Millions around the world watch the union of British royalty and Hollywood glamour at St. George’s Chapel in Windsor Castle in Windsor, near London, England.
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From: MeNeedIt

Three new cases of the often lethal Ebola virus have been confirmed in a city of more than 1 million people, Congo’s health minister announced, as the spread of the hemorrhagic fever in an urban area raised alarm.

The statement late Friday said the confirmed cases are in Mbandaka city, where a single case was confirmed earlier in the week.

There are now 17 confirmed Ebola cases in this outbreak, including one death, plus 21 probable cases and five suspected ones.

The World Health Organization on Friday decided not to declare the outbreak a global health emergency, but it called the risk of spread within Congo “very high” and warned nine neighboring countries that the risk to them was high. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

The outbreak is a test of a new experimental Ebola vaccine that proved effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago. Vaccinations are expected to start early in the week, with more than 4,000 doses already in Congo and more on the way.

A major challenge will be keeping the vaccines cold in the vast, impoverished country where infrastructure is poor.

While Congo has contained several Ebola outbreaks in the past, all of them were based in remote rural areas. The virus has twice made it to Congo’s capital of 10 million people, Kinshasa, in the past but was rapidly stopped.

Health officials are trying to track down more than 500 people who have been in contact with those feared infected, a task that became more urgent with the spread to Mbandaka, which lies on the Congo River, a busy traffic corridor, and is an hour’s flight from the capital.

The outbreak was declared more than a week ago in Congo’s remote northwest. Its spread has some Congolese worried.

“Even if it’s not happening here yet I have to reduce contact with people. May God protect us in any case,” Grace Ekofo, a 23-year-old student in Kinshasa, told The Associated Press.

A teacher in Mbandaka, 53-year-old Jean Mopono, said they were trying to implement preventative measures by teaching students not to greet each other by shaking hands or kissing.

“We pray that this epidemic does not take place here,” Mopono said.

The WHO, which was accused of bungling its response to the West Africa outbreak, the biggest Ebola outbreak in history with more than 11,000 deaths, appears to be moving swiftly to contain this latest epidemic, experts said.

There is “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control,” said Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the WHO expert meeting on Friday. But without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly.”

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys. It is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
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From: MeNeedIt

“Panda Beer,” “Little General,” “Flying Fist IPA,” and “Mandarin Wheat” are among the offerings on tap at a craft beer exhibition this week in Shanghai dedicated to expanding the palette of Chinese consumers and promoting sales of high-end brews.

The 2018 Craft Beer of China Exhibition features breweries like Rasenburg Beer, Myth Monkey Brewing, Lazy Taps, Goose Island and Boxing Cat Brewery that are sharing tips on the latest technology and sales trends as Chinese shift from legacy brews to more experimental, refined and expensive flavors.

From taps at the expo flowed creative mixes of flavors and traditions, a swirling cocktail of Chinese ingredients, barley, hops and spices from around the world.

“After drinking it [craft beer], it feels much better than the domestic industry beer, and then you just can’t leave it,” said Yu Shiqi, a 40-year old craft beer consumer at the expo who dreams of brewing his own.

There’s money to be made in China, which drinks a quarter of all beer worldwide, and small-batch brewers and giant multinationals are cashing in. Though craft beer is far from upstaging local beer behemoths like Tsingtao that dominate the $28 billion national beer market, it is rising in popularity as small breweries open up in China’s major metropolitan areas like Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Craft beers are typically more expensive than mass-market, low-alcohol content brews like Budweiser and China’s Yanjing. But as China’s middle class grows, so too does its tastes for finer products.

A couple of years ago, craft beer made up only 0.3 percent of total beer consumption. It has since risen to about 5 percent, said Darren Guo, one of the exhibition’s organizers, who expect to see 30 percent growth in the craft beer market every year until 2020. “Beer culture is pretty much on the beginning or starting level.”

Laurel Liu, sales director of Beijing-based Jing-A brewery, says she gets calls from small towns asking how to start up a craft brewery.

“You don’t even expect them to have craft beer there but now they do,” Liu said. “I’m really surprised and happy to see now that craft beer in China is a thing and it’s really easier to access these products now.”

More money was spent on beer in China than the U.S. in 2017, according to beer industry research firm Drink Sector. Craft breweries were “rapidly increasing,” although foreign imports continue to dominate the high-end beer sector.

The Belgian-Brazilian firm Anheuser-Busch InBev, the makers of Budweiser, has invested heavily in China, building breweries and acquiring craft breweries like Shanghai’s Boxing Cat. Anheuser Busch also owns Goose Island, which is based in Chicago.

Michael Jordan, brew-master at Boxing Cat, and his staff experiment with flavors like egg tart, green tea, peppercorn, chai, kiwi, hibiscus and sweet potato.

Jordan chalks up some of the success of craft brewing in China to President Xi Jinping sharing a pint of IPA, or Indian Pale Ale, in 2015 in the UK with then-prime minister David Cameron.

“The ‘Xi phenomenon’ really kind of opened people’s eyes to IPA,” he said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Canadian computer scientists helped pioneer the field of artificial intelligence before it was a buzzword, and now Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is hoping to capitalize on their intellectual lead.

Trudeau has become a kind of marketer-in-chief for Canada’s tech economy ambitions, accurately explaining the basics of machine learning as he promotes a national plan he says will “secure Canada’s foothold in AI research and training.”

“Tech giants have taken notice, and are setting up offices in Canada, hiring Canadian experts, and investing time and money into applications that could be as transformative as the internet itself,” Trudeau wrote in a guest editorial published this week in the Boston Globe.

Trudeau has been taking that message on the road and is likely to emphasize it again Friday when he addresses a gathering of tech entrepreneurs at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. His visit to the MIT campus headlines an annual meeting of the school’s Solve initiative, which connects innovators with corporate, government and academic resources to help them tackle world problems.

Trudeau isn’t the only head of state talking up AI — France’s Emmanuel Macron and China’s Xi Jinping are among the others — but his deep-in-the-weeds approach has caught U.S. tech companies’ attention in contrast to President Donald Trump, whose administration “got off to a little bit of a slow start” in expressing interest, said Erik Brynjolfsson, an MIT professor who directs the school’s Initiative on the Digital Economy.

“AI is the most important technology for the next decade or two,” said Brynjolfsson, who attended the Trump White House’s first AI summit last week. “It’s going to completely transform the economy and our society in lots of ways. It’s a huge mistake for countries’ leaders not to take it seriously.”

Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Uber and Samsung have all opened AI research hubs centered in Montreal, Toronto and Edmonton, drawn in large part by decades of academic research into “deep learning” algorithms that helped pave the way for today’s digital voice assistants, self-driving technology and photo-tagging services that can recognize a friend’s face.

Canada’s reputation as a welcoming place for immigrants is also helping, as is Trudeau’s enthusiasm about the AI economy, Brynjolfsson said.

“When a national leader says AI is a priority, I think you get more creative, smart young people who will be taking it seriously,” he said.

AI is an “easy and recognizable shorthand” for the digital economy Trudeau hopes to foster, said Luke Stark, a Dartmouth College sociologist from Canada who studies the history and philosophy of technology.

A former schoolteacher, Trudeau is “smart enough to know when to learn something so he can talk about it intelligently in a way that helps educate people,” Stark said.

Stark said that also allows Trudeau to “push into the background some of the less high-tech, less fashionable elements of the Canadian economy,” such as the extraction of oil and gas.

The visit comes amid talks between Canada, the U.S. and Mexico over whether to renew the North American Free Trade Agreement. Negotiators have now gone past an informal Thursday deadline set by U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan, increasing the likelihood that talks could drag into 2019.
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From: MeNeedIt

The big day is nearly here for Britain’s Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as the couple are to wed Saturday in the town of Windsor, just outside London. The former American actress confirmed this week that her father will not attend the ceremony because of ill health. Huge crowds are expected as well-wishers try to catch a glimpse of the royal couple and, as Henry Ridgwell reports, from the security operation, to the catering, to the flowers, the day marks the culmination of months of preparation.
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From: MeNeedIt

Congo’s latest Ebola outbreak does not yet warrant being declared a global health emergency, the World Health Organization announced Friday, as health officials rushed to contain the often deadly virus that has spread to a city of more than 1 million.

The vast, impoverished country now has 14 confirmed Ebola cases, with dozens of others probable or suspected.

WHO officials, speaking after an experts’ meeting on the outbreak, said vaccinations could begin as early as Sunday in a key test of an experimental vaccine.

The health agency called the risk to the public in Congo “very high” and the regional risk high, with the global risk low. The Republic of Congo and Central African Republic are nearby and are among nine neighboring countries alerted. WHO said there should be no international travel or trade restrictions.

Dr. Robert Steffen, who chaired the expert meeting, said there was “strong reason to believe this situation can be brought under control.”

He noted the almost immediate response by WHO and partners after Ebola was announced in Congo last week. Without a vigorous response, “the situation is likely to deteriorate significantly,” he added. If the outbreak spreads internationally, the expert committee would reconvene to reconsider its assessment of the epidemic.

Congo has contained several past Ebola outbreaks but the spread of the hemorrhagic fever to an urban area poses a major challenge. The city of Mbandaka, which has one confirmed Ebola case, is an hour’s flight from the capital, Kinshasa, and is located on the Congo River, a busy travel corridor.

For a health crisis to constitute a global health emergency it must meet three criteria stipulated by WHO: It must threaten other countries via the international spread of disease, it must be a “serious, unusual or unexpected” situation, and it may require immediate international action for containment.

‘Major, major game-changer’

Ebola has twice made it to Congo’s capital in the past and was rapidly stopped. Congo has had the most Ebola outbreaks of any country, and Dr. David Heymann, a former WHO director who has led numerous responses to Ebola, said authorities there have considerable expertise in halting the lethal virus.

The Ebola vaccine proved highly effective in the West Africa outbreak a few years ago, although the vaccine was used long after the epidemic had peaked. More than 4,000 doses have arrived in Congo this week, with more on the way, and vaccinations are expected to start next week. One challenge will be keeping the vaccine cold in a region with poor infrastructure and patchy electricity.

Just one Ebola death in the current outbreak has been confirmed so far. Congo’s health ministry late Thursday said the total number of cases is 45, including 10 suspected and 21 probable ones.

The health ministry said two new deaths have been tied to the cases, including one in a suburb of Mbandaka. The other was in Bikoro, the rural area where the outbreak was announced last week. It is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) from Mbandaka.

“This is a major, major game-changer in the outbreak,” Dr. Peter Salama, WHO’s emergency response chief, warned Thursday after the first urban case was announced. “Urban Ebola can result in an exponential increase in cases in a way that rural Ebola struggles to do.”

Until now, the outbreak had been confined to remote rural areas, where Ebola, which is spread via contact with bodily fluids of those infected, travels more slowly.

Health teams

Doctors Without Borders said 514 people believed to have been in contact with infected people were being monitored. WHO said it was deploying about 30 more experts to Mbandaka.

Amid fears of the outbreak spreading to neighboring countries, the U.N. migration agency said Friday it would support the deployment of Congolese health teams to 16 entry points along the nearby border with the Republic of Congo for infection control and prevention.

The U.N. children’s agency said it was mobilizing hundreds of community workers to raise awareness on protection against the disease.

This is the ninth Ebola outbreak in Congo since 1976, when the disease was first identified. The virus is initially transmitted to people from wild animals, including bats and monkeys.

There is no specific treatment for Ebola. Symptoms include fever, vomiting, diarrhea, muscle pain and at times internal and external bleeding. The virus can be fatal in up to 90 percent of cases, depending on the strain.
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From: MeNeedIt

Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and Apple founder Steve Jobs are some of America’s best known inventors. But there are other, less recognizable individuals whose innovative products have greatly impacted our world. More than a dozen of them were recently honored for their unique contributions in a special ceremony at the National Inventors Hall of Fame Museum in Alexandria, Virginia. VOA’s Julie Taboh has more.
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From: MeNeedIt

For almost 20 years, cyclists have gathered in New York’s Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine for what might seem like an unusual ceremony the blessing of the bikes. Held the day before the city’s Five Boro Bike Tour, the ceremony is meant to bring luck and safety to those who travel around the Big Apple on a bike. Evgeny Maslov has the story, narrated by Anna Rice.
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From: MeNeedIt

After a career that included helping Alphabet’s Google build out data centers and speeding packages for Amazon.com to customers, Jim Miller is doing what many Silicon Valley executives do after stints at big companies: finding more time to ride his bike.

But this bike is a little different. Arevo, a startup with backing from the venture capital arm of the Central Intelligence Agency and where Miller recently took the helm, has produced what it says is the world’s first carbon fiber bicycle with 3-D-printed frame.

Arevo is using the bike to demonstrate its design software and printing technology, which it hopes to use to produce parts for bicycles, aircraft, space vehicles and other applications where designers prize the strength and lightness of so-called “composite” carbon fiber parts but are put off by the high-cost and labor-intensive process of making them.

Arevo on Thursday raised $12.5 million in venture funding from a unit of Japan’s Asahi Glass, Sumitomo’s Sumitomo Corp. of the Americas and Leslie Ventures. Previously, the company raised $7 million from Khosla Ventures, which also took part in Thursday’s funding, and an undisclosed sum from In-Q-Tel, the venture capital fund backed by the CIA.

Traditional carbon fiber bikes are expensive because workers lay individual layers of carbon fiber impregnated with resin around a mold of the frame by hand. The frame then gets baked in an oven to melt the resin and bind the carbon fiber sheets together.

Arevo’s technology uses a “deposition head” mounted on a robotic arm to print out the three-dimensional shape of the bicycle frame. The head lays down strands of carbon fiber and melts a thermoplastic material to bind the strands, all in one step.

The process involves almost no human labor, allowing Arevo to build bicycle frames for $300 in costs, even in pricey Silicon Valley.

“We’re right in line with what it costs to build a bicycle frame in Asia,” Miller said. “Because the labor costs are so much lower, we can re-shore the manufacturing of composites.”

While Miller said Arevo is in talks with several bike manufacturers, the company eventually hopes to supply aerospace parts. Arevo’s printing head could run along rails to print larger parts and would avoid the need to build huge ovens to bake them in.

“We can print as big as you want – the fuselage of an aircraft, the wing of an aircraft,” Miller said.
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From: MeNeedIt

Moldova, a small, landlocked country in eastern Europe, imports three-quarters of its energy and has seen its energy costs rise by more than half in the past five years.

But that could soon change, according to the United Nations Development Program (UNDP), which this year will launch an innovative effort to power a Moldovan university with cryptocurrency-funded solar energy.

The initiative with Sun Exchange, a South African solar power marketplace, will allow people to buy solar cells using SolarCoin, a cryptocurrency launched by blockchain start-up ElectriCChain, and then lease them to the Technical University of Moldova, one of the country’s largest universities.

Crowd-fund project

The idea is to find new sources of finance to “help buildings go green overnight,” in this instance with rooftop solar panels, said Dumitru Vasilescu, a program manager with UNDP in Moldova, one of Europe’s poorest countries.

“One of the biggest obstacles to countries investing in renewable energy is a lack of finance, as you often have to wait 10 to 15 years before you get a return on your investment,” he told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

But the university will get a full 1 megawatt of energy installed in the summer, he said, as a result of the crowd-funding effort.

Owners of the solar cells, in turn, will receive SolarCoins as soon as the university produces energy, earning interest of about 4 percent on their investment, Vasilescu added.

Moldova currently has more than 10,000 square meters of unused rooftop space on public buildings that could be potentially used for such efforts, he said.

Key technology

Blockchain, which first emerged as the system underpinning the virtual currency bitcoin, is a digital shared record of transactions maintained by a network of computers on the internet, without the need of a centralized authority.

It has become a key technology in both the public and private sectors, given its ability to record and keep track of assets or transactions without the need for middlemen.

Research firm IDC estimates global investment in blockchain will more than double in 2018 to $2.1 billion from $945 million last year, most of it for banking. IDC expects “strong, double-digit growth” in the energy space between 2016 and 2021.

Kevin Treco, an associate director at the Carbon Trust, an environmental consultancy, said blockchain-based technologies could significantly change energy use in countries striving to decentralize power and boost renewable sources.

Renewable energy fast

In Moldova, for example, cryptocurrency-funded renewable energy could reduce the country’s dependence on energy imports such as oil and gas from Russia, Vasilescu said.

Darius Nassiry, a senior research associate at the Overseas Development Institute, a British think tank, predicted that most of the growth in cryptocurrency-funded energy would occur in the developing world.

“They have faster-growing energy needs — and a more accommodating legal and regulatory environment towards such innovations,” he said by email.

But a lack of understanding on how blockchain applications such as cryptocurrencies work could slow their growth in the energy sector, he added.

For Abraham Cambridge, the founder and CEO of Sun Exchange, the solar currency exchange system “has all the right incentives in place.”

“It reduces the costs of going solar dramatically for the end user and makes it easy for anyone in the world to own a solar cell anywhere in the world and, from it, make a steady source of sunlight-powered income,” he said in a statement.

Blockchain is also being used in the energy sector to facilitate carbon trading, with U.S. computing giant IBM announcing this week that it will partner with Veridium Labs, an environmental tech startup, to turn carbon credits into digital tokens.

If the Moldovan solar currency pilot is successful, UNDP plans to replicate it in neighboring countries, said Vasilescu, adding that it could “revolutionize the renewable energy market for Eastern Europe and Central Asia.”
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From: MeNeedIt

Interstellar space is mostly a vacuum, so there is no medium that can carry sound. In other words, space is totally silent. But astronomers have often associated the movement of heavenly bodies with music. With the help of modern technology, one astronomer has turned the signals from the Milky Way into a funky tune.

“It was an idea that I had for a long time,” said University of Massachusetts Astronomy Research Professor Mark Heyer, “and only recently has some of the technology come about that somebody like me could access that.”

The visible light coming from distant worlds carries a lot of information that can be analyzed with a spectroscope. Heyer developed a computer program, or algorithm, to convert the movement of large clouds of atoms and molecules of different elements and compounds, into music.

“I take the spectrum and I, essentially, mathematically resample that to a musical scale and that gives that spectrum, which is inherently atonal, it gives it the tonality. And that is what really is the key stuff to make it sound nice,” he said.

Heyer randomly assigned different musical instruments to different gases, forming a combination consisting of a saxophone, a piano, an upright bass and some percussion woodblocks. For instance, a certain atomic gas, which fills much of the space between the stars, is represented by the upright bass.

“It gives you that driving pulse, I think, that drives the music forward. And the woodblocks sort of do that as well,” he said.

After some experimenting, Heyer decided to use the pentatonic minor blues scale.

“I was experimenting with the algorithm and I had major scales and simple minor scales, but when I first played the available segment of just one of the instruments, it sounded like that could be a very nice blues or jazzy sound to it,” he said. “So, I recrafted the algorithm so it could transform the data into a musical blues scale.”

Heyer says he was surprised when he realized for the first time that the rotation of our galaxy contains a rhythm — and that funky blues seemed to fit perfectly.
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From: MeNeedIt

U.S. birth rates declined last year for women in their teens, 20s and — surprisingly — their 30s, leading to the fewest babies in 30 years, according to a government report released Thursday.

Experts said several factors may be combining to drive the declines, including shifting attitudes about motherhood and changing immigration patterns. 

The provisional report, based on a review of more than 99 percent of the birth certificates filed nationwide, counted 3.853 million births last year. That’s the lowest tally since 1987.

Births have been declining since 2014, but 2017 saw the greatest year-to-year drop, about 92,000 less than the previous year.

That was surprising, because baby booms often parallel economic booms, and last year was a period of low unemployment and a growing economy. 

What’s causing this?

But other factors are likely at play, experts said.

One may be shifting attitudes about motherhood among millennials, who are in their prime child-bearing years right now. They may be more inclined to put off child-bearing or have fewer children, researchers said.

Another may be changes in the immigrant population, who generate nearly a quarter of the babies born in the U.S. each year. For example, Asians are making up a larger proportion of immigrants, and they have typically had fewer children than other immigrant groups.

Also, use of IUDs and other long-acting forms of contraception has been increasing.

Other findings

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report also found: 

The rate of births to women ages 15 to 44, known as the general fertility rate, sank to a record low of about 60 per 1,000.  

 
Women in their early 40s were the only group with higher birth rates in 2017, up 2 percent from the year. The rate has been rising since the early 1980s. 

 
The cesarean section rate rose by a tiny amount after having decreased four years. Studies have shown C-sections are more common in first-time births involving older moms. 

 
Rates of preterm and low birth weight babies rose for the third straight year, possibly for the same reason. 

 
Birth rates for teens continued to nosedive, as they have since the early 1990s. In 2017, they dropped 7 percent from the year before. 

 
Rates for women in their 20s continued to fall and hit record lows. They fell 4 percent. 

 
Perhaps most surprising, birth rates for women in their 30s fell slightly, dipping 2 percent for women ages 30 to 34 and 1 percent for women 35 to 39.

 
Birth rates for women in their 30s had been rising steadily to the highest levels in at least half a century, and women in their early 30s recently became the age group that has the most babies. That decline caused some experts’ eyebrows to shoot up, but they also noted the dip was very small. 

“It’s difficult to say yet whether it marks a fundamental change or it’s just a blip,” said Hans-Peter Kohler, a University of Pennsylvania demographer who studies birth trends.

Generation can’t replace itself 

Another notable finding: The current generation is getting further away from having enough children to replace itself.

The U.S. once was among a handful of developed countries with a fertility rate that ensured each generation had enough children to replace it.

The rate in the U.S. now stands less than the standard benchmark for replacement. It’s still above countries such as Spain, Greece, Japan and Italy, but the gap appears to be closing. 

A decade ago, the estimated rate was 2.1 kids per U.S. woman. In 2017, it fell below 1.8, hitting its lowest level since 1978. 

“That’s a pretty remarkable decline,” said Dr. John Santelli, a Columbia University professor of population and family health and pediatrics.
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From: MeNeedIt