An internship at a hospital in Malawi was an eye-opening experience for Sonia Sosa.

“Sometimes, there are tons of babies, and there are not that many nurses, so they’re understaffed. It was really hard to work there, but then it also challenged me to really go back and work really hard to be able to provide this care that is accessible to them,” said Sosa, who studied biomedical engineering and is a global health fellow at Rice 360° Institute for Global Health in Houston. 

The purpose of the institute, through various programs, is to design and implement new technologies to combat global health problems. 

One of the institute’s efforts is the Newborn Essential Solutions and Technologies project also known as NEST360°. The collaborative, multinational effort aims to reduce the number of newborn deaths in sub-Saharan Africa, a region with one of the highest neonatal mortality rates in the world. NEST aims to develop a collection of medical technologies that would be appropriate for a harsh and challenging environment and make them sustainable through educating clinicians and developing distribution systems for this technology. 

The devices are being developed or being tested, such as a light weight incubator, a diagnostic device for jaundice and respiratory rate monitor. 

Made for the environment

In total, 17 technologies have been identified, and together, engineers say they can help prevent the top causes of newborn deaths such as pneumonia and preterm birth in sub-Saharan Africa.

“Our students developed a solution that would cost on the order of hundreds of dollars and not only address the fact that it needed to be robust and cost-effective, but also easy to maintain and repair should something happen,” said Yvette Mirabal, executive director of Rice 360° Institute For Global Health.

Countries such as Malawi have received donations of medical equipment in the past, but they were not always helpful.

“I saw that all the devices come in as donations from First World countries, they didn’t fit in there. People used it differently, put them in weird places, and when they broke, there were no spare parts,” said global health fellow and engineer Jack Wang.

The devices ended up collecting dust and becoming useless because they were not right for the environment. There is also the issue of a lack of knowledge about the first world equipment. 

“The engineers, doctors, nurses, aren’t necessarily familiar and or trained with them, unless they had gone to a Western school where they’ve been exposed to some of these technologies, but maybe even in more complex forms. So, there was a systemic change that needed to be addressed,” said Mirabal.

Understanding the harsh dusty environment in Malawi and inconsistent electricity will help engineers build better devices, suitable for that part of the world. 

“We’re, in some cases, incorporating battery power where it’s appropriate. And then in other cases, we’re testing out backup power or including sort of with the NEST bundle of technologies, a package of solar power so that when there are those blackouts, there’s a backup system,” Mirabal said.

Of the 17 technologies, some are commercially available. Others are either in clinical trials or in early prototypes. A $15 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation is a start at achieving the goal of developing the technologies, scale them and roll them out first in Malawi, and eventually to other countries that need them.
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Around the world, 2.6 million newborns die within a month after they are born, according to the World Health Organization. A project called NEST360°, in the Rice 360° Institute for Global Health in Houston, is trying to reduce the number of preventable newborn deaths in sub-Saharan Africa. The key is to provide appropriate medical devices for hospitals in this region of the world. VOA’s Elizabeth Lee has the details.
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Social media giants Facebook and Twitter said they have removed hundreds of pages and accounts linked to Russia and Iran ahead of the midterm elections in the U.S.

Facebook said it had removed 254 Facebook pages and 116 Instagram accounts that originated in Iran and were part of a disinformation campaign that targeted countries around the world, including the U.S. and Britain.

The social media companies acted on a tip from cybersecurity firm FireEye, which said on Tuesday that the accounts were promoting Iranian propaganda, including discussion of “anti-Saudi, anti-Israeli and pro-Palestinian themes.”

“We’ve removed 652 Pages, groups and accounts for coordinated inauthentic behavior that originated in Iran and targeted people across multiple internet services in the Middle East, Latin America, UK and US,” Nathaniel Gleicher, head of cybersecurity policy at Facebook, said in a blog post.

The removals comes weeks after the company took down several pages of disinformation originating in Russia. On Tuesday, Facebook said it had found more such pages and had removed them. But the company said the Russian pages don’t appear to be linked to the ones originating in Iran.

Also Tuesday, Twitter said it had identified and removed 284 accounts for “engaging in coordinated manipulation” that it said “appeared to have originated in Iran.”

The announcements come after Microsoft said it had taken control of websites it said were trying to hack into conservative American think tanks and the U.S. Senate.

Microsoft said it executed a court order to gain control of six websites linked to the group behind the 2016 hack of the Democratic National Committee.
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In the heart of New York City, one artist has created a dystopic version of Times Square, submerging it underwater and filling it with a virtual fleet of boats. VOA’s Tina Trinh reports on a futuristic art installation addressing a present-day concern: climate change.
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From an app to diagnose disease on Zambian farms to Tinder-style matchmaking for Senegalese land owners and young farmers, young coders have been finding solutions to hunger in the first Africa-wide hackathon on the issue.

Eight teams competed in the hackathon, organized by the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and a Rwandan trade organization this week in the country’s capital Kigali.

Experts say keeping young people in farming is key to alleviating hunger in Africa, which has 65 percent of the world’s uncultivated arable land, but spends $35 billion a year on importing food for its growing population.

“In our families, agriculture is no longer a good business. They don’t get the return,” said Rwandan Ndayisaba Wilson, 24, whose team proposed a $400 solar-powered device that can optimize water and fertilizer use.

“We believe that if the technology is good and farmers can see the benefits, they will adopt it.”

Among the proposed solutions were an app that links aspiring farmers with land owners in Senegal and a Nigerian mobile platform that uses blockchain to help farmers demonstrate their creditworthiness to lenders.

The winner was AgriPredict, an app already operating in Zambia that can help farmers identify diseases and pests. Those pests include the voracious fall armyworm, which eats crops and has wreaked havoc in much of sub-Saharan Africa.

Farmers can access the app directly from their phones or via Facebook. CEO Mwila Kangwa, 31, said the initiative came out of the twin disasters that hit Zambian farmers in 2016: the fall armyworm and Tuta absoluta, the pest commonly known as the tomato leaf miner.

“We noticed there were no tools whatsoever that will help farmers mitigate or prevent or even counter these diseases so we came up with this idea of creating a software to help farmers,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

As winners, the Zambian team will receive coaching from the FAO to refine their product and an opportunity to meet potential funders and partners.

“What they brought was a technically sound solution … and the ability to convey the message to young people by using, for example, Facebook,” said Henry van Burgsteden, IT officer for digital innovation at the FAO and one of the judges.

The hackathon was held during a conference in Kigali on ways to attract more young people to agriculture through information and communication technology tools.

High unemployment and the challenges of rural life mean many young people desert farming for the city, while aging farmers struggle with climate change, poverty and poor infrastructure.
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A federal judge hearing arguments over a settlement between the Trump administration and a company that wants to post plans for printing 3D weapons on the internet said Tuesday that the issue is best decided by the president or the Congress.

U.S. District Judge Robert Lasnik that while he will still rule on the legal issues involving the settlement, “a solution to the greater problem is so much better suited” to the president or Congress.

The settlement prompted 19 states and Washington, D.C., to sue the Trump administration for allowing a Texas company to distribute instructions on how to make printable three-dimensional guns.

Lasnik issued a temporary restraining order blocking the online release of the blueprints. Now, the states and Washington are seeking a permanent ban.

A lawyer for the U.S. Justice Department argued that it is already illegal to possess plastic guns, and the government is fully committed to enforcing that law.

But Lasnik questioned the logic behind enforcing a ban on undetectable guns rather than proactively stopping them from being made in the first place.

It is unclear when he will issue his final ruling in the case.
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U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday that it is “very dangerous” for social media companies like Twitter and Facebook to silence voices on their services.

Trump’s comments in an interview with Reuters come as the social media industry faces mounting scrutiny from Congress to police foreign propaganda.

Trump has made his Twitter account — with more than 53 million followers — an integral and controversial part of his presidency, using it to promote his agenda, announce policy and attack critics.

Trump previously criticized the social media industry on Aug. 18, claiming without evidence in a series of tweets that unnamed companies were “totally discriminating against Republican/Conservative voices.” In the same post, Trump said “too many voices are being destroyed, some good & some bad.”

Those tweets followed actions taken by Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc.’s YouTube and Facebook to remove some content posted by Infowars, a website run by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones. Jones’ own Twitter account was temporarily suspended on Aug. 15.

“I won’t mention names but when they take certain people off of Twitter or Facebook and they’re making that decision, that is really a dangerous thing because that could be you tomorrow,” Trump said.

Trump appeared on a show produced by Infowars, hosted by Jones, in December 2015 while campaigning for the White House. In removing Jones’ content, YouTube, Twitter and Facebook each pointed to specific user agreement violations. For example, Facebook removed several pages associated with Infowars after determining they violated policies concerning hate speech and bullying.

Twitter and Facebook declined to comment on Trump’s statement. Apple and Google did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In July, during a House of Representatives Judiciary Committee hearing, executives from Facebook, Google and Twitter testified they did not remove content based on political reasons.

“Our purpose is to serve the conversation, not to make value judgments on personal beliefs,” Nick Pickles, Twitter’s senior strategist, said at the time.
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People in big cities around the world typically enjoy a wide range of public transportation options. Those who own smartphones also have the choice of using some of the increasingly popular ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. And now, Kabul residents in Afghanistan can, too. VOA’s Haseeb Maudoodi takes a look at Kabul’s newest online taxi service called Buber, which means ‘take me’ in Dari. Bezhan Hamdard narrates.
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People in big cities around the world typically enjoy a wide range of public transportation options. Those who own smartphones also have the choice of using some of the increasingly popular ride sharing services such as Uber and Lyft. And now, Kabul residents in Afghanistan can, too. VOA’s Haseeb Maudoodi takes a look at Kabul’s newest online taxi service called Buber, which means ‘take me’ in Dari. Bezhan Hamdard narrates.
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Google has been in the headlines recently, and the news was not good. The technology company left the Chinese market eight years ago to protest Beijing’s censorship, but now appears ready to return with a new search engine. But the project is shrouded in secrecy, even as Google’s employees demand transparency. Meanwhile, the company tries to defend itself against accusations it has been invading user’s privacy, despite claiming it doesn’t. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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Google has been in the headlines recently, and the news was not good. The technology company left the Chinese market eight years ago to protest Beijing’s censorship, but now appears ready to return with a new search engine. But the project is shrouded in secrecy, even as Google’s employees demand transparency. Meanwhile, the company tries to defend itself against accusations it has been invading user’s privacy, despite claiming it doesn’t. Faiza Elmasry has the story. Faith Lapidus narrates.
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The world’s oceans are filled with trace amounts of uranium, the primary fuel for nuclear power reactors. The trick is extracting it from the seawater. Now, scientists in the U.S. say they have done that using yarn, and extracted 5 grams of the powdered form of uranium used to produce reactor fuel. Faith Lapidus reports.
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