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CARL AZUZ: Hi, I'm Carl Azuz.
Welcome to the show.
Today's down the middle coverage starts
with a controversial facet of the coronavirus pandemic.
Should American workers be required to be vaccinated?
In an effort to pressure more Americans
to get one of the country's three available COVID vaccines,
US President Joe Biden announced new rules last week.
Among them, concerns all businesses
that have 100 or more employees, they
have to require these workers either to get vaccinated
or to be tested for COVID every week.
This could apply to 100 million workers,
or two-thirds of the American workforce,
according to the President.
At hospitals or other medical care facilities that
get government health care funding,
roughly 17 million workers will have to be inoculated.
Federal government employees will
have to get the vaccine without the option of regular testing.
But the new mandate does not apply to members of Congress.
So representatives, senators, and the people
who work for them will not have to get a vaccine.
President Biden blamed politics and unvaccinated Americans
for spreading COVID-19 and threatening
to hinder the recovery of the American economy.
But critics point to CDC data that
shows more than 11,000 Americans have been hospitalized,
and more than 2,600 have died even though they
were already vaccinated.
Many Americans still have concerns about the health
effects of the vaccines.
And because they were developed last year,
any long-term effects they may have are unknown.
One of America's top infectious disease specialist
says many more vaccine mandates may
be necessary to get the coronavirus pandemic
under control.
But there are a lot of questions about whether people can get
exemptions to the mandate for medical reasons
or religious beliefs or if they've
recovered from the virus and have natural immunity.
The responses from employers have been mixed.
Some large companies, like Amazon and Walmart
support the mandates and hope they'll lower their health care
costs and reduce the number of sick days their employees
need to take.
But others are concerned about losing workers who refuse
to get the vaccines at a time when
many businesses are struggling with a shortage of workers
to begin with.
A number of lawsuits have been filed against companies
that required vaccines before the government mandate
was announced.
And at least 19 Republican governors
have spoken out against the Democratic president,
saying a government mandate will only increase the determination
of some people not to get vaccinated,
and that workers shouldn't lose their jobs over
a personal medical decision.
Again, this is just one example of one debate concerning
coronavirus in America.
We expect the subject to be in the news for months to come.
10 Second Trivia.
Which of these animals was the last to go extinct--
Saber-toothed tiger, woolly mammoth, megalodon,
or Eurasian cave lion?
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Scientists believe certain woolly mammoths survived
until 4,000 years ago, long after these other animals are
thought to have gone extinct.
Can scientists use genetic engineering to bring
back the woolly mammoth?
And should they?
This sounds like something out of "Jurassic Park,"
but scientists can't directly clone a woolly mammoth.
The DNA they've gotten from these animals remains
has deteriorated too much.
What they are hoping to do is use genetic engineering
to create a hybrid of an elephant and a mammoth
that would look just like the extinct animal.
A biosciences and genetics company has raised $15 million
to do this.
And it says it hopes to have calves walking
around in four to six years.
But there are still a lot of questions
about how this would happen.
For one thing, researchers say they'll
have to make 50 changes to an elephant's genetic code
so it's able to survive in the Arctic.
And even then, critics say this won't create a mammoth,
just to harrier, fatter elephant.
They're also concerned that the possibility of using elephant
mothers to carry a genetically engineered baby
could be unethical.
Supporters hope the project will create a lot of new interest
in genetic science.
It's just not known whether it'll work
or what the consequences would be.
Next, we're talking about coral.
Coral?
No, coral.
Specifically, coral reefs.
They cover less than 1% of the ocean floor.
But they're home to more than 25% of known marine life.
Pollution and mining have destroyed much of the coral
off the coast of Hong Kong.
But a company that makes clay tiles
is seeing some success in restoring coral.
Creating the tiles takes a lot of energy
and produces a lot of carbon dioxide.
The costs and challenges of getting the materials
may keep them from being a large scale solution.
But there are upsides.
- As diving destinations go, Hong Kong might not boast
the most spectacular views.
But for marine biologist Vriko Yu,
these murky waters offer more than initially meets the eye.
VRIKO YU: It's a lie if anybody tell
you corals in Hong Kong are pretty, because they're not.
But they'll always there.
In fact, we do have more coral species
than the entire Caribbean.
- Hong Kong's corals are persisting against the odds,
surviving centuries of land development,
coral mining and pollution.
But for more coral to grow, there needs to be stable
bedrock, something Hong Kong's degraded ocean
floor is lacking, Yu says.
Working with other scientists and architects
from the University of Hong Kong,
Yu develop technology to restore Hong Kong's
coral reefs using 3D printing.
VRIKO YU: We were thinking about what's the best material
or what kind of structure would best provide the foundation
for corals to grow.
- The team makes the hexagonal tiles out of clay, a material
non-toxic to ocean life.
While 3D printing allows him to mimic the complex surface
structure of corals that are already suited
to Hong Kong's environment.
VRIKO YU: The design of the reef tiles
is actually inspired by the brain coral, where they have
this valley of patterns that looks cool, but also effective
in attracting marine life.
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So we're now in Coral Beach.
This is our experiment site where we
deployed about 130 reef tiles.
We just went down there to see how the corals are performing.
What is surprisingly good is that after the typhoon season,
all of them survived.
- They installed the first tiles in 2020.
So far, four times more coral has survived on the clay tiles
than on traditionally used structures
like concrete blocks, says Yu.
But coral doesn't grow overnight.
Yu predicts it will take at least three
to five years for the reef to mature.
In the meantime, Yu and partnering Professor David
Baker have founded startup archiREEF to expand the project
beyond the University.
They're refining the printing technology
and studying coral behaviors to prepare
for their next installation, where
paying companies can adopt a reef tile
and follow its progress.
DAVID BAKER: We don't want to be a company that is simply
fabricating an object that people put in the ocean
and walk away from it.
We have to engage with our clients
across that whole spectrum from consulting
to installation and to monitoring and management.
- ArchiREEF isn't the only startup restoring coral.
Coral Vita grows coral fragments on a land-based farm
in the Caribbean, where the company says
it can develop faster than in the ocean
and replants them onto degraded reefs.
But Baker believes that archiREEF
can help regrow coral in areas where
it is entirely disappeared.
A situation which is becoming increasingly common.
DAVID BAKER: Creating that new hard bottom,
it can help overcome that problem and kind of reset
the clock on these coral communities.
- While the startup will need to overcome challenges before it
can implement its technology at scale, including lowering
the environmental footprint and cost of producing the tiles,
Yu says the demand is there, as people in Hong Kong
become increasingly conscious of their impact
on the Marine environment.
VRIKO YU: We live by the sea.
And everything that we do is closely tied to the ocean.
All the pollutants that we have in our daily life
will potentially end up in the ocean at some point.
Restoration is not only what the government should be doing,
or academics, or scientists.
It's really about everybody.
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CARL AZUZ: Fantastic fair food favorites for me-- corn
dogs, popcorn, and fried Oreos.
But on the healthier side, there are veggies.
And they're good for the people and the bears that eat them.
The giant veggies that farmers grow and compete
with at the Alaska State Fair are
later brought to the brown bears at a wildlife
conservation center.
For the animals, it's a chance to gorge
themselves and maybe even roll in hundreds
of pounds of vegetables.
Some can't bear to eat their veggies,
others grin and bear it, or just barely choke them down.
But if you've been berated before baring
to bear your greens, take some inspiration from the animals,
because they hibernate all of them.
D.C. International School.
thank you for watching from Washington D.C.
Our web producer picks the schools we mentioned
from youtube.com/cnn10.
No where else.
I'm Carl Azuz.
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