

Lee was convicted of capital murder in 1995, two years after 26-year-old Debra Reese was found dead, strangled and beaten with a small wooden bat.

Several of Reese's neighbors told investigators they saw Lee nearby. But the lawsuit filed on behalf of his family last year insisted, "No physical evidence directly tied Mr. Lee to the murder of Ms. Reese."

Lee, who was Black, was executed on April 20, 2017 -- the first death row inmate executed in the state in more than a decade, and the first in a series of executions carried out before the state's supply of lethal injection drugs expired at the end of the month.

In an effort to prevent his execution, Lee's attorney sought in the post-conviction appeals process to finally have the DNA evidence in the case tested for the first time. Short told CNN that included testing of the murder weapon and hair found in Reese's home that prosecutors said belonged to a Black person.

Their request was denied.

"The reasoning given by the judge was it wouldn't matter, that there were three people who saw him at or near that neighborhood on that day and time and honestly the DNA just wouldn't matter," Short said.

Short said the looming expiration date could have played a role in not having the DNA tested. If the state were to halt proceeding with the execution while the DNA was tested, he said, the lethal injection drugs would be expired by the time the results had been received.

At the time, Arkansas officials indicated they were unsure if they could obtain additional supply of the lethal injection drugs in the future.

'It wasn't likely to change the verdict,' judge says

Circuit Judge Herbert Wright, who was among those who denied a request to stay Lee's execution in order to test the DNA, told CNN in an interview that the expiration of the drugs did not play a role in his case and would not have impacted his decision, which he made based on whether the evidence would make a difference in the outcome of the case.

"And my decision was that it wasn't likely to change the verdict," Wright told CNN, pointing to other evidence like the eyewitness testimony and acknowledging that the decision would clear the way for the execution.

Wright also said there was an issue of timeliness -- that there had been years for Lee to ask for the type of DNA testing that his attorneys were now seeking, just days before the execution.

The judge said that one of his "worst fears" was having a case where one missing piece of evidence would have tilted the outcome of the case in the other direction.

"But in this case, based on what was in front of me, I feel like I made the right decision," he said. "I don't necessarily like the decision, but it was the legally correct decision to make."

State officials like Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who signed Lee's death warrant, have defended the execution.

In a news conference earlier this month, Hutchinson said the newly uncovered evidence was "inconclusive, and the fact is that the jury found him guilty based upon the information that they had."

State Attorney General Leslie Rutledge echoed that, telling CNN in an interview, "The wrong person was not put to death. The right person was put to death. Ledell Lee murdered Debra Reese."

Asked about the new DNA evidence, Rutledge repeatedly insisted Lee was "lawfully executed" and pointed to the testimony of an eyewitness who purportedly saw Lee enter Reese's home that day and then leave, "erratically," 20 minutes later.

"I absolutely stand by the lawful conviction of the jury and the decisions of the courts," she said.

Source

Last year, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi told the United Nations his country would make enough COVID-19 vaccines "to help all humanity." Now India is struggling to meet its own domestic needs for the shots amid a startling surge of infections.

As the world's largest maker of vaccines, India always was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But a mixture of overconfidence, poor planning and bad luck has prevented that from happening.

Here's a look at what went wrong:

CAUGHT OFF GUARD

Officials in India seemed to have been caught off guard by several things, including the speed at which vaccines were approved for use around the world. India like many other countries had been working under the assumption that vaccines wouldn't be ready for use until mid-2021.

Instead, they started being greenlit in some countries in December—upping the pressure to not only produce but deliver promised shots as soon as possible. India, which approved two vaccines in January, turned out to not be ready for either the eventual demand at home or abroad.

The government's plan had been to vaccinate 300 million of the India's nearly 1.4 billion people by August. But it hadn't actually reserved even close to enough shots to do so. It had just assumed—partly based on projections from the country's vaccine makers—that there would be enough doses to both vaccinate people at home and fulfil promised orders abroad.

In this Jan. 21, 2021, file photo, vials of Covishield, a version of the AstraZeneca vaccine, are seen on a filling machine at the Serum Institute of India in Pune, India. India, the world's largest maker of vaccines, was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But its own capacity is proving to be insufficient for its own massive needs amid a ferocious surge of new infections. In past weeks, many people wanting to get vaccines have been turned away. Experts say that this is due to bad planning. Credit: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File

There also was little domestic urgency because India's infections had been declining consistently for months. In fact, in January, just days after India kicked off its domestic vaccination campaign and also started exporting shots, Modi declared victory over the pandemic at a virtual gathering of the World Economic Forum.

Modi's government seemed to bask in the early success of its so-called "vaccine diplomacy" and the Foreign Ministry reiterated time and again that exports were calibrated according to the needs of the domestic immunization program.

Experts say that turned out to be a dangerous miscalculation as an explosion of domestic cases was just around the corner.

Dr. Vineeta Bal, who studies immune systems at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research in Pune city, said the government should've been planning for the future instead of celebrating its "victory" over the virus.

"I've no idea why people didn't think about it," she said. "Did no one do the calculation ... of how many doses will be needed in India?"

In this April 26, 2021, file photo, Indians queue up to get vaccinated against the COVID-19 in Mumbai, India. India, the world's largest maker of vaccines, was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But its own capacity is proving to be insufficient for its own massive needs amid a ferocious surge of new infections. In past weeks, many people wanting to get vaccines have been turned away. Experts say that this is due to bad planning. Credit: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File

PRODUCTION PROBLEMS

India has two main COVID-19 vaccine producers: the Serum Institute of India, which is making the AstraZeneca vaccine, and Bharat Biotech, which is making its own local vaccine.

India had allowed the companies to start producing their shots last year as they waited for formal approval from regulators. Both the government and the companies thought that by the time the shots were approved they would have larger stockpiles of the vaccines than they did.

Scaling up manufacturing has turned out to be a problem for both companies.

Serum Institute's chief executive, Adar Poonawalla, told the The Associated Press in December that the target was to make up to 100 million shots monthly by January and to split them equally between India and the world. But the federal government told states last month that the company was producing just 60 million shots a month.

In this Jan. 16, 2021, file photo, a health worker is administered COVID-19 vaccine at a hospital in Kolkata, India.India, the world's largest maker of vaccines, was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But its own capacity is proving to be insufficient for its own massive needs amid a ferocious surge of new infections. In past weeks, many people wanting to get vaccines have been turned away. Experts say that this is due to bad planning. Credit: AP Photo/Bikas Das, File

The company has said that a fire in its facilities in January and a U.S. embargo on exporting raw materials needed to make the the jabs has hobbled production. Poonawalla told the Associated Press that pivoting away from suppliers in the U.S. could result in a delay of up to six months.

Bharat Biotech chairman Krishna Ella told reporters in January that the company was aiming to make 700 million shots in 2021. But the federal government told states last month that the company was producing just 10 million shots a month.

The government said last month that it was giving the company millions of dollars in grants to try to help it ramp up production.

Neither company nor India's Health Ministry responded to requests for comment.

WHAT NEXT?

With India recording hundreds of thousands of new infections each day, the government on May 1 opened up vaccination to all adults. That caused a surge in demand that has laid bare the extent of the shortage.

In this May 5, 2021, file photo, Indian youth wait to get vaccinated against the coronavirus at Radha Soami Satsang Ground in New Delhi, India. India, the world's largest maker of vaccines, was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But its own capacity is proving to be insufficient for its own massive needs amid a ferocious surge of new infections. In past weeks, many people wanting to get vaccines have been turned away. Experts say that this is due to bad planning. Credit: AP Photo/Ishant Chauhan, File

India has so far received just 196 million shots, including 10 million as a part of COVAX, a worldwide initiative aimed at providing equitable access to vaccines. Just 41 million people have been fully vaccinated, while 104 million more have received the first shot.

But the number of shots administered has declined from an average of 3.6 million a day on April 10 to about 1.4 million a day on May 20.

To help with the shortage, India has greenlit the Russian vaccine Sputnik V and 200,000 doses of that arrived last week.

The government says supplies will improve soon and expects more than 2 billion shots to be available between August and December, according to Dr. V.K. Paul, a government advisor. That would include 750 million shots made by Serum Institute, 550 million shots made by Bharat Biotech and 156 million shots from Russia.

There are also plans for five Indian companies to make the Russian vaccine locally and for Serum Institute to make a version of the Novavax vaccine and vaccines from five other Indian companies whose shots are still being tested.

In this April 8, 2021, file photo, a note informing about the non-availability of COVID-19 vaccine is seen pasted on a wall of a vaccination centre in Mumbai, India. India, the world's largest maker of vaccines, was expected to play a pivotal role in global efforts to immunize against COVID-19. But its own capacity is proving to be insufficient for its own massive needs amid a ferocious surge of new infections. In past weeks, many people wanting to get vaccines have been turned away. Experts say that this is due to bad planning. Credit: AP Photo/Rafiq Maqbool, File

But experts warn that such estimates are once again too optimistic.

"These are optimistic estimates...there are many ifs and buts that one needs to consider," said Bal.

Source

An artificial intelligence tool under development at Duke University can be added to the standard toilet to help analyze patients' stool and give gastroenterologists the information they need to provide appropriate treatment, according to research that was selected for presentation at Digestive Disease Week (DDW) 2021. The new technology could assist in managing chronic gastrointestinal issues such as inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS).

"Typically, gastroenterologists have to rely on patient self-reported information about their stool to help determine the cause of their gastrointestinal health issues, which can be very unreliable," said Deborah Fisher, MD, one of the lead authors on the study and associate professor of medicine at Duke University Durham, North Carolina. "Patients often can't remember what their stool looks like or how often they have a bowel movement, which is part of the standard monitoring process. The Smart Toilet technology will allow us to gather the long-term information needed to make a more accurate and timely diagnosis of chronic gastrointestinal problems."

The technology can be retrofitted within the pipes of an existing toilet. Once a person has a bowel movement and flushes, the toilet will take an image of the stool within the pipes. The data collected over time will provide a gastroenterologist a better understanding of a patient's stool form (i.e., loose, normal or constipated) and the presence of blood, allowing them to diagnose the patient and provide the right treatment for their condition.

To develop the artificial intelligence image analysis tool for the Smart Toilet, researchers analyzed 3,328 unique stool images found online or provided by research participants. All images were reviewed and annotated by gastroenterologists according to the Bristol Stool Scale, a common clinical tool for classifying stool. Using a computationally efficient approach to convolutional neural networks, which is a type of deep learning algorithm that can analyze images, researchers found that the algorithm accurately classified the stool form 85.1 percent of the time; gross blood detection had an accuracy of 76.3 percent.

"We are optimistic about patient willingness to use this technology because it's something that can be installed in their toilet's pipes and doesn't require the patient to do anything other than flush," said Sonia Grego, Ph.D., a lead researcher on the study and founding director of the Duke Smart Toilet Lab. "An IBD flare-up could be diagnosed using the Smart Toilet and the patient's response to treatment could be monitored with the technology. This could be especially useful for patients who live in long-term care facilities who may not be able to report their conditions and could help improve initial diagnosis of acute conditions."

The prototype has promising feasibility, but it is not yet available to the public. Researchers are developing additional features of the technology to include stool specimen sampling for biochemical marker analysis that will provide highly specific disease data to meet patients' and gastroenterologists' needs.

Source

• Vaccination rates have dropped to almost half of their peak last month.

• States with the lowest vaccinations per capita could be at risk of a COVID-19 resurgence.

• In Wyoming, less than 30% of people are fully immunized, the lowest rate in the country.

Vaccinations across the country are down by close to 50% from their peak last month.

The country was vaccinating an average of almost 3.4 million people a day in mid-April but only 1.8 million vaccine doses were given out each day over the last week.

While COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations, and deaths have been on the decline as more people get vaccinated, experts are worried the slowing of vaccinations could leave groups of unvaccinated people vulnerable to infection, especially during the summer when people are likely to congregate indoors to avoid the heat, CNN reported.

Specifically, experts are worried about states with the lowest vaccination rates per capita, including Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas, Wyoming, Idaho, Georgia, and Tennessee.

"If we have large numbers of unvaccinated people in those states, we may very well see a surge in those states, so I think a lot of us are worried about that," Dr. Ashish Jha, dean of the Brown University School of Public Health, told CNN's Chris Cuomo on Thursday.

Data from Johns Hopkins University showed that less than 30% of people in Wyoming are fully immunized, which is the lowest rate of any state, compared to the less than 40% of Americans that are fully vaccinated, according to the CDC.

More than 60% of American adults have already received at least one shot.

Read the original article on Business Insider

Source: These are the states most at risk of a COVID-19 resurgence thanks to a drop in vaccinations

Nearly half a billion people on the planet have diabetes, but most of them aren't getting the kind of care that could make their lives healthier, longer and more productive, according to a new global study of data from people with the condition.

Many don't even know they have the condition.

Only 1 in 10 people with diabetes in the 55 low- and middle-income countries studied receive the type of comprehensive care that's been proven to reduce diabetes-related problems, according to the new findings published in Lancet Healthy Longevity.

That comprehensive package of care—low-cost medicines to reduce blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol levels; and counseling on diet, exercise and weight—can help lower the health risks of under-treated diabetes. Those risks include future heart attacks, strokes, nerve damage, blindness, amputations and other disabling or fatal conditions.

The new study, led by physicians at the University of Michigan and Brigham and Women's Hospital with a global team of partners, draws on data from standardized household studies, to allow for apples-to-apples comparisons between countries and regions.

The authors analyzed data from surveys, examinations and tests of more than 680,000 people between the ages of 25 and 64 worldwide conducted in recent years. More than 37,000 of them had diabetes; more than half of them hadn't been formally diagnosed yet, but had a key biomarker of elevated blood sugar.

The researchers have provided their findings to the World Health Organization, which is developing efforts to scale up delivery of evidence-based diabetes care globally as part of an initiative known as the Global Diabetes Compact. The forms of diabetes-related care used in the study are all included in the 2020 WHO Package of Essential Noncommunicable Disease Interventions.

"Diabetes continues to explode everywhere, in every country, and 80% of people with it live in these low- and middle-income countries," says David Flood, M.D., M.Sc., lead author and a National Clinician Scholar at the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. "It confers a high risk of complications such as including heart attacks, blindness, and strokes. We can prevent these complications with comprehensive diabetes treatment, and we need to make sure people around the world can access treatment."

Flood worked with senior author Jennifer Manne-Goehler, M.D., Sc.D., of Brigham and Women's Hospital and the Medical Practice Evaluation Center at Massachusetts General Hospital, to lead the analysis of detailed global data.

Key findings

In addition to the main finding that 90% of the people with diabetes studied weren't getting access to all six components of effective diabetes care, the study also finds major gaps in specific care.

For instance, while about half of all people with diabetes were taking a drug to lower their blood sugar, and 41% were taking a drug to lower their blood pressure, only 6.3% were receiving cholesterol-lowering medications.

These findings show the need to scale-up proven treatment not only to lower glucose but also to address cardiovascular disease risk factors, such as hypertension and high cholesterol, in people with diabetes.

Less than a third had access to counseling on diet and exercise, which can help guide people with diabetes to adopt habits that can control their health risks further.

Even when the authors focused on the people who had already received a formal diagnosis of diabetes, they found that 85% were taking a medicine to lower blood sugar, 57% were taking a blood pressure medication, but only 9% were taking something to control their cholesterol. Nearly 74% had received diet-related counseling, and just under 66% had received exercise and weight counseling.

Taken together, less than one in five people with previously diagnosed diabetes were getting the full package of evidence-based care.

Relationship to national income and personal characteristics

In general, the study finds that people were less likely to get evidence-based diabetes care the lower the average income of the country and region they lived in. That's based on a model that the authors created using economic and demographic data about the countries that were included in the study.

The nations in the Oceania region of the Pacific had the highest prevalence of diabetes—both diagnosed and undiagnosed—but the lowest rates of diabetes-related care.

But there were exceptions where low-income countries had higher-than-expected rates of good diabetes care, says Flood, citing the example of Costa Rica. And in general, the Latin America and Caribbean region was second only to Oceania in diabetes prevalence, but had much higher levels of care.

Focusing on what countries with outsize achievements in diabetes care are doing well could provide valuable insights for improving care elsewhere, the authors say. That even includes informing care in high-income countries like the United States, which does not consistently deliver evidence-based care to people with diabetes.

The study also shines a light on the variation between countries and regions in the percentage of cases of diabetes that have been diagnosed. Improve reliable access to diabetes diagnostic technologies is important in leading more people to obtain preventive care and counseling.

Women, people with higher levels of education and higher personal wealth, and people who are older or had high body mass index were more likely to be receiving evidence-based diabetes care. Diabetes in people with "normal" BMI is not uncommon in low- and middle-income countries, suggesting more need to focus on these individuals, the authors say.

The fact that diabetes-related medications are available at very low cost, and that individuals can reduce their risk through lifestyle changes, mean that cost should not be a major barrier, says Flood. In fact, studies have shown the medications to be cost-effective, meaning that the cost of their early and consistent use is outweighed by the savings on other types of care later.

Source

China's Mars rover drove from its landing platform and began exploring the surface on Saturday, state-run Xinhua news agency said, making the country only the second nation to land and operate a rover on the Red Planet.

The launch last July of the Tianwen-1 Mars probe, which carried the Zhurong rover, marked a major milestone in China's space program.

Tianwen-1 touched down on a vast northern lava plain known as the Utopia Planitia a week ago and beamed back its first photos of the surface a few days later.

The Mars probe and rover are expected to spend around three months taking photos, harvesting geographical data, and collecting and analyzing rock samples.

The six-wheeled, solar-powered, 240-kilogram (530-pound) Zhurong is named after a Chinese mythical fire god.

In this artist's rendering made available by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Saturday, May 22, 2021, China's Zhurong rover is depicted on the surface of Mars. China's first Mars rover has driven down from its landing platform and is now roaming the surface of the red planet, China's space administration said Saturday. Credit: CNSA via AP

China has now sent astronauts into space, powered probes to the Moon and landed a rover on Mars—the most prestigious of all prizes in the competition for dominion of space.

The United States and Russia are the only other countries to have reached Mars, and only the former has operated a rover on the surface.

Several US, Russian and European attempts to land rovers on Mars have failed in the past, most recently in 2016 with the crash-landing of the Schiaparelli joint Russian-European spacecraft.

The latest successful arrival came in February, when US space agency NASA landed its rover Perseverance, which has since been exploring the planet.

The US rover launched a small robotic helicopter on Mars which was the first-ever powered flight on another planet.

In this photo taken by China's Zhurong Mars rover and made available by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, the rover's solar panels and antenna are deployed as the rover sits on its lander on the surface of Mars. China landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time on Saturday, a technically challenging feat more difficult than a moon landing, in the latest step forward for its ambitious goals in space. Credit: CNSA via AP

China has come a long way in its race to catch up with the United States and Russia, whose astronauts and cosmonauts have decades of experience in space exploration.

It successfully launched the first module of its new space station last month with hopes of having it crewed by 2022 and eventually sending humans to the Moon.

In this black and white photo taken by China's Zhurong Mars rover and made available by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) on Wednesday, May 19, 2021, extension arms and a departure ramp are deployed on the rover's lander on the surface of Mars. China landed a spacecraft on Mars for the first time on Saturday, a technically challenging feat more difficult than a moon landing, in the latest step forward for its ambitious goals in space. Credit: CNSA via AP

Last week a segment of the Chinese Long March 5B rocket disintegrated over the Indian Ocean in an uncontrolled landing back to Earth.

That drew criticism from the United States and other nations for a breach of etiquette governing the return of space debris to Earth, with officials saying the remnants had the potential to endanger life and property.

Source

The world could “end the pandemic” in mid-2022 by vaccinating 60 percent of the population at a cost of $50 billion, the IMF has said, as rich countries and vaccine manufacturers pledged to address the inequality undermining the global response to coronavirus.

Countries with sufficient vaccine supplies could afford to donate 1 billion doses in 2021, even while continuing to prioritise the immunisation of their own populations against Covid-19, the IMF said in its report released at a virtual G20 Health Summit on Friday.

Combined with upfront financing, the vaccine donations would bring a faster end to the pandemic, saving millions of lives and yielding economic benefits of about $9tn to global gross domestic product by 2025, it estimated.

“In the absence of urgent actions, many emerging and developing economies may have to wait until the end of 2022 or later to bring the pandemic under control,” the IMF warned. “That will be too late not just for those countries but also for the world.”

The $50 billion figure is tiny compared with the $16tn that the IMF estimates countries have already spent supporting households and businesses during the pandemic. But some health experts say the biggest impediments to vaccination drives are not funding but logistics and national politics.

The IMF proposal was released as Ursula von der Leyen, European Commission president, told the virtual meeting that the EU would donate at least 100m vaccines to poorer countries by the end of the year, including 30m doses each from Germany and France.

While some countries have begun to celebrate falling infection rates, successful vaccination campaigns and a return to some semblance of normality, global cases of Covid infections are at present at some of the highest levels since the start of the pandemic.

“As we prepare for the next pandemic, our priority must be to ensure that we all overcome the current one together. We must vaccinate the world, and do it fast,” said Italian prime minister Mario Draghi, who hosted the virtual meeting.

Pfizer and BioNTech also pledged to supply 1 billion cut-price doses to poorer nations in 2021 and a further 1 billion in 2022. The companies’ breakthrough Covid-19 shot has become the mainstay of vaccination campaigns in Europe and the US.

To date, about 1.6 billion vaccinations have been administered worldwide out of a global population of almost 8 billion, according to Financial Times data. But vaccination campaigns continue to be interrupted by practical and political difficulties.

Although the UK has vaccinated 60 percent of its adults with at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, most African countries have immunized less than 1 percent of their population. The IMF said the world should aim to have vaccinated 40 percent of all countries’ populations by the end of 2021 and at least 60 percent by the middle of 2022.

“The proposal requires not just commitments but upfront financing, upfront vaccine donations and upfront ‘at-risk’ precautionary investments,” Kristalina Georgieva, IMF managing director told the virtual summit. “It is essential that all necessary financing is available immediately.”

Manufacturing has been constrained this year by shortages of key materials and supply disrupted by export controls in leading producers such as India. The possibility that the mutating virus will undermine the efficacy of existing shots has also raised concerns that the pandemic could drag on, even if the manufacturing and supply problems are overcome.

To prevent the spread of new and more virulent variants of Sars-CoV-2, the IMF also outlined the need to invest in widespread deployment of test-and-trace initiatives as a precautionary measures.

The proposed measures could be funded with $35 billion in grants from donor countries and $15 billion in financing from national governments, the IMF said. The $35 billion in donations would include a $4 billion increase in upfront funding to the international Covax initiative to increase vaccination coverage in low- and middle-income countries from the current target of 20 percent to 30 percent by the end of this year.

The report suggested vaccine production capacity had already become less of a constraint on vaccination than previously feared. The IMF “conservatively” expected “at least 6 billion vaccine doses [to be] produced and administered worldwide by the end of 2021,” it said.

Thomas Bollyky, a senior fellow at the US Council on Foreign Relations, said the IMF proposal was “useful for prodding people to think about what’s needed” but warned that money was “no substitute for political leadership.”

“The challenge hasn’t been financing, it’s been an unwillingness of leaders around the world to engage in those actions prior to addressing domestic vaccine needs,” he said. “It’s going to take more than money to get us out of this.”

Source: IMF says $50 billion is needed to end Covid pandemic in 2022

Metal atoms have surprisingly been discovered in the frigid atmosphere of the first known interstellar comet to visit our solar system, a new study finds.

Astronomers have also detected metal in the cold haloes surrounding comets local to the solar system, which suggest our solar system comets and the interstellar visitor may have similar origins, researchers add.

Comets, which are made up of dust and ice left over from planetary formation, could yield key clues to the chemistry of early planetary systems. Scientists often deduce the composition of comets by examining the clouds of gas and dust known as comas that surround the hearts of comets.

Video: Comets in our solar system surprisingly emit heavy metal vapors

This image of comet C/2016 R2 (PANSTARRS) was captured from ESO's SPECULOOS telescope at the Paranal Observatory in Chile. (Image credit: ESO/SPECULOOS Team/E. Jehin)

Scientists typically do not detect metals such as nickel in the comas of comets, since their surfaces are usually too cold for metal to vaporize. Exceptions to this rule are comets passing near or plunging into the sun, when temperatures can readily exceed the 800 degrees Fahrenheit (425 degrees Celsius) needed for nickel vapor to form.

Now scientists have detected nickel atoms in the coma of the first known interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov. First discovered in 2019, its speed and trajectory revealed it was a rogue comet from interstellar space, making it the first known interstellar comet and the second known interstellar visitor after the pancake-shaped shape rock 1I/'Oumuamua.

The discovery was unexpected — when astronomers first saw these nickel atoms in January using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, 2I/Borisov was far from the sun, with an estimated temperature of minus 135 degrees F (minus 93 degrees C). They detailed their findings in the May 20 issue of the journal Nature.

In an independent study also appearing in the May 20 issue of Nature, astronomers discovered gaseous nickel and iron in the cold comas of about 20 solar system comets of many different types. The wavelengths of light from these metals they detected using the Very Large Telescope were hidden in plain sight, mingled among the spectrum of light from other molecules in the comas. 

The amount of iron and nickel these comets released was small — only about 1 gram per second, compared with the roughly 220 lbs. (100 kilograms) of water per second the comets produced. Coincidentally, the amount of nickel these comets each produced per second was almost exactly the nickel content of a U.S. five-cent coin, or nickel.

"Usually there is 10 times more iron than nickel, and in those comet atmospheres we found about the same quantity for both elements," Damien Hutsemékers, a researcher with the University of Liège and co-author of the study, said in a statement. "We came to the conclusion they might come from a special kind of material on the surface of the comet nucleus, sublimating at a rather low temperature and releasing iron and nickel in about the same proportions."

The detection of nickel (Ni) in the fuzzy atmosphere of the interstellar comet 2I/Borisov is illustrated here, with the spectrum of light of the comet on the bottom right superimposed on a real image of the comet taken with ESO's Very Large Telescope in 2019. The lines of nickel are indicated by orange dashes. (Image credit: ESO/L. Calçada/O. Hainaut, P. Guzik and M. Drahus)

As to why astronomers overlooked metal atoms in these cometary atmospheres even though the spectrums of light from many of them were visible for the past 20 years, "probably, until now, none of the observers who saw these spectral signatures of nickel or iron could even imagine that gaseous metals might be present in such a cold environment, and left them unidentified," Piotr Guzik, an astronomer at Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Poland, who co-authored the study concerning 2I/Borisov, told Space.com.

It remains uncertain how all these comets can generate metal at such cold temperatures. One possibility is that harsh ultraviolet light from the sun might break apart nickel-containing molecules in the comets.

All in all, "the fact that even such a minor constituent as nickel is present both in the coma of interstellar comet Borisov and comets observed in the solar system suggests similar conditions at the time and place of their birth," Guzik said.

Source: Metals found in the atmospheres of comets in and beyond our solar system surprise scientists

Just half a degree Celsius less warming would save economic losses of Chinese railway infrastructure by approximately $0.63 billion per year, according to a new paper published by a collaborative research team based at Beijing Normal University and the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, China.

The study, which appears in Transportation Research Part D recently, found that the rainfall-induced disaster risk of railway infrastructure has increased with increasing extreme rainfall days during the decades 1981-2016. Limiting global warming to the Paris Agreement target of 1.5 oC instead of 2.0 oC would significantly reduce the disaster susceptibility of Chinese railway infrastructure to extreme precipitation, according to Liu Kai, the first author of the paper.

Liu is an associated professor at the Academy of Disaster Reduction and Emergency Management, Beijing Normal University.

"Flood disaster can inundate the railway track, cause failures of the subgrade and track structure. Based on our statistics, a total of 975 historical railway rainfall-induced disasters was reported from 1981 to 2016. The rainfall-induced debris flow had the largest contribution, about 42%, followed by the rainfall-induced flood, which is about 26%, rainfall-induced landslide—about 18%—and rainfall-induced compound hazards, about 14%,"Liu said.

The team used a random forest (RF) machine-learning model to calculate the disaster susceptibility and quantify the relationship between susceptibility and precipitation change.

"We found a remarkable increase in the disaster susceptibility of railway lines along the Yangtze River valley, which is the economic center of China with the largest population density." Said LIU, "The disaster susceptibility has increased by 30% during the period 1999-2016 relative to that in 1981-1998 ."

Liu and her team, collaborated with Dr. Tianjun Zhou, professor of the Institute of Atmospheric Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, combined CMIP5, an archive of comprehensive climate models, with socio-economic projections to investigate future climate changes and the accompanying impacts. The researchers specifically examined extreme precipitation changes under RCP4.5 and RCP8.5 scenarios [RCP4.5 and 8.5 scenarios represent a possible range of radiative forcing values in the year 2100 relative to pre-industrial values (+4.5 and +8.5 W/m2, respectively)] over three time periods including near term (2020-2039), mid-term (2040-2059), and long term (2080-2099).

The scientists found that 32.0% and 45.0% of land area will be exposed to an increase in the annual average extreme rainfall days of more than 0.5 days by 2050 and 2090 under RCP8.5. The proportion of railway infrastructure with high disaster susceptibility is projected to increase from the baseline period level (1981-1998) of 1.1% to 4.5% by 2050 and up to 12% by 2090 under RCP8.5.

"We extended the projection to the changes in the proportions of railway lines at high risk for specific levels of 1.5 oC, 2 oC, and 3 oC global warming and measure the benefits of mitigation by calculating the avoided impact. The avoided impact, or railway exposure to high disaster susceptibility, would be 90% and 391% if warming was limited to 1.5oC compared to the impact for 2 oC and 3 oC warming under RCP8.5, respectively." said Prof. Zhou, the co-author of the study. Under RCP8.5, with a global average temperature increase of 1.5 oC, the direct damage and repair cost could increase to an annual amount of $1.47 billion. With 2o C warming, the damage doubles, and the loss grows to $2.10 billion.

"This study quantifies the influence of the climate change with its associated rainfall change on railway infrastructures in China. Chinese railway is still under large expansion. The mileage of China's railway lines will reach about 200,000 km in 2035 compared to about 140,000 km in 2020. The design of newly planned high-speed railway lines should incorporate climate change effects. How to reduce the disaster susceptibility of the world's most densely populated railway network should be planned to limit the adverse impact," Liu said.

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Papers in leading psychology, economic and science journals that fail to replicate and therefore are less likely to be true are often the most cited papers in academic research, according to a new study by the University of California San Diego's Rady School of Management.

Published in Science Advances, the paper explores the ongoing "replication crisis" in which researchers have discovered that many findings in the fields of social sciences and medicine don't hold up when other researchers try to repeat the experiments.

The paper reveals that findings from studies that cannot be verified when the experiments are repeated have a bigger influence over time. The unreliable research tends to be cited as if the results were true long after the publication failed to replicate.

"We also know that experts can predict well which papers will be replicated," write the authors Marta Serra-Garcia, assistant professor of economics and strategy at the Rady School and Uri Gneezy, professor of behavioral economics also at the Rady School. "Given this prediction, we ask 'why are non-replicable papers accepted for publication in the first place?'"

Their possible answer is that review teams of academic journals face a trade-off. When the results are more "interesting," they apply lower standards regarding their reproducibility.

The link between interesting findings and nonreplicable research also can explain why it is cited at a much higher rate—the authors found that papers that successfully replicate are cited 153 times less than those that failed.

"Interesting or appealing findings are also covered more by media or shared on platforms like Twitter, generating a lot of attention, but that does not make them true," Gneezy said.

Serra-Garcia and Gneezy analyzed data from three influential replication projects which tried to systematically replicate the findings in top psychology, economic and general science journals (Nature and Science). In psychology, only 39 percent of the 100 experiments successfully replicated. In economics, 61 percent of the 18 studies replicated as did 62 percent of the 21 studies published in Nature/Science.

With the findings from these three replication projects, the authors used Google Scholar to test whether papers that failed to replicate are cited significantly more often than those that were successfully replicated, both before and after the replication projects were published. The largest gap was in papers published in Nature/Science: non-replicable papers were cited 300 times more than replicable ones.

When the authors took into account several characteristics of the studies replicated—such as the number of authors, the rate of male authors, the details of the experiment (location, language and online implementation) and the field in which the paper was published—the relationship between replicability and citations was unchanged.

They also show the impact of such citations grows over time. Yearly citation counts reveal a pronounced gap between papers that replicated and those that did not. On average, papers that failed to replicate are cited 16 times more per year. This gap remains even after the replication project is published.

"Remarkably, only 12 percent of post-replication citations of non-replicable findings acknowledge the replication failure," the authors write.

The influence of an inaccurate paper published in a prestigious journal can have repercussions for decades. For example, the study Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet in 1998 turned tens of thousands of parents around the world against the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine because of an implied link between vaccinations and autism. The incorrect findings were retracted by The Lancet 12 years later, but the claims that autism is linked to vaccines continue.

The authors added that journals may feel pressure to publish interesting findings, and so do academics. For example, in promotion decisions, most academic institutions use citations as an important metric in the decision of whether to promote a faculty member.

This may be the source of the "replication crisis," first discovered the early 2010s.

"We hope our research encourages readers to be cautious if they read something that is interesting and appealing," Serra-Garcia said. "Whenever researchers cite work that is more interesting or has been cited a lot, we hope they will check if replication data is available and what those findings suggest."

Gneezy added, "We care about the field and producing quality research and we want to it to be true."

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A letter written by Albert Einstein in which he writes out his famous E=mc2 equation has sold at auction for more than $1.2 million, about three times more than it was expected to get

BOSTON -- A letter written by Albert Einstein in which he writes out his famous E = mc2 equation has sold at auction for more than $1.2 million, about three times more than it was expected to get, Boston-based RR Auction said Friday.

Archivists at the Einstein Papers Project at the California Institute of Technology and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem say there are only three other known examples of Einstein writing the world-changing equation in his own hand.

This fourth example, the only one in a private collection, only became public recently, according to RR Auction, which had expected it to sell for about $400,000.

“It’s an important letter from both a holographic and a physics point of view,” Bobby Livingston, executive vice president at RR Auction said, calling the equation the most famous in the world.

The equation — energy equals mass times the speed of light squared — changed physics by demonstrating that time was not absolute and that mass and energy were equivalent.

The one-page handwritten letter in German to Polish American physicist Ludwik Silberstein is dated Oct. 26, 1946.

Silberstein was a well-known critic and challenger to some of Einstein's theories.

“Your question can be answered from the E = mc2 formula, without any erudition," Einstein wrote in the letter written on Princeton University letterhead, according to a translation provided by RR Auction.

The letter was part of Silberstein's personal archives, which were sold by his descendants.

The buyer was identified by RR only as an anonymous document collector.

The rarity of the letter set off a bidding war, Livingston said.

Five parties were bidding aggressively at first, but once the price reached about $700,000, it became a two-party contest, he said.

The auction began May 13 and concluded Thursday.

Source: Handwritten example of famous Einstein equation gets $1.2M

Amazon wants warehouse workers to take action to improve their health — but they won’t get extra time to do it.

On Monday, Amazon announced wellness initiatives aimed at operations employees, with a focus on health education, mindfulness, and stretching.

When Mashable reached the company via email to ask how employees would be empowered to engage in these activities during their highly regimented and surveilled days, the company said it's not giving employees extra break time. And when asked about reducing productivity requirements, it responded with a comment on how worker performance was judged on several factors.

Amazon has been piloting components of the new program, called WorkingWell, since 2019. The company aims to roll it out to all operations centers — which include the fulfillment centers where Amazon workers prepare packages for shipment — by the end of 2021.

WorkingWell is part of a $300 million investment to improve worker safety, with the goal of cutting reportable injury rates in half by the year's end. Data from 2020 obtained by The Center for Investigative Reporting show consistently rising injury rates at Amazon fulfillment centers that are higher than the industry average. 

WorkingWell aims to bring interactions with health and wellness principles directly to the warehouse floor. For example, videos in "Wellness Zones" will guide employees through stretching exercises. New "AmaZen" kiosks will let employees "watch short videos featuring easy-to-follow wellbeing activities, including guided meditations, positive affirmations, calming scenes with sounds, and more." Workers will get "hourly prompts" at their workstations, called "Mind & Body Moments," reminding workers to breathe, stretch, and do "mental reflections." 

Many Amazon workers have complained about rigid productivity quotas, with some saying they have to skip bathroom breaks to meet them.

Documents obtained by The Verge in 2020 showed how Amazon automatically tracks employee productivity and downtime, and fires around 10 percent of its workforce annually for not meeting productivity standards. Amazon recently quelled a union drive by employees advocating for better working conditions through what experts described as union-busting tactics. 

Stretching, mindfulness, and meditation can have physical and mental health benefits. But they don't address the underlying cause of Amazon workers' stress and injuries, which is the threat of being fired if they don't handle packages quickly enough.

While employees won't get additional time to do these activities, they will get rewarded for participating in them. Amazon said via email that one of the factors it will take into account when assessing an employee's performance is their participation in WorkingWell. That could encourage employees to use the resources available to them — or it could put another burden on their break time to make sure that, too, is productive.

Amazon will solicit employee feedback on the program through "Connect & Comment Kiosks." Other components of WorkingWell include "EatWell," which involves placing healthier snacks in break rooms, and signage about healthy eating choices. "Health & Safety Huddles" will bring employees together for interactive videos and exercises. A new dedicated first aid area, called "Wellness Centers" — extremely different from "Wellness Zones" — will also bring "injury prevention experts" to the workplace. 

Outside of the workplace, Amazon announced it has partnered with a clinic called Crossover Health to provide primary care for employees. Amazon already offers healthcare plans for employees, which differ depending on an employee's status (e.g., whether they are full- or part-time, and permanent or seasonal). Amazon describes the Crossover Health partnership as an "affordable" option that focuses on preventative medicine, among other things.

There will eventually be a WorkingWell app that will allow employees to access the wellness activities outside of the workplace. 

Providing new opportunities and access to healthcare for employees is a step in the right direction for Amazon. But ultimately, it's a bandaid, not a cure.

Source: Amazon gives workers new wellness program, but not extra time to participate