The United Arab Emirates launched its first mission to Mars early Monday as it strives to develop its scientific and technology capabilities and move away from its reliance on oil. The Hope Probe blasted off from Japan’s Tanegashima Space Center at 1:58 a.m. UAE time/6:58 a.m. Japanese time Monday (2158 GMT Sunday) for a seven-month journey to the Red Planet, where it will orbit and send back data about the atmosphere. The first Arab mission to Mars was initially set to launch July 14 but had been delayed twice because of bad weather. There are currently eight active missions exploring Mars; some orbit the planet and some have landed on its surface. China and the United States each plan to send another this year. The Emirates Mars Mission has cost $200 million, according to Minister for Advanced Sciences Sarah Amiri. It aims to provide a complete picture of the Martian …

The World Health Organization reports the COVID-19 pandemic and lack of money are hampering efforts to bring a speedy end to the Ebola outbreak in Democratic Republic of Congo’s Equateur Province.  Since the outbreak was declared June 1, 56 cases, including 20 deaths have been recorded.Shortly after Ebola was detected in the DRC, World Health Officials expressed confidence they would be able to quickly control the spread of the deadly virus.  They noted many lessons had been learned from previous outbreaks.  They said the availability of a vaccine, and therapeutics could help them prevent the onset of the disease and treat those who fell ill.   World Health Organization spokeswoman, Fadela Chaib says these new tools are being used to good effect.  Over the course of four days, she says 12,000 people have been vaccinated.   However, she says it is difficult to contain virus spread because cases are scattered across a …

Actor and activist Angelina Jolie urged the U.N. Security Council on Friday to fulfill its promise to hold to account perpetrators of sexual violence against children in conflict settings.“I have met child survivors of sexual violence – and domestic violence and trauma and abuse – everywhere,” Jolie said of her 20 years working with the U.N. refugee agency. “There is no continent untouched by these crimes.”She addressed a council session reflecting on the issue, one year after adoption of Resolution 2467, which strengthened prevention through justice and accountability mechanisms, empowered the council to impose sanctions on perpetrators, and opened the way for victims to seek reparations.Jolie gave the example of Yazidi children she had met in northern Iraq. Thousands of their mothers and female relatives have been abducted, enslaved and abused since 2014 by fighters with the Islamic State group. Many are still in captivity.“Many of the children witnessed the …

Researchers have discovered one of the blackest materials on Earth – material that reflects less than .5 percent of the light that hits it – on the skin of deep-sea fish that use their blackness as camouflage from predators.The fish’s skin and its possible applications in the above-water world are described in a study published Thursday in the science journal Current Biology. The lead author of the study, Smithsonian Natural History Museum zoologist Karen Osborn, said in her research she kept coming across black fish that she could not quite photograph — she could only capture their silhouette.This inspired her to capture samples of the fish and examine them. Deep-sea fish of this nature, she said, use their blackness to escape predators. In their environment, where sunlight cannot reach, many fish have developed bioluminescence — their own biological light source — which they use to hunt their prey. Their prey, …

More than 1 million people in the United Kingdom have quit smoking since the coronavirus pandemic hit earlier this year, an anti-smoking group said. Action on Smoking and Health said more than 40% of those surveyed say they gave up cigarettes in direct response to the coronavirus.  A separate poll by University College London found more people quit smoking in the first six months of the year than in any full year since 2007. Medical researchers across the globe say COVID-19 symptoms are worse in smokers who get the virus than in nonsmokers who get sick.  U.S. experts say hospitalized smokers with coronavirus are less likely to survive.  Menthol cigarettesAlso Thursday, the U.S. branch of Action on Smoking and Health joined an African American anti-smoking group in filing a court action against the Food and Drug Administration. FILE – Packs of menthol cigarettes and other tobacco products line shelves at a store in …

The number of reported Ebola cases in western Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) has surpassed the African nation’s 2018 outbreak numbers in the same region, World Health Organization officials said Thursday. “There are now 56 cases, and this is of great concern, particularly as it is now surpassing the previous (2018) outbreak in this area, which was closed off and controlled at a total of 54 cases,” said Dr. Matshidiso Moeti, WHO regional director for Africa, referring to DRC’s Equateur province, a large region bordering the Republic of Congo and the Central African Republic. The challenges of responding to Ebola cases amid the COVID-19 pandemic, he added, are exacerbated by inadequate funding and rough terrain. “The current Ebola outbreak is running into headwinds because cases are scattered across remote areas in dense rain forests,” he said. “This makes for a costly response, as ensuring that responders and supplies reach affected populations is extremely …

Officials from the European Space Agency, ESA, and its U.S. counterpart, NASA Thursday released the first ever pictures from the agencies’ joint Solar Orbiter mission, including the closest pictures ever taken of the sun.The orbiter was about 77 million kilometers from the sun – about halfway between Earth and the star – when it took the stunning high-resolution pictures last month.During a remote news briefing as the pictures were released, ESA’s Solar Orbiter project scientist, Daniel Müller, said the mission was off to an excellent start. He said, “We didn’t expect such great results so early.”The Belgium Royal Observatory’s David Berghmans, the principal investigator for the  “Extreme Ultraviolet Imagers” (EUI) on board the spacecraft, described the very first high-resolution image they saw from the orbiter, which snapped a picture of the sun’s corona, or outer disc. He said they did not expect to see much – the region of the …

NASA astronauts Chris Cassidy and Robert Behnken stepped outside the International Space Station (ISS) Thursday to continue efforts to complete a three-and-a-half-year project to upgrade the station’s batteries, the space agency said.Cassidy and Behnken have been working to replace aging nickel-hydrogen batteries with new lithium-ion batteries delivered to the station on a Japanese cargo ship in May. In all, NASA said 12 spacewalks will have been performed since January 2017 to change out batteries for eight power channels used to route electricity on the station.Thursday’s extravehicular activity is expected to last up to seven hours.NASA Astronauts Take Space Walk to Upgrade ISS BatteriesSpacewalk continues mission begun last week to upgrade ISS batteriesThe final spacewalk to complete the project is scheduled for next Tuesday and it will be somewhat historic. When the two astronauts once again step outside the ISS that day, it will mark the 300th spacewalk involving U.S. astronauts …

Can a pregnant woman spread the coronavirus to her fetus? It’s possible, but it seems to be relatively rare and scientists think they know why that is. Many viruses can cross the placenta and infect a fetus in the womb, and evidence has been growing that the coronavirus sometimes can too.   Researchers in Italy studied 31 women with COVID-19 who delivered babies in March and April and found signs of the virus in several samples of umbilical cord blood, the placenta and, in one case, breast milk. But this sort of testing can just detect bits of genetic material — it doesn’t mean there is virus capable of causing infection in those places. In one case, there was strong evidence suggesting the newborn had the virus at birth because signs of it were found in umbilical cord blood and in the placenta. In another, a newborn had certain coronavirus …

U.S. President Donald Trump has unveiled a top-to-bottom overhaul of the review process for infrastructure projects that critics contend causes major cracks in bedrock conservations laws.  “This is something that nobody thought was possible,” Trump said on the outskirts of Atlanta’s airport on Wednesday, contending that “horrible roadblocks” due to environmental regulations had cost “trillions of dollars” over the years.  The president said his new rule “completely modernizes the approval review process under the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969,” which will cut the timeline for major projects, including highways, from up to 20 years down to two years or less.  “You’re not going to devote a lifetime to doing a project that doesn’t get approved,” Trump said of the streamlined process. “It’s going to be very quick — yes or no, after study.” In his remarks at the Hapeville Airport Hub of United Parcel Service, Trump discussed how he had personally experienced frustration with “mountains and mountains of red tape” over the decades in the real estate industry.  He remarked how “years and years of litigation …

There has been an alarming decline in the number of children getting vaccinated for such preventable diseases as diphtheria, tetanus and measles, the United Nations warned Wednesday. The U.N.’s World Health Organization and UNICEF blame the decline on the disruption of routine health care caused by the coronavirus pandemic. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, director general of World Health Organization, attends the virtual 73rd World Health Assembly in Geneva, May 18, 2020.“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunized than ever before,” WHO chief Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus said. “But the pandemic has put those gains at risk. The avoidable suffering and death caused by children missing out on routine immunizations could be far greater than COVID-19 itself.” The WHO and UNICEF said that even when vaccines are available, many children who need them are afraid to leave their homes because of the coronavirus or the difficulties of traveling because of COVID-19 restrictions.  But even before the pandemic hit, the agencies …

President Donald Trump is ready to roll back a foundational Nixon-era environmental law that he says stifles infrastructure projects, but that is credited with ensuring decades of scrutiny of major projects and giving local communities a say. Trump was in Atlanta to announce changes Wednesday to the National Environmental Policy Act’s regulations for how and when authorities must conduct environmental reviews, making it easier to build highways, pipelines, chemical plants and other projects. The 1970 law changed environmental oversight in the United States by requiring federal agencies to consider whether a project would harm the air, land, water or wildlife, and giving the public the right of review and input. The White House said the final rule will promote the rebuilding of America. Critics call the Republican president’s efforts a cynical attempt to limit the public’s ability to examine and influence proposed projects under one of the country’s bedrock environmental protection laws. “This …

Researchers believe they have identified the area of the brain that determines a preference for alcohol, perhaps the first step in an eventual treatment for alcoholism.In a study published Monday in the Society for Neuroscience journal eNeuro, researchers said they were trying to determine why some people can consume alcohol every day without developing dependence while less frequent drinkers develop a dependence.The researchers, from the University of Massachusetts, offered a test group of rats intermittent access to a 20 percent alcohol solution, then trained them to self-administer both 10 and 20 percent solutions of alcohol, as well as a sugar solution as a reward. They then were able to determine which rats were high or low alcohol consumers and divide them accordingly.The researchers monitored the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC) activity in rats as they consumed the alcohol. The OFC is the brain region associated with impulsivity, reward and decision-making. They found …

The World Health Organization (WHO) and UNICEF are calling for a renewed push for vaccinations, as the numbers of vaccinations fall due to the coronavirus pandemic.In a statement issued Wednesday, the non-profits say child vaccination rates plateaued at 85 percent in the decade prior to the outbreak, with an estimate that at least 14 million infants were not vaccinated each of those years.“Vaccines are one of the most powerful tools in the history of public health, and more children are now being immunized than ever before,” said Dr. Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, WHO Director-General.But the pandemic has slowed production of the vital preventative vaccines, and stay-at-home orders, economic hardships and other obstacles have hindered access to doctor’s offices and clinics.For example, new data released by the WHO indicates the first four months of 2020 saw a significant drop in in children completing the recommended number of vaccination doses against diphtheria, tetanus …