We all like to read those stories about how even poor countries, like Ghana, have the noble ambition to explore the final frontier. In this article for SciDev, some are suggesting maybe the space race in low- and middle-income should wait until they’ve dealt with poverty.
Vietnam’s first remote sensing satellite blasted into orbit ESA-S. Corvaja, 2013 [HONG KONG] Countries belonging to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are investing huge sums of money in building prestigious space programmes. But critics have questioned the practicality of these efforts and asked whether they divert funding from key areas such as health and education.
Read more at: www.scidev.net
Humanity’s tendency to soil its nest reaches a new threshold.
For the first time in human history, the concentration of climate-warming carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has passed the milestone level of 400 parts per million (ppm). The last time so much greenhouse gas was in the air was several million years ago, when the Arctic was ice-free, savannah spread across the Sahara desert and sea level was up to 40 metres higher than today.
Read more at: www.guardian.co.uk
Thanks to SciDev for pointing out this fascinating tool, the IR mapper for tracking drug resistance in malaria parasites worldwide:
An online mapping system to track insecticide resistance in malaria-causing mosquitoes around the world has been launched. The free interactive website identifies places in more than 50 malaria-endemic countries where mosquitoes have become resistant to the insecticides used in bed nets and indoor sprays.
I didn’t know there was a global scientific agenda, but apparently there is and some think it’s dominated (like most things) by Western interests:
“In Africa, we sometimes believe that global curiosity-driven research — studies driven by researchers’ inquisitiveness rather than political or strategic directives — is at “odds with the continent’s development priorities.”
Scientific trend analyses can help identify where science and development priorities join Analysis of scientific trends can help policymakers target limited resources where science and development collide, argues Linda Nordling. Last month, Thomson Reuters released a report identifying 100 ‘front lines’ in research.
Read more at: www.scidev.net
Infectious disease expert Michael Osterholm, writing in the NY Times, says that the steady drumbeat of news stories about bird flu or other new viral strains emerging here and there threatens to create a new kind of global malaise – ‘contagion exhaustion,’ lack of interest in the threat of pandemic flu. I wrote about this problem yesterday, in my post The never-ending threat of pandemic flu.
Osterholm says we must remain ever-vigilant, which would be ideal. But it won’t happen. Our attention will drift, as it always does. So rather than keep trying to scare people into remaining on ‘orange alert’ for pandemics perhaps we should raise awareness of the potentially scarier threat represented by underfunding basic public health systems (here and worldwide). Our best bet against any and all emerging new diseases is not going to be to respond with a new vaccine so much as it is in the basic, pre-emptive kind of work — disease monitoring, food safety, prevention — that most of us tend to take for granted.
MINNEAPOLIS THERE has been a flurry of recent attention over two novel infectious agents: the first, a strain of avian influenza virus (H7N9) in China that is causing severe respiratory disease and other serious health complications in people; the second, a coronavirus, first reported last year in the Middle East, that has brought a crop of new infections.
Read more at: www.nytimes.com
An update on scientists testing the idea of using bacteria to infect mosquitoes infected with malaria to undermine spread of the parasite.
Infecting mosquitoes with a specific type of bacteria makes the insects resistant to malaria. Now scientists have figured out how to get the mosquitoes to pass the infections on to their offspring. If it can done reliably, it might help interrupt transmission of malaria to humans.
Read more at: www.npr.org
Nice piece from the NYTimes: “The name Maurice Hilleman may not ring a bell. But today 95 percent of American children receive the M.M.R. — the vaccine for measles, mumps and rubella that Dr. Hilleman invented, starting with the mumps strain he collected that night from his daughter. It was by no means his only contribution. At Dr. Hilleman’s death in 2005, other researchers credited him with having saved more lives than any other scientist in the 20th century.”
We live in an epidemiological bubble and are for the most part blissfully unaware of it. Diseases that were routine hazards of childhood for many Americans living today now seem like ancient history. And while every mother could once identify measles in a heartbeat, now even the best hospitals have to call in their eldest staff members to ask: “Is this what we think it is?”
Read more at: www.nytimes.com
Kinda cool: Blood samples are loaded into micro-channels on a modified, semi-transparent DVD disc and scanned by a DVD reader, which has been adapted to detect light transmitted through the disc. The image can then be visualised on a computer screen.
DVD players can become portable, cheap diagnostic tools for developing countries for testing HIV R Dourmashkin/Wellcome Images Researchers have turned conventional DVDs into portable and cheap diagnostic tools for developing countries, and are now adapting their prototype into a workable medical device.
Read more at: www.scidev.net
