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Article:
https://www.voanews.com/a/russia-s-daily-covid-19-death-toll-hits-new-high/6256020.html

Ted video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_kwartler_how_fast_can_a_vaccine_be_made?utm_source=tedcomshare&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=tedspread

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Article:
http://news.ku.edu/2021/09/10/home-covid-19-test-developed-ku-moves-toward-production

Ted video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/dan_kwartler_how_fast_can_a_vaccine_be_made#t-84905

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LAWRENCE - With the United States facing another surge of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant, an at-home test for the virus developed by researchers at the University of Kansas is moving toward commercial production. The aim is to launch the product in early 2022.

"They're building the handheld instrument right now," said Steven Soper, a Foundation Distinguished Professor with appointments in the departments of Mechanical Engineering and Chemistry. "Following our successful proof-of-concept testing as a result of funding from the NIH, it will go into production and marketed by BioFluidica."

Soper's team, which includes a half-dozen graduate students in bioengineering and chemistry, has been working on the project since early June 2020. They have been repurposing "lab on a chip" technology he had previously developed to give doctors simple tools to more easily and quickly diagnose conditions ranging from stroke to a variety of cancers so that it could be used to select SARS-CoV-2 virus particles directly from saliva samples and count them one at a time. At-home users would put saliva on the test chip, then use a hand-held electronic reader - about the size of an iPhone - to analyze the results. The whole process would take around 15 minutes.

Soper's group, including his private company, BioFluidica, is working with an undisclosed company that has experience in large-scale medical manufacturing to produce the chip consumables and the handheld units. Users would be able to buy a test for about $10 and the reader, which can be reused many times over, for about $50. The project will also require emergency use authorization from the FDA. Documentation for this handheld will be submitted to the FDA in the fourth quarter of 2021.

The emergence of the Delta variant means testing will continue to be needed for the foreseeable future, Soper said. His team is already working on adapting the test to detect Delta and other changes to the virus.

"We're making sure we're ready to handle any variant that may be generated and that may pop up in the United States," he said. "Not everyone's getting vaccinated. There's always going to be a population that won't be vaccinated. What happens is, if they get infected, that means the virus can change - and they can reinfect people, even people who have been vaccinated."

Soper said the new device could eventually be used to quickly diagnose other illnesses, including influenza and other viruses, as well as bacterial infections. But COVID is the most pressing issue at the moment.

"This is always a moving target with COVID-19," he said. "Everyone needs to be careful."

Soper earned his doctorate in bioanalytical chemistry from KU in 1989 and returned to the university as a faculty member in 2016. He brought along his company, BioFluidica, which previously created new products to help doctors test for various types of cancers, including breast, colon and prostate cancer. Funding to develop the COVID-19 test comes from the National Institutes of Health RADx Program.

Photo: Steven Soper, a Foundation Distinguished Professor with appointments in the School of Engineering and Department of Chemistry, is leading an effort to develop a quick-turnaround COVID-19 test that can be used at home. Soper's team, which includes a half-dozen graduate students in bioengineering and chemistry, is repurposing "lab on a chip" technology he had previously developed to give doctors simple tools to more easily and quickly diagnose conditions ranging from stroke to colon cancer. Credit: Meg Kumin, KU Marketing Communications.

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At-home COVID-19 test developed at KU moves toward production

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LAWRENCE - With the United States facing another surge of COVID-19 due to the Delta variant, an at-home test for the virus developed by researchers at the University of Kansas is moving toward commercial production. The aim is to launch the product in early 2022.

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Topic: Establishment Prevails in Pick For Japan's Prime Minister

Article
https://www.nytimes.com/live/2021/09/28/world/japan-party-elections?name=styln-japan-election&region=TOP_BANNER&block=storyline_menu_recirc&action=click&pgtype=Article&variant=show&is_new=false

Ted video
https://www.ted.com/talks/graham_allison_is_war_between_china_and_the_us_inevitable

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Image

TOKYO - In a triumph of elite power brokers over public sentiment, Japan's governing party on Wednesday elected Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, as its choice for the next prime minister.

By selecting Mr. Kishida, 64, a moderate party stalwart, in a runoff election for the leadership of the Liberal Democratic Party, the party's elites appeared to disregard the public's preferences and choose a candidate who offered little to distinguish himself from the unpopular departing prime minister, Yoshihide Suga.

Wednesday's leadership election was the most hotly contested in years. While party leaders usually coalesce around a candidate, this time it was not clear that Mr. Kishida would prevail until the ballots were counted in a second round at a luxury hotel in Tokyo.

Mr. Kishida defeated his chief rival, Taro Kono, an outspoken American-educated maverick, 257 to 170, in a runoff vote dominated by the party's members of Parliament.

Neither the public nor the rank-and-file members of the party had shown much support for Mr. Kishida. But the conservative wing of the party, which dominates Parliament, preferred Mr. Kishida to Mr. Kono, 58, the minister in charge of Japan's vaccine rollout.

Japan's Parliament will hold a special session early next month to officially select the new prime minister. Given that the Liberal Democrats control the legislature, Mr. Kishida's appointment is all but guaranteed. He will also lead the party in a general election that must be held no later than the end of November.

By going with the safe pair of hands, the party seemed to demonstrate its confidence that it could win in the fall election despite choosing a leader with lackluster public support.

After a year in which voters grew increasingly frustrated with the government's handling of the pandemic and associated economic woes, the party seems to be counting on the opposition's weakness and the public's tolerance for the status quo.

During the campaign, Mr. Kishida appeared to acknowledge some public dissatisfaction as he promised to introduce a "new capitalism" and encourage companies to distribute more of their profits to middle-class workers.

In doing so, he is following a familiar template within the Liberal Democratic Party, which has been adept at adopting policies first introduced by the opposition in order to keep voters assuaged.

The party leadership election was notable in that it was the first time two women vied for the top post. Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative backed by Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, and Seiko Noda, 61, a left-leaning lawmaker who called for more rights for women, the elderly and those with disabilities, were eliminated in the first round.

TOKYO - At 6 p.m. on the dot, Fumio Kishida appeared in front of a largely empty auditorium for his first news conference as the leader of Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party.

In a way, the event was the first test of the new leader's campaign promises. In the run-up to the election, Mr. Kishida sold himself as a politician who would answer to the people, taking to YouTube to answer questions sent to him on social media. The appeal to transparency was a stark contrast with his two most recent predecessors, who were often criticized for their administrations' opacity.

Mr. Kishida started with a brief speech in which he reiterated his campaign pledge to build a new, friendlier style of capitalism. He then ran down his top priorities: fighting the coronavirus, injecting economic stimulus, ending wage stagnation, improving regional relations as a hedge against China and dealing with the problems arising from Japan's rapidly aging society.

When he finished, reporters asked him about his plans for the economy and potential cabinet appointments. Not all of the questions concerned the future, however. Mr. Kishida spent a decent part of the 30-minute news conference addressing questions about a real-estate scandal related to his predecessor Shinzo Abe.

It was a reminder that, although Mr. Kishida is a new face, he still represents the same party that has ruled Japan for almost all of the postwar period.

When people think of preordained elections these days, they tend to look to Russia or Iran or Hong Kong. But in Japan, a parliamentary democracy and the world's third-largest economy, the same party has governed for all but four years since 1955, and most expect it to win the general election due by the end of November.

So on Wednesday, when the Liberal Democratic Party chooses a successor to Yoshihide Suga, the unpopular prime minister and party chief, it will almost certainly anoint the prime minister who will lead Japan into the new year.

But why, in a country with free elections, where voters have expressed dissatisfaction over the government's handling of the coronavirus and the Olympics, can the Liberal Democratic Party remain so confident of victory?

The Liberal Democrats try to be all things to all people.

The party formed in 1955, three years after the end of the postwar American occupation of Japan. Yet the United States had a hand in its gestation.

Fearing that Japan, which had a growing left-wing labor movement, might be lured into the Communist orbit, the C.I.A. urged several rival conservative factions to come together.

"They didn't necessarily like each other or get along, but they were engineered into one mega-party," said Nick Kapur, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University.

The new Liberal Democratic Party oversaw Japan's rapid growth during the 1960s and 1970s, which helped to solidify its power. And over the decades, it has morphed into a big tent, as reflected in the candidates seeking the party's top position this week.

Sanae Takaichi, 60, is a hard-line conservative. Fumio Kishida, 64, is a moderate who talks about a "new capitalism." Seiko Noda, 61, supports greater rights for women and other groups. Taro Kono, 58, eventually wants to phase out the nuclear power industry.

Japan's governing-party election was set in motion earlier this month, when Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga announced that he would not seek re-election.

Mr. Suga, 72, assumed the prime ministership after Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest-serving prime minister, resigned in August 2020 because of ill health. But Japan's struggles with the coronavirus left Mr. Suga deeply unpopular, and his decision to step aside made him a rare leader of a large, developed country to resign in large part because of the pandemic.

The son of a strawberry farmer and a schoolteacher from the country's rural north, Mr. Suga had been a behind-the-scenes operator in the Liberal Democratic Party. A deeply uncharismatic leader who struggled to connect with the public, he often looked uncomfortable as a public-facing leader.

In many respects, Mr. Suga's quick rise and fall could be attributed to timing. When Mr. Abe resigned, the party bosses decided they did not want a bruising leadership contest and quickly aligned behind Mr. Suga, a power broker and chief spokesman for Mr. Abe who was perceived as malleable and willing to carry on his predecessor's policies.

But public frustrations with Mr. Suga grew as Japan, which had managed the pandemic quite well in 2020, took months to ramp up its vaccination program and left the population weary with continued economic restrictions. Concerns that the government was plowing ahead with the Olympics as cases rose in Tokyo and surrounding prefectures also damaged Mr. Suga's credibility.

By early last month, Mr. Suga's approval ratings, which were above 60 percent at the beginning of the year, had plunged below 30 percent.

With his difficulty connecting with the public, Mr. Suga shouldered the blame for the broader failings of the Japanese bureaucracy, which held up vaccinations with requirements for domestic clinical testing and limits on who could administer the vaccines. But he also embodied a larger challenge facing Japan's government.

"When you have a crisis, you need an adaptable, break-all-the-rules, get-things-done kind of response, and that is a little harder for Japan," said Sheila A. Smith, a senior fellow for Japan studies at the Council on Foreign Relations in Washington.

Members of Japan's ruling party will choose a new leader on Wednesday who is all but guaranteed to win the general election later this year.

The vote inside the Liberal Democratic Party comes at a delicate time for Japan. It is emerging from its pandemic state of emergency, struggling to reinvigorate its economy and navigating an often troubled relationship with neighbors.

Here are more about the issues shaping the campaign.

Mask-wearing and isolation were quickly adopted but vaccination efforts were slow. In January, Defense Minister Taro Kono, an outspoken technocrat with a huge following on Twitter, was put in charge of getting vaccines into people's arms.

In July, state-of-emergency orders were put in place to slow the spread of the disease. Those measures, and Mr. Kono's efforts, largely worked. The measures were lifted just before the elections.

Mr. Kono's performance was, according to Fortune, "a bright spot in an otherwise deteriorating COVID-19 response." Still, the virus hit the country hard, killing more than 17,000 people in Japan, and batting its economy.

While Japan seems to be winning its fight against Covid-19, its made less progress toward economic recovery, which has faltered under the long national emergency put in place to curb the virus's spread.

As growth in the U.S. and China surged back following lockdowns, it faltered in Japan as anxious consumers stayed home rather than brave the delta variant.

Whoever becomes the next prime minister will be faced with the challenge of getting the economy back on track and also figuring out how to deal with the long-term structural issues facing the country: stagnant wages, a growing wealth gap, long-delayed digitalization efforts and a lack of opportunities for women in the work force.

Japan's economic challenges add more stress to its tricky relations with its neighbors, which is mired in territorial disputes and bitter memories of when the country colonized large parts of the region.

The new leader will have to figure out how to dial down tensions while promoting vital trade relations.

The most urgent issue is North Korea, which started the week with the test of what it says is a new hypersonic missile, an action almost tailor-made to drive up pre-election anxiety.

Dealing with the problem is complicated by Japan's bad relations with the South. Tokyo and Seoul remain at loggerheads over Japan's willingness to make amends for atrocities committed during World War II.

But the biggest question for the new leader is how they will navigate tricky relations with China,Japan's biggest trading partner anda potential source of regional instability because of its aggressive posturing on territorial issues and Taiwan, according to policymakers.

This might be the area of biggest contrast between the candidates. On one end of the spectrum is Mr. Kono, who is seen as the most dovish of the bunch, willing to dial down tensions with China and patch up relations with South Korea. On the other end is Ms. Takaichi, an ultraconservative who has expressed a full-throated commitment to standing up to Beijing and an unapologetic attitude toward Japan's wartime history.

The two women who campaigned to lead Japan's Democratic Liberal Party were unsuccessful in their bids. But their campaigns were a rarity in a country where men dominate politics, and they ultimately played spoilers for Taro Kono, an outspoken American-educated maverick, who lost in a runoff.

Here's what you need to know about the two women.

The country's longest-serving prime minister, Shinzo Abe, endorsed Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative for the party's top job.

Though Ms. Takaichi lags in public opinion polls, she has strong support from the dominant wing of the party. She has cultivated that support among conservatives, in part, by not taking up issues of gender equality. She rarely talks about that issue; she supports a current law requiring married couples to share surnames.

She supports amending the pacifist Constitution, a contentious position in a country wary of military aggression. Recently, she vowed to "protect the national sovereignty and honor at all costs." She signaled she would follow Mr. Abe's fiscal policies. In 2014, she endorsed a book that praised Hitler's campaign tactics.

Ms. Takaichi was first elected to Parliament in 1993 from Nara Prefecture in western Japan. Unlike other candidates, Ms. Takaichi does not come from a prominent political family. Her mother was a police officer; her father worked at a car company.

Seiko Noda, 61, unlike Ms. Takaichi, has leaned into the historic nature of her candidacy. She has explicitly promoted gender equality.

As minister in the government in the late 1990s, The Times wrote, "They take pictures of her long thighs as she climbs into limousines," and "capture shots of her sitting in revealingly short skirts, and they dub her the Madonna of the Cabinet."

In 2015, Ms. Noda challenged Mr. Abe for the party's leadership. It was unsuccessful, but he selected her to be his new minister of internal affairs and communications. Her grandfather was a ranking party leader but today has little support from the party or the public.

The vote for a new leader of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan is a staid affair, empty of any of the pomp and ceremony of party congresses in places such as the United States and China.

But the stakes are still high. The election will determine the leadership of the world's third-largest economy, a country grappling with serious economic and demographic challenges as it cycles through its third prime minister in the year and a half of the pandemic.

The four candidates have spent the last two weeks glad-handing and lobbying for support from their party ahead of today's secret ballot, hoping to win an absolute majority of the 764 votes up for grabs.

Half of those votes come from rank-and-file party members, who will gather in their local headquarters at 1 p.m. to tally support.

The other half are from the party's parliamentarians, who will soon assemble in a central Tokyo hotel.

The results of the contest will be announced around 2:20 p.m. But if no one wins an absolute majority - a likely outcome - the top two vote-getters will advance to a second round.

Now things get interesting. In the run off, the power to choose a winner shifts decisively toward the parliamentarians. The rank and file get just 47 votes at this stage, and the outcome will hinge on the political maneuvering and horse trading the candidates carried out in the days leading up to the election as they fought for support from the party's internal factions.

A final decision will come before 4 p.m. and the winner will hold a news conference shortly after.

Winning the contest will all but guarantee them the premiership, although nothing will be official until Oct. 4, when the Parliament will meet to officially select Japan's new leader.

Like much of the Asia-Pacific, Japan is slowly emerging from the strictest pandemic restrictions as reports of new cases fall and vaccinations ramp up. And it's coming just as the world's third-largest economy prepares to hold general elections by November.

The government will end its state-of-emergency measures on Thursday amid a fall in the number of new daily coronavirus cases and a vaccine rollout that has reached nearly 60 percent of the population, hoping that the move helps to revive the country's economy.

It will be the first time since April 4 that no part of Japan is under a state of emergency.

The move was announced by Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga on Tuesday, a day before a Liberal Democratic Party vote that will select a leader to succeed him. Mr. Suga said that he would not be extending the emergency measures currently active in 19 prefectures and that they would instead expire at the end of the month, as scheduled.

"Moving forward, we will continue to put the highest priority on the lives and livelihoods of the people," Mr. Suga said in Parliament on Tuesday afternoon.

He said that the government would "work to continue to achieve both infection control and the recovery of daily life."

New daily coronavirus cases in Japan have decreased 73 percent over the past two weeks, to an average of 2,378 a day, according to the Our World in Data project at the University of Oxford. And there has been a sharp improvement in Japan's vaccine rollout, with close to 60 percent of the population fully inoculated, a rate that exceeds that of the United States and of many other countries around the Pacific Rim.

Under the state of emergency, people were urged to refrain from nonessential outings, and restaurants were asked to close by 8 p.m. and to not serve alcohol. The government plans to ease those restrictions in stages.

Yasutoshi Nishimura, a government minister who is leading Japan's Covid-19 response, said that serving alcohol would be allowed but that "governors will decide on that appropriately, according to the region's infection situation."

The winner of the race to lead Japan's ruling Liberal Democratic Party is all but assured to be prime minister after the general election. Unlike in past party elections, when leaders unified around a single candidate, there is no clear favorite this time. Here's a rundown of the three leading contenders.

Polls have found that the public favors Taro Kono, the cabinet minister overseeing Japan's coronavirus vaccine rollout, by at least two to one. His Twitter following of 2.4 million dwarfs those of his three rivals combined.

But in the back rooms where Japanese political decisions are made, Mr. Kono, 58, is not nearly as well liked. His reputation as the Liberal Democrats' most outspoken nonconformist and his left-leaning views on social issues put him out of step with the party's conservative elders.

Many Liberal Democratic members of Parliament consider Fumio Kishida, 64, a moderate with tepid support in the polls, to be the safest choice, according to media tallies of lawmakers.

Sanae Takaichi Credit... Kazuhiro Nogi/Agence France-Presse - Getty Images

Former Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who resigned last year because of ill health, has backed Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative. Ms. Takaichi, who would be Japan's first female prime minister, has strong backing from the right wing of the party, but her poll numbers are low. Another woman in the leadership race, Seiko Noda, 61, has little support from either the public or the party.

None of the candidates vying for the top spot in the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan garnered enough votes in the first round, forcing the top two candidates into a runoff.

The two leading candidates are Taro Kono, 58, a government minister who has rankled party leaders on policy issues and garnered large public support, and Fumio Kishida, 64, a moderate with tepid support in the polls. Mr. Kono got 255 votes, versus 256 for Mr. Kishida. The top candidate would have needed 382 votes to win outright.

The two female candidates, Sanae Takaichi, 60, a hard-line conservative, and the more socially progressive Seiko Noda, 61, were eliminated.

Voting in the second round should begin shortly and results will be released later Wednesday.

The four candidates vying to be leader of the governing Liberal Democratic Party in Japan cast their ballots in an election broadcast on several television channels on Wednesday.

Yoshihide Suga, the departing prime minister, joined the candidates, Taro Kono, the minister overseeing Japan's vaccine rollout, Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, Sanae Takaichi, a staunch ally of Shinzo Abe, Japan's longest serving prime minister, and Seiko Noda, a left-leaning member of Parliament.

Each party member in Japan's two houses of Parliament ascended a stage, wrote their choice for leader on a slip of paper, and dropped their votes into a wooden box. After votes are counted, if none of the candidates exceed 50 percent of the votes, the balloting will go to a second round. The first results should be read at about 2:20 p.m. on Wednesday.

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Establishment Prevails in Pick for Japan's Prime Minister

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TOKYO - In a triumph of elite power brokers over public sentiment, Japan's governing party on Wednesday elected Fumio Kishida, a former foreign minister, as its choice for the next prime minister.

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Topic: The Climate Change
Article: Climate change: COP26 is the biggest conference in the world. Here's why it matters - CNET
Ted Video:Climate Action Tracker: The state of the climate crisis in 2020 | TED Talk

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The planet, you've likely heard, isn't doing so well. The latest report from the United Nations' chief climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shows global temperatures are very likely to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the next few decades. Human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally the cause.

Increasing temperatures, scientists have shown, will see more extreme weather events occurring more often -- more hurricanes, more flooding, more fire, more drought -- and result in a host of knock-on effects that threaten ecosystems, livelihoods and life as we know it.

Get the CNET Daily News newsletter

Unless nations take drastic action to wean themselves off fossil fuels in the coming decade.

That's why November's UN Climate Change Conference, COP26, is being hailed as "the world's best last chance" to get the climate emergency under control. To ensure temperature change remains "well below" the 2 degrees Celsius agreed to by UN signatories in the Paris Agreement in 2015, countries need to act fast and double down on commitments to reach net zero emissions.

If much of that sounds like mumbo-jumbo to you, you're not alone. The science and politics of climate change are often confusing, leading to a ton of questions. CNET will be on the ground in Glasgow to bring you everything from COP26 and beyond, and in preparation we've addressed some of the biggest points about the conference and things to look out for this November.

What is COP26?

In a nutshell, it's the biggest, most important climate conference on the planet.

Since 1995, the United Nations has held an annual summit bringing together representatives from almost all the nations on Earth. Politicians and policy makers come together to discuss climate targets and progress on reducing emissions. The meetings are formally known as a "conference of the parties" -- that's where you get "COP" from -- and feature 190-plus United Nations members that have signed up to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change in 1992.

The UNFCCC was the first critical milestone in the world's reckoning with climate change and its first commitment to a collaborative, concerted approach toward mitigating it. In 1997, the Kyoto Protocol was adopted -- the world's first treaty with the aim of reducing greenhouse gas emissions. But the US didn't sign on because the protocol didn't include countries like China and India. Unfortunately, it failed to drive down greenhouse gas emissions.

The most critical climate change treaty today is the Paris Agreement, which will inform much of the conversation at COP26. We'll get to that shortly.

When is COP26?

COP26 was originally scheduled to be held in November 2020 but another world-changing crisis, the COVID-19 pandemic, forced a reschedule.

It will now be held from Oct. 31 to Nov. 12, 2021, in the Scottish Event Campus of Glasgow, Scotland.

The UK partnered with Italy to win the "presidency" for this COP and the chance to host it. While COP26 will take place purely in Glasgow, a "Pre-COP" is scheduled to be held in Milan, Italy, from Sep. 30 to Oct. 2.

The Pre-COP is the final stop before all nations come together in November and features representatives of a few dozen countries, usually climate, environment or energy ministers. At the meeting, the delegates engage in discussions to help refine and set the agenda for COP26.

If you have more questions about what to expect from COP26, you can email our Science team.

What is the Paris Agreement?

The Paris Agreement will be fundamental to discussions at COP26. To understand it, we need to travel back to COP21 in December 2015.

The 21st COP, which took place in the French capital, saw 196 nations sign the Paris Climate Accords, or "Paris Agreement," a legally binding treaty with the aim of limiting global warming to "well below 2 degrees Celsius" by 2100, compared to preindustrial levels (levels commonly defined as the global average temperature between 1850 and 1900.)

"The Paris Agreement was incredible," says Sarah Perkins-Kirkpatrick, a climate scientist at UNSW Canberra in Australia. "All of a sudden we had this overwhelming majority of countries saying, 'Yeah, we need to limit global warming to 1.5 or 2 degrees Celsius.'"

To achieve that goal, the agreement sets countries on a course to reach a peak in their greenhouse gas emissions as soon as possible and to shoot for "net zero" emissions in the second half of this century. Countries that are party to Paris agreed to emissions reduction targets known as their "nationally determined contribution," or NDC.

These targets are not set by the UNFCCC or IPCC but by the countries themselves, and so they are "negotiated," as such, at the COP. However, the conference provides the limelight and the international pressure that could see nations announce more ambitious targets. The Paris Agreement also sets out an update cycle with which to improve NDCs.

"Every five years, countries are asked to update these NDCs and not only to update them, but to make them more and more ambitious," says Malte Meinshausen, an environmental scientist at the University of Melbourne, Australia.

Last year was the end of the first five-year cycle, and countries were expected to update their NDCs in preparation for COP26. The idea is that countries will submit updated NDCs for 2025 and 2030, making this a critical COP for the next decade.

With just over a month to spare before COP26, Climate Action Tracker shows 89 countries have updated their NDCs and 71 have not. Of the 89, nine, including Australia, Russia and New Zealand, have submitted NDCs that are not more ambitious.

The Paris Agreement laid the foundations for taking action on climate change. But in the past five years, as more science and research has been poured into understanding climate change and the effects of a warming world -- including the threats to biodiversity, the extinction of coral reefs, the increased risks of catastrophic weather events and a dangerous rise in sea levels -- the NDCs and targets that the majority of nations originally set for 2030 have been shown to be woefully insufficient if we're to keep warming "well below 2 degrees Celsius."

Naturally, that leads us to asking...

Why 1.5 and 2 degrees?

The Paris Agreement enshrined these two numbers in the public consciousness, but you can trace their origins back several decades. The idea of limiting warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius was floated at COP16, which took place in Cancún, Mexico, in 2010.

It wasn't just a number picked out of thin air.

"One-and-a-half degrees was chosen for, first, scientific reasons and second, practical reasons," said pioneering climate scientist Michael Oppenheimer during a recent briefing by Covering Climate Now.

But since Paris, the numbers have taken on a new level of urgency because the science of climate change has only strengthened in the past six years. "A lot of science has come out since the Paris Agreement," notes Perkins-Kirkpatrick.

Much of the science was synthesized in the IPCC's Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5 degrees Celsius, or SR15, which was released in 2018. This report goes into the minutiae of how 1.5 degrees and 2 degrees Celsius of warming would affect the planet -- and states that warming is likely to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius "between 2030 and 2052 if it continues to increase at the current rate."

Further study has shown the situation to be even more serious. In the latest report prepared by the IPCC, scientists showed that Earth has already warmed by about 1.1 degrees Celsius compared to preindustrial times. The report argued that, even in the most optimistic scenario, we are almost certain to reach 1.5 degrees Celsius before 2100. However, with immediate, extensive action to mitigate carbon emissions we could drag the global average temperatures below 1.5 by the end of the century.

But what if we don't? What if global warming does reach 2 degrees Celsius? It's only half a degree warmer right? Those small changes can make huge differences. In the recent IPCC report, the authors state that every half a degree increase will very likely result in increased heat waves, rainfall and droughts.

Avoiding the worst impacts of the climate crisis requires all nations party to the Paris Agreement to reduce carbon emissions rapidly -- within the next decade. It's still possible to hit 1.5 and dip back below, but it requires a halving of global emissions by 2030 -- and net-zero emissions by 2050.

With all that in mind, we come to...

Why COP26 is so important

The timing of this COP is important for two reasons.

First, it's the earliest opportunity for signatories to the Paris Agreement to get together and discuss updated NDCs. Meinshausen highlights the task ahead for COP26: It will need to "put the world on a downward trajectory path" when it comes to emissions and NDCs are fundamental to this process.

The biggest emitters of carbon are China, the US, India, Russia and Japan. The European Union countries altogether rank as the third biggest.

Some of these nations are attempting to lead the way. After rejoining the Paris Agreement this year, the US government has submitted one of the most ambitious reduction targets overall, though it's still short of what's required to limit warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius. The UK did similarly, submitting a 2030 goal of emissions reductions that is in line with reaching net zero by 2050.

Meinshausen notes that close attention will be paid to both China and India's NDCs. While China has recently been applauded for refusing to fund new coal projects overseas, it has kept its climate targets close to its chest. India is yet to commit to new NDCs, but there is some discussion that the nation will reveal its pledge at COP26 -- both nations will be worth watching at the conference.

It might seem kind of unusual at first, but there is no legal enforcement of NDCs and it's not the fear of punishment that holds countries to account. Accountability is really brought on by diplomatic pressure and the constant, transparent reporting countries must provide under the Paris Agreement.

The second reason is climate injustice.

"Not everybody contributed to [the] emissions of greenhouse gases equally," said Saleemul Huq, director of the International Center for Climate Change and Development. Rich nations were able to burn fossil fuels during the industrial revolution and beyond, pumping extreme amounts of carbon (and other greenhouse gases) into the atmosphere. Poor countries didn't contribute the same level of emissions -- yet they are the major victims of the climate crisis.

The Paris Agreement also set out terms for climate aid (reaffirming an earlier pledge) that required developed nations to help developing ones tackle the climate crisis with financial support. By 2020, the goal was to provide $100 billion a year in funding to help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions or create adaptation strategies. But developed nations in the agreement fell short -- by a long way. COP26 is set to be a big moment for upholding and strengthening these pledges.

While COP26 being hailed as the best last chance to avert catastrophe, it's not the be all, end all. The pandemic may have sidelined COP26 for a year, but pressure has continued to build since the last COP and there's a growing public outcry for decisive action. Across the US, drought, floods, wildfires and hurricanes have wreaked havoc and the impacts of the climate emergency are now being felt more readily than ever before.

Can COP26 deliver the next positive step in staying well below 2 degrees? Climate scientists I spoke with are optimistic. We might still overshoot 1.5, but not by much, Meinshausen hopes. If such a future is to come to pass, those hopes rest on COP26's shoulders.

If you have more questions about what to expect, you can email our Science team.

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Climate change: COP26 is the biggest conference in the world. Here's why it matters

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The planet, you've likely heard, isn't doing so well. The latest report from the United Nations' chief climate body, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, shows global temperatures are very likely to rise 1.5 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels in the next few decades. Human-generated greenhouse gas emissions are unequivocally the cause.

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Topic:

Pill to treat Covid-19 cuts the risk of death by half, says Merck, which will seek its emergency authorization

Article:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/health/us-coronavirus-friday/index.html

Ted Video: https://www.ted.com/talks/nora_flanagan_how_schools_should_respond_to_covid_19

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us coronavirus: many states see significant increase in vaccinations ahead of deadlines for vaccine mandates - cnn

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Many states see significant increase in Covid-19 vaccinations ahead of deadlines for vaccine mandates

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With more states and health care systems moving toward mandatory inoculations for certain workers, officials are hoping the incentive of employment will eliminate vaccine hesitancy -- while one governor is arranging contingency scenarios.

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Topic:

US Opioid Overdose Deaths Soar

Article:
https://www.voanews.com/a/for-thurs-us-opioid-overdose-deaths-soar/6251407.html

Ted video

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In the shadows of Washington's government office buildings, Gary Hayes searches for another dose of heroin, chasing a high that will last only a few hours before he wants more.

"It's hard to stop using when you are living on the streets and there's no treatment help," Hayes told VOA. The 28-year-old Black man, who lives in a homeless tent encampment in the nation's capital, has struggled with substance abuse disorder for a decade.

"I overdosed twice in the last year, but I know several people who died," Hayes said, reflecting on the deadly opioid epidemic playing out during another health tragedy, the coronavirus pandemic.

More than 93,000 Americans died from drug overdoses in 2020, the highest number on record, according to Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) statistics released in July. U.S. health officials attribute the rise in deaths to powerful synthetic opioids such as fentanyl, which can be up to 100 times more potent than morphine.
Overdose deaths: Black vs. white
In the District of Columbia, more than 400 people died from opioid overdoses last year, and most were African American. The medical examiner's office reported that fentanyl or fentanyl analogs were present in many cases.

"In some communities, we've seen deaths among African Americans eclipse the death rates among whites over the past several years," said Dr. Caleb Alexander, a professor of epidemiology and medicine at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health in Baltimore, Maryland. "Many people who have died from the opioid epidemic or otherwise developed addiction are African American or other people of color living in urban areas."

Opioid overdose deaths among African Americans have been on the rise since 2013, according to a study published in the journal Addiction. Simultaneously, opioid use among white Americans leveled off for the first time since the 1990s, when doctors began overprescribing the opioid painkiller that sparked the health crisis.

"Historically, the opioid epidemic has at times been painted as an epidemic of rural white working-class families, but opioids don't discriminate," Alexander told VOA. "The addiction that one develops looks just the same, regardless of the color of your skin."
Pandemic's impact
According to the CDC, between 1999 and 2019, nearly 500,000 lives in the U.S. were lost to overdoses involving opioids, both prescription and illicit types. The epidemic has impacted many communities, and U.S. health officials believe the crisis has worsened since the pandemic started.

While overdose deaths were already increasing in the months preceding the COVID-19 outbreak, the latest data show a sharp rise in overdoses during the pandemic.

"It's gone from being called the opioid crisis to the overdose crisis," said harm reduction activist Britt Carpenter, director of the Philly Unknown Project, a group that advocates for the homeless. He says the pandemic has reversed progress made in reducing opioid addiction in recent years.

Carpenter walks the streets of the Kensington neighborhood in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, trying to help the homeless people he sees using opioids. "It's been a younger demographic of users from the suburbs in their 20s, coming into the city to live on the streets and use drugs," Carpenter told VOA. "In the last 18 months, some of the neighborhood streets have become overwhelmingly filled again with people."

In August, Philadelphia city workers and police cleared out two large homeless encampments in Kensington, where, according to officials, hundreds of people had been living and several drug overdoses had been reported. "The outreach and recovery world have their hands full now," Carpenter said.

In Philadelphia County, illicit fentanyl was present in more than 80% of drug overdose deaths in 2020, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA). In September, the DEA issued a public safety alert warning Americans of an alarming increase in the lethality and availability of fake prescription pills containing fentanyl and methamphetamine.

"Drug traffickers, both here and abroad, are increasingly using counterfeit pills to package and distribute the poison that illicit fentanyl is," said Thomas Hodnett, acting special agent in charge of the DEA's Philadelphia Division. Law enforcement officials say most of the counterfeit pills coming into the United States are produced in Mexico and China.
Opioid vaccine?
U.S. health officials believe the pandemic lockdowns and the availability of potent drugs last year dramatically increased overdoses and addiction rates.

"I know a lot of people who had made progress in their recovery, then relapsed," Arman Maddela, a recovering addict, told Reuters. Maddala, who lives in San Diego, California, lost his sobriety and began using heroin and fentanyl last year. "Being alone and isolated in your living space without any reason to leave the house is enough for someone struggling with addiction to relapse and dig themselves into a hole," he said.

Harm reduction advocate Carpenter agrees. "One trait of addiction is isolation. The pandemic lockdowns made it hard for people to attend support group meetings in person or visit their therapists."

With the easing of many pandemic restrictions this year, more drug counseling programs reopened in-person services. At the same time, U.S. medical researchers are working to develop new treatments for opioid addiction with further hopes of reducing fatal drug overdoses.

Clinical trials are under way for the first vaccine to be tested in the U.S. for opioid abuse disorder. The vaccine would create antibodies that prevent opioids such as oxycodone from reaching the brain and later impairing a person's breathing. The serum could be given in combination with other opioid-based medications used to treat addiction.

"A vaccine that lasts for several months could help many more people beat their addiction and potentially protect them from an overdose death if a patient relapses," said Sandra Comer, a professor of neurobiology at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, where the research is being conducted.

With billions of dollars being spent on the coronavirus pandemic, some health care specialists are calling on the government to allocate more money for comprehensive addiction prevention and treatment programs.

"We need to be sure these treatments are available and that individuals with addiction have unfettered access because it can reduce the risk of dying by as much as 50%," said Alexander. "We know this can be done because there are millions of Americans living healthy successful lives in recovery today."

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In the shadows of Washington's government office buildings, Gary Hayes searches for another dose of heroin, chasing a high that will last only a few hours before he wants more. "It's hard to stop using when you are living on the streets and there's no treatment help," Hayes told VOA.

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Article：
https://www.chronogram.com/hudsonvalley/seven-climate-solutions/Content?oid=13900160

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click to enlarge

We have climate problems. They are here, they are real, and, increasingly, they are local, as sea levels rise and extreme w﻿eather take aim at communities in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. We also have climate solutions-and they're already underway in our own backyard. Here are seven solutions that take aim at some of our toughest regional climate problems-and seven local people who are rolling up their sleeves and doing the hard work on decarbonization and resilience.

#1: Change The Law

Jen Metzger, former New York State senator, policy advisor to New Yorkers for Clean Power

Passed in 2019, the Climate Leadership and Community Protection Act (CLCPA) is now the backbone of New York's climate policy. The new law aims to decarbonize the state economy, and to invest in communities that currently take the brunt of both climate change and pollution. Metzger, who had a hand in crafting the CLCPA, lost her seat in a close election in 2020. But as a policy expert who knows how the legislative sausage gets made, she's still working on state climate response.

THE OBSTACLES: Putting state climate targets into law was hard. Meeting them will be harder-and most of the supportive legislation needed to fund and carry out the CLCPA's goals has not yet been passed. The fossil fuel industry has large influence and deep pockets, and opposition to fossil fuel infrastructure projects is politically costly for Democrats and Republicans alike.

THE BENEFITS: If New York State can muster the will to deliver on the goals of the CLCPA, we'll do more than decarbonize the state's power system and overall economy. We'll create new green jobs, boost resilience and quality of life in vulnerable communities, and dramatically reduce the air pollution that currently kills and sickens thousands of New Yorkers each year.

Metzger: "New York has really been a model. But now, this is where the rubber hits the road. We have to implement this law."

#2: Collaborate Across the Landscape

Nava Tabak, director of science, climate, and stewardship at Scenic Hudson

As climate change redraws coastal maps, the job of protecting important ecosystems that serve as flood buffers is becoming harder-and more collaborative. In recent years, science-driven conservation organizations like Scenic Hudson are taking a more active role in helping communities understand, predict, and respond to climate risks, and in creating new online tools to help local leaders work through tough landscape-level climate problems.

THE OBSTACLES: People-and the local governments they elect-are generally more inclined to respond to problems that already exist than they are to spend resources on preventing future disasters. Even as it becomes clearer that rising sea levels will be destructive and force large future investments, there's little political will to act before the damage has been done.

THE BENEFITS: Proactive work that makes communities and ecosystems more resilient is far less expensive than rebuilding after disaster strikes.

Tabak: "We and our partners believe that the Hudson Valley can be a model for climate resilience for the rest of the state."

#3: Harness the Power of Farm Soils

Ben Dobson, farmer, cofounder of Hudson Carbon and farm manager of Stone House Grain

Agriculture is responsible for about 10 percent of US greenhouse gas emissions, according to the EPA. More than a third of that is methane, a shorter-lived but much more potent greenhouse gas than carbon dioxide. But farming can also be part of the solution. At Stone House Farm and Old Mud Creek Farm in Columbia County, Dobson is working with scientists at the Woods Hole Marine Biological Laboratory, with support from farm owner Abby Rockefeller, to develop best practices for locking carbon into farm soil. The goal is to create a road map that other farmers can follow.

THE OBSTACLES: Ecological research is notoriously slow and difficult. Even if Dobson's research projects yield clear results, what works for one farmer might not work for another. And then there's the problem of carbon offsets: Even if they work as intended to suck carbon out of the air, they can be abused if people rely on them instead of doing the hard work of cutting emissions.

THE BENEFITS: To prevent the worst impacts of climate change, we need to go beyond cutting emissions. Limiting planetary warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius will require not just decarbonizing, but also ramping up practices and technologies that can capture and store carbon. And for that, we need projects like Dobson's.

Dobson: "We don't have an exact formula that works, but we're getting closer and closer. In ecosystems, there is no 'exact.' But there is rigor and honesty, and both of those are needed."

#4: Bring Back Zero-Carbon Shipping

Andrew Willner, founder of the Center for Post Carbon Logistics

Sometimes it takes a big idea to break free. Along the banks of the Hudson River, a small chorus of advocates has been pressing for sail freight as an alternative to fossil-fueled shipping. The idea is beginning to move from vision to reality: This summer, the Hudson-based schooner met up with the French vessel Grain de Sail in New York Harbor to exchange goods, the first link in what might one day become a larger sail shipping network in the region. Sail freight advocates want to revitalize the Hudson River as a shipping thoroughfare, much as it was in the early 1800s, and to reimagine local waterfronts as powerhouses of jobs to support a slower but saner regional economy.

THE OBSTACLES: The wind may blow for free, but time is money. Sail shipping is slow and labor-intensive compared to other methods of moving stuff from one place to another. And after almost 200 years of relying on fossil-fueled transport, Hudson River port cities no longer have solid logistical systems in place to support the movement of goods by sail.

THE BENEFITS: As the cost of polluting becomes more apparent, shippers that rely on fossil fuels will have to pay increasing costs to do so. Sail freight might become more cost- competitive. And if we go big on reinvesting in the river as a highway, there are opportunities to reimagine waterfronts in ways that create jobs and promote resilience.

Willner: "We have the beginning of a post-carbon logistics system being developed on the Hudson."

#5: Get Buildings Off Oil and Gas

Melinda McKnight, VP and CFO, Energy Conservation Services

If New York wants to decarbonize its economy, we have to get buildings off a fossil fuel diet. That's no small task. Fuel burned to heat buildings accounts for roughly a third of the state's greenhouse gas emissions. From the draftiest Victorian to the most futuristic office space, every building is a unique challenge. The good news, for building energy experts like McKnight: Zero-carbon heating technology has come a long way in recent years. And it doesn't involve electric baseboard heat that costs a fortune to run, or tearing down your house to build a passive-solar monument to `70s design.

THE OBSTACLES: Up-front expense is still a huge barrier to the widespread adoption of heat pumps, better insulation, and other building energy fixes. New York State has some incentive programs through NYSERDA, but they're not enough to meet the state's CLCPA goals, and there's a forbidding amount of red tape involved in accessing them. What's more, if New York is serious about home decarbonization, it will need to train a small army of systems installers.

THE BENEFITS: Zero-emissions building heat is obviously good for climate goals, but it's also good for the people in the building. Burning fuel of any kind produces particulates that cause a variety of health problems and premature death. And better insulation makes a house both more comfortable and less expensive to maintain.

McKnight: "Giving contractors and people who actually do the work a seat at the table to talk about practical application would be a really big step in the right direction."

#6: Move the Important Stuff

Aaron Bennett, deputy chief of watershed lands and community planning, New York City Department of Environmental Protection

One of the toughest problems in the battle for climate resilience is knowing when to retreat.

It's a difficult decision to make, but when the increasing risk of repeated flood or fire becomes too high for the community to bear, it's time for "managed retreat": relocating vital assets out of harm's way. In Boiceville, a little hamlet in the rural town of Olive, the local fire department and the town board are working to move a fire station out of the path of recurring floods. Bennett, who until recently was an environmental planner for Ulster County, has been helping with the effort.

THE OBSTACLES: Relocation is an emotionally fraught decision for the whole community. That goes double for a place like Olive, which has a history of whole communities being seized and submerged to build New York City's reservoirs. On top of that, existing programs that help communities do resilience work have rules that don't make sense for every situation. The Boiceville effort has run up against several roadblocks in the search for state or federal funding.

THE BENEFITS: If the Boiceville Fire Department moves to higher ground, it can respond to future flood disasters without itself being in peril. It's small potatoes in the grand scheme of global climate impacts, but it's a version, writ small, of the tough infrastructure decisions now faced by climate-threatened cities all over the world.

Bennett: "A lot of critical community facilities are located within the floodplain. We all know flooding is going to increase in terms of frequency and intensity. So we have to be prepared for that."

#7: Build Zero-Carbon Energy

Rich Winter, Callicoon beef farmer and founder of Delaware River Solar

Energy entrepreneurs like Winter are building community solar projects in farms and fields across the state. Anyone who pays a utility bill can subscribe-and save on electricity costs, while they're at it. Solar and wind energy currently take up just a tiny slice of the state's overall power generation pie, but they're growing, aided by plunging costs and increasingly renewable-friendly state policy.

THE OBSTACLES: The biggest immediate hurdle for wind and solar projects is community opposition to siting, especially in wealthier areas. Another factor that will loom larger down the road: As renewable energy takes over more of the grid, we will need to develop more energy storage to maintain grid reliability, since the sun and wind aren't constant.

THE BENEFITS: Building renewable power will help New York meet its climate goals. That might be a bit ineffable for rural communities worried about their viewsheds, but when solar begins to displace gas and coal in earnest, the benefits will be felt keenly in communities where fossil fuel plants have been creating public health problems for decades.

Winter: "I would say 20 percent of our farms would be up for development in the next decade if they didn't have the income from the solar array. The farmland is not disappearing. Maybe you don't see a tractor going by and baling hay. But agriculture is still happening."

The people featured in this story were participants in an online panel conversation about local climate solutions hosted by The River on July 14, "How Do You Solve a Problem Like the Climate?" For more on that event and their work, see our story on The River: "7 Locals Tackling New York's Toughest Climate Problems.

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hudson valley news; mid-hudson valley news; hudson valley politics; news in the hudson valley; politics in the hudson valley; mid-hudson valley politics

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Seven Climate Solutions We Can Implement Locally

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click to enlarge We have climate problems. They are here, they are real, and, increasingly, they are local, as sea levels rise and extreme w﻿eather take aim at communities in the Hudson Valley and Catskills. We also have climate solutions-and they're already underway in our own backyard.

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Topic:
climate change solutions
Article :
https://news.google.com/search?q=climate%20change%20solutions&hl=en-US&gl=US&ceid=US%3Aen
Ted Video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/ted_halstead_a_climate_solution_where_all_sides_can_win#t-4471

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Online DVD rental service Netflix Inc. ( NFLX) and digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc. ( TIVO) on Thursday said they would jointly develop a product to download movies over the Internet, a deal uniting two of the fastest growing brands in home entertainment.

Shares of TiVo ( search) jumped 7 percent and shares of Netflix rose 5 percent in after-hours trade on the widely anticipated announcement for a set-top box that represents a kind of technological Holy Grail for the entertainment industry.

Netflix spokeswoman Shernaz Daver said they targeted a 2005 debut for a product that would let consumers download movies onto their TiVos through high-speed Web connections and watch films at their leisure.

But the plan faces the daunting challenges of winning cooperation from Hollywood, which has hesitated to release its movies on the Web without rock-solid security, fearing it could lose control of its products like music industry labels did.

Bigger competitors are also already trying to take business from the two young technology firms, which have about 2 million subscribers each.

TiVo and Netflix, both of which had been Wall Street high-flyers because of their cutting edge technology for home movie and television viewing, have seen their shares fall by about half over the last year in the face of rising competition.

Netflix has seen threats to its market as Wal-Mart Stores Inc.( WMT) entered the DVD-by-mail business, while TiVo is under pressure from cable companies that offer personal video recorders that, like TiVo, store TV shows on a computer hard drive. Cable companies also offer video on demand and pay-per-view movies, products which compete with the new plan.

Despite the potential for the new technology, Netflix expects its traditional DVD business to be even more dominant five years from now, Daver said.

She said her company was speaking with studios and expected to sign unique licensing agreements with each.

Those deals could be difficult to craft, American Technology Research ( search) analyst Rob Sanderson said.

"There is going to be a lot of excitement about a potential service, but it is going to come down to licensing and distribution rights, which may be more of a challenge than many people on Wall Street really understand," he said.

The movie industry has been extremely cautious about online distribution of its products, fearing that a false step could lead to the widespread piracy that has hurt the music industry.

TiVo last month won U.S. regulatory approval for technology that would permit users to send copies of digital broadcast shows over the Internet to a limited number of friends, despite concerns by the Motion Picture Association of America ( search) and the National Football League ( search) about the risks of unfettered distribution of copyrighted shows and airing regional games outside of their markets.

TiVo Chief Executive Mike Ramsay, who resigned from the Netflix board, said that no merger or acquisition was in the works between the two companies.

"We have an interest in tapping into broadband as a distribution mechanism for content. Its a natural for us because we have all these units out there, and we think its a natural for the consumer because this content can be made available in a form that probably won't find its way to broadcast," he told Reuters.

Ramsay said the plans would not have a near-term material impact on financial results at TiVo.

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Netflix, TiVo to Develop Internet Movie Download Product

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Online DVD rental service Netflix Inc. ( NFLX) and digital video recorder maker TiVo Inc. ( TIVO) on Thursday said they would jointly develop a product to download movies over the Internet, a deal uniting two of the fastest growing brands in home entertainment.

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Hinano's Topic: Online Education                      

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Hinano's Topic: Online Education                      

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Article:
https://www.cnn.com/2021/04/01/cnn-underscored/best-online-learning-platforms/index.html

Ted Video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/alexis_ohanian_how_to_make_a_splash_in_social_media#t-202787

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computer science and information technology

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We tried the top online learning platforms - here's how they compare | CNN Underscored

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The internet is filled to the brim with learning opportunities for those who want to learn on their own time. Some online learning, or e-learning, services focus on traditional mediums like science, math and coding. Others are an open space for both common and niche interests.

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Topic : Covid-19

Article :
https://www.cnn.com/2021/10/01/business/employer-vaccine-mandate-approval/index.html

Ted Video

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employer vaccine mandates are growing more popular but opposition remains - cnn

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Employer vaccine mandates are growing more popular but opposition remains

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Employer Covid-19 vaccine mandates have become increasingly common. So has public acceptance, but opposition to some of those rules remains strong.

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People with disabilities have a tougher time getting Covid vaccines, the C.D.C. reports.

Article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/30/health/covid-vaccine-disabilities.html?searchResultPosition=7

Ted Video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/kaitlyn_sadtler_and_elizabeth_wayne_how_the_covid_19_vaccines_were_created_so_quickly

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Americans with a disability were more likely to want coronavirus vaccines but were having a harder time getting them than other people, according to data released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a stark signal of what the agency's scientists said was a need for health officials to remove barriers to access.

In a survey of nearly 57,000 people from May to June, unvaccinated people with a disability such as serious difficulty seeing, hearing or walking were nearly twice as likely as their unvaccinated counterparts without a disability to say that they would definitely get vaccinated. (The survey only included people outside of nursing homes and other institutions.)

And yet, people with a disability were less likely to be vaccinated: Among 50- to 64-year-olds, 63 percent of people with a disability had received coronavirus shots, compared with 72 percent of other people. Among people older than 75, the gap was smaller but still evident: Eighty-eight percent of people with a disability were vaccinated, compared with 90 percent of people without one.

"Covid-19 vaccination coverage was lower among U.S. adults with a disability than among those without a disability, even though adults with a disability reported less hesitancy to getting vaccinated," the study's authors wrote.

The study noted that state-run vaccine registration websites were not all compliant with basic accessibility recommendations. It suggested that online scheduling systems offer call lines for people who needed help booking vaccinations.

It also said that not all vaccination sites had American Sign Language interpreters or workers trained in helping people with developmental disabilities, and that getting to those sites in the first place was often difficult for people with a disability.

"These efforts would be relevant to the reduction of health disparities related to disability beyond the Covid-19 pandemic," the study said.

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People with disabilities have a tougher time getting Covid vaccines, the C.D.C. reports.

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Americans with a disability were more likely to want coronavirus vaccines but were having a harder time getting them than other people, according to data released on Thursday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a stark signal of what the agency's scientists said was a need for health officials to remove barriers to access.

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Use the 5 Q's to analyze your article AND your TED Video!

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Article:  https://learningenglish.voanews.com/a/nasa-chooses-moon-landing-site-for-ice-seeking-rover/6243025.html

Ted Video:
https://www.ted.com/talks/carrie_nugent_adventures_of_an_asteroid_hunter?referrer=playlist-what_s_really_floating_out_in

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The American space agency NASA has chosen the moon landing site for a new ice-seeking explorer set to arrive in 2023.

The explorer, or rover, will be sent to an area on the moon's south pole called Nobile Crater. The robotic vehicle is called Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER.

VIPER's purpose will be "to map and explore the region's surface and subsurface for water and other resources," NASA said in a recent announcement.

Nobile Crater was formed through a crash with a space object.

VIPER measures 1.5 meters by 1.5 meters by 2.5 meters. It weighs 430 kilograms. Unlike the rovers used on Mars, VIPER can be piloted nearly in real time, because the distance from Earth is much shorter.

VIPER is solar-powered and comes with a 50-hour battery that was built to withstand extreme temperatures. It was designed with the ability to "walk" sideways so that its solar equipment can stay pointed toward the sun.

The mission is part of NASA's Artemis program, which aims to land the first woman and next man on the moon by 2024. The program's long-term goal is to establish a continued human presence on the moon.

NASA says it will be the first mission to explore the surface of the moon's south pole. This is one of the coldest areas in our solar system. So far, it has only been studied by orbiters and satellites observing the moon. Data collected from those observations led scientists to believe that ice and other resources likely exist in areas near the moon's poles. Some of these areas remain permanently blocked from the sun.

NASA says such areas can reach temperatures as low as minus 248 degrees Celsius. Scientists believe the south pole's frozen water could date back billions of years.

Lori Glaze is the director of NASA's planetary science division. She told reporters: "The rover is going to get up close and personal with the lunar soil, even drilling several feet down."

NASA says the search for ice on the moon is important because it is seen as a necessary resource for future exploration activities. Astronauts could use the ice for drinking water and to cool equipment or make rocket fuel for missions deeper into the solar system.

NASA says it chose a mountainous area on the western edge of the Nobile Crater for the landing because it contains many "nearby sites of scientific interest." It also has surface areas that the rover can effectively explore.

Daniel Andrews is overseeing the VIPER project. He said in a statement that "years of study" had gone into examining the polar area the rover will explore. "VIPER is going into uncharted territory -- informed by science -- to test hypotheses and reveal critical information for future human space exploration."

NASA hopes the data and samples that VIPER collects will help scientists find other places where water might exist on the moon. The mission also aims to help NASA better understand how frozen water first reached the moon and how it was able to survive for billions of years.

I'm Bryan Lynn.
Bryan Lynn wrote this story for VOA Learning English, based on reports from NASA and Agence France-Presse. Ashley Thompson was the editor. We want to hear from you. Write to us in the Comments section, and visit our Facebook page ___________________________________________________ .

Words in This Story

crater - n. a round hole made by an explosive force such as a bomb or an object falling from the sky

region - n. a particular area

battery - n. an electric cell or connected electric cells for providing electric current

mission - n. an important project or trip, especially involving space travel

drill - v. to use a tool or machine to make holes in a hard substance

uncharted - adj. an area that has not had a map made of it and has not been described

hypothesis - n. an idea or explanation for something that is based on known facts but has not been proven

reveal - v. make known something that is surprising or that was previously secret

sample - n. a small amount of something that gives you information about the thing it was taken from

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NASA Chooses Moon Landing Site for Ice-Seeking Rover

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The American space agency NASA has chosen the moon landing site for a new ice-seeking explorer set to arrive in 2023. The explorer, or rover, will be sent to an area on the moon's south pole called Nobile Crater. The robotic vehicle is called Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover, or VIPER.