Month: January 2023

The past year has been difficult for startups everywhere, but running a company in Ukraine during the Russian invasion comes with a whole different set of challenges.
Clinical psychologist Ivan Osadchyy brought his medical device, called Knopka, to this year’s consumer technology show known as CES in Las Vegas in hopes of getting it into U.S. hospitals.
His is one of a dozen Ukrainian startups backed by a government fund that are at CES this year to show their technology to the world.
“Two of our hospitals we operated before are ruined already and one is still occupied. So this is the biggest challenge,” Osadchyy said.
“The second challenge is for production and our team because they are shelling our electricity system and people are hard to work without lights, without heating in their flats,” he said.
Inspired by grandmother
He came up with the device after spending a year with his own grandmother in the hospital and finding that he had to track down nurses when she needed something.
The system works by notifying nurses when a patient has an abnormal heart rate, is due for treatment or otherwise needs help. The nurse can’t turn off their button until they’ve dealt with the issue.
“We are still working and operating because hospitals are open and we need to support them and provide efficiency and safety for patients as well,” he said.
Karina Kudriavtseva of the government-backed Ukrainian Startup Fund, says that, like Knopka, all the country’s startups have kept going since Russia’s invasion almost a year ago.
“The times have changed, their conditions have changed, but it can only make them stronger because all of the startups are working on the thing that to save the company, save the team, save the business, and save their lives, of course,” she said.
Conflict led to relocation, innovation
The invasion forced Valentyn Frechka to relocate to France, but he says his Releaf paper company has never stopped production.
When he was 16, Frechka decided to study alternative sources of cellulose in order to decrease deforestation. He’s now developed a technology that uses fallen leaves and recycled fiber to make paper.
The company’s main product is paper shopping bags, but they also make food packaging, egg trays and corrugated boxes.
Frechka said the conflict has forced the company to become more flexible and more open to opportunities.
“When this conflict happened and we located our company to France, we have found a lot of new partners and we have raised fundraising. We have raised the money for our needs,” he said. “So, it really makes us more open for the world.”

Source: Voice of America

It was uplifting enough for the Buffalo Bills staff and players to see Damar Hamlin appear on the video screen in the team’s meeting room Friday — “larger than life,” as coach Sean McDermott put it — for the first time since the safety collapsed and had to be resuscitated on the field.
What sent everyone’s emotions over the top was hearing Hamlin, his mouth and throat still raw shortly after having a breathing tube removed, softly say: ” Love you, boys.”
“Amazing. Touching. To see Damar, No. 1, through my own eyes, I know it’s something I’ve been looking forward to, kind of needing to see,” McDermott said. “And to see the players’ reaction. They stood up right away and clapped for him and yelled some things at him. It was a pretty cool exchange.”
Four days since his heart stopped after making what appeared to be a routine tackle in a game, the 24-year-old Hamlin from his hospital room in Cincinnati and the Bills enjoyed a moment of jubilation in celebrating the next step in what his doctors have termed a remarkable recovery.
“We got our boy, man. It’s all that matters,” left tackle Dion Dawkins said.
“To see the boy’s face, to see him smile and to see him go like this in the camera,” Dawkins said, flexing his muscles to mimic Hamlin, “it was everything. And then to hear him talk, it was literally everything. That’s what we needed.”
Hamlin is now breathing and walking on his own and traded in the writing pad he had been using to communicate. Though there is no timetable for his release, Hamlin’s doctors said Thursday that both breathing on his own and showing continued signs of improvement are the final steps for him to be discharged from the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.
Hamlin spent his first two days in the hospital under sedation. Upon being awakened Wednesday evening, Hamlin was able to follow commands and grip people’s hands. The breathing tube was removed, the team said Friday, and Hamlin’s “neurologic function remains intact.”
The team did not say whether Hamlin’s status remains critical or whether he’s been moved from intensive care.
“The hair on the back of my neck stood up when he said, ‘I love you boys,'” said general manager Brandon Beane, who returned to Buffalo Thursday after spending the three days at Hamlin’s bedside along with the player’s family.
The turning point in Hamlin’s recovery, for Beane, anyway, came Thursday morning when the two exchanged hugs.
“Just to be able to hug him and the grip strength that he had,” Beane said, before recalling what he told Hamlin’s father, Mario. “I told him, I’m not a crier, but man it was emotional and a lot of grown men in there [were] crying yesterday. Something I’ll never forget.”
The sight of Hamlin collapsing, which was broadcast to a North American TV audience on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” has led to an outpouring of support from fans and players from across the league. Fans, team owners and players — including Tom Brady and Russell Wilson — have made donations to Hamlin’s Chasing M’s Foundation, which had raised just short of $8 million by Friday afternoon.

Source: Voice of America

India has announced a $2.3 billion plan to promote “green hydrogen” — hydrogen produced with renewable energy — which experts say could be the clean fuel of the future.
The initiative could help the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases reach its goal of net zero carbon emissions by 2070.
A series of incentives are aimed at making green hydrogen affordable by bringing down production costs of a technology that has yet to become commercially viable.
While India has been rapidly expanding renewables such as solar energy, these will not be enough to meet climate goals in a country whose energy needs are expected to grow more than anywhere in the world over the next two decades. India’s current reliance on carbon-emitting coal, its primary source of electricity, has raised concerns on how it will switch to clean energy.
The government is hoping that investments under what is called the National Hydrogen Mission, will provide the answer.
“For lot of heavy industries like steel, cement and oil refining, green hydrogen can be a better solution to make them cleaner. Their massive energy requirements cannot be met by other renewable sources such as solar and wind,” Vibhuti Garg, South Asia director at the Institute for Energy Economics and Financial Analysis, said.
“But much will depend on the cost economics” he said.
Green hydrogen is made by using electricity from renewable sources to split hydrogen from water. The energy it produces creates no carbon emissions. But in an industry still in its infancy, the key lies in significantly lowering production costs.
“The goal is to bring down its cost over the next five years,” Information and Broadcasting Minister Anurag Thakur said this week while announcing the initiative. He said it will also help India reduce its emissions and become a major exporter in the field.
Some experts are optimistic. “In the last one year there has been a drop in green hydrogen prices from roughly $4 per kilogram to $3 now,” said Hemant Mallya at the Council for Energy, Environment and Water, a public policy think tank in New Delhi.
He said increased use will bring down costs further. “The eventual target is $1 per kilogram because that is when you start becoming competitive with coal. But even before that if we can hit $2 per kilogram, it will compete with gas currently imported from Russia and that is pretty much achievable with scale and technological advancement.”
The hope is that just as costs for solar power have dropped substantially in recent years and are now lower than that of electricity generated by coal plants, the cost of producing green hydrogen will also reduce over time.
India’s goal is to produce 5 million tons of green hydrogen per year by 2030. Experts call it an “ambitious” target and point out that at the moment India only has a handful of pilot projects in the sector.
However, India wants to ensure that it is not left behind in a technology that is now being looked at with much more hope as the world grapples with a climate crisis. In giving a push to green hydrogen, India is following other countries like the United States and those in the European Union that have also approved incentives worth billions of dollars for its development.
“I think India does not want to miss the bus and is putting the building blocks in place,” said Garg. She pointed out that in the solar energy sector for example, China took the lead in manufacturing the most cost-competitive components for solar panels, leaving most countries, including India, dependent on Chinese imports. “In green hydrogen, India wants to be a pioneer and not wait for other countries to become the lead players.”
As the government offers financial incentives, some of India’s biggest firms have made commitments to invest in green hydrogen. They include conglomerates like the Adani Group and Reliance Industries and state-owned energy companies.
Still, experts say there are many challenges ahead in developing the nascent industry. India will have to scale up domestic manufacturing of electrolyzers, which are a key component to develop green hydrogen and also ensure that there is enough renewable energy available to make it. The investments needed will be huge. Domestic industries might have to be incentivized to switch to using green hydrogen.
India is also eyeing exports of green hydrogen by becoming a cost-competitive source.
“Our aim is to establish India as a global hub of green hydrogen,” Thakur said. “We will make efforts to get at least 10% of the global demand for green hydrogen.”
Hopes that export markets will emerge if green hydrogen becomes viable have risen after the disruption in global energy markets in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “We need to broaden the horizon and look at exports because the premium on the price of green hydrogen might be a problem domestically, but internationally it is not that much of a challenge for someone in Europe to pay it. And because of the Ukraine crisis for example, countries in Europe, will want to transition quicker than anticipated from natural gas,” according to Mallya.

Source: Voice of America

Shubham Chandra knows how dangerous the coronavirus can be: He lost his dad during the pandemic. So when he cleared customs at Newark Liberty International Airport and saw people offering anonymous COVID-19 testing, he was happy to volunteer.
“It’s a minimum amount of effort to help a lot of people,” said the 27-year-old New York City man, who had just stepped off a plane from Cancun, Mexico.
The airport testing is part of the government’s early warning system for detecting new variants, which began expanding recently in the wake of a COVID-19 surge in China.
With the addition of Los Angeles, California, and Seattle, Washington, there are now seven airports where arriving passengers can volunteer for COVID-19 tests. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention program now covers about 500 flights from at least 30 countries, including more than half from China and surrounding areas.
As of Thursday, the CDC is also requiring travelers to the U.S. from China, Hong Kong and Macao to take a COVID-19 test no more than two days before travel and provide a negative result before boarding a flight.
And down the road, some scientists are calling for wider use of an additional strategy: screening wastewater from toilet tanks on arriving airplanes.
“Without surveillance, it’s very hard to know what’s going on,” said Dr. Stuart Campbell Ray, an infectious disease expert at Johns Hopkins University. “Hopefully, with more sampling, we will get more information about what’s circulating.”
Concern about new variants
Some scientists are worried the COVID-19 surge in China could unleash a new coronavirus mutant on the world, since every infection is another chance for the virus to change. There’s no sign of a new variant from China at this point. But one reason for new testing requirements, according to the CDC, is a lack of adequate and transparent information from China on viral strains infecting people there.
“We have very little control over what happens elsewhere,” said epidemiologist Katelyn Jetelina, a consultant to the CDC. “What we can control is what’s happening in the United States.”
The airport program is based on an unfortunate reality: “Travelers … go across the globe quickly and they can get and spread infectious diseases really fast,” said Dr. Cindy Friedman, chief of the CDC’s travelers’ health branch.
Friedman said the program is a partnership with two companies that take care of the testing and lab work — XpresCheck and Concentric by Ginkgo. A pilot program was expanded around the time the first omicron variant emerged in the U.S. more than a year ago. In addition to the Newark, Seattle and Los Angeles airports, the program includes New York’s Kennedy, Washington’s Dulles, and airports in Atlanta and San Francisco.
The latest expansion of the traveler surveillance program aims to capture more flights from China. But on Wednesday in Newark, some of the targeted planes arrived from Mexico, France and Belgium. After clearing customs, travelers could stop at a table, swab their noses and fill out a form. Chandra said it took about a minute.
Like other travelers, he won’t get the results. But he tests for COVID-19 when he flies to Ohio every other month to see his mom, he said, since “the last thing I want to do is bring (the virus) home to her.”
About 10% of people on targeted flights volunteer. Their samples are pooled and PCR tested. Positive ones are genetically sequenced. Volunteers get free home COVID-19 tests.
Over time, Friedman expects the program to grow and potentially go global. It has already shown it can spot coronavirus variants early — detecting omicron variants BA.2 and BA.3 and reporting them to a global database weeks before others did.
But Jetelina said a surveillance program at seven airports is “just not that big,” so trying to spot variants might be like “looking for a needle in the haystack.”
Wastewater testing
To aid the search, experts suggest taking more samples from airplane bathrooms.
“It’s a little gross when you start thinking about it,” Jetelina said. “But these are really long flights, and we would expect the majority of people would go to the bathroom.”
The CDC, which monitors wastewater in municipal systems, ran a pilot program last summer testing airplane wastewater at Kennedy airport. Friedman said the agency is working to expand this type of surveillance.
Such testing has been used elsewhere. A study last year in the journal Environment International looked at wastewater testing from 37 flights chartered to bring Australians home earlier in the pandemic, concluding that the practice “can provide an additional and effective tool” for monitoring the virus coming into a country. Recently, Canada announced an expanded wastewater pilot program, and Belgium said it would test wastewater from airplanes coming from China.
As surveillance continues, scientists believe that the omicron variant BF.7, which is extremely adept at evading immunity, is driving China’s current surge. CDC data shows BF.7 is already in the U.S. and currently accounts for about 2% of COVID-19 cases. The most prevalent mutant in the U.S. is XBB.1.5, another variant responsible for 41% of U.S. cases. Ray said this one attaches more tightly than its competitors to a receptor that allows viruses to enter a cell.
Scientists said the virus will surely keep evolving — which is why they need to keep searching for new variants. The coronavirus is like a predator stalking humanity, Ray said, and “the predator adapts to the prey.”

Source: Voice of America

Buffalo Bills safety Damar Hamlin has shown what physicians treating him are calling “remarkable improvement over the past 24 hours,” the team announced Thursday, three days after the player went into cardiac arrest and had to be resuscitated on the field.
“While still critically ill, he has demonstrated that he appears to be neurologically intact,” the Bills said in a statement. “His lungs continue to heal and he is making steady progress.”
Bills rookie cornerback Kaiir Elam also posted a message on his Twitter account that said Hamlin “is doing better, awake and showing signs of improvement.”
The developments came as the Bills were scheduled to return to practice on Thursday for the first time since Hamlin collapsed after his heart stopped after making a tackle and was rushed to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center during the first quarter of Buffalo’s game against the Bengals on Monday night.
The second-year player has spent the past two days sedated and listed in critical condition.
The Bills’ announcement comes as they prepare to play a home game against the New England Patriots on Sunday, and with the team still dealing with the shock of seeing their teammate collapse on the field, his heart not beating.
After returning home early Tuesday once the game was suspended, the Bills held meetings and a walkthrough practice without any media availability on Wednesday. On Thursday, players were spotted arriving at the facility, though the team has not yet released a practice schedule.
The chilling sight of Hamlin collapsing, which was broadcast to a North American TV audience on ESPN’s “Monday Night Football,” has led to an outpouring of support from fans and players from across the league.
Numerous players — former teammates and those who didn’t know Hamlin until Monday — voiced their support, while saying they were shaken by what happened.
Colts safety Rodney Thomas made the two-hour drive from Indianapolis to Cincinnati on Tuesday just to be by the side of his former high school teammate.
“He’s a fighter. I know he’s a fighter and there’s no other thought in my mind other than him walking out under his own power,” Thomas said Wednesday.
Minnesota Vikings defensive tackle Harrison Phillips, who spent the previous four seasons playing for Buffalo, had dinner delivered to the hospital for Hamlin’s family and medical staff.
Hamlin’s marketing representative Jordon Rooney said Wednesday that the player’s family was buoyed by the words and acts of kindness.
“They are elated right now,” Rooney said. “Damar is still their first concern. But for them, they always look at how they can turn a somewhat troubling situation into a good one. The bounce back from this, for him and his family, is going to be incredible.”
What remains unclear is whether the NFL will reschedule the Bills’ game against the Bengals, which has major implications in determining the top spot in the AFC. The playoffs are set to open on January 14.
The Chiefs (13-3) have a half-game lead over Buffalo (12-3), with the Bills owning the tiebreaker after beating Kansas City this season. The Bengals (11-4) are currently the third seed and have also defeated the Chiefs.
Hamlin was hurt in the first quarter when he was struck squarely in the chest while making what appeared to be routine tackle of Bengals receiver Tee Higgins. Hamlin briefly got up and adjusted his facemask before collapsing backward.
Hamlin was selected by Buffalo in the sixth round of the 2021 draft out of Pitt. He spent his rookie season limited to special teams roles, and took over the starting safety job in Week 3 in place of veteran Micah Hyde, who remains sidelined by a neck injury.
Fans, team owners and players — including Tom Brady and Russell Wilson — have made donations to Hamlin’s Chasing M’s Foundation, which had raised more than $7 million by Thursday morning.

Source: Voice of America