AFP UK

A firefighter was killed on Thursday while battling a wind-fuelled wildfire in southern Spain which forced the evacuation of hundreds of people and closed a key highway, local officials said.

The 44-year-old was one of roughly 400 firefighters tackling the flames which broke out late Wednesday in the Sierra Bermeja mountains in the southern province of Malaga, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.

“You can imagine the pain and sadness at his command post,” the environment minister in the regional government of Andalusia, Carmen Crespo, told a news conference, adding an investigation had been opened into his death.

She said the blaze was “very complicated and very difficult. Dangerous, very dangerous”.

Over 25 water-dropping aircraft helped firefighters trying to control the blaze during the day.

Emergency services said around 900 people were evacuated from their homes — mainly from the municipality of Estepona, an area popular with British pensioners and holidaymakers.

Several told Spanish public television they were given only minutes to leave by police.

Firefighters said strong winds, with gusts of up to 60 kilometres (40 miles) an hour, hot and dry conditions and the steep mountain slopes were making their task difficult although they hoped cooler night time temperatures would help them gain the upper hand.

“Sadly wildfires have once again ravaged places of such beauty as the Sierra Bermeja. My solidarity with everyone who has been evacuated from their homes. I imagine their desolation and impotence,” Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez tweeted.

Local officials suspect the blaze may have been deliberately started.

“It is striking that at the same moment in the evening, when there were strong winds in different spots, there were different outbreaks of fire. It’s striking,” Estepona mayor Jose Garcia Urbano told reporters.

The fire forced the closure of the AP-7 highway which runs along the Mediterranean coast for several hours on Thursday. Two other roads remain closed.

Firefighters on Thursday battled strong winds to contain a wildfire in southern Spain, as hundreds of people were evacuated and a key highway and roads were closed.

About 250 firefighters backed by 26 water-bombing planes fought the flames which broke out late Wednesday in the Sierra Bermeja mountains in the southern province of Malaga, the regional government of Andalusia said in a statement.

Emergency services said some 900 people were evacuated from their homes — mainly from the municipality of Estepona, an area popular with British pensioners and holidaymakers.

Several told Spanish public television they were given only minutes to leave by police.

Firefighters said strong winds, with gusts of up to 60 kilometres (40 miles) an hour, hot and dry conditions and the steep mountain slopes were making their task difficult.

“Winds are getting stronger but … they are coming from the west which moves the fire away from built-up areas,” the head of the Malaga firefighter division, Manuel Marmolejo, told reporters.

Local officials suspect the blaze may have been deliberately started.

“It is striking that at the same moment in the evening, when there were strong winds in different spots, there were different outbreaks of fire. It’s striking,” Estepona mayor Jose Garcia Urbano told reporters.

The fire forced the closure of the AP-7 highway which runs along the Mediterranean coast for several hours on Thursday. Two other roads remain closed.

Feeling sluggish at work? Poor ventilation and pollution might play a part.

A new study by scientists at Harvard has found that the air quality inside an office can have a significant impact on employees’ cognitive function, including response times and ability to focus.

“We have a huge body of research on the exposure to outdoor pollution, but we spend 90 percent of our time indoors,” Jose Guillermo Cedeno Laurent, a research fellow and lead author of the paper published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters, told AFP.

The limited amount of prior studies on indoor settings had focused on measures like thermal comfort and satisfaction, rather than on cognitive outcomes, he added.

Cedeno Laurent and colleagues designed a study that followed 302 office workers across six countries (China, India, Mexico, Thailand, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom) over a period of a year.

It ended in March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic brought global lockdowns.

All participants were aged between 18 and 65, worked at least three days in an office building, and had a permanent workstation within the office.

Their workspaces were fitted with an environmental sensor to monitor real time concentrations of fine particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller, PM2.5, as well as carbon dioxide, temperature, and relative humidity.

The participants were given a custom-designed app on their phones to carry out the cognitive tests. They were prompted to take the tests at prescheduled times or when the sensors detected PM2.5 and CO2 levels that fell below or exceeded certain thresholds.

CO2 concentrations serve as a proxy for ventilation levels. Outside, concentrations are around 400 ppm (parts per million), while 1000 ppm is cited as an upper limit for indoors.

There were two tests. The first required employees to correctly identify the color of displayed words that spelled out another color. 

This evaluated cognitive speed and the ability to focus on relevant stimuli when irrelevant stimuli are being presented.

The second test involved basic addition and subtraction with two-digit-long numbers, to assess cognitive speed and working memory.

– Open a window –

Results showed that an increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5 led to about a one percent reduction in response times to both tests, and more than a one percent reduction in accuracy.

For a frame of reference, the outdoor PM2.5 levels in the US capital Washington were 13.9 micrograms per cubic meter on Thursday, according to the IQAir tracking site, while it was 42 micrograms per cubic meter in New Delhi.

In terms of C02, an increase of 500 ppm (parts per million), which is not an unusual level of variation, led to a more than one percent drop in response times, and more than two percent drop in accuracy across both tests.

The research comes as US Congress is poised to pass an infrastructure package, and Cedeno Laurent argues now is the time to plan to for energy efficient, high performance buildings that provide the right amount of ventilation and air filtration.

While past studies have shown that prolonged exposure to PM2.5 inflames the central nervous system and crosses the blood-brain-barrier to cause long term neurodegenerative disease, this is the first to show short term effects, he added.

For employees returning to in-person office work, there are some solutions.

Opening a window is one, said Cedeno Laurent. If the outdoor air quality isn’t good, upgrading the building’s filtration systems or adding high quality portable air cleaners are good ideas.

Feeling sluggish at work? Poor ventilation and pollution might play a part.

A new study by scientists at Harvard has found that the air quality inside an office can have a significant impact on employees’ cognitive function, including response times and ability to focus.

“We have a huge body of research on the exposure to outdoor pollution, but we spend 90 percent of our time indoors,” Jose Guillermo Cedeno Laurent, a research fellow and lead author of the paper published Thursday in Environmental Research Letters, told AFP.

The limited amount of prior studies on indoor settings had focused on measures like thermal comfort and satisfaction, rather than on cognitive outcomes, he added.

Cedeno Laurent and colleagues designed a study that followed 302 office workers across six countries (China, India, Mexico, Thailand, the United States of America, and the United Kingdom) over a period of a year.

It ended in March 2020 when the Covid-19 pandemic brought global lockdowns.

All participants were aged between 18 and 65, worked at least three days in an office building, and had a permanent workstation within the office.

Their workspaces were fitted with an environmental sensor to monitor real time concentrations of fine particulate matter 2.5 micrometers and smaller, PM2.5, as well as carbon dioxide, temperature, and relative humidity.

The participants were given a custom-designed app on their phones to carry out the cognitive tests, which they were prompted to take at prescheduled times or when the sensors detected PM2.5 and CO2 levels fall below or exceed certain thresholds.

CO2 concentrations serve as a proxy for ventilation levels. Outside, concentrations are around 400 ppm (parts per million), while 1000 ppm is cited as an upper limit for indoors.

There were two tests. The first required employees to correctly identify the color of displayed words that spelled out another color. 

This evaluated cognitive speed and the ability to focus on relevant stimuli when irrelevant stimuli are being presented.

The second test involved basic addition and subtraction with two-digit-long numbers, to assess cognitive speed and working memory.

– Open a window –

Results showed that an increase of 10 micrograms per cubic meter of PM2.5 led to about a one percent reduction in response times to both tests, and more than a one percent reduction in accuracy.

For a frame of reference, the outdoor PM2.5 levels in the US capital Washington were 13.9 micrograms per cubic meter on Thursday, according to the IQAir tracking site, while it was 42 micrograms per cubic meter in New Delhi.

In terms of C02, an increase of 500 ppm (parts per million), which is not an unusual level of variation, led to a more than one percent drop in response times, and more than two percent drop in accuracy across both tests.

The research comes as US Congress is poised to pass an infrastructure package, and Cedeno Laurent argues now is the time to plan to for energy efficient, high performance buildings that provide the right amount of ventilation and air filtration.

While past studies have shown that prolonged exposure to PM2.5 inflames the central nervous system and crosses the blood-brain-barrier to cause long term neurodegenerative disease, this is the first to show short term effects, he added.

For employees returning to in-person office work, there are some solutions.

Opening a window is one, said Cedeno Laurent. If the outdoor air quality isn’t good,  upgrading the building’s filtration systems or adding high quality portable air cleaners are good ideas.

Illegal logging, charcoal production and poaching in and around Virunga National Park, the famed sanctuary of mountain gorillas in eastern DR Congo, are enriching armed groups in the troubled region, local NGOs say.

“The majority of armed groups active in North Kivu (province) have set up bases in and around the park,” raking in hundreds of thousands of dollars (euros) each month, 38 environmental and human rights movements say.

They spell out the problem in a letter to the province’s military governor, President Felix Tshisekedi and senior officials in Kinshasa and in Goma, North Kivu’s capital.

Armed groups “illegally exploit various natural resources to finance themselves,” from ivory trafficking and charcoal production to extorting local fishermen on Lake Edward, according to the letter released on Wednesday.

Signatories included the Congolese Alert Network for the Environment and Human Rights (ACEDH), Humanitarian Action for Sustainable Development (AHDD), the Congo Basin Conservation Society (CBCS) and Planete Verte RDC (Green Planet DRC).

Fishing alone is estimated to provide the groups with income of least $100,000 a month, through “taxes” levied on the use of the canoes.

As for charcoal burning, “at least 40 trucks each carrying 150 sacks of lump charcoal enter the city of Goma every day,” the letter says. At $10 per sack, the sums collected reach almost $1.7 million per month.

These funds add to income from kidnapping and other criminal activities, which the groups use to buy weapons and bribe officials, the letter adds.

The Congolese Institute for the Conservation of Nature (ICCN) said the letter “pinpoints a real problem” where armed groups directly feed off trafficking in natural resources.

The groups are urging North Kivu’s government to “prohibit any commercial activity or illicit traffic involving the military, park wardens or members of their families” and to crack down on “intermediaries”.

Situated on DR Congo’s borders with Rwanda and Uganda, the 7,800-square-kilometre (3,000-square-mile) park is the oldest nature reserve in Africa and a sanctuary for rare species, including mountain gorillas, which are also present in neighbouring Rwanda and Uganda.

The haven has also been the theatre of clashes between gunmen and park rangers, of whom 21 have died in the past year.

More than 120 armed groups roam eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, many of them a legacy of regional wars some two decades ago, according to the Kivu Security Tracker (KST), a respected US-based monitor of violence in the region.

Drew Weissman’s decades of research helped pave the way for mRNA Covid-19 vaccines, but the scientist isn’t resting on his laurels. 

The University of Pennsylvania immunologist, who on Thursday shared the $3 million 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences with his longtime collaborator Katalin Kariko, is now spearheading efforts to design a new vaccine against all coronaviruses.

The Silicon Valley-backed award honors major discoveries with the highest cash amounts in science.

“There have been three (coronavirus) pandemics or epidemics in the past 20 years,” Weissman told AFP in an interview, referring to the original SARS virus, MERS and Covid-19.

“You have to assume there’s going to be more, and our idea was that we could wait for the next coronavirus epidemic or pandemic, and then spend a year and a half making a vaccine. Or we could make one now and have it either ready to go, or use it now.”

The 62-year-old and his team started work on the project last spring and have so far published two papers, with promising results. 

One of the vaccines was shown to prevent SARS and a few other animal coronaviruses that have the potential to cross into humans.

By now, many are familiar with the basic principles of mRNA (messenger ribonucleic acid) vaccines: they deliver genetic instructions to our cells to build the spike protein of the coronavirus, in order to evoke antibodies when our bodies encounter the real virus.

The new focus is to try to train our immune systems to parts of the virus that do not mutate as fast as the spike. These are called “conserved regions.”

As a practicing doctor for most of his life, “my dream since starting college and medical school was to make something that helps people,” Weissman said, adding it made him “incredibly happy” to see the vaccines he laid the groundwork for save lives.

But while he foresaw the issue of global vaccine inequality — and is working on a project with the Thai government to develop their own Covid-19 vaccine for this reason — he admitted to being astonished by the level of vaccine hesitancy seen in wealthy countries.

“The conservative anti-science, anti-government people completely surprised us. I just didn’t expect that group to come out against vaccines,” he said.

– New applications –

While mRNA technology is enjoying huge attention, Weissman remembers a time when the field was a scientific backwater.

“We started working together in 1998, and that was without much funding and without much in the way of publications,” he said of his work with Kariko.

In 2005, they found a way to alter synthetic RNA to stop it from causing a massive inflammatory response found in animal experiments.

“Just before our paper was published I said ‘Our phones are going to ring off the hook,'” he recalls. 

“We sat there staring at our phones for five years, and they never rang!”

With a second big breakthrough in 2015, they found a new way to deliver the particles safely and effectively to their target cells, using a fatty coating called “lipid nanoparticles.”

Both developments are part of the Pfizer and Moderna Covid-19 vaccines today.

Beyond vaccines, mRNA technology is also being heralded for its potential to revolutionize medicine.

Weissman’s team is working on using RNA to develop a single-injection gene therapy to overcome the defect that causes sickle cell anemia, a genetic blood disease that 200,000 babies are born with in Africa every year.

Significant technical challenges remain to ensure the treatment is able to correctly edit genes and is safe, but the researchers are hopeful.

Bone marrow transplant, an expensive treatment with serious risks, is currently the only cure.

It would take 15 billion years for the clock that occupies Jun Ye’s basement lab at the University of Colorado to lose a second — about how long the universe has existed.

For this invention, the Chinese-American scientist, along with Hidetoshi Katori of Japan, will split $3 million as co-winners of the 2022 Breakthrough Prize in Fundamental Physics.

Working independently, the two developed techniques using lasers to trap and cool atoms, then harness their vibrations to drive what are known as “optical lattice clocks,” the most precise timekeeping pieces ever built.

By comparison, current atomic clocks lose a second once every 100 million years.

But what is gained by greater accuracy?

“It’s really an instrument to allow you to probe the basic fabric of space-time in the universe,” Ye told AFP.

In Ye’s lab, researchers have shown that time moves slower when the clock is moved closer to the ground by a matter of centimeters, in line with Einstein’s predictions of relativity.

Applied to current technology, these clocks could improve GPS navigation accuracy by a factor of a thousand, or help smoothly land an unmanned spaceplane on Mars.

– A brief history of time –

Improving the precision and accuracy of timekeeping has been a goal since ancient Egyptians and Chinese made sundials.

A key breakthrough came with the invention of the pendulum clock in 1656, which relies on a swinging weight to keep time, and a few decades later chronometers were accurate enough to determine a ship’s longitude at sea.

The early 20th century saw the advent of quartz clocks, which when jolted with electricity resonate at very specific, high frequencies, or number of ticks in a second.

Quartz clocks are ubiquitous in modern electronics, but are still somewhat susceptible to variations caused by the manufacturing process, or conditions like temperature.

The next great leap in timekeeping came from harnessing the movements of energized atoms to develop atomic clocks, which are immune the effects of such environmental variations. 

Physicists know that a single, very high frequency will cause particles called electrons that orbit the nucleus of a specific type of atom to jump to a higher energy state, finding an orbit further away from the nucleus.

Atomic clocks generate the approximate frequency that causes atoms of the element Cesium to jump to that higher energy state. 

Then, a detector counts the number of those energized atoms, adjusting the frequency if necessary to make the clock more precise. 

So precise that since 1967, one second has been defined as 9,192,631,770 oscillations of a Cesium atom. 

– Exploring the universe, and Earth –

Katori’s and Ye’s labs have found ways to improve atomic clocks even further by moving oscillations to the visible end of the electromagnetic spectrum, with frequencies a hundred thousand times higher than those used in current atomic clocks — to make them even more accurate.

They realized they needed a way to trap the atoms — in this case, of the element strontium — and hold them still with ultralow temperatures to help measure time properly. 

If the atoms are falling due to gravity or are otherwise moving, there would be a loss of accuracy, and relativity would cause distorting effects on the timekeeping. 

To trap the atoms, the inventors created an “optical lattice” made by laser waves moving in opposite directions to form a stationary, egg carton-like shape.

Ye is excited about the potential use of his clock. For example, synchronizing the clocks of the world’s best observatories down to the tiniest fractions of a second would allow astronomers to better conceptualize black holes. 

Better clocks can also shed new light on the Earth’s geological processes.

Relativity tells us that time slows down when it approaches a massive body, so a sufficiently accurate clock could tell scientists the difference between solid rock and volcanic lava below the surface, helping to predict an eruption.

Or indeed, measure the levels of the oceans, or how much water flows beneath a desert.

The next great challenge, Ye says, will be miniaturizing the technology so it can be moved out of a lab.

The scientist admits it’s sometimes hard to explain fundamental physics concepts to the public.

“But when they hear about clocks, they can feel it’s a tangible thing, they can make a connection to that, and that’s very rewarding,” he said.

Twenty-five years ago, French biophysicist Pascal Mayer had an idea that seemed nothing short of “crazy.” Today, his research has paved the way for a rapid and inexpensive DNA sequencing technique used around the world in the battle against Covid-19.

On Thursday, Mayer, 58, who hails from the town of Riom in central France, was awarded the prestigious Breakthrough Prize in life sciences, alongside British researchers Shankar Balasubramanian and David Klenerman.

The American prize, launched by Silicon Valley entrepreneurs to recognize the latest scientific advances, carries an award of a hefty $3 million, compared to $1 million given to Nobel Prize laureates. Mayer and his colleagues will get $1 million each.

Thanks to the new method, known as next generation sequencing (NGS), scientists can analyze coronavirus mutations day by day to identify and monitor new variants.

Without this technique, studying the rapidly spreading new Covid-19 mutations would be much more costly and, more importantly, take much longer, Mayer told AFP.

But back in 1996, when Mayer began developing the idea, it sounded wild.

“It seemed crazy, so I looked pretty crazy when I talked about it,” said Mayer, who now works at his own bioresearch company.  

– DNA colonies –

A genome is a complete set of an organism’s genes: its hereditary information. 

Each gene represents a small piece of DNA, which in turn, consists of four letters: A (for adenine), T (thymine), C (cytosine) and G (guanine).

Made up of 23 chromosomes, the human genome contains more than three billion letters. 

“It’s a bit like having an encyclopedia consisting of 23 volumes,” Mayer explained.

To sequence the genome is to “read” the order of these letters.

The sequencing of the first complete human genome was completed in 2003, after ten years and an investment of over $1 billion. The technique that was used then is called Sanger sequencing.

Thanks to NGS, also called massive parallel sequencing, the process can now be done overnight at a cost of $1,000.

How is that achieved? Instead of reading the pages of each book one by one, they are all read simultaneously.

“It’s like putting all the pages on a soccer field, and being able to take a photo of the field at once,” explained Mayer.

One of the keys to his technique is creating clusters of DNA, by cutting up the genome into small pieces, then creating thousands of copies of them and grouping them into islands of sorts.

Assembled together, they can be read simultaneously and more easily by fluorescence.

Mayer said the simplicity of the technique is its key strength and a source of pride for him. 

The sequencing takes place “with a stroke of the pipette,” he said.

– 17,000 machines –

After studying at the University of Strasbourg and completing postdoctoral fellowships in Canada and in France, Mayer tested his idea for the first time in Geneva, in the research center of a pharmaceutical company where he then worked. 

Two key patents were filed in April 1997.

The technology was later acquired by a start-up founded by Balasubramanian and Klenerman, two British scientists working on the same problem. 

Their company was eventually bought by the US genetic research company Illumina, the global leader in genetic sequencing, which has 17,000 sequencing machines around the globe.

Besides Covid-19 research, massive parallel sequencing is widely used to diagnose and treat certain cancers and rare diseases. 

It is also used in forensic investigations to analyze DNA samples from crime scenes.

Mayer does not own the property rights to the sequencing method, so he doesn’t share in the profits. 

But he hopes the award will give a boost to his bioresearch company Alphanosos, which he founded in 2014. 

Mayer intends to invest a part of his award to fund projects at his company, including treatment for coronavirus.

The UN nuclear watchdog on Thursday promised a “comprehensive” and “objective” review of Japan’s controversial plan to release treated water from the stricken Fukushima nuclear plant into the sea.

During its inspection, the International Atomic Energy Agency will consult experts including from China and South Korea, which have reacted angrily to the release plan.

More than a million tonnes of processed water has accumulated in tanks at the crippled plant since it went into meltdown following a tsunami in 2011, including liquid that was used to cool damaged reactors.

An extensive pumping and filtration system removes most radioactive elements, and Japan says the plan to dilute and release the water over several decades is safe.

The IAEA has endorsed the release, which it says is similar to the disposal of wastewater at nuclear plants elsewhere.

“The review includes several missions and technical visits in coming months and years,” Lydie Evrard, the IAEA’s deputy director general, said Thursday in Tokyo on a visit to kick off the inspection process.

Before sharing the results, the IAEA will ensure its review is “comprehensive” and “objective”, she said in an online briefing after meeting officials in Fukushima and the capital.

The Japanese government’s decision in April to go ahead with the release — which could begin as soon as March 2023 — sparked ire from neighbouring countries over environmental and safety concerns.

It also generated fierce opposition from local fishing communities, who fear it will undermine years of work to restore confidence in their seafood.

Debate over how to handle the water has dragged on for years, as space to store it at the site runs out.

The filtration process removes most radioactive elements from the water, but some remain, including tritium.

Experts say the element is only harmful to humans in large doses and with dilution the treated water poses no scientifically detectable risk.

The IAEA will send future missions to review “the radiological characterisation” of the water, as well as how to release it and its impact on the environment and people, the Japanese industry ministry said.

Last month, plant operators unveiled plans to construct an undersea tunnel for the release of the 1.25 million tonnes of treated water, which also includes rain and groundwater that seeps in daily.

For Bangkok market sellers, the armpit sweat soaking their T-shirts during the humid monsoon season may contain subtle signs of coronavirus infection, local scientists have said.

Thai researchers are developing a sweat-based mobile virus detector, and road-tested it on shopkeepers at a Bangkok food market this week.

“From the samples, we found that people infected with Covid-19 secrete very distinct chemicals,” said Chadin Kulsing from Bangkok’s Chulalongkorn University.

“We used this finding to develop a device to detect the specific odours produced by certain bacteria in the sweat of Covid-19 patients.

Chadin — who said the test was 95 percent accurate — hopes it might be rolled out as an affordable alternative to more expensive swab tests that require lab processing.

It is however still in the development stage, and the research behind it is yet to be published or peer-reviewed.

The scientists adapted a device usually used to detect toxic chemicals in the environment.

Subjects place a cotton swab under their arms for 15 minutes, before the swab is put in a glass vial and sterilised with UV rays.

“The technician then draws an appropriate amount of the sample using a suction hose, and pressurises it into the analyser to check the results,” Chadin said.

Sample collection takes 15 minutes and the results are ready in 30 seconds.

The sweat tests received the thumbs-up from Bangkok market vendors, who said it was much more pleasant than nostril swab tests.

“This sweat test is more convenient because I get to work while waiting for the results,” a 43-year-old watermelon seller told AFP.

“With the PCR test, I’d have to be at a testing centre, sit and wait for the result and it just wastes my time.”

Thailand, battling its third and worst Covid wave, reported 16,000 new cases Thursday, taking the total since the start of the pandemic to nearly 1.34 million.