Malawi Wire

In an executive order signed Monday, President Joe Biden announced steps by his administration to bolster the “bioeconomy” in the United States, a classification that covers research and development across a broad swath of products, including medical supplies, sustainable new fuels and food, as well as technologies meant to help fight climate change.

The order comes barely a month after Biden signed a major piece of legislation, the CHIPS Act, meant to supercharge U.S. manufacturing of semiconductors, an area in which the U.S. has lost its once-dominant global position.

The effort to boost the U.S. biotech sector further underscores the administration’s apparent belief that deeper engagement by the federal government with domestic manufacturing operations is necessary to preserve U.S. competitiveness in the global economy.

In a briefing over the weekend, administration officials made it clear that the administration’s push to bring more U.S.-based biotechnology manufacturing online comes as a response to other countries — particularly China — investing heavily in the sector.

Administration officials stressed that biotechnology-based products and “biomanufacturing” present a promising alternative to many current products — fuel, plastics and other materials — that are currently made using the byproducts of carbon-laden petrochemicals.

Order text

The executive order reads, in part, “It is the policy of my Administration to coordinate a whole-of-government approach to advance biotechnology and biomanufacturing towards innovative solutions in health, climate change, energy, food security, agriculture, supply chain resilience, and national and economic security.”

It continues, “Central to this policy and its outcomes are principles of equity, ethics, safety, and security that enable access to technologies, processes, and products in a manner that benefits all Americans and the global community and that maintains United States technological leadership and economic competitiveness.”

Caution urged

Among the Biden administration’s promises in the executive order is a vow to “substitute fragile supply chains from abroad with strong chains at home.” But not everyone agrees that a government effort to manipulate the supply chain is the smartest strategy for the long run.

“Government can play a role in funding basic research, university labs and the rest, but when it starts micromanaging supply chains, you end up with more fragile supply chains than robust ones,” Scott Lincicome, a director for general economics and trade at the Libertarian-leaning Cato Institute, told VOA.

Similarly, he said, government decisions to privilege “onshore” production over foreign producers can be dangerous.

“There’s nothing wrong with domestic manufacturing, but as we’ve learned throughout the pandemic, there’s a big problem with putting all of your eggs in one basket, either all foreign or all domestic,” Lincicome said.

“While onshoring can insulate you from foreign shocks, it makes you far more vulnerable to domestic shocks,” he added. “And in the process, it makes you poorer and weaker overall. The best approach is to have a very open, diverse global supply chain with domestic networks, foreign suppliers, and a very light government touch on trade, investment, talent and the rest.”

Multiple aims

The executive order lays out a number of areas in which the Biden administration plans to flex the federal government’s muscle, including the domestic manufacturing of biotechnology products. The aim is to encourage both the creation of domestic manufacturing facilities, as well as the supply chains of fuel and raw materials needed to operate them.

The administration also promises to help create markets for biotechnology products by increasing mandatory purchasing requirements for federal agencies.

In addition, the executive order proposes to push more funding into research and development and to provide innovators support in the form of federal data that helps identify unmet needs. Other efforts will include job training programs, streamlined regulatory approval of new products, and cooperative programs with international partners.

Mending fences

The administration’s push to help U.S. biotechnology firms could go some way toward mending fences with the industry, which was angered by elements of the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA), which Biden recently signed into law.

The IRA, for the first time, allows Medicare, the government health insurance program for senior citizens, to bargain with pharmaceutical firms over the prices of some prescription drugs. Many in the industry strongly opposed the measure, claiming it would reduce incentives to innovate.

The executive order comes less than a week after the Biotechnology Innovation Organization sent a letter to the administration requesting it to “take additional steps to foster the development and deployment of pioneering technologies that will further reduce greenhouse gas emissions in manufacturing, transportation, and agricultural supply chains to build a stronger, more resilient, and environmentally sustainable economy.”

Biden signed the order before traveling to Boston, where he was scheduled to tout the results of the infrastructure bill he signed last year, which pumped federal money into a wide array of construction projects.

Also on Monday, Biden named Renee Wegrzyn, a biotechnology executive, to head the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health. The announcement came as part of a discussion of Biden’s “moonshot” initiative to drive new research on treatments for cancer.

Source: Voice Of America

New York Gov. Kathy Hochul said Friday the state was stepping up its polio-fighting efforts as the virus that causes the life-threatening disease was detected in the wastewater of yet another county in the New York City area.

Health officials began checking for signs of the virus in sewage water after the first case of polio in the United States in nearly a decade was identified in July in Rockland County, which is north of the city. The latest detection involved a wastewater sample collected last month in Nassau County on Long Island, directly east of the city.

The sample is genetically linked to the polio case from Rockland and provides further evidence of expanding community spread, state health officials said. The poliovirus had previously been detected in wastewater in New York City and three counties to its north: Rockland, Orange and Sullivan.

Hochul declared a state disaster emergency that allows EMS workers, midwives and pharmacists to administer polio vaccines and allows doctors to issue standing orders for the vaccine. Data on immunizations will be used to focus vaccination efforts where they’re needed the most.

“On polio, we simply cannot roll the dice,” state Health Commissioner Dr. Mary T. Bassett said in a prepared statement. “If you or your child are unvaccinated or not up to date with vaccinations, the risk of paralytic disease is real. I urge New Yorkers to not accept any risk at all.”

Health officials said all unvaccinated New York residents — including children by 2 months of age, pregnant people and those who haven’t completed their vaccine series — should get immunized immediately. They also urged boosters for certain people, such as health care workers in affected areas who treat patients who might have polio.

The statewide polio vaccination rate is 79%, but the counties of Rockland, Orange and Sullivan had lower rates.

Officials have said that it is possible that hundreds of people in the state have gotten polio and don’t know it. Most people infected with polio have no symptoms but can still give the virus to others for days or weeks.

The lone confirmed case in New York involved an unidentified young adult who was unvaccinated.

Source: Voice of America

A global search for alternative sources to Russian energy in light of the war in Ukraine has refocused attention on smaller, easier-to-build nuclear power stations, which proponents say could provide a cheaper, more efficient alternative to older model mega-plants.

U.K.-based Rolls-Royce SMR says its small modular reactors, or SMRs, are much cheaper and quicker to get running than standard plants, delivering the kind of energy security that many nations are seeking. France already relies on nuclear power for a majority of its electricity, and Germany kept the option of reactivating two nuclear plants it will shut down at the end of the year as Russia cuts natural gas supplies.

While Rolls-Royce SMR and its competitors have signed deals with countries from Britain to Poland to start building the stations, they are many years away from operating and cannot solve the energy crisis now hitting Europe.

Nuclear power also poses risks, including disposing of highly radioactive waste and keeping that technology out of the hands of rogue countries or nefarious groups that may pursue a nuclear weapons program.

Those risks have been accentuated following the shelling around Europe’s largest nuclear power plant in Zaporizhzhia, Ukraine, which has raised fears of potential nuclear disaster.

In the wake of the war, however, “the reliance on gas imports and Russian energy sources has focused people’s minds on energy security,” Rolls-Royce SMR spokesman Dan Gould said.

An SMR’s components can be built in a factory, moved to a site in tractor trailers and assembled there, making the technology more attractive to frugal buyers, he said.

“It’s like building Lego,” Gould said. “Building on a smaller scale reduces risks and makes it a more investible project.”

SMRs are essentially pressurized water reactors identical to some 400 reactors worldwide. The key advantages are their size — about one-tenth as big as a standard reactor — the ease of construction and the price tag.

The estimated cost of a Rolls-Royce SMR is $2.5 billion to $3.2 billion, with an estimated construction time of 5 1/2 years. That’s two years faster than it took to build a standard nuclear plant between 2016 and 2021, according to International Atomic Energy Agency statistics. Some estimates put the cost of building a 1,100-megawatt nuclear plant at between $6 billion and $9 billion.

Rolls-Royce aims to build its first stations in the U.K. within 5 1/2 years, Gould said. Similarly, Oklahoma-based NuScale Power signed agreements last year with two Polish companies — copper and silver producer KGHM and energy producer UNIMOT — to explore the possibility of building SMRs to power heavy industry. Poland wants to switch from polluting, coal-powered electricity generation.

Rolls-Royce SMR said last month that it signed a deal with Dutch development company ULC-Energy to look into setting up SMRs in the Netherlands.

Another partner is Turkey, where Russia is building the Akkuyu nuclear power plant on the southern coast. Environmentalists say the region is seismically active and could be a target for terrorists.

The introduction of “unproven” nuclear power technology in the form of SMRs doesn’t sit well with environmentalists, who argue that proliferation of small reactors will exacerbate the problem of how to dispose of highly radioactive nuclear waste.

“Unfortunately, Turkey is governed by an incompetent administration that has turned it into a ‘test bed’ for corporations,” said Koray Dogan Urbarli, a spokesman for Turkey’s Green Party.

“It is giving up the sovereignty of a certain region for at least 100 years for Russia to build a nuclear power plant. This incompetence and lobbying power make Turkey an easy target for SMRs,” said Koray, adding that his party eschews technology with an “uncertain future.”

Gould said one Rolls-Royce SMR would generate nuclear waste the size of a “tennis court piled 1-meter high” throughout the plant’s 60-year lifetime. He said initially, waste would be stored on site at the U.K. plants and would eventually be transferred to a long-term disposal site selected by the British government.

M.V. Ramana, professor of public policy and global affairs at the University of British Columbia, cites research suggesting there’s “no demonstrated way” to ensure nuclear waste stored in what authorities consider to be secure sites won’t escape in the future.

The constant heat generated by the waste could alter rock formations where it’s stored and allow water seepage, while future mining activities could compromise a nuclear waste site’s integrity, said Ramana, who specializes in international security and nuclear energy.

Skeptics also raise the risks of possibly exporting such technology in politically tumultuous regions. Gould said Rolls-Royce is “completely compliant” with U.K. and international requirements in exporting its SMR technology “only in territories that are signatories to the necessary international treaties for the peaceful use of nuclear power for energy generation.”

Ramana said, however, there’s no guarantee nations will follow the rules.

“Any country acquiring nuclear reactors automatically enhances its capacity to make nuclear weapons,” he said, adding that every SMR could produce “around 10 bombs worth of plutonium each year.”

Rolls-Royce SMR could opt to stop supplying fuel and other services to anyone flouting the rules, but “should any country choose to do so, it can simply tell the International Atomic Energy Agency to stop inspections, as Iran has done, for example,” Ramana said.

Although spent fuel normally undergoes chemical reprocessing to generate the kind of plutonium used in nuclear weapons, Ramana said such reprocessing technology is widely known and that a very sophisticated reprocessing plant isn’t required to produce the amount of plutonium needed for weapons.

Source: Voice of America

Voice-operated smartphones are aiming at a vast yet widely overlooked market in sub-Saharan Africa — the tens of millions of people who face huge challenges in life because they cannot read or write.

In Ivory Coast, a so-called “Superphone” using a vocal assistant that responds to commands in a local language is being pitched to the large segment of the population — as many as 40 percent — who are illiterate.

Developed and assembled locally, the phone is designed to make everyday tasks more accessible, from understanding a document and checking a bank balance to communicating with government agencies.

“I’ve just bought this phone for my parents back home in the village, who don’t know how to read or write,” said Floride Jogbe, a young woman who was impressed by adverts on social media.

She believed the 60,000 CFA francs ($92) she forked out was money well spent.

The smartphone uses an operating system called “Kone” that is unique to the Cerco company, and covers 17 languages spoken in Ivory Coast, including Baoule, Bete, and Dioula, as well as 50 other African languages.

Cerco hopes to expand this to 1,000 languages, reaching half of the continent’s population, thanks to help from a network of 3,000 volunteers.

The goal is to address the “frustration” illiterate people feel with technology that requires them to be able to read or write or spell effectively, said Cerco president Alain Capo-Chichi, a Benin national.

“Various institutions set down the priority of making people literate before making technology available to them,” he told AFP.

“Our way skips reading and writing and goes straight to integrating people into economic and social life.”

Of the 750 million adults around the world who cannot read or write, 27 percent live south of the Sahara, according to UN figures for 2016, the latest year for which data is available.

The continent also hosts nearly 2,000 languages, some of which are spoken by tens of millions of people and are used for inter-ethnic communication, while others are dialects with a small geographical spread.

Lack of numbers or economic clout often means these languages are overlooked by developers who have already devised vocal assistants for languages in bigger markets.

Twi and Kiswahili

Other companies investing in the voice-operation field in Africa include Mobobi, which has created a Twi language voice assistant in Ghana called Abena AI, while Mozilla is working on an assistant in Kiswahili, which has an estimated 100 million speakers in East Africa.

Telecommunications expert Jean-Marie Akepo questioned whether voice operation needed the platform of a dedicated mobile phone.

Existing technology “manages to satisfy people”, he said.

“With the voice message services offered by WhatsApp, for example, a large part of the problem has already been solved.”

Instead of a new phone, he recommended “software with local languages that could be installed on any smartphone”.

The Ivorian phone is being produced at the ICT and Biotechnology Village in Grand-Bassam, a free-trade zone located near the Ivorian capital.

It came about through close collaboration with the government. The company pays no taxes or customs duties and the assembly plant has benefited from a subsidy of more than two billion CFA francs.

In exchange, Cerco is to pay 3.5 percent of its income to the state and train around 1,200 young people each year.

The company says it has received 200,000 orders since launch on July 21.

Thanks to a partnership with French telecommunications giant Orange, the phone will be distributed in 200 shops across Ivory Coast.

Source: Voice of America

New York Governor Kathy Hochul declared a disaster emergency Friday in a bid to accelerate efforts to vaccinate residents against polio after the virus was detected in wastewater samples taken in four counties.

Hochul’s executive order followed the discovery of the virus last month in samples from Long Island’s Nassau County, bordering the New York City borough of Queens. Earlier this year the virus was found in samples from Rockland, Orange and Sullivan counties, all north of the city.

In July, the first confirmed case of polio in the United States in nearly a decade turned up in an adult in Rockland County, according to the state health department.

“On polio, we simply cannot roll the dice,” State Health Commissioner Mary Bassett said in a statement. “If you or your child are unvaccinated or not up to date with vaccinations, the risk of paralytic disease is real.”

Polio can cause irreversible paralysis in some cases, but it can be prevented by a vaccine first made available in 1955. While there is no known cure, three injections of the vaccine provide nearly 100% immunity.

People of all ages are under threat, though the virus primarily affects children age 3 and younger.

Officials urged inoculations for unvaccinated adults and children as young as 2 months, and they advised that vaccinated people receive a lifetime booster dose.

Hochul’s declaration authorizes paramedics, midwives and pharmacists to administer polio vaccinations, among other steps, to accelerate inoculation rates. The order also directs health care providers to update the state with data on immunizations.

The state of emergency will stay in effect until October 9. Health officials set a goal of getting 90% of residents vaccinated.

The state health department warned that people in New York City and Rockland, Orange, Sullivan and Nassau counties are at the highest risk.

Orange County has the lowest vaccination rate of the counties of concern with less than 59% being immunized, according to the state health department.

Source: Voice of America