The World Health Organization is set to recognize gaming disorder as a serious mental health issue.

In its 11th International Classification of Disease, a diagnostic manual to be published next year, the U.N. health agency defines gaming disorder as a “persistent or recurrent” disorder that can cause “significant impairment” to the gamer’s life, including to family, education, work and friends.

The agency says the disorder is characterized by giving increasing priority to gaming, on and offline, over other aspects of everyday life.

Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, told CNN that the entry on the disorder “includes only a clinical description and not prevention and treatment options.”

According to a report released in 2016 by the gaming industry, 63 percent of U.S. households include a gamer who, on average, has been playing video games for 13 years.

The increasing popularity of video gaming became evident in the past three years when 50 U.S. colleges established varsity gaming teams, with scholarships, coaches and game analysts.

However, some countries, such as China and South Korea already consider the internet and gaming to be addictions and have created boot-camplike treatment facilities.
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From: MeNeedIt

After decades of hope and high promise, this was the year scientists really showed they could doctor DNA to successfully treat diseases. Gene therapies to treat cancer and even pull off the biblical-sounding feat of helping the blind to see were approved by U.S. regulators, establishing gene manipulation as a new mode of medicine.

Almost 20 years ago, a teen’s death in a gene experiment put a chill on what had been a field full of outsized expectations. Now, a series of jaw-dropping successes have renewed hopes that some one-time fixes of DNA, the chemical code that governs life, might turn out to be cures.

“I am totally willing to use the ‘C’ word,” said the National Institutes of Health’s director, Dr. Francis Collins.

Gene therapy aims to treat the root cause of a problem by deleting, adding or altering DNA, rather than just treating symptoms that result from the genetic flaw.

The advent of gene editing — a more precise and long-lasting way to do gene therapy — may expand the number and types of diseases that can be treated. In November, California scientists tried editing a gene inside someone’s body for the first time, using a tool called zinc finger nucleases for a man with a metabolic disease. It’s like a cut-and-paste operation to place a new gene in a specific spot. Tests of another editing tool called CRISPR, to genetically alter human cells in the lab, may start next year.

“There are a few times in our lives when science astonishes us. This is one of those times,” Dr. Matthew Porteus, a Stanford University gene editing expert, told a Senate panel discussing this technology last month.

It’s a common path for trail-blazing science — success initially seems within reach, setbacks send researchers back to the lab, new understandings emerge over years, and studies ultimately reveal what is safe and effective.

Here is a look at what’s been achieved and what lies ahead.

A string of firsts

The year started with no gene therapies sold in the U.S. and only a couple elsewhere. Then the Food and Drug Administration approved the first CAR-T cell therapies, which alter a patient’s own blood cells to turn them into specialized cancer killers. They’re only for certain types of leukemia and lymphoma now, but more are in the works for other blood cancers.

Last week, the FDA approved Luxturna, the first gene therapy for an inherited disease, a form of blindness. People with it can’t make a protein needed by the retina, tissue at the back of the eye that converts light into signals to the brain, enabling sight. The therapy injects a modified virus containing a corrective gene into the retina so the cells can make the protein.

Children who received the treatment told what it was like to gain vision.

“Oh yikes, colors. Colors are super fun,” said 13-year-old Caroline Carper of Little Rock, Arkansas. “And the sunshine is blinding.”

Gene therapies also showed some promise against a variety of diseases including hemophilia, a blood clotting problem; “bubble boy” disease, where a flawed immune system leaves patients vulnerable to fatal infections; and sickle cell disease, a serious and painful blood disorder common among black people.

It’s not all good news, though. The therapies don’t work for everyone. They’re shockingly expensive. And no one knows how long some results will last, though scientists say the aim is a one-time repair that gets at the root cause.

 “The whole promise … is to cure diseases. It’s based on the rationale of fixing the problem,” not just improving treatment, said Dr. Carl June, a University of Pennsylvania scientist who pioneered CAR-T therapy.   

A new frontier: Gene editing

In mid-November, Brian Madeux, a 44-year-old Phoenix man with a metabolic disease called Hunter syndrome, had just become the first person to try an experimental gene editing treatment.

“I believe in science,” he texted The Associated Press after doctors sent viruses containing a corrective gene and an editing tool through an IV into his body. The hope is that the gene and the editing tool would enter some of his liver cells and insert the instructions needed to start making an enzyme he lacks.

It’s not known yet if it worked. Sangamo Therapeutics is testing its therapy in several studies, and independent monitors will help decide when results are released.

“It’s a pretty exciting milestone,” Collins said, because it shows a way to treat more diseases than ones that can be addressed now by altering blood cells in the lab or injecting genes into the eye.

“You can imagine having a scalable approach to thousands of genetic diseases,” he said.

What’s next

Top of Collins’ list: muscular dystrophy and sickle cell.

There’s been so much progress that the NIH has modified an oversight panel that just a few years ago reviewed every gene therapy experiment in the U.S. Most are considered safe enough to go ahead without the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee’s review. The panel hasn’t even met for a year.

When the panel was formed decades ago, “there was a lot of concern that a graduate student could take some of this home and create a monster in his basement,” said one panel member, Boston scientist Dr. Howard Kaufman. 

Those fears have eased, he said.

“There’s no monsters that have materialized from this.”
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From: MeNeedIt

The discovery in China of an underground army of nearly 8,000 life-size terracotta soldiers is considered one of the greatest archaeological finds of the 20th century. 

More than four decades after they were first seen in modern times, by farmers in Shaanxi province, the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts has 10 of the majestic figures on display in an exhibit that explores the history of ancient China and the reign of its first emperor, Ying Zheng. 

Although various assortments of the terracotta soldiers have been displayed previously in museums in New York, Philadelphia, Seattle and elsewhere, the exhibit in Richmond also includes 40 objects never seen in the U.S., including ancient jade ornaments, precious jewelry and ceramics. 

“Terracotta Army: Legacy of the First Emperor of China” is only being shown in Richmond and at the Cincinnati Art Museum, where it goes after its run in Virginia ends March 11. 

The exhibit explores the life of Ying Zheng – who declared himself Qin Shihuang, the first emperor – and how he influenced China during his reign from 221 to 210 BC. Historians believe he ordered the construction of the terracotta army, which was buried in pits and discovered 2,000 years later, about a mile east of the emperor’s burial site. 

“We want visitors to learn who is the first emperor and what people’s lives looked then, what technology developed during that time and the architecture of that time,” said Li Jian, the co-curator. 

“No matter rich or poor, royal emperors or commoners, people had a quest for immortality,” she said. “These excavated objects reflect the people’s lives at the time.” 

The first two rooms of the exhibit showcase horse and chariot fittings, arms and armor, works of art in gold and silver, and other cultural relics. 

A bucket-shaped mask with an open mouth and cut-out eyes is the oldest object, dating to 3500 BC, when an exorcist would have worn it while performing rituals to ward off evil spirits and misfortune. A necklace of red agate beads and white jade pendants was a type of jewelry favored by Qin nobility. A bronze household lamp would have contained vegetable oil or animal fat, capable of burning for long periods of time in an era before candles. 

Visitors encounter an imposing sight as they enter the third room: The terracotta soldiers, 6 feet tall and weighing between 250 and 400 pounds each, are positioned in individual open cases, in various poses of war. 

There’s the armored general, with detailed carving depicting a protective leather apron overlaid with plated armor. An infantryman stands at attention with both arms at his side. A standing archer and a kneeling archer depict the Qin military strategy, requiring one group of archers to stand and provide cover fire while another group knelt and loaded bolts into their crossbows. 

Connie James, a retired kindergarten teacher from Richmond, appreciated the details as she spent a recent weekday afternoon exploring the exhibit with her husband. 

“I was expecting them to look like a terracotta flower pot, but they’re very intricate,” she said. “For those of us who couldn’t get to China, this is something very special.” 

Her husband, David James, liked seeing the ancient weapons used by the warriors. 

“I wouldn’t have imagined they would have been used in a crossbow at that time, but they were,” he said. 

Museum director Alex Nyerges said the exhibit attracted nearly 40,000 visitors during its first two weeks in Richmond, putting it on a path to become one of the museum’s most popular. 
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From: MeNeedIt

United Parcel Service Inc is on track to return a record number of packages this holiday shipping season, a sign that e-commerce purchases surged to new heights over the past month.

The world’s largest package delivery company and rival FedEx Corp get paid by retailers like Amazon.com Inc and Wal-Mart Stores Inc for handling e-commerce deliveries.

Both have benefited from booming delivery volumes over the past few years, but also have had to invest billions of dollars to upgrade and expand their networks to cope.

An 8 percent increase in returns

UPS said on Wednesday it handled more than 1 million returns to retailers daily in December, a pace expected to last into early January. It said returns would likely peak at 1.4 million on Jan. 3, which would be a fifth consecutive annual record, up 8 percent from this year.

The returns follow what could be the strongest holiday shopping season on record for both brick-and-mortar and online retailers, once stores publish sales data. Mastercard Inc said on Tuesday U.S. shoppers spent over $800 billion during the season, more than ever before.​

FedEx said on Wednesday it experienced another record-breaking peak shipping season, but declined to provide specifics. The company’s Chief Marketing Officer Rajesh Subramaniam told analysts last week about 15 percent of all goods purchased online are returned, with apparel running at about 30 percent.

UPS said record-breaking e-commerce sales during Black Friday and Cyber Monday in late November jolted the returns season, with a larger flood of packages going back to retailers even as many gifts sat under Christmas trees.

Rates raised

UPS has worked for years to increase its ability to forecast customer shipping demands to handle major package volume spikes ahead of the holidays. It has also raised shipping rates and added 2018 peak-season surcharges.

The returns delivered in 2017 are part of the 750 million packages UPS said it expects to deliver globally during the peak shipping season from the U.S. Thanksgiving holiday through New Year’s Eve. That is an increase of nearly 40 million over the previous year.

UPS and FedEx shares were both up slightly on Wednesday.
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From: MeNeedIt

While the attention of much of the world was occupied with earthly happenings, space scientists had some notable achievements during the past year, ranging from new projects to the spectacular end of at least one program. VOA’s George Putic reviews the highlights of the year in space.
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From: MeNeedIt

Rehabilitation centers give critically wounded soldiers a second chance at life. Paraplegics and quadriplegics spend their days together in an environment built to aid them in self-reliance. Arash Arabasadi reports on one such facility.
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From: MeNeedIt

When you think about fine wine, what countries come to mind? France? Italy? What about China? Well, by 2020, China could become the world’s second-largest wine consumer, behind the United States. That’s according to a report by Vinexpo, a leading wine exhibition. VOA’s Chu Wu visited California’s wine country to hear what winemakers—and drinkers—had to say.
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From: MeNeedIt

Russian ballet and its dancers are famous the world over and inspire many Russians to pursue a career in the classical dance.  But to break into ballet, dancers have to struggle through a brutal training regime and gender stereotypes.  VOA Moscow videographer Ricardo Marquina Montanana talked to an aspiring ballerina and a successful ballet dancer whose father wanted him to follow in his footsteps and be a boxer.
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From: MeNeedIt

The global fight over land and resources is getting increasingly bloody and the race for control of valuable assets is expanding from forests and indigenous territories to the seas, space and databanks.

Here are five hotspots for property rights in 2018:

1. Rising violence: From Peru to the Philippines, land rights defenders are under increasing threat of harassment and attack from governments and corporations.

At least 208 people have been killed so far this year defending their homes, lands and forests from mining, dams and agricultural projects, advocacy group Frontline Defenders says.

The tally has exceeded that of 2016, which was already the deadliest year on record, and “it is likely that we will see numbers continue to rise”, a spokeswoman told the Thomson Reuters Foundation.

2. Demand for affordable housing: Governments are under increasing pressure to recognize the right to housing, as Smart Cities projects and rapid gentrification push more people on to the streets, from Mumbai to Rio de Janeiro.

India has committed to providing Housing for All by 2022, while Canada’s recognition of housing as a fundamental right could help eliminate homelessness in the country.

“We need our governments to respond to this crisis and recognize that homelessness is a matter of life and death and dignity,” said Leilani Farha, the United Nations special rapporteur on the right to housing.

3. Takeover of public lands: From the shrinking of wilderness national monuments in Utah to the felling of rainforests for palm plantations in Indonesia, public lands risk being rescinded or resized by governments in favor of business interests.

Governments are also likely to be hit by more lawsuits from indigenous communities fighting to protect their lands, as well as the environment.

4. Fight over space and sea: A race to explore and extract resources from the moon, asteroids and other celestial bodies is underway, with China, Luxembourg, the United States and others vying for materials ranging from ice to precious metals.

The latest space race targets a multi-trillion dollar industry.

Expect more debate over the 50-year-old U.N. Outer Space Treaty, which declares “the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind.”

On Earth, the fight over the seas is intensifying, particularly in the Arctic. Melting ice caps have triggered a fierce contest between energy companies in the United States, Russia, Canada, and Norway over drilling rights.

5. Debate over data: As more countries move towards digital citizen IDs, there are growing concerns about privacy and safety of the data, the ethics of biometrics, and the misuse of data for profiling or increased surveillance.

Campaigners are pushing for “informational privacy” to be part of the right to privacy, and for governments to treat the right to data as an inalienable right, like the right to dignity.
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From: MeNeedIt

There’s a good chance that 2017 will go down in the history of medicine as a year when genetic engineering finally started moving from research labs to clinics. Several successful stories coming from different parts of the world promise that hereditary diseases and cancers may soon be conquered. VOA’s George Putic looks back at a few of these cases.
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From: MeNeedIt

At the age of 5, Maame Biney immigrated to the U.S. from Ghana to live with her father. She was an energetic child, and her father wanted to channel that energy into a sport. One day, they drove by a local ice rink in Reston, Virginia, where a sign in front read “Learn to Skate.”

Biney’s father asked if she wanted to give it a try.

“I brought her here, in this particular rink, and she just tried it,” her father, Kweku Biney, said. “And the first day she got on the ice I was scared, you know. I thought she was going to break her head open, so I said, ‘What did I get myself into? This is risky.’”

But Biney was a natural. “She took that thing in stride, and I was just surprised, you know, the way she was skating,” he said. “And she just looked like somebody who’s been doing it for probably a few months prior to that day.

Biney was hooked. Every morning she would bounce out of bed to wake up her father for the early morning practices. She tried figure skating first, but a coach noticed how fast she was and encouraged her to take up speedskating. She competed in local events before moving up to the U.S. Junior Championships, where she won a bronze medal.

This month, she qualified for the U.S. Olympic Team after finishing first in the women’s 500-meter trial in Kearns, Utah. At age 17, she is the youngest speedskater on the U.S. team and the first African American woman to represent the country as a speedskater.

“First time I met Maame, she was 9,” said Sooan Yoo, Biney’s coach in Reston. “Now she’s almost my height as she’s gaining age, and she’s representing the USA team.”

Despite her accomplishments, the high schooler doesn’t take herself too seriously.

“I just hope that everyone sees how fun the sport is when you can just go fast and just be awesome. Not that I am awesome or anything, but just — you feel good about yourself, so yeah. Be proud of yourself. That’s it,” she said.

Biney’s achievements have earned her fans around the world, particularly in West Africa, where skating isn’t common. She hopes girls watch her and become inspired to pursue their own dreams.

“Since speedskating or any ice sport isn’t really an option back in Africa, I would just tell all the little kids back there just to find something that you love, and be happy,” she said. “And just have fun with it. Because why are you going to do something if you don’t have fun?”

Biney hopes to do more than just have fun when she competes at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, in February. Her event, the 500 meter, is the shortest and requires intense sprinting ability. She said her strategy is simple: “Go fast and don’t fall.”

Her teammates say her easygoing attitude belies her hard work and competitive spirit. Her team, Dominion Speedskating, practices six to seven days a week.

“She is really kind and everything. She’s really caring,” said 15-year-old Dominion teammate Joonsuh Oh. “Everyone loves her when you first see her. She seems kind of intimidating because you just never know her. But if you actually meet her, she’s really friendly, and when she skates, she’s amazing.”

Despite intense pressure, Biney’s father hopes she can just soak up the moment and have fun. He said seeing her walk with Team USA during the opening ceremony will be enough of a reward. Anything more will be a bonus, he said.

“Once you stay focused, everything will fall in place” he said. “That’s it. That’s all I got for her. She doesn’t need to be afraid of anything, and I don’t think she is.”
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From: MeNeedIt

When schoolchildren in Washington, D.C. are asked to say the first thing that comes to mind about Africa, they use words like hot, desert, sand, poverty, hunger, war and Ebola.

These are all accurate things to say about that part or the world — but they reflect an “incomplete” picture, says writer Austin Merrill, who together with photojournalist Peter DiCampo has set out to document African reality beyond common stereotypes.

They are the founders of Every Day Africa, an Instagram community of photographers who strive to capture ordinary moments of life, such as children picking flowers in a field, or girlfriends chatting at a coffee shop. Their Instagram following has topped 370,000.

In addition to the Instagram feed, the book “Every Day Africa, 30 Photographers Re-Picturing the Continent,” recently hit bookstores in Europe, the United States and certain countries on the African continent. The book is filled with images documenting life in Africa that aim to shatter misconceptions often found in Western media.

Readers see a teenager rollerblading in the streets of Dakar, a DJ playing music in Lagos, a couple looking at the Atlantic Ocean in Cape Town. The book displays the full diversity and visual richness of African life.

Both DiCampo and Merrill invited a diverse “community of photographers” from all over the continent to contribute to the Instagram project and the book. Some are professionals, while others are skilled amateurs.

Ethiopian-American writer Maaza Mengiste prologues the book in an essay focusing on the power of the ordinary. “We sometimes forget that no matter what is happening in our lives, ordinary moments find a way to move forward,” Mengiste writes.

Normality

Peter DiCampo and Austin Merrill, both Americans, met while serving with the Peace Corps in Ivory Coast. In 2012, they received a grant from the Pulitzer Center on Crisis Reporting in Washington to cover the aftermath of Ivory Coast’s civil war.

While they were interviewing refugees and soldiers, Merrill remembers that around them “the vast majority of life was pretty normal, but that wasn’t coming through in the story that we were trying to put together.”

“We were seeing all these other moments, that were much sort of truer to our daily life experience in that part of the world,” says DiCampo.

So, they took their cellphones and started to photograph what was around them. They felt, says Merrill, that the normal, everyday scenes of life “might be the most important thing we had to tell about that place, about that moment, instead of the crisis story.”

Media organizations tend to focus on breaking news, often triggered by an evolving crisis. Africa has many of those; but, as Di Campo puts it, “It’s quite difficult to have a global understanding when all you see of other parts of the world are really extreme stories.”

This is the gap that the “Everyday Africa” book is trying to fill; to look at the continent from the inside and from different perspectives.

DiCampo and Merrill, with the support of the Pulitzer Center, have also created media workshops that train elementary school students in the United States on how to document their lives and recognize stereotypes.

“We use the story of how we we created Every Day Africa,” said DiCampo, “to engage the students in a discussion of how media representation affects them, their lives and their communities and we use our photography to teach basic photography lessons, so that by the end of the workshop, they have an everyday project for their own school or community.”

This social media model has hit a nerve. “The Every Africa platform on Instagram may very well be the biggest visual library of the continent,” writes Ghanaian photographer Nana Kofi Acquah.

“To task African photographers with the burden of changing how the continent is perceived, might be overwhelming,” writes Acquah; but, he adds, “a picture of the real Africa” is slowly emerging.
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From: MeNeedIt