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"Human Health"
What priorities would you like the World Bank to focus on, to motivate fair and sustainable recovery, alleviate poverty and foster civil society and democracy?
The investigative news magazine Vanguard reports from Indonesia on the tobacco industry’s massive, coordinated effort to get as many young people across the developing world, hooked on deadly cigarettes, in order to profit from their addiction. New York mayor Michael Bloomberg says 1 billion people will be killed by smoking this century, unless something is done to curb big tobacco’s efforts to profit from destroying the health of its customers.
Generative economics is rooted in a simple insight: that economic activities can have corrosive or generative impacts on future available resources. The dynamics of an economic environment can add another layer of corrosive or generative potential to the activities in question. Analysis can be subtle, however, because generative qualities are often not the focus of conventional thinking or play out over the long term.
The rupture of a pipeline in Montana has caused at least several tens of thousands of barrels of oil to spill into the pristine Yellowstone River, raising concerns about the tar sands pipeline planned to pass through the most important fossil aquifer in North America. The spill is precisely the kind of irreversible and unnecessary [...]
The Indus River has swollen to 18 miles across at some places, with observers saying it looks like an inland sea more than a river, in record flooding that is displacing millions across Pakistan. The worst flooding in 80 years, the disaster has taken at least 1,600 lives and is affecting at least 20 million people directly. The total number of displaced persons is unknown. With the UN appealing for emergency funds to aid the displaced, homeless and starving, another flood surge is expected.
Scientists in Mississippi say they have discovered microscopic globules of hydrocarbons, i.e. petroleum, inside the outer shells of blue crab living along the Gulf coast. This discovery appears to show that oil has now entered the food chain. This process cannot be reversed, though measures may be taken to limit the spread of the oil deeper into the local and regional ecosystem.
Clean, safe drinking water is scarce for over 3 billion people across the world. At least 1 billion literally never have access to clean, safe drinking water, putting them at constant risk of severe thirst-related ill health effects, infectious diseases or toxic contamination. Over 100 countries face either sporadic or chronic crisis-level problems [...]
Geneticist and biotech pioneer Craig Venter unveils the process of experimentation and research that allowed his team to create the “first synthetic cell”. The video includes not only information about how the genetic code was created first on a computer and includes “watermarks” such as the name of the new species’ official website, but also about how the team studied ethical issues relating to the project of creating synthetic life. The project took 15 years and was aimed at creating “error-free genetic code”.
Water resource depletion leads not only to chronic scarcity of clean, safe drinking water for increasing numbers of people, but means arable land is harder to cultivate and to maintain. Persistent drought and accelerated desertification (the expansion of deserts into the farmed and/or built environment) are results of water resource depletion.
But the most [...]
Life expectancy in the United States is 78.11 years, 50th in the world, behind the Wallis and Futuna Islands and just ahead of Guadeloupe. Canada is 8th, at 81.23 years; France is 9th, at 80.98; Sweden is 10th, at 80.86. Despite Canada’s “socialized” healthcare system, the average Canadian can expect to live more than three years longer than the average American.
One of the great complaints heard from groups opposing comprehensive health insurance reform, especially from quarters where the chief concern is to prevent a drop in private profit related to healthcare services, is that reform will strip away incentives to devote funding to medical research, in pathologies, treatments and technology. This is a point of philosophical dispute, but to make sure we enact reforms that will not curb research incentives, we should institute a new medical research tax credit.
DNA is an amazingly efficient memory bank for the design and scheduling of biological development. Cell DNA have their own replication systems, but human scientists who want to interfere with the content of the genome have been working to find ways to achieve artificial replication and synthesis of disparate properties, and now they may have achieved a landmark breakthrough.
Researchers have stumbled upon a surprise possible treatment for swelling of nerves in the spinal cord. It turns out that FD&C blue dye No. 1 bears certain key similarities to a compound used to treat nerve inflammation. Since there is no active immediate treatment for spinal cord injuries, and secondary inflammation often leads to long-term damage, this treatment holds great promise. The one side-effect observed: the rats’ skin turned blue.
The influenza A/H1N1 virus, popularly known as “swine flu” was officially declared a pandemic in June. Shortly after the pandemic declaration, it was confirmed that H1N1 was confirmed in human patients in 74 countries. In the 5 weeks since then, it has spread rapidly and is now confirmed to have caused human infection in 140 countries.
What methods and strategies can be developed for speeding MRSA-effective Manuka honey to production and distribution for clinical treatment? What similar discoveries hold promise for treating multi-resistant bacteria?
The New Scientist magazine is reporting on an intriguing and brazen new Pentagon program that would create living “OrthopterNets”, communication networks made of insects implanted with special technologies to modulate their wingbeats. Crickets, cicadas and katydids, all use their wings to generate sounds, the patterns of which communicate information to others of their kind. The Pentagon wants to use this natural communications network to prompt the insects to emit specific sounds in the presence of specific chemicals.
From the moment I took office as President, the central challenge we have confronted as a nation has been the need to lift ourselves out of the worst recession since World War II. In recent months, we have taken a series of extraordinary steps, not just to repair the immediate damage to our economy, but to build a new foundation for lasting and sustained growth. We are creating new jobs. We are unfreezing our credit markets. And we are stemming the loss of homes and the decline of home values.
The Urban Institute found that 22,000 people died in 2006, in the United States, specifically from lack of health insurance. Other projections, which count the accumulation of long-term pathologies, compounded ill health or medical “error” involving staff calculations about the wisdom of providing the most costly care to those who can’t pay, run into the hundreds of thousands.
It’s worth asking: how can we achieve products that are produced, packaged, distributed and brought to market, in such a way that they could achieve near 100% organic status? Are we counting the non-organic-quality industrial processes involved in burning fuel and creating plastics? Can we do without such processes? Would corn-based biodegradable plastics be a significant first step?
NOW, with David Brancaccio, travels to the Indian Himalaya, to examine the problem of persistent accelerating ice melt which is speeding the erosion of glaciers that feed the Ganges River, which in turn provides water for hundreds of millions of people and sustains a precarious but massive food economy.
The Hot Spring connects people to brainstorm, solve problems, and build a more just, more sustainable future.
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