Science

Reuters
Puzzled scientists seek reasons behind Africa's low fatality rates from pandemic
Africa's overburdened public health systems, dearth of testing facilities and overcrowded slums had experts predicting a disaster when COVID-19 hit the continent in February. The new coronavirus was already wreaking havoc in wealthy Asian and European nations, and a United Nations agency said in April that, even with social-distancing measures, the virus could kill 300,000 Africans this year. In May the World Health Organization (WHO) warned that 190,000 people on the continent could die if containment measures failed.
Reuters
Zimbabwe plans to send dead elephants' brain tissue to U.S. for toxin tests
Zimbabwe plans to send brain tissue samples from dead elephants to the United States to test for toxic micro-organisms blamed for hundreds of elephant deaths in neighbouring Botswana, the parks authority said. Thirty-four elephants have died in western Zimbabwe since Aug. 24, Parks and Wildlife Management Authority director general Fulton Mangwanya told a parliamentary committee in a statement on Monday. Botswana blamed toxins produced by cyanobacteria for the deaths of 330 elephants this year.
Reuters
Nine in ten recovered COVID-19 patients experience side-effects - study
Nine in ten coronavirus patients reported experiencing side-effects such as fatigue, psychological after-effects and loss of smell and taste after they recovered from the disease, according to a preliminary study by South Korea. In an online survey of 965 recovered COVID-19 patients, 879 people or 91.1% responded they were suffering at least one side-effect from the disease, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) official Kwon Jun-wook told a briefing. Fatigue was the most common side-effect with 26.2% reading, followed by difficulty in concentration which had 24.6%, Kwon said.
Reuters
Nine in ten recovered COVID-19 patients experience side-effects, study shows
Nine in ten coronavirus patients reported experiencing side-effects such as fatigue, psychological after-effects and loss of smell and taste after they recovered from the disease, according to a preliminary study by South Korea. In an online survey of 965 recovered COVID-19 patients, 879 people or 91.1% responded they were suffering at least one side-effect from the disease, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency (KDCA) official Kwon Jun-wook told a briefing. Fatigue was the most common side-effect with 26.2% reading, followed by difficulty in concentration which had 24.6%, Kwon said.
Associated Press
United Arab Emirates to launch spacecraft to moon in 2024
The United Arab Emirates plans to send an unmanned spacecraft to the moon in 2024, a top Emirati official said Tuesday, the latest gamble in the stars by the oil-rich nation that could see it become only the fourth nation on Earth to accomplish that goal. The announcement by Dubai's ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the vice president and prime minister of the hereditarily ruled UAE, shows the rapid expansion of the space program that bears his name. Already, an Emirati space probe is hurtling through space on its way to Mars while last year it sent its first astronaut to the International Space Station.
Associated Press
Salty lake, ponds may be gurgling beneath South Pole on Mars
A network of salty ponds may be gurgling beneath Mars’ South Pole alongside a large underground lake, raising the prospect of tiny, swimming Martian life. In the latest study appearing in the journal Nature Astronomy, the scientists provide further evidence of this salty underground lake, estimated to be 12 miles to 18 miles (20 kilometers to 30 kilometers) across and buried 1 mile (1.5 kilometers) beneath the icy surface. Roughly 4 billion years ago, Mars was warm and wet, like Earth.
Reuters
Illegal money flows from Africa near $90 billion, U.N. study says
Africa is losing nearly $89 billion a year in illicit financial flows such as tax evasion and theft, amounting to more than it receives in development aid, a U.N. study showed on Monday. The estimate, in the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development's (UNCTAD) 248-page report, is its most comprehensive to date for Africa. The report calls Africa a "net creditor to the world," echoing economists' observations that the aid-reliant continent is actually a net exporter of capital because of these trends.
Business Insider
Scientists detected a set of salty lakes on Mars, hidden below the glaciers of its south pole
NASA's Perseverance rover is set to search for signs of ancient Martian life that could have migrated to underground lakes like these.
Reuters
Germany confirms one more African swine fever case in wild boar
One more case of African swine fever (ASF) has been confirmed in a wild boar in the eastern German state of Brandenburg, the agriculture ministry said on Monday. There have been 36 confirmed cases since the first one on Sept. 10. All were in wild animals with no farm pigs affected, the ministry said.
Reuters
The joy of birdsong graces David Attenborough's lockdown
British naturalist David Attenborough has said he spent much of lockdown relishing the joy of the natural world by listening to the birds in his garden. Attenborough, the world’s most influential wildlife broadcaster, has become increasingly outspoken in recent years about the risks posed by climate change. Attenborough, who launched last week a film about lessons learned during his seven decades as a television naturalist, said that the novel coronavirus lockdown had been relatively painless for him.
BBC
Maple trees offer most protection from harmful UV
A species of maple tree gives the best protection from damaging sunlight, a study suggests.
Reuters
'Planet is dying', India's 8-year-old climate crusader warns
When 8-year-old Indian climate change activist Licypriya Kangujam is older, she wants to launch a solo mission to the moon to research ways to save planet earth. One of the world's youngest climate change activists, Kangujam was influenced by the images of the devastation caused by the Nepal earthquakes in 2015 that killed some 9,000 people and destroyed one million homes. Now she is leading a youth movement calling for Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Indian lawmakers to pass a new law aimed at capping carbon emissions in the world's third largest producer of greenhouse gases.
Business Insider
Brain-eating amoeba kills a 6-year-old boy in Texas, prompting officials to test the water supply to 8 cities
The child's mother described being heartbroken," but said, "the fact that we know how he got it, how he contracted it, gives us peace of mind."
Associated Press
Nearly 1M who died of COVID-19 also illuminated treatment
The nearly 1 million people around the world who have lost their lives to COVID-19 have left us a gift: Through desperate efforts to save their lives, scientists now better understand how to treat and prevent the disease — and millions of others may survive. Ming Wang, 71, and his wife were on a cruise from Australia, taking a break after decades of running the family’s Chinese restaurant in Papillion, Nebraska, when he was infected. In the 74 days he was hospitalized before his death in June, doctors frantically tried various experimental approaches, including enrolling him in a study of an antiviral drug that ultimately showed promise.
Business Insider
Our supportive running shoes might counterintuitively make us more prone to injury, new research suggests
Footwear is designed to maximize comfort when walking and running. But modern shoes might do our feet a disservice, weakening them over time.
Business Insider
The aurora borealis didn't cause the Titanic's crash, contrary to a new theory — but it may have affected rescue efforts
Strong northern lights can indicate huge bursts of energy from the sun — solar storms — that interfere with magnetic, electric, and radio technology.
Business Insider
Residents of a Texas city told not to drink tap water after a brain-eating microbe was found in the water supply
Water tests were conducted in Texas communities after a 6-year-old boy died from a rare brain illness caused by a microbe found in water.
BBC
Global warming driving California wildfire trends - study
Climate change is behind the scale and impact of recent wildfires in the western US, scientists say.
Associated Press
French virus testing labs under strain amid resurgent demand
France’s COVID-19 resurgence is palpable in the buzzing biology lab of this public hospital in the Paris suburb of Argenteuil. More than 1 million of France’s 67 million people took a virus test over the past week, putting labs like this under growing strain.
The New York Times
A Hopeful Forecast: More Accurate Long-Term Weather Predictions
What if you could get an accurate weather report as much as three weeks in advance? In some parts of the world, that could soon be possible.Right now, forecasters can reliably predict the weather in most parts of the United States up to eight days in advance, according to the American Meteorological Society. In recent years, research has shown that improving technology could make weather forecasts accurate 15 days ahead of time. And recent research published by Falko Judt, an atmospheric scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, found that there's even more unlocked potential in the tropics.Judt ran a series of simulations using a global weather model. As expected, the model's ability to make accurate weather predictions dissipated after about two weeks for the polar and middle-latitude regions, which encompass most of the U.S. But for the tropics, the model showed almost no dissipation, even after 20 days. This suggests that forecasters will one day be able to accurately predict tropical weather as much as three weeks ahead of time -- and potentially even further in advance.In general, tropical weather phenomena are subtler and less variable, so they "have intrinsically longer predictability," Judt said. For example, New York might have warm weather the day before a blizzard, but the Amazon rainforest is never quite so capricious.In the Amazon, "you could have a day that rains a lot and then two weeks later a dry spell of 10 days, but the temperature variation will just be a couple of degrees."But even if there is a lot of uniformity in tropical weather, that is not the same as predictability."A stopped clock is very predictable," said Kerry Emanuel, an atmospheric scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "If a clock stops at five minutes past noon, you can say it's going to be at five minutes past noon forever, and you'd be right. But we wouldn't call that a very skillful prediction."Weather prediction is challenging in the tropics in part because existing forecasting models aren't well-suited to their most common weather phenomena."In the tropics, most of the weather is in the form of showers and thunderstorms, which are much smaller than a typical weather system in the middle latitudes," Judt said. "These smaller showers and thunderstorms are more difficult to simulate with our current weather prediction models."By the same token, there's less readily available data to put into these models. The U.S. and other countries in the middle latitudes have hundreds of weather stations. But there are far fewer stations in the tropics because so much of that territory is covered by oceans. Also, many tropical countries lack the necessary funding to collect data via weather balloons, planes, drones and other costly devices.Not being able to accurately predict the weather in the tropics, especially rain, has an outsized impact on the people who live there. Many make their living from farming, Judt said, and "it's very difficult to plant crops and harvest when you don't know when it will rain, how much it will rain and how long it will rain for."The tropics are also prone to extreme storms where "it just pours for hours and hours," Judt said. Accurate weather predictions made further in advance would better prepare communities and help prevent property damage, injuries and deaths resulting from flooding.Judt's findings, and those of scientists at Penn State University and the University of Munich published in recent years, test the limits of a theory introduced in 1969 by Ed Lorenz, a prolific MIT mathematician and meteorologist. He theorized that tiny disturbances in the atmosphere can build up and have vast impacts over time -- a phenomenon now known as the butterfly effect. This effect, he wrote, seems to ensure that predicting the weather more than two to three weeks ahead of time will always be mathematically impossible.Scientists today call this roadblock the predictability horizon, a point of no return for weather forecasting. Anything beyond it is not much better than a random guess."Science has painted a fence around what it can do in a very spectacular way," said Emanuel, who worked alongside Lorenz for more than three decades. No matter how much data you have or how powerful your computers are, he said, eventually your ability to improve "slows down and grinds to a halt."Still, things have improved over the past few decades, narrowing the gap between the aspirational and actual predictability of weather. Eugenia Kalnay, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Maryland in College Park who studies the predictability of weather, says the advent of weather satellites has revolutionized forecasting in the tropics."In the '90s, we had almost no satellite observations in the southern hemisphere," she said. "Since then, the number and quality of satellite observations has increased substantially," so our ability to make accurate forecasts in the Southern Hemisphere is almost as good as in the Northern Hemisphere.Additionally, the global weather models that are now in development can simulate showers and thunderstorms, Judt said, whereas existing models cannot. This, coupled with a series of weather satellites set to launch over the next few years, should translate to longer lead times for tropical forecasts."We should see an improvement in tropical weather prediction in the next 10 years," he said.This article originally appeared in The New York Times.(C) 2020 The New York Times Company
Business Insider
Astronauts are testing NASA's new spacesuits underwater as the agency pushes toward the next moon landing
NASA wants to get astronauts on the moon by 2024. Before that, the agency must make sure its spacesuits work.
Business Insider
Orcas are under threat from man-made noise pollution. These scientists are fighting to protect them.
Noise pollution from boats and oil drilling can interfere with orcas' ability to communicate, and drive them toward dangerously rocky shorelines.
Associated Press
NASA astronaut plans to cast her ballot from space station
NASA astronaut Kate Rubins told The Associated Press on Friday that she plans to cast her next vote from space – more than 200 miles above Earth. Rubins is just outside Moscow in Star City, Russia, preparing with two cosmonauts for a mid-October launch and a six-month stay at the International Space Station. “I think it’s really important for everybody to vote,” Rubins said.
Associated Press
New measurements show moon has hazardous radiation levels
China’s lander on the far side of the moon is providing the first full measurements of radiation exposure from the lunar surface, vital information for NASA and others aiming to send astronauts to the moon, the study noted. “This is an immense achievement in the sense that now we have a data set which we can use to benchmark our radiation" and better understand the potential risk to people on the moon, said Thomas Berger, a physicist with the German Space Agency's medicine institute. Astronauts would get 200 to 1,000 times more radiation on the moon than what we experience on Earth — or five to 10 times more than passengers on a trans-Atlantic airline flight, noted Robert Wimmer-Schweingruber of Christian-Albrechts University in Kiel, Germany.
Business Insider
Tesla will face challenges with a new battery technology, experts say
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