Day: July 7, 2022

Luanda -Angola’s national football team defeated, this Thursday, the Seychelles by 3-0, for the the second round of Group A of COSAFA Cup, played at Zwelithini Stadium, in Durban (South Africa).

The goals were scored by Julinho, at 14 minutes, Megue, through a penalty kick (77′) and Vanilson (89`).

With this second victory, the national team remain in the lead with six points, the same as Botswana, in second, which defeated the Comoros Islands, 1-0.

Angola will play Botswana again at 3pm on Sunday at the Princess Mogogo Stadium. Before that, the Seychelles-Comoros clash at the same venue.

In Group B, Malawi-Eswatini (15h00) and Lesotho-Mauritius (18h00) meet this Friday. The two games take place at the King Zwelithini Stadium.

The COSAFA Cup is being played in two groups of four teams each (A and B) in an all-against-all system.

Source: Angola Press News Agency

Cases of COVID-19 are surging again globally, due in large part to the rise of virus variant Omicron BA.5, which is much more contagious than its predecessors and is able to circumvent existing immunity in many people.

In the U.S., the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week released data indicating that the BA.5 variant is now responsible for more than half of new cases and is poised to continue outcompeting older versions of the Omicron variant that remain in circulation.

The new variant is also carving its path across other countries. In the Americas, Brazil and Mexico are both experiencing upticks. In Europe, cases are on the rise across the continent, including in Germany, France, Italy, Spain and Greece, among others. The United Kingdom is experiencing a rise as well.

In Asia, cases are rising in Japan, South Korea and India, among others. Cases are also climbing in Australia and New Zealand.

‘Worst’ variant yet

Public health experts are warning that despite the fact that death rates from COVID-19 remain low in the U.S., the Omicron BA.5 variant remains a major concern. Evidence suggests that a recent prior infection with COVID-19 offers little or no protection against reinfection with the new variant.

During past waves, it has typically been assumed that an individual who had recovered from a bout of COVID-19 would have enhanced immune protection against reinfection for a significant period of time.

“The Omicron subvariant BA.5 is the worst version of the virus that we’ve seen,” Dr. Eric Topol, a member of the Department of Molecular Medicine at Scripps Research, wrote in his popular Substack newsletter. “It takes immune escape, already extensive, to the next level, and, as a function of that, enhanced transmissibility, well beyond Omicron (BA.1) and other Omicron family variants that we’ve seen.”

Even though people appear to be less likely to get extremely sick from the new variant, public health experts say that they are concerned about the possibility that as infections increase, more people will come down with lingering symptoms. So-called long COVID, which can include fatigue, shortness of breath, cognitive dysfunction and other adverse health events, has been detected in as many as one in five people who survive an infection.

Public health challenge

Rising case counts have public health experts deeply concerned about what will take place in the coming months.

“Right now, the public health stance should be maximizing vaccination, including boosters for those who are eligible and primary vaccination and boosters for children,” David Blumenthal, president of the Commonwealth Fund, a public health foundation, told VOA. “That’s the absolutely critical, essential first step in a public health campaign to reduce the impact of COVID. That also should include planning for, we hope, a more specific vaccine in the fall against the Omicron variants.”

Blumenthal said he believed that the threat of long COVID meant that it also makes sense for people to continue wearing masks in public during surges in infection. However, he said he recognized that calling for more restrictions presented a serious challenge to public health officials, who will find themselves trying to persuade a pandemic-weary public to embrace masking again.

“I think that civic leaders — respected, nonmedical leaders, as well as personal physicians — are probably the best communicators at this point,” he said.

US in detail

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, in the 90 days ending on July 6, the average number of daily cases over the previous seven days in the U.S. rose to 106,193, from 34,795. However, the actual number of cases is believed to be far higher, because the prevalence of at-home testing means that the majority of cases are not reported to public health agencies.

The same data set shows that over the same 90-day period, the seven-day average of people hospitalized for COVID-19 rose to 35,637, from 14,904. While that marked a significant upward move in percentage terms, the absolute number of people currently hospitalized for the disease remains far below the more than 807,000 recorded at the peak in January.

Deaths from COVID-19 have actually fallen over the past 90 days, with a seven-day average of 309 recorded on July 6, compared with 507 recorded 90 days earlier. The current death rate remains near all-time lows since the beginning of the pandemic.

Blumenthal said he believed that the threat of long COVID meant that it also makes sense for people to continue wearing masks in public during surges in infection. However, he said he recognized that calling for more restrictions presented a serious challenge to public health officials, who will find themselves trying to persuade a pandemic-weary public to embrace masking again.

“I think that civic leaders — respected, nonmedical leaders, as well as personal physicians — are probably the best communicators at this point,” he said.

US in detail

According to data compiled by Johns Hopkins University, in the 90 days ending on July 6, the average number of daily cases over the previous seven days in the U.S. rose to 106,193, from 34,795. However, the actual number of cases is believed to be far higher, because the prevalence of at-home testing means that the majority of cases are not reported to public health agencies.

The same data set shows that over the same 90-day period, the seven-day average of people hospitalized for COVID-19 rose to 35,637, from 14,904. While that marked a significant upward move in percentage terms, the absolute number of people currently hospitalized for the disease remains far below the more than 807,000 recorded at the peak in January.

Deaths from COVID-19 have actually fallen over the past 90 days, with a seven-day average of 309 recorded on July 6, compared with 507 recorded 90 days earlier. The current death rate remains near all-time lows since the beginning of the pandemic.

Source: Voice of America

In a former gold mine a mile underground, inside a titanium tank filled with a rare, liquefied gas, scientists have begun the search for what so far has been unfindable: dark matter.

Scientists are pretty sure the invisible stuff makes up most of the universe’s mass and say we wouldn’t be here without it — but they don’t know what it is. The race to solve this enormous mystery has brought one team to the depths under Lead, South Dakota.

The question for scientists is basic, says Kevin Lesko, a physicist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: “What is this great place I live in? Right now, 95% of it is a mystery.”

The idea is that a mile of dirt and rock, a giant tank, a second tank and the purest titanium in the world will block nearly all the cosmic rays and particles that zip around — and through — all of us every day. But dark matter particles, scientists think, can avoid all those obstacles. They hope one will fly into the vat of liquid xenon in the inner tank and smash into a xenon nucleus like two balls in a game of pool, revealing its existence in a flash of light seen by a device called “the time projection chamber.”

Scientists announced Thursday that the five-year, $60 million search finally got underway two months ago after a delay caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. So far, the device has found nothing. At least no dark matter.

That’s OK, they say. The equipment appears to be working to filter out most of the background radiation they hoped to block.

“To search for this very rare type of interaction, job number one is to first get rid of all of the ordinary sources of radiation, which would overwhelm the experiment,” said University of Maryland physicist Carter Hall.

And if all their calculations and theories are right, they figure they’ll see only a couple fleeting signs of dark matter a year. The team of 250 scientists estimates they’ll get 20 times more data over the next couple of years.

By the time the experiment finishes, the chance of finding dark matter with this device is “probably less than 50% but more than 10%,” said Hugh Lippincott, a physicist and spokesman for the experiment in a Thursday news conference.

While that’s far from a sure thing, “you need a little enthusiasm,” Lawrence Berkeley’s Lesko said. “You don’t go into rare search physics without some hope of finding something.”

Two hulking Depression-era hoists run an elevator that brings scientists to what’s called the LUX-ZEPLIN experiment in the Sanford Underground Research Facility. A 10-minute descent ends in a tunnel with cool-to-the-touch walls lined with netting. But the old, musty mine soon leads to a high-tech lab where dirt and contamination is the enemy. Helmets are exchanged for new, cleaner ones and a double layer of baby blue booties go over steel-toed safety boots.

The heart of the experiment is the giant tank called the cryostat, lead engineer Jeff Cherwinka said in a December 2019 tour before the device was closed and filled. He described it as “like a thermos” made of “perhaps the purest titanium in the world” designed to keep the liquid xenon cold and keep background radiation at a minimum.

Xenon is special, explained Aaron Manalaysay, experiment physics coordinator, because it allows researchers to see if a collision is with one of its electrons or with its nucleus. If something hits the nucleus, it is more likely to be the dark matter that everyone is looking for, he said.

These scientists tried a similar, smaller experiment here years ago. After coming up empty, they figured they had to go much bigger. Another large-scale experiment is underway in Italy run by a rival team, but no results have been announced so far.

The scientists are trying to understand why the universe is not what it seems.

One part of the mystery is dark matter, which has by far most of the mass in the cosmos. Astronomers know it’s there because when they measure the stars and other regular matter in galaxies, they find that there is not nearly enough gravity to hold these clusters together. If nothing else was out there, galaxies would be “quickly flying apart,” Manalaysay said.

“It is essentially impossible to understand our observation of history, of the evolutionary cosmos without dark matter,” Manalaysay said.

Lippincott, a University of California, Santa Barbara, physicist, said “we would not be here without dark matter.”

So while there’s little doubt that dark matter exists, there’s lots of doubt about what it is. The leading theory is that it involves things called WIMPs — weakly interacting massive particles.

If that’s the case, LUX-ZEPLIN could be able to detect them. And scientists want to find “where the WIMPs can be hiding,” Lippincott said.

Source: Voice of America