Nature News: Better biosurveillance could halt disease spread
Germany is still recovering from one of the world’s worst outbreaks of enterohaemorrhagic Escherichia coli, which as of 18 June had sickened more than 3,200 people and caused 39 deaths1. The unusually deadly bacteria moved undetected through the food supply from livestock to agriculture to the dinner table, and the response to the outbreak was branded slow and inefficient by physicians and scientists (see ‘Microbe outbreak panics Europe’).
Now a group of health professionals assembled by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, Georgia, has called for biosurveillance efforts in the United States and worldwide to be streamlined to help recognize and respond to threats quickly [...]
Read MoreCrack 03.09
March, 2009—Amy Keenan, 25, sat in her faded denim jacket and blue jeans as the cold March wind blew. Her fair skin was pockmarked — red spots surrounded her forehead and mouth. She picked at her face when she smoked crack cocaine sitting on the rooftops of the Van Dyke projects in Brooklyn. As she [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: Food Insecurity Looms in Parched Horn of Africa
ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia — A drought in the Horn of Africa, triggered by the same La Niña episode that caused massive flooding in Australia last year, is plunging millions of pastoralists closer to food insecurity.
Parts of Kenya, Ethiopia, Somalia and eastern Uganda are most affected. The U.N. World Food Programme (WFP) estimates that 8.4 million people are in need of food aid in the region, according to spokesman David Orr. Thousands of livestock have already died in Kenya and Ethiopia from animal diseases associated with the drought. The severity this year will depend on the rainy season between March and May. [...]
Read MoreNature News: A last push to eradicate polio
Funding gap persists as agencies and organizations attempt to wipe out the tenacious virus. Some 99% of wild poliovirus has been eradicated, but it clings on in a few places. The last endemic hot spots are the conflict-ridden front lines of Pakistan and Afghanistan, areas of India and Nigeria — and governments and charities are [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: Study: Human Exposure to BPA ‘Grossly Underestimated’
Americans are likely to be exposed at higher levels than previously thought to bisphenol A, a compound that mimics hormones important to human development and is found in more than 90 percent of people in the United States, according to new research. U.S. EPA says it is OK for humans to take in up to [...]
Read MoreEPA Developing Tool to Assist in Enviro Justice Initiative
July 30 — U.S. EPA is working on a coarse screening tool as part of its “environmental justice” initiative to help its employees spot pockets of people whose health has suffered disproportionally over the years. The Environmental Justice Strategic Enforcement Assessment Tool uses a complex combination of census data, a respiratory hazard index, poverty levels, [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: Dengue Re-emerges in U.S., Spurring Race for Vaccine
June 28 — For the first time in more than 65 years, dengue has returned the continental United States, according to an advisory the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention issued in late May. While a few cases were reported earlier, they were primarily in Americans who had caught the virus abroad or at the [...]
Read MoreGreenwire/NYTimes.com: High-Speed Rail Will Spur Growth in Hub Cities, Says Mayors Report
June 14 – Billions of dollars of new business and tens of thousands of jobs will flow to four hub cities — Los Angeles, Chicago, Orlando and Albany, N.Y. — where plans for major high-speed rail networks are located, according to the U.S. Conference of Mayors. Their report, released in Oklahoma City today, is the [...]
Read MoreScientists Weigh Use of Bacteria for Cleaner Fossil Fuel Production
May 18 — Much of the world’s oil reserves lies in giant tar sand stretches in places like Alberta and Venezuela. While the oil industry uses an energy-intensive and fairly dirty process to make steam to cook the oil out of the tar sands, underground bacteria simply eat the crude oil and break it down [...]
Read MoreClinton presses for funds to shore up U.S. climate policy leadership
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton defended her budget in front of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. She said that the United States needs to become a leader in climate change politics and economics [...]
Read MoreA Road Map to Deliver GM Crops to Third World Farmers
March 31 — In Burkina Faso, a school for the future regulators of Africa’s genetically modified (GM) crops is opening up next month. The school, called the African Biosafety Network of Expertise (ABNE), has been set up by the African Union and is funded by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. The operators are careful [...]
Read MoreClimate Change May Make Plants More Fragrant
A warming climate could lead to a more fragrant world, but it might disturb an intricate communication system used by plants, according to a review published recently in Trends in Plant Science. When Jarmo Holopainen grew white cabbages in a greenhouse in Finland, he found that over many years of sunlight and elevated levels of [...]
Read More