A Salvadoran trans woman died in ICE custody on June 1, the first day of Pride Month.
Johana Medina was a migrant from El Salvador. She was seeking asylum in the U.S.
Known to her friends as Joa, Johana passed away Saturday night from complications due to HIV/AIDS. Her death was announced on the Diversidad Sin Fronteras Facebook page on Sunday.
In a statement, Casa Migrante trans leader Grecia, who was close with Johana, said that ICE agents ignored Johana’s pleas for help as her illness became worse while in custody.
The Treasury Department said in a statement that the U.S. will no longer allow the group educational and cultural trips known as “people to people” travel to the island. Those trips have been used by thousands of American citizens to visit the island even before the U.S. restored full diplomatic relations with the communist government in December 2014.
Treasury said it would also deny permission for private and corporate aircraft and boats. However, commercial airline flights appear to be unaffected and travel for university groups, academic research, journalism and professional meetings will continue to be allowed.
“It kills the people-to-people category, which is the most common way for the average American to travel to Cuba,” said Collin Laverty, head of Cuba Educational Travel, one of the largest Cuba travel companies in the U.S.
[video]
How Doctors Can Stop Stigmatizing — And Start Helping — Kids With Obesity
Kids with obesity face a host of health problems related to their weight, like high blood pressure, diabetes and joint problems.
Research points to another way heavier children and teens are at risk: their own doctors’ bias. This prejudice has real health consequences for kids, making families less likely to show up for appointments or get recommended vaccines.
I am a family physician at a community health center in Washington, D.C., and many of my young patients have obesity. It’s no surprise. Obesity is the most common chronic disease that affects children and teens in the U.S. One-third of American kids are overweight or obese.
But I often feel totally unprepared to talk about it in a way that puts kids at ease. We have to cram in a physical exam, shots and parent questions into a 15-minute appointment, and a discussion about a healthy lifestyle sometimes feels like an afterthought.
The next generation of lunar explorers – the Artemis generation – will establish a sustained presence on the Moon, making revolutionary discoveries, prospecting for resources and proving technologies key to future deep space exploration. To support these ambitions, our navigation engineers are developing an architecture that will provide accurate, robust location services all the way out to lunar orbit.
How? We’re teaming up with the U.S. Air Force to extend the use of GPS in space by developing advanced space receivers capable of tracking weak GPS signals far out in space.
Spacecraft near Earth have long relied on GPS signals for navigation data, just as users on the ground might use their phones to maneuver through a highway system. Below approximately 1,860 miles, spacecraft in low-Earth orbit can rely on GPS for near-instantaneous location data. This is an enormous benefit to these missions, allowing many satellites the autonomy to react and respond to unforeseen events without much hands-on oversight.
Beyond this altitude, navigation becomes more challenging. To reliably calculate their position, spacecraft must use signals from the global navigation satellite system (GNSS), the collection of international GPS-like satellite constellations. The region of space that can be serviced by these satellites is called the Space Service Volume, which extends from 1,860 miles to about 22,000 miles, or geosynchronous orbit.
In this area of service, missions don’t rely on GNSS signals in the same way one would on Earth or in low-Earth orbit. They orbit too high to “see” enough signals from GNSS satellites on their side of the globe, so they must rely on signals from GNSS satellite signals spilling over to the opposite side of the globe. This is because the Earth blocks the main signals of these satellites, so the spacecraft must “listen” for the fainter signals that extend out from the sides of their antennas, known as “side-lobes.”
Though 22,000 miles is considered the end of the Space Service Volume, that hasn’t stopped our engineers from reaching higher. In fact, our simulations prove that GNSS signals could even be used for reliable navigation in lunar orbit, far outside the Space Service Volume, over 200,000 miles from Earth. We’re even planning to use GNSS signals in the navigation architecture for the Gateway, an outpost in orbit around the Moon that will enable sustained lunar surface exploration.
It’s amazing that the same systems you might use to navigate the highways are putting us on the path forward to the Moon!
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
