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Friday 22 September 2023

How warmer climates spread disease; Fighting dengue with more mosquitoes

 

A mosquito feeds at the Salt Lake City Mosquito Abatement District in Salt Lake City, United States.-AP


How warmer climates spread disease


LIVING on the edge of wetlands on the Italian island of Sardinia, Anna Rita Cocco is mourning the loss of her elderly father who died in a coma within weeks of a fatal mosquito bite.

“My father was full of life and used to walk for miles each day. I was expecting him to die at some point, but not suffering like that, taken from me by a mosquito,” she said her late father, Bernardino, who died aged 80.

Italy was only declared malaria-free by the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 1970, but now, other lesser-known mosquito- or tick-borne diseases are on the rise.

A complex mix of global warming, changes in land use and more movement of people and goods are contributing to the spread of illnesses – such as dengue or Lyme disease – to new regions in a worsening trend, the UN panel of scientists says.

Migratory birds infected by mosquitoes and flying over 3,200km from Senegal in West Africa have been identified as carriers of the West Nile virus that killed Cocco’s father in Sardinia, where summers are becoming hotter.

The Mediterranean island, and northern areas of Italy where the virus is also spreading, are both suffering more extreme events of floods and droughts.

Abundant water helps mosquitoes to breed, while more drought and fewer trees constrict the migratory birds’ ecosystems, forcing them into closer contact with each other, enabling some diseases to spread.


A municipal worker fumigates a housing colony as a preventive measure against mosquito-borne diseases in Hyderabad, India. —AFP

“People don’t seem to be aware of the threat,” said Cocco.

Epidemiologists identify habitat change as one of the main factors behind the intercontinental leap of the West Nile virus.

First identified in 1937 in the West Nile region of Uganda, the disease has spread within Africa and to other continents. Almost 3,000 people have died in the United States alone since a first outbreak in New York in 1999.

In the red clay houses of Maka Diama village in northwest Senegal, women make soap from plants that grow in a nearby river, which they sell to tourists and local hotels, and cook rice grown in surrounding paddy fields.

Recent years have seen huge changes in this wetland region teeming with crocodiles and migratory birds, most notably a leap in rice production, driven by government efforts to reduce Senegal’s reliance on imported rice.

Barrages built near the coast to retain and safeguard freshwater supplies from salty sea water have slowed river flows, and fertilisers used for rice paddies have encouraged the growth of river plants.

This push for greater food self-sufficiency has tripled rice production to 1.3 million tonnes over a decade. But changes in land use have upset the delicate wetland habitats, helping mosquitoes which lay eggs in stagnant water.

“There are so many mosquitoes here these days,” said Arame Diop, one of the village soap-makers. “Far more than there used to be.” Diop’s family already sleeps under mosquito nets to avoid malaria, which is endemic in Senegal.

Assane Gueye Fall, an entomologist at the National Livestock and Veterinary Research Laboratory in the capital, Dakar, said Senegal’s policies sought to improve food and water security.

“But to solve a problem, they created another,” he said of what he called the “explosion of mosquitoes” and of disease.

The long-distance carriers of West Nile are birds that receive the virus from bites by infected mosquitoes and then fly on their migratory routes, to be bitten once more by mosquitoes that then spread illness to people and other animals, mainly horses. Flamingos, herons, storks and birds of prey are among many migratory species found in the wetlands of the Djoudj National Bird Sanctuary, a Unesco World Heritage Site near Maka Diama.

Navigating his boat slowly, captain Ibrahima Ndao, the park conservationist, explained how abrupt changes in land use are impacting the wetlands. Pelicans are swooping all around, catching fish for their young.

“There has been a significant expansion of paddy fields around the reservoir. But we have to make sure that the birds’ environment is preserved,” he said.

“If the space of their environment is reduced, it’s easier for illnesses to spread,” said Ndao, pointing out increased growth of plants along the banks, including those used by the women of Maka Diama to make soap.

Ndao stressed the importance of a “one-health approach” that looks at human and animal health as one issue.

As in Europe, Senegal is also losing natural habitats through desertification exacerbated by climate change, forcing animals into closer contact with human communities. Vector-borne diseases – such as malaria, dengue, Zika, yellow fever and West Nile – are seen by WHO as an increased threat in Africa, potentially affecting over 800 million people, some 70% of the population.

West Nile virus has gained a foothold in an increasing number of countries, from Australia to Venezuela. Because it is easy to confuse West Nile with a generic flu or other mosquito-borne illnesses, patients rarely get tested. As a result, the impact of the virus in Africa is virtually unknown.

West Nile is often asymptomatic or mild, but one out of 150 people who contract the virus can develop severe neurological complication including meningitis, paralysis and even death.

In 2022, 12 European nations reported 1,335 locally acquired cases of West Nile virus – with a few others brought in by international travellers – and 104 deaths. It was the highest number of cases since a peak of more than 1,500 in 2018.

Italy suffered most in the European Union in 2022 with 51 deaths, ahead of 33 in Greece and five in Romania, according to the European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control. A public health campaign is alerting people, and authorities are stepping up tests of birds and mosquitoes.

The main vector is the Culex mosquito, but what makes West Nile potentially endemic is that it can be transmitted by more than 50 species of mosquito and by ticks, said entomologist Fall in Dakar. By contrast, dengue, for example, relies on one or two species. — Reuters

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Fighting dengue with more mosquitoes


Boquín, a project leader working with Doctors Without Borders, holding a glass jar filled with mosquitoes before their release in neighbourhoods rife with dengue, in a facility in Tegucigalpa. Doctors Without Borders is partnering with the World Mosquito Programme to release close to nine million Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes in Tegucigalpa over the next six months. —AP


FOR decades, preventing dengue fever in Honduras has meant teaching people to fear mosquitoes and avoid their bites. Now, Hondurans are being educated about a potentially more effective way to control the disease – and it goes against everything they’ve learned.

Which explains why a dozen people cheered last month as Tegucigalpa resident Hector Enriquez held a glass jar filled with mosquitoes above his head, and then freed the buzzing insects into the air.

Enriquez, a 52-year-old mason, had volunteered to help publicise a plan to suppress dengue by releasing millions of special mosquitoes in the Honduran capital, Tegucigalpa.

The mosquitoes Enriquez unleashed in his El Manchen neighbourhood – an area rife with dengue – were bred by scientists to carry bacteria called Wolbachia that interrupt transmission of the disease. When these mosquitoes reproduce, they pass the bacteria to their offspring, reducing future outbreaks.

This emerging strategy for battling dengue was pioneered over the last decade by the non-profit World Mosquito Programme, and it is being tested in more than a dozen countries. With more than half the world’s population at risk of contracting dengue, the World Health Organisation is paying close attention to the mosquito releases in Honduras, and elsewhere, and it is poised to promote the strategy globally.

In Honduras, where 10,000 people are known to be sickened by dengue each year, Doctors Without Borders is partnering with the mosquito programme over the next six months to release close to nine million mosquitoes carrying the Wolbachia bacteria.

“There is a desperate need for new approaches,” said Scott O’Neill, founder of the mosquito programme.


A Doctors Without Borders’ worker releasing laboratory-bred mosquitoes infected with bacteria that interrupt the transmission of dengue, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, where 10,000 people are known to be ill from dengue each year. — AP

Scientists have made great strides in recent decades in reducing the threat of infectious diseases, including mosquito-borne viruses like malaria. But dengue is the exception: its rate of infection keeps going up.

Models estimate that around 400 million people across some 130 countries are infected each year with dengue. Mortality rates from dengue are low – an estimated 40,000 people die each year from it – but outbreaks can overwhelm health systems and force many people to miss work or school.

“When you come down with a case of dengue fever, it’s often akin to getting the worst case of influenza you can imagine,” said Conor McMeniman, a mosquito researcher at Johns Hopkins University. It’s commonly known as “breakbone fever” for a reason, McMeniman said.

Traditional methods of preventing mosquito-borne illnesses haven’t been nearly as effective against dengue.

The Aedes aegypti mosquitoes that most commonly spread dengue have been resistant to insecticides, which have fleeting results even in the best-case scenario. And because dengue virus comes in four different forms, it is harder to control through vaccines.

Aedes aegypti mosquitoes are also a challenging foe because they are most active during the day – meaning that’s when they bite – so bed nets aren’t much help against them. Because these mosquitoes thrive in warm and wet environments, and in dense cities, climate change and urbanisation are expected to make the fight against dengue even harder.

“We need better tools,” said Raman Velayudhan, a researcher from the WHO’s Global Neglected Tropical Diseases Programme. “Wolbachia is definitely a long-term, sustainable solution.”

Velayudhan and other experts from the WHO plan to publish a recommendation to promote further testing of the Wolbachia strategy in other parts of the world.

The Wolbachia strategy has been decades in the making.

The bacteria exist naturally in about 60% of insect species, just not in the Aedes aegypti mosquito.

“We worked for years on this,” said O’Neill, 61, who with help from his students in Australia eventually figured out how to transfer the bacteria from fruit flies into Aedes aegypti mosquito embryos by using microscopic glass needles.

Around 40 years ago, scientists aimed to use Wolbachia in a different way: to drive down mosquito populations. Because male mosquitoes carrying the bacteria only produce offspring with females that also have it, scientists would release infected male mosquitoes into the wild to breed with uninfected females, whose eggs would not hatch.

But along the way, O’Neill’s team made a surprising discovery: mosquitoes carrying Wolbachia didn’t spread dengue – or other related diseases, including yellow fever, Zika and chikungunya.

And since infected females pass Wolbachia to their offspring, they will eventually “replace” a local mosquito population with one that carries the virus-blocking bacteria.

The replacement strategy has required a major shift in thinking about mosquito control, said Oliver Brady, an epidemiologist at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

“Everything in the past has been about killing mosquitoes, or at the very least, preventing mosquitoes from biting humans,” Brady said.

Since O’Neill’s lab first tested the replacement strategy in Australia in 2011, the World Mosquito Programme has run trials affecting 11 million people across 14 countries, including Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Fiji and Vietnam.

The results are promising. In 2019, a large-scale field trial in Indonesia showed a 76% drop in reported dengue cases after Wolbachia-infected mosquitoes were released.

Still, questions remain about whether the replacement strategy will be effective – and cost effective – on a global scale, O’Neill said. The three-year Tegucigalpa trial will cost US$900,000 (RM4.2mil) , or roughly US$10 (RM46) per person that Doctors Without Borders expects it to protect.

Scientists aren’t yet sure how Wolbachia actually blocks viral transmission. And it isn’t clear whether the bacteria will work equally well against all strains of the virus, or if some strains might become resistant over time, said Bobby Reiner, a mosquito researcher at the University of Washington.

“It’s certainly not a one-and-done fix, forever guaranteed,” Reiner said.

Many of the world’s mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia were hatched in a warehouse in Medellín, Colombia, where the World Mosquito Programme runs a factory that breeds 30 million of them per week.

The factory imports dried mosquito eggs from different parts of the world to ensure the specially bred mosquitoes it eventually releases will have similar qualities to local populations, including resistance to insecticides, said Edgard Boquín, one of the Honduras project leaders working for Doctors Without Borders.

The dried eggs are placed in water with powdered food. Once they hatch, they are allowed to breed with the “mother colony” – a lineage that carries Wolbachia and is made up of more females than males.

A constant buzz fills the room where the insects mate in cube-shaped cages made of mosquito nets. Caretakers ensure they have the best diet: males get sugared water, while females “bite” into pouches of human blood kept at 37°C.

“We have the perfect conditions,” the factory’s coordinator, Marlene Salazar, said.

Once workers confirm that the new mosquitoes carry Wolbachia, their eggs are dried and filled into pill-like capsules to be sent off to release sites.

The Doctors Without Borders team in Honduras recently went door-to-door in a hilly neighbourhood of Tegucigalpa to enlist residents’ help in incubating mosquito eggs bred in the Medellin factory.

At half a dozen houses, they received permission to hang from tree branches glass jars containing water and a mosquito egg-filled capsule.

After about 10 days, the mosquitoes would hatch and fly off.

That same day, a dozen young workers from Doctors Without Borders fanned out across Northern Tegucigalpa on motorcycles carrying jars of the already hatched dengue-fighting mosquitoes and, at designated sites, released thousands of them into the breeze.

Because community engagement is key to the programme’s success, doctors and volunteers have spent the past six months educating neighbourhood leaders, including influential gang members, to get their permission to work in areas under their control.

Some of the most common questions from the community were about whether Wolbachia would harm people or the environment. Workers explained that any bites from the special mosquitoes or their offspring were harmless. — AP

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Thursday 21 September 2023

China's Ministry of State Security reveals US' infiltration of Huawei traced back to 2009

 

cyber attack Photo:VCG

#GTGraphic: China’s Ministry of State Security revealed that US’ infiltration of #Huawei headquarters' servers can be traced back to 2009. Here are some main means through which US intelligence agencies engage in cyberattacks and cyber espionage: -Establishing #cyberattack arsenals -Coercing tech companies to open backdoors -Distorting truth globaltimes.cn/page/202309/12
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The US' infiltration of Huawei headquarters' servers can be traced back to 2009, China's Ministry of State Security (MSS) said in an article released on Wednesday.  The Chinese ministry disclosed despicable methods of cyber espionage adopted by US intelligence agencies, which include establishing cyberattack arsenals, coercing technology companies to cooperate, and distorting the truth to accuse others.

The MSS first revealed that the US has established cyberattack arsenals, and that US intelligence agencies have been resorting to extreme measures to conduct surveillance, espionage and cyberattacks across multiple countries worldwide, including China. Particularly, the US' National Security Agency (NSA), through its Office of Tailored Access Operations (TAO) and advanced arsenal, has repeatedly carried out systematic and platform-based attacks on China, attempting to steal important data resources.

According to the MSS, TAO began to invade Huawei headquarters' servers and carry out continuous monitoring in 2009. In September 2022, TAO was found to have carried out tens of thousands of malicious cyberattacks over a prolonged period targeting China, including China's Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU). The US controlled tens of thousands of network devices and stole a vast amount of high-value data.

US cyberattacks are indiscriminate, as they not only target governments to steal political or military intelligence, but also indiscriminately attack businesses and critical infrastructure, Tang Lan, director of the Center for Cyberspace Security and Governance Studies at the China Institutes of Contemporary International Relations, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

The ability of US intelligence agencies to launch large-scale cyberattacks relies on a diverse range of cyber weapons. Since 2022, China's cybersecurity agencies have disclosed multiple cyber weapons used by US intelligence agencies, such as Bvp47, Quantum, FOXACID and Hive.

US intelligence agencies used these sophisticated weapons to carry out network attacks and cyber espionage targeting 45 countries and regions worldwide, including China and Russia, for over one decade. The targets of these cyberattacks include crucial sectors such as telecommunications, scientific research, economy, energy and the military, the MSS noted.

The aggressiveness of cyberattacks carried out by the US is very prominent because the country aims to gain control over cyberspace and achieve an absolute advantage globally, Tang said.

This is quite different from the previous practices of the US, which used to have more restraint and would not overtly display its intentions or methods, according to Tang. "Cyberattacks have become the US' major tool in great-power competition. The country no longer conceals its intentions, but directly and clearly expresses its desire to obtain absolute initiative in cyberspace," she said.

The US also forced technology companies to cooperate. The US government, using national security as an excuse, forcefully implanted backdoors into devices, software, and applications of relevant technology companies via acts such as the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. By using methods like embedded code and vulnerability attacks, the US achieved global data monitoring and theft, leveraging the influence of global technology companies.

In December 2020, US location data company X-Mode Social was exposed for obtaining location data through an embedded software development kit in mobile applications and selling the data to contractors closely associated with the US military and intelligence agencies. In April 2022, Anomaly Six, a company with ties to military intelligence, was exposed for embedding its internal tracking software development kit into numerous mobile applications, thereby tracking the location data and browsing information of billions of mobile phones worldwide and aggregating and selling the data to the US government.

The US was found to have been carrying out extensive cyberattacks and espionage activities across the globe, while also fabricating security reports in a creative manner, smearing China as the primary cyber threat actor and hyping the so-called Chinese cyber espionage issue, perfectly exemplifying its ability to distort the truth.

It is well known that the US has long been engaged in large-scale surveillance and espionage activities against countries around the world, including its allies, leveraging its technological advantage. Since the exposure of the Prism spying incident in 2013, China's cybersecurity agencies have repeatedly discovered the involvement of the US in cyberattacks targeting China.

In recent years, the US has intensified its Hunt Forward Operations (HFOs), with clear targets being Russia, Iran, China and North Korea. US Cyber Command is becoming an expeditionary force, disguising its actions as HFOs and proactive defense, while conducting cyberattacks and espionage against other countries.

However, the US continues to portray itself as a victim of cyberattacks at the same time. Under the banner of maintaining "cyber security," the US is instigating and coercing other countries to join the so-called Clean Network program, attempting to eliminate Chinese companies from the international cyber market.

In fact, the "Clean Network" is a sham, while suppressing opponents and maintaining hegemony is the US' real intention. In response, the Chinese government has repeatedly urged the US to deeply reflect on its own actions and cease global cyberattacks and espionage activities, as well as stop using false information channels to muddy public opinion, the MSS noted.

Recently, China's National Computer Virus Emergency Response Center reported that during the handling of a cyberattack case on NPU, they successfully extracted a spyware sample called Second Date, which is a network spy weapon developed by the NSA and operates covertly in thousands of network devices spread across multiple countries worldwide.

The US will continuously upgrade its arsenal of cyber weapons in the future, as well as constantly enrich its means and methods for conducting cyberattacks, Tang said.

The MSS stressed that cyberspace is increasingly becoming a new battlefield for safeguarding national security. Without cybersecurity, there is no national security, and no stable operation of the economy and society, while the interests of the general public are also difficult to guarantee. The MSS called for solidarity to strengthen security awareness, and to enhance security capabilities, so as to jointly safeguard cybersecurity.





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Huawei eyes to build up China’s computing foundation to offer world a second option: Meng Wanzhou





Huawei eyes to build up China’s computing foundation to offer world a second option: Meng Wanzhou

Attendees visit the Huawei booth at the 2023 World Mobile Congress on June 28, 2023, in Shanghai. Photo: VCG


Chinese telecom giant Huawei Technologies is aiming to help build the foundation for China’s computing power and offering the world a “second option,” Huawei’s rotating chair Meng Wanzhou said on Wednesday, as the US and some of its Western allies are pushing for a complete tech decoupling.

At the Huawei Connect 2023, which showcased the company’s latest products and technologies, Meng vowed a number of new initiatives to bolster its computing base, as part of the company’s “All Intelligence” strategy.

Meng said that computing power is the core of Artificial Intelligence’s development, and Huawei will build a robust computing power foundation to support diverse requirements of various industries.

“We support every organization and industries to train their large models using information.” Meng said.

According to Meng, Huawei’s All Intelligence strategy aims to accelerate the “intelligence” of all industries, including connecting “everything” both virtual and physical, allowing model applications to benefit everyone, and offering computing power for every decision-making.

Intelligent transformation is the global tendency of manufacture development, which is crucial for the high-quality development of China’s manufacturing industry. Intelligence and its underlying computing power has become a focal point in the global technological competition.

Huawei, which has been a top target of the US’ technological crackdown, has been investing heavily in building its computing power, and its Large Language Model (LLM).

The LLM, which absorbs massive knowledge can be applied to multiple scenarios, lowered the threshold of AI development and application, according to Meng, and LLM bring possibility to solve large-scale industrial problems.

The computing power requirement of a LLM doubles every four months, according to Zhou Bin, CTO of Huawei’s Ascend Computing Business.

Huawei has continued to invest in research and development including in areas such as chemistry and material, physical and engineering, for decades, the combination of connecting and computing techniques contributed its advantages on intelligent products and system.

Meng said Huawei is also focused on personnel training through cooperation with colleges.

Huawei is working with 2,600 universities around the world to jointly build information and communication technology academies, which have trained 200,000 students annually. The “smart base” projects with 72 Chinese universities provided more than 1,600 courses for 500,000 students, according to media report.

“We invest about $3-5 billion annually in basic theory research.” Ren Zhengfei, Huawei’s founder, said during an event of International Collegiate Programming Contest in August, 2023.

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Wednesday 20 September 2023

7 superfoods found in your kitchen

Eggs


The word “superfood” can be misleading, as people think it must be some special ingredient that’s expensive and hard to obtain.

But it’s purely marketing – the term was apparently coined by an American company for its marketing campaign.

The focus is just on certain food groups that are more nutritious than others.

For instance, a bunch of bananas will definitely have more health benefits than, say, a slice of bread.

A healthy diet should be based on a mix of different food groups with a variety of nutrients, and it doesn’t necessarily have to be only superfoods.

Here are seven everyday items which fall under the superfood category:

1 Eggs 


Eggs have gotten a bad rep because at one stage, some people believed they were bad for our cholesterol.

However, studies have shown that eggs actually raise HDL (“good” cholesterol) and change the LDL (“bad” cholesterol) profile so that the body can better absorb it.

They provide an amazing number of nutrients such as vitamins A, B12, B2, B5, E, and selenium, and minerals like calcium, iron, potassium, zinc, manganese and folate, which are all contained in the yolk.

The white provides high-quality protein. Egg also has choline, important for brain development, and lutein that protects the eyes.

2 Greek yogurt


Greek yogurt is creamier and thicker than regular yogurt as the extra whey has been strained out.

Rich in calcium and protein, it can improve bone health, reduce hunger pangs, improve gut health, build muscle mass and is said to lower blood pressure as well.

3 Ginger 


Known for its anti-inflammatory, antioxidant and anti-nausea properties, ginger contains gingerol which has potent antioxidant properties.

It is said to ease digestion issues, relieve pain and boost immunity.

Regular consumption has been shown to lower cholesterol and help control blood sugar.

4 Green tea


Packed with antioxidants, green tea can protect against heart disease.

Health experts say green tea supports bone health, boosts memory, lowers cholesterol and may even reduce the risk of stroke.

Many of us rely on coffee to wake us up during the day and give us that shot of energy, but the caffeine in green tea can help you achieve the same results, without you crashing by the second half of the day.

5 Turmeric


Turmeric, often used in Indian and Malay curries, and sometimes added to tea, contains an antioxidant called curcumin which has anti-inflammatory properties.

Due to the anti-inflammatory compound in curcumin, it has been found effective in the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis as well.

Experts also believe it is a potent antioxidant that can neutralise free radicals, and may be effective in delaying brain diseases and other age-related chronic diseases.

It is being studied too for a potential role in preventing cancer.

6 Garlic


We take it for granted as it is so commonly found in the kitchen, but did you know that garlic has been used as a medicinal ingredient even in ancient times?

A good source of manganese, vitamins B6 and C, as well as selenium, it can boost the immune system and protect against the common cold.

It helps reduce blood pressure and lowers cholesterol levels, and this can help in decreasing the risk of heart disease. 

 Studies have also shown that it is helpful in reducing pain from knee osteoarthritis.

7 Olive Oil


Olive oil is not used in Asian context as often as in Western cooking that uses it as a marinade, dressing or cooking agent. 

 Not just any oil, but specifically it is extra virgin olive oil that is said to be good for the heart as it’s high in monounsaturated fat and polyphenols.

High in antioxidants, it also decreases inflammation and lowers blood cholesterol.

Olive oil contains vitamin E and experts say it is also good for the immune system as it supports the production of white blood cells that control inflammation.

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