SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 8, 2015 HEALTH & SCIENCE WHO states end of Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone

FREETOWN: The UN health agency said yes- The announcement represents a hugely since the last known case tested negative for a tion centered around the iconic cotton tree in dreds of new cases a week, with social order terday Ebola-ravaged Sierra Leone had beaten significant milestone in UN-backed efforts to second time. the downtown area. on the brink of collapse. Koroma drew criticism an 18-month outbreak that killed almost 4,000 wipe out Ebola, leaving neighboring Guinea as After the WHO delivered its formal declara- from the international community for a num- of its people and plunged the economy into the only country still registering cases. With ‘No elaborate celebration’ tion President Ernest Bai Koroma was expect- ber of lock-downs confining millions to their severe recession. “Today, November 7, 2015, just a handful of cases a week arising in that After some false starts, Sierra Leone’s ed to voice his gratitude to aid agencies, homes-measures that which were deemed the World Health Organization declares the country in recent months, health campaigners countdown finally began on September 25, healthcare professionals and other key work- punitive and self-defeating. end of the Ebola outbreak in Sierra Leone,” are hopeful the battle with history’s worst out- three weeks after the WHO had declared ers gathered at the ceremony. “Thank God it is While the primary cost of the outbreak has Anders Nordstrom, the UN agency’s country break is almost won. neighboring Liberia Ebola-free following 4,800 all over and we now live in peace,” said Mamie been in human life, the crisis has also wiped representative told a ceremony in the capital Save the Children has sounded the alarm deaths there. Guinea, where around 2,500 Kabia, 25, a member of one of the expert out development gains in Sierra Leone, which Freetown, provoking prolonged cheering from however over the long-term impact on 1.8 mil- died, still has a handful of cases and Sierra teams burying highly infectious bodies around was devastated by 11 years of civil war ending the gathered dignitaries. lion children in Sierra Leone who missed nine Leone has announced heightened security the clock at the height of the crisis. The epi- in 2002. The World Bank estimates that Sierra The former British colony recorded around months of school, pointing to a “significant and health screening at their shared border. demic was first reported in Sierra Leone 18 Leone will lose at least $1.4 billion in forgone half of the cases in an epidemic that has infect- spike in adolescent pregnancies”. Palo Conteh, the head of Sierra Leone’s Ebola months ago, when a woman tested positive economic growth in 2015 as a result, leading ed 28,600 people across the three hardest-hit The crisis took a devastating toll on primary response, had indicated that there were no after contracting the virus at the funeral of a to an “unprecedented” GDP contraction of West African nations and claimed 11,300 lives health services and immunization programs, plans for “an elaborate celebration” of the healer who had been treating Ebola patients more than 20 percent. Across the country, since December 2013. Experts agree that the with the deaths of 221 medical staff-five per- country’s Ebola-free status. on the Guinea border. Ebola workers recounted their own personal real death toll is almost certainly significantly cent of frontline doctors and seven percent of But a large crowd, numbering in the thou- horror stories. “I hated the smell of chlorine. higher than the official data, which has been nurses and midwives. A country is considered sands according to witnesses, took to the ‘I died several times’ They say you only die once, but I died several skewed by the under-reporting of deaths in free of human-to-human transmission once streets late Friday to light candles, wave ban- At the peak of the outbreak in 2014, Sierra times. But it is good it is now over,” ambulance many probable Ebola cases. two 21-day incubation periods have passed ners, sing and dance in an impromptu celebra- Leone and its neighbors were reporting hun- driver Ferenka Koroma said. — AFP Dakotaraptor ruled Hell Creek Formation as lethal predator Slashing claw would make mincemeat of prey

SIOUX FALLS: Tyrannosaurus rex may have been known as the big guy around the Hell Creek Formation 66 million years ago, but a newly discovered species of raptor would have roamed nearby as one of the region’s most lethal predators. Dakotaraptor stood 6 feet tall at the hips yet moved like a springy, agile sprinter, reaching 30 to 40 mph and rival- ing today’s ostrich. But potential prey caught admiring the 17-foot-long crea- ture’s grace stood little chance, as the strong-muscled winged Dromaeosaur boasted a vicious 91/2-inch-long killing claw that could make mincemeat out of any herbivore caught in its path, said Robert DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History. “It had one of the strongest killing strokes in that slash- ing claw of any raptor known,” DePalma said. DePalma and his research team including University of Kansas paleontol- MOSCOW: Inna Nosikova exits a mock-up spaceship after an eight-day ogists announced the new species in a imitation flight to the moon. — AP study published Oct 30 by the University of Kansas Paleontological Institute. Dakotaraptor helps fill a gap in body size Russian women complete test distribution between the small bird-like Maniraptora creatures and the giant T rex on space flight confinement found in Hell Creek, which spans parts of northwestern South Dakota, southwest- This undated image provided by Robert DePalma, shows a sketch drawn by DePalma, curator of verte- MOSCOW: After emerging from an would be able to survive without males ern North Dakota, eastern Montana and brate paleontology at the Palm Beach Museum of Natural History, which depicts the newly-discovered eight-day space simulation on Friday, or cosmetics for a week. The women eastern Wyoming. The newly discovered species of raptor called Dakotaraptor. — AP photos the all-female Russian crew said they assured reporters it was possible. species roamed the earth alongside T had missed their loved ones in the Asked whether she missed the com- rex, the three-horned Triceratops and the about 60 million years earlier than experiment more than they missed the forts of regular life, such as showering duck-billed Edmontosaurus. Dakotaraptor, was an ambush predator comforts of regular life. The six-woman and sweets, while in confinement, with thicker bones and leg proportions crew climbed into a grounded space crewmember Anna Kussmaul told ‘Turkey from hell’ that limited its speed, making it the capsule last week to imitate a lunar reporters she was more concerned “Dakotaraptor coexisted with all of “beefly bulldog of raptors,” DePalma said. flight and test the effects of confine- about her family. “Not knowing what our favorites from our childhoods,” Dakotaraptor did not fly, which makes ment and stress that come with space was going on in their lives for eight DePalma said. “We had no idea that such the presence of quill knobs on its arms so travel. days bothered me a lot more than not a cool and lethal creature existed right interesting to DePalma and other dinosaur While Russia’s space medicine center having shampoo, or chocolate,” alongside them. And it was in the experts. The bumps serve as reinforce- in Moscow has conducted similar Kussmaul said. The women were not ground the whole time. It’s amazing.” ment points for long wing feathers, mark- experiments in the past, including one allowed to take their cellphones with Thomas Holtz Jr, a senior vertebrate pale- ing the first concrete evidence that large several years ago in which six males them and communicated exclusively ontology lecturer at the University of raptors had wings. “It really would have were locked up for 500 days to model a with the medicine center’s command Maryland, said most of the raptor bones made this like a turkey from hell,” he said. flight to Mars, this is the first time the crew which monitored all of their activi- and teeth found in Hell Creek have been The feathers were clearly not just for show, crew was all female. At least one of the ties and conversations. “To those who from small-form creatures. and they could have been used by the women from the crew hopes to said we’d end up ripping each other’s “That is what is important about this dinosaur to intimidate other predators, become a cosmonaut in the future. hair out: We didn’t even come close to find,” Holtz said. “In fact, it was rather big- shield its young or as a tactical method to “Of course I want to go into space,” that,” Daria Komissarova told the ger than most of us expected, almost the corral prey. They might also indicate that said Inna Novinova. “This was an invalu- dozens of journalists that greeted the size of the largest known the species evolved from a lineage that able experience both in methods and women as they exited the space cap- Dromaeosaurid, the much earlier once could fly or was evolving toward isolation,” that come with space flight, sule installed at the Institute of Utahraptor.” Dakotaraptor stands about flight, DePalma said. Dakotaraptor’s leg WEST BALM BEACH: In this Oct 29, 2015 photo provided by Robert she said. Speculation swirled in the Biomedical Problems, part of the as tall as Utahraptor, a species discovered bones, wing portions, tail vertebrae, teeth DePalma, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Palm Beach Russian media about whether they Russian Academy of Sciences. — AP in the 1990s in east-central Utah, but the and wishbone were unearthed in 2005 raptors have completely different builds. from a remote area of badlands in South Museum of Natural History, examines the fierce foot claw of a newly The stockier Utahraptor, which lived Dakota’s Harding County. — AP discovered species of raptor called Dakotaraptor.