paris — The universe is still expanding at an accelerating rate, but it may have slowed down recently compared with a few billion years ago, early results from the most precise measurement of its evolution yet suggested Thursday.

The preliminary findings are far from confirmed, but if they hold up, it would further deepen the mystery of dark energy – and likely mean there is something important missing in our understanding of the cosmos.

These signals of our universe’s changing speeds were spotted by the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI), which is perched atop a telescope at the Kitt Peak National Observatory in the U.S. state of Arizona.

Each of the instrument’s 5,000 fiber-optic robots can observe a galaxy for 20 minutes, allowing astronomers to chart what they have called the largest-ever 3D map of the universe.

“We measured the position of the galaxies in space but also in time, because the farther away they are, the more we go back in time to a younger and younger universe,” Arnaud de Mattia, a co-leader of the DESI data interpretation team, told AFP.

Just one year into its five-year survey, DESI has already drawn up a map that includes 6 million galaxies and quasars using light that stretches up to 11 billion years into the universe’s past.

The results were announced at conferences in the United States and Switzerland on Thursday, ahead of a series of scientific papers being published in the Journal of Cosmology and Astroparticle Physics.

DESI is on a mission to shed light on the nature of dark energy – a theoretical phenomenon thought to make up roughly 70 percent of the universe.

Another 25 percent of the universe is composed of the equally mysterious dark matter, leaving just 5 percent of normal matter – such as everything you can see.

An inconstant constant?

For more than a century, scientists have known that the universe started expanding after the Big Bang, 13.8 billion years ago.

But in the late 1990s, astronomers were shocked to discover it has been expanding at an ever-increasing rate.

This was a surprise because gravity from matter – both normal and dark – was thought to have been slowing the universe down.

But obviously something was making the universe expand at ever-faster speeds, and the name “dark energy” was given to this force.

More recently, it was discovered that the acceleration of the universe significantly sped up around 6 billion years after the Big Bang.

In the push-and-pull between matter and dark energy, the latter certainly seems to have the upper hand, according to the leading model of the universe called the Lambda CDM.

Under this model, the quickening expansion of the universe is called the “cosmological constant,” which is closely linked to dark energy.

DESI director Michael Levi said that so far, the instrument’s early results were showing “basic agreement with our best model of the universe.”

“But we’re also seeing some potentially interesting differences, which could indicate that dark energy is evolving with time,” Levi said in a statement.

In other words, the data seem to show “that the cosmological constant Lambda is not really a constant,” because dark energy would be displaying “dynamic” and changing behavior, De Mattia said.

Slowing down in old age

This could suggest that – after switching into high gear 6 billion years after the Big Bang – the speed at which the universe has been expanding has been “slowing down in recent times,” DESI researcher Christophe Yeche said.

Whether dark energy does in fact change over time would need to be verified by more data from DESI and other instruments, such as the space telescope Euclid.

But if it was confirmed, our understanding of the universe will likely have to be changed to accommodate for this strange behavior.

For example, the cosmological constant could be replaced by some kind of field linked to some as-yet-unknown particle.

It could even necessitate updating the equations of Einstein’s theory of relativity “so that they behave slightly differently on the scale of large structures,” De Mattia said.

But we are not there yet.

The history of science is full of examples in which “deviations of this type have been observed then resolved over time,” De Mattia said.

After all, Einstein’s theory of relativity has withstood more than a century of scientific poking and prodding and still stands stronger than ever.
…

…

On Earth and in space, efforts are underway to curb emissions of the super-pollutant methane, a greenhouse gas. VOA’s Veronica Balderas Iglesias looks at the latest innovations and policies, as the International Energy Agency warns the clock is ticking to win the fight against climate change.
…

Seoul, South Korea — A much-heralded first meeting between South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol and a negotiator for young doctors who walked off the job in February appeared to have made little progress on Thursday after the latter expressed pessimism on social media.  

Yoon’s office said his first in-person talks lasted more than two hours, after he showed the first signs of flexibility in an approach until now marked by a hard-line attitude, as crucial parliament elections approach next week.

“There is no future for medical care in Korea,” the negotiator, Park Dan, posted on his Facebook page after the meeting at which Yoon’s office said the two exchanged views on improving working conditions and compensation for the doctors.

It was not immediately clear what aspect of the talks Park was referring to. Reuters has sent him a text message to seek comment.  

The long drawn-out walkout by thousands of trainee doctors nationwide is putting increasing strain on South Korea’s health care system, forcing hospitals to turn away patients and cut back on surgeries except in emergencies.

Park, the head of the Korean Intern Resident Association, accepted Yoon’s invitation to meet and conveyed the views of his colleagues, Yoon’s office said in its brief statement.

It added that Yoon would respect the position of the trainee doctors in future discussions with the medical community on health care reform, including an increase in physician numbers.

The centerpiece of Yoon’s contested plan is to boost medical school admissions and the number of doctors in a rapidly aging society, but many are instead concerned about securing better working conditions and legal protection.

Unless action is taken, South Korea faces having 15,000 fewer doctors than it needs to maintain essential services, the government has warned.

Yoon had said his plan to raise the number of new medical students to 5,000 a year from 3,000 now is not up for discussion but signaled on Monday there might be room to adjust it if the medical community offered reasonable proposals.  

South Korea’s practicing physicians and teachers in medical school have demanded that Yoon scrap his reform plans.  

While a large majority of the public support the thrust of Yoon’s plan, a poll on Monday showed more people are unhappy with the way his government has handled the stalemate.

South Koreans go to the polls on April 10 to elect a 300-member parliament and Yoon’s conservative People Power Party faces an uphill battle to win back a majority now held by the opposition.
…

Harare, Zimbabwe — Zimbabwe appealed to the United Nations, aid agencies and individuals on Wednesday for $2 billion to avert food insecurity caused by an El Nino-induced drought.

At the State House in Harare, President Emmerson Mnangagwa declared a nationwide state of disaster. He told reporters that Zimbabwe is expecting a harvest of 868,000 metric tons of grain this year — far short of expectations and about 680,000 tons less than the country needs.

“Preliminary assessment shows that Zimbabwe requires in excess of $2 billion toward various interventions we envisage in the spectrum of our national response,” he said.

Zimbabwe isn’t alone. Malawi and Zambia declared a state of disaster earlier this year due to the drought.

Edward Kallon, U.N. resident and humanitarian coordinator in Zimbabwe, said the world body is monitoring the severe impact of the ongoing dry spell in southern Africa. He said the crisis has far-reaching consequences across various sectors, including food and nutrition security, health, water resources, education and jobs.

So far, Kallon said, the U.N. has allocated $5 million from the Central Emergency Response Fund for needs such as water, hygiene, sanitation, food and medical response to a cholera outbreak.

“The U.N. pledges its support to the government of Zimbabwe in mobilizing resources to tackle the El Nino-induced drought,” he said. “Efforts are underway to finalize a response plan.”

Paul Zakariya, executive director of the Zimbabwe Farmers Union, said that while nothing can be done to stop climate change effects, irrigation farming is one of the methods that can be used to mitigate calamity.

“Only depending on rain-fed agriculture, we will not go too far,” Zakariya said.

The government should ensure that even farmers with small amounts of land can irrigate, he said.

“With irrigation, our farmers are producing all year round,” he said.

Zimbabwe, once the breadbasket of southern Africa, has largely depended on handouts from organizations such as the World Food Program and the U.S. Agency for International Development in the last 20-plus years.

The government attributes the food shortages to recurring droughts.

Critics attribute the problem to the confiscation of land from white commercial farmers who produced crops all year round. They were replaced with peasant farmers who let irrigation systems fall into disrepair and are reliant on rain to grow their crops.

U.N. agencies said they will provide funding so Zimbabwe can revive the irrigation systems. Details are expected at a news conference on Thursday.
…

…

…

ATLANTA — A person in Texas has been diagnosed with bird flu, an infection tied to the recent discovery of the virus in dairy cows, health officials said Monday.

The patient was being treated with an antiviral drug and their only reported symptom was eye redness, Texas health officials said. Health officials say the person had been in contact with cows presumed to be infected, and the risk to the public remains low. 

It marks the first known instance globally of a person catching this version of bird flu from a mammal, federal health officials said.

However, there’s no evidence of person-to-person spread or that anyone has become infected from milk or meat from livestock, said Dr. Nirav Shah, principal deputy director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Genetic tests don’t suggest that the virus suddenly is spreading more easily or that it is causing more severe illness, Shah said. And current antiviral medications still seem to work, he added.

Last week, dairy cows in Texas and Kansas were reported to be infected with bird flu — and federal agriculture officials later confirmed infections in a Michigan dairy herd that had recently received cows from Texas. None of the hundreds of affected cows have died, Shah said.

Since 2020, a bird flu virus has been spreading among more animal species – including dogs, cats, skunks, bears and even seals and porpoises – in scores of countries. 

However, the detection in U.S. livestock is an “unexpected and problematic twist,” said Dr. Ali Khan, a former CDC outbreak investigator who is now dean of the University of Nebraska’s public health college.

This bird flu was first identified as a threat to people during a 1997 outbreak in Hong Kong. More than 460 people have died in the past two decades from bird flu infections, according to the World Health Organization. 

Most infected people got it directly from birds, but scientists have been on guard for any sign of spread among people. 

Texas officials didn’t identify the newly infected person, nor release any details about what brought them in contact with the cows.

The CDC does not recommend testing for people who have no symptoms. Roughly a dozen people in Texas who did have symptoms were tested in connection with the dairy cow infections, but only the one person came back positive, Shah said.

It’s only the second time a person in the United States has been diagnosed with what’s known as Type A H5N1 virus. In 2022, a prison inmate in a work program picked it up while killing infected birds at a poultry farm in Montrose County, Colorado. His only symptom was fatigue, and he recovered.
…

islamabad, pakistan — Global eradication efforts have “cornered” polio in a “few pockets” of Pakistan and Afghanistan, the last two countries where the virus continues to paralyze children.

Experts hailed the progress being made in tackling the “outbreak-prone” disease during a virtual briefing last week to mark a decade since India was declared polio-free in March 2014.

“We have Pakistan and Afghanistan [where polio is] still endemic, but the virus is cornered in very few pockets in very few districts of these two countries,” said Dr. Ananda Bandyopadhyay, deputy director of polio technology, research and analytics at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

“The virus is gasping in these last corridors,” Bandyopadhyay said.

Pakistan has reported two wild poliovirus cases this year, while the number stood at six in 2023. Afghanistan has yet to detect a polio case this year and recorded six cases last year.

Experts credited continued efforts to vaccinate populations with pushing polio to the verge of extinction.

Wild poliovirus affects young children and can paralyze them in severe cases or can be deadly in certain instances. The paralytic disease is the only currently designated public health emergency of international concern.

Hamid Jafari, director of polio eradication for the WHO Eastern Mediterranean Region, told the event that until 2020, about 13 families of wild poliovirus had spread across the neighboring countries.

Since then, only two families have survived, and they remain endemic to Pakistan “in a very small geographic area” in southern parts of the Khyber Pakhtunkhwa border province and in eastern Afghanistan, he said.

While the “historic reservoirs” have been cleared of the virus in Pakistan and Afghanistan, transmission is now surviving in “exceptionally hard-to-reach” populations, making it difficult for polio teams to inoculate children there, he said.

Jafari said “militancy and extensive population movement” across the Afghanistan-Pakistan border, and keeping track of those populations, were the kinds of “last-mile challenges that we have.”

“The genetic cluster that seems to be on its way out and getting eliminated is in the heart of the area of militancy in Pakistan,” he said.

Jafari noted that India’s polio program did not face the same militancy challenge that Afghanistan’s did until the Taliban takeover in August 2021, and that it remains a significant problem in Pakistan in the last stages of eradicating the virus.

Bandyopadhyay said successes against the poliovirus in both countries raise hope it is on the verge of extinction there.

He said clinicians “observed similar trends” even in the countries that “saw polio’s disappearing act.”

“Initially, we would have multiple families or lineages of the virus … and then you saw that disappearing act,” he said.

Jafari said that lessons learned in India had been applied to Nigeria, which was declared polio-free in June 2020. He added that many of “these practices were instilled in the program” in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

WHO has said that cases caused by wild poliovirus have dropped by more than 99% since 1988, from an estimated 350,000 in more than 125 endemic countries to just two endemic countries as of October 2023.

It attributed the decline to the Global Polio Eradication Initiative, led by the WHO, the U.N. Children’s Fund, Rotary International, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Jay Wenger, director of the polio program at the Gates Foundation, said that even though Afghanistan and Pakistan had reported a handful of cases, global efforts against the virus must continue.

“As we get to the end of the [polio program], it’s critical to finish. We usually say if there is polio anywhere, it’s a threat to everywhere,” he said.
…

…

DALLAS — Millions of people along a narrow band in North America will look up when the sky darkens during a total solar eclipse on April 8. When they do, safety is key.

Staring directly at the sun during a solar eclipse or at any other time can lead to permanent eye damage. The eclipse is only safe to witness with the naked eye during totality, or the period of total darkness when the moon completely covers the sun.

Those eager to experience the eclipse should buy eclipse glasses from a reputable vendor. Sunglasses are not protective enough, and binoculars and telescopes without a proper solar filter can magnify light from the sun, making them unsafe.

“Please, please put those glasses on,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said.

Where to find eclipse glasses

Since counterfeit glasses abound, consider purchasing glasses from a local science museum or order online from a seller cleared on the American Astronomical Society’s website.

Eclipse safety experts say legitimate eclipse glasses should block out ultraviolet light from the sun and nearly all visible light. When worn indoors, only very bright lights should be faintly visible – not household furniture or wallpaper.

Old eclipse glasses from the 2017 total solar eclipse or October’s “ring of fire” annular eclipse are safe to reuse, as long as they aren’t warped and don’t have scratches or holes.

Glasses should say they comply with ISO 12312-2 standards, though fake suppliers can also print this language on their products. NASA does not approve or certify eclipse glasses.

How to view the eclipse without glasses

If you don’t have eclipse glasses, you can still enjoy the spectacle through indirect ways such as making a pinhole projector using household materials.

Poke a hole through a piece of cardstock or cardboard, hold it up during the eclipse and look down to see a partial crescent projected below. Holding up a colander or a cracker will produce a similar effect.

Another trick: Peering at the ground under a shady tree can yield crescent shadows as the sunlight filters through branches and leaves.

Eye experts warn against viewing the eclipse through a phone camera. The sun’s bright rays can also damage a phone’s digital components.

Why looking at a solar eclipse is dangerous

Eye damage can occur without proper protection. The sun’s bright rays can burn cells in the retina at the back of the eye. The retina doesn’t have pain receptors, so there’s no way to feel the damage as it happens. Once the cells die, they don’t come back.

Symptoms of solar eye damage, called solar retinopathy, include blurred vision and color distortion.

In a rare case of eclipse eye damage, a woman who viewed the 2017 eclipse without adequate protection came to Mount Sinai’s New York Eye and Ear Infirmary, complaining of a black spot in her vision. Doctors discovered retinal damage that corresponded to the eclipse’s shape.

“The dark spot she was describing was in the shape of a crescent,” said Dr. Avnish Deobhakta, a Mount Sinai ophthalmologist.

There’s no set rule for how long of a glance can lead to permanent damage. Severity varies based on cloudiness, air pollution and a person’s vantage point.

But doctors say looking at a solar eclipse for even a few seconds unprotected isn’t worth the risk. There are reports of solar retinopathy after every solar eclipse, and U.S. eye doctors saw dozens of extra visits after the one in 2017.

Spectators who plan ahead can secure a stress-free eclipse viewing experience.

“It can be dangerous if we aren’t careful, but it’s also very safe if we take the basic precautions,” said Dr. Geoffrey Emerson, a board member of the American Society of Retina Specialists.
…

…

tokyo — Japanese government health officials raided a factory Saturday producing health supplements that they say have killed at least five people and hospitalized more than 100 others. 

About a dozen people wearing dark suits solemnly walked into the Osaka plant of Kobayashi Pharmaceutical Co. in the raid shown widely on Japanese TV news, including public broadcaster NHK. 

The company says little is known about the exact cause of the sicknesses, which include kidney failure. An investigation into the products is underway in cooperation with government health authorities. 

The supplements all used “benikoji,” a kind of red mold. Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals’ pink pills called Benikoji Choleste Help were billed as helping lower cholesterol levels. 

Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals, based in the western Japanese city of Osaka, said about 1 million packages were sold over the past three fiscal years. It also sold benikoji to other manufacturers, and some products have been exported. The supplements could be bought at drug stores without a prescription from a doctor. 

Reports of health problems surfaced in 2023, although benikoji has been used in products for years. 

Kobayashi Pharmaceuticals President Akihiro Kobayashi has apologized for not having acted sooner. The recall came March 22, two months after the company had received official medical reports about the problem. 

On Friday, the company said five people had died and 114 people were being treated in hospitals after taking the products. Japan’s health ministry says the supplements are responsible for the deaths and illnesses and warned that the number of those affected could grow. 

Some analysts blame the recent deregulation initiatives, which simplified and sped up approval for health products to spur economic growth. But deaths from a mass-produced item is rare in Japan, as government checks over consumer products are relatively stringent. 

The government has ordered a review of the approval system in response to supplement-related illnesses. A report is due in May.  
…

…

…

…