Former Indiana Gov. Joe Kernan has died at age 74
The former Indiana governor and mayor of South Bend, Indiana, passed away on Wednesday morning, his longtime aide confirmed. Kernan, who was diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease several years ago, recently lost his ability to speak and was living in a care facility before his death.
Photo via @IBJnews
Indian teenagers discover asteroid near Mars moving toward Earth
Two teenage schoolgirls in India discovered an asteroid near Mars, a space education institute in India reported recently.
The two girls, Vaidehi Vekariya and Radhika Lakhani, both 14 and in 10th grade, were participants in a project sponsored by Space India and NASA. The project allows students to look at images from a telescope in Hawaii.
Vaidehi and Radhika used specialized software to analyze the images snapped by the Pan-STARRS telescope in Hawaii, and made the discovery in June, Space India told Reuters.
The asteroid, which is named HLV2514, is slowly shifting in its orbit near the red planet and is moving toward Earth, CNN said. It won't be near Earth for 1 million years, however, and even then will still be 10 times as far away as the moon.
The two girls live in the city of Surat in the state of Gujarat in western India.
The pair gave it a random name for now but are looking forward to the opportunity to possible name it something else once confirmed, according to VICE.
"I look forward to …when we will get a chance to name the asteroid,” Vaidehi told Reuters, adding that she wants to become an astronaut when she is older.
Radhika said she is working hard on her education. “I don’t even have a TV at home, so that I can concentrate on my studies,” according to Reuters.
The asteroid will be officially christened only after NASA confirms its orbit.
https://www.yahoo.com/news/two-schoolgirls-india-discover-asteroid-200721410.html
US-China Collaborative Biomedical Research Program
Organization and History
Scientific cooperation between the United States and the People’s Republic of China was initiated more than 30 years ago and has grown rapidly in recent years. In December 2010, the director of the U.S. National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the president of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) signed an implementation arrangement to develop the U.S.-China Program for Biomedical Research Cooperation, which aims to enhance cooperative biomedical research of benefit to both countries.
A Joint Working Group (JWG) made up of NIH and NSFC representatives develop strategic research plans and help expedite review and clearance of proposed bilateral projects. Both the NIH and NSFC allocate funds to support joint activities under this program.
Areas of Joint Research
In the first year of the program, applications were open for basic, translational, behavioral, clinical, preventive, or epidemiological research projects in the areas of allergy, immunology, infectious diseases, and cancer. The JWG decided to fund 34 grant supplements and intramural research projects to support U.S. investigators collaborating with Chinese colleagues. The NSFC provided complementary funding to support the Chinese investigators.
In the second year of the program, investigators were invited to submit research projects that covered various areas of cancer, mental health, immunology, and infectious diseases (including HIV/AIDS and its co-morbidities). The JWG decided to fund 42 awards to U.S. and Chinese collaborating investigators.
The research areas were expanded in the third year of the program to include Parkinson’s disease and stroke, as well as continuing research on the health topics covered in the first two years.
https://www.niaid.nih.gov/research/us-china-collaborative-biomedical-research-program
Interesting. Another CCP
CCP Receives $4 Million from USAID for COVID-19 Preparedness and Response
USAID has awarded $4 million to the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs to help nine countries – six in Asia and three in Africa – with communication and community engagement activities to prepare for and respond to the novel coronavirus spreading across the world.
CCP’s Breakthrough ACTION project will lead the efforts alongside its partner Save the Children to help ensure that governments share appropriate messages with the public – and reduce the spread of rumors and misinformation – in order to prevent the transmission of the virus and stem panic. The virus causes a respiratory illness that has killed more than 2,700 people since it was first identified in China’s Wuhan city in Hubei province in December.
This week, the number of new cases of COVID-19 worldwide passed the 220,000 mark and it is being found in all corners of the world. Several countries are on lockdown as their health systems are overrun with patients and schools and businesses across the world have been closed. There is still a good deal that isn’t known about COVID-19, but one of the best ways to prevent transmission is regular handwashing and keeping a distance from others.
“It’s important to have very clear and precise calls to action so there is no confusion or doubt about what communities can do to prevent COVID-19 transmission,” says Alice Payne Merritt, MPH, a deputy director at CCP. “Meanwhile, the community needs to be engaged in its own preparedness. It doesn’t work if you only push messages out from the top-down. The community needs to be part and parcel of preparedness.”
The award to CCP is part of $37 million in financing from the Emergency Reserve Fund for Contagious Infectious Diseases at USAID for 25 countries affected by COVID-19 or at high risk of its spread.
CCP has experience in risk communication and community engagement around emerging diseases having done similar work in West Africa during the Ebola outbreak several years ago and in Latin America and the Caribbean during the more recent Zika outbreak.
The CCP-led work will support work in Bangladesh, Ethiopia, South Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and another African nation where CCP already has USAID-funded programs. Save the Children, a partner on the Breakthrough ACTION work, will head up the work in Cambodia, Vietnam and Myanmar where it already works.
Merritt says it’s critical for all stakeholders to coordinate closely in developing messages to prevent and mitigate the spread of COVID-19. Each country will create individual messages and calls to action based on the situation on the ground, which is specific to them.
“The public landscape can be noisy so it’s paramount that everyone is speaking from the same page,” she says. “Our role is to help with behavior change communication and harmonize those messages.”
https://ccp.jhu.edu/2020/03/19/coronavirus-covid-19-usaid/
Didn't they test them before the hearing yesterday?
So he came down with it today? How is that possible?
Is this going to highlight the FAKE POSITIVES?
Member when Hawaii had a oopsy missile alert?