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The World Health Organization Friday marked World Health Day with the warning that depression is the most common cause of ill health, affecting some 300 million people worldwide. The U.N. agency is urging people to seek treatment for depression, which can lead to disability and even death.

WHO says conflict, wars and natural disasters are major risk factors for depression.  

WHO estimates one in five people affected by these events suffers from depression or anxiety. Given the magnitude of the problem, it says mental health and psychosocial assistance should be a part of all humanitarian assistance.  

Apart from these situations, WHO reports depression is the leading cause of disability. The director of WHO’s department of Mental Health and Substance Abuse, Shekhar Saxena, says depression is behind a global epidemic of death by suicide.

“All over the world, 800,000 people die because of suicide every year and this converts into a death every 40 seconds,” said Saxena. “So, while we are dealing with the number of deaths, which are of course very unfortunate in conflicts and wars, we also need to remember that there are silent epidemics going on in the world, which are also killing a very large number of people without obvious headlines and banners.”  

Saxena tells VOA there is no significant difference in the prevalence of depression between developed and developing countries. He notes the majority of people with depression lives in low- and middle-income countries.

“Depression is more common amongst the women – 5.1 percent versus 3.6 percent amongst men,” said Saxena. “Other risk factors include poverty, discrimination, and all adverse life situations – either chronic or acute, especially amongst young people.”  

Saxena says treatment usually involves psychotherapy, antidepressant medication or a combination of both. He says it is not necessary to have a specialist treat depression. He says the so-called talking cure administered by general doctors, nurses, or health care workers can be just as effective.
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We have radars to track flying objects, but a tiny fly may be even better at tracking and grabbing fast moving prey. Scientists at the University of Cambridge learned that not only the number of lenses in the fly’s eye, but also their variety, help it focus on fast moving objects. VOA’s George Putic reports.
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The U.S. Air Force is open to buying rides on previously flown SpaceX rockets to put military satellites into orbit, a move expected to cut launch costs for the Pentagon, the head of the Air Force Space Command said on Thursday.

The idea of flying on recycled rockets became a reality a week ago when privately owned Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, launched a communications satellite on a Falcon 9 booster that previously put a cargo ship into orbit for NASA.

That Falcon main stage had been recovered from a successful return landing on an ocean platform shortly after its maiden flight last April, then was relaunched and salvaged again last Thursday, marking a spaceflight first.

“I would be comfortable if we were to fly on a reused booster,” General John “Jay” Raymond told reporters at the U.S. Space Symposium in Colorado Springs. “They’ve proven they can do it. … It’s going to get us to lower cost.”

SpaceX has so far won three launch contracts to fly military and national security satellites – business previously awarded exclusively to United Launch Alliance, a partnership of Lockheed Martin and Boeing.

All those flights will take place on new Falcon 9 rockets.

SpaceX, owned and operated by technology entrepreneur Elon Musk, has a backlog of more than 70 missions worth more than $10 billion.

After last week’s landmark launch, Musk said the company planned to fly about 20 more rockets this year, including the debut blastoff of its new heavy-lift vehicle. Up to six of those missions, including the Falcon Heavy, will use previously flown boosters, he said.

Speaking at the symposium on Wednesday, SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said the cost of refurbishing and reflying the Falcon 9 first stage was “substantially less than half” the cost of manufacturing a new booster – the most expensive part of the rocket. SpaceX’s website lists the cost of a basic Falcon 9 launch at $62 million.

SpaceX expects to reduce costs even further.

The company’s next goal is to launch and return a rocket and relaunch it within 24 hours. “That’s when we’ll really feel like we’ve got reusability right,” Shotwell said.

Raymond said the Air Force would need to certify that a used booster could safely deliver its satellites into orbit.

“I’m pretty comfortable we’ll get comfortable with doing it,” Raymond said. “This is just beginning.”
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Don’t look to the Kentucky Coal Museum to bring coal back.

The museum is installing solar panels on its roof, part of a project aimed at lowering the energy costs of one of the city’s largest electric customers. It’s also a symbol of the state’s efforts to move away from coal as its primary energy source as more coal-fired power plants are replaced by natural gas. The state legislature recently lifted its decades-old ban on nuclear power.

“It’s a little ironic or coincidental that you are putting solar green energy on a coal museum,” said Roger Noe, a former state representative who sponsored the legislation that created the coal museum. “Coal comes from nature, the sunrays come from nature, so it all works out to be a positive thing.”

The museum is in Benham, once a coal camp town whose population peaked at about 3,000, according to Mayor Wanda Humphrey, 85.  Today, it has about 500 people.

The town’s second building was a company commissary known as the “big store,” where Humphrey would visit every day after school to order an RC Cola and a bag of peanuts, charged to her father’s account. Today, that building houses the Kentucky Coal Museum, which opened in 1994 with the help of some state funding. The museum houses relics from the state’s coal mining past, including some items from the personal collection of “Coal Miner’s Daughter” country singer Loretta Lynn.

It’s also the best place in town to get the most direct sunlight, which made it an ideal location for solar panels.

“The people here are sort of in awe of this solar thing,” Humphrey said.

The Southeast Community and Technical College, which owns the museum, expects the solar panels to save between $8,000 and $10,000 a year on energy costs, according to spokesman Brandon Robinson.
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