Something To Think About …

Filosofa's Word

Since becoming largely disabled due to a heart condition in early September, one of the things I have been able to do is spend more time reading!  Way back in the day, I used to read 3-4 books of an average 450 pages each, every week.  But then … I began blogging, Donald Trump came on the scene, the clowns took over the country, and my days and nights were suddenly filled with trolling the news and writing 2-3 blog posts every day.  Reading for pleasure took a backseat and I was lucky to read 100 pages a week.  But now, being unable to leave my chair for more than a few minutes at a time, I am once again a voracious reader and have read, on average, 6-7 books every week.

One of the topics that is near and dear to my heart is September 11, 2001.  When I…

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Britain Tells Its Big Game Hunters to Piss Off! Britons who Kill Endangered Animals abroad for Fun will not be able to bring their hunting trophies home! — Mother Jones — Barbara Crane Navarro

This story was originally published by the Guardian and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration. Britons who kill endangered animals abroad for fun will not be able to bring their hunting trophies home, the government has announced. The proposed law will prevent big game hunters from bringing home body parts of 7,000 species including lions,… Britain […]

Britain Tells Its Big Game Hunters to Piss Off! Britons who Kill Endangered Animals abroad for Fun will not be able to bring their hunting trophies home! — Mother Jones — Barbara Crane Navarro

The Bonfire of the (Advent) Vanities — Kassandra Komplex — Tiny Life — Barbara Crane Navarro

In case you’re a working adult, how often, come December 1, do you feel as if there was just too much time in your hands ahead of the Christmas holidays? That there are just too many unbooked slots in your Outlook calendar, that the evenings are just so empty and bare? That maybe a special […] […] […]

The Bonfire of the (Advent) Vanities — Kassandra Komplex — Tiny Life — Barbara Crane Navarro

Shamanic adventures – « Amazon Rainforest Magic The adventures of Meromi, a Yanomami girl »  — Barbara Crane Navarro

illustration from « Amazon Rainforest Magic – The adventures of Meromi, a Yanomami girl » « This second volume of the Amazon Rainforest Magic series is a page-turner and as charming and delightful as the author’s first. The story line continues the thread from the previous book and the characters seem like old friends.  Meromi, a Yanomami girl now 9 […]

Shamanic adventures – « Amazon Rainforest Magic The adventures of Meromi, a Yanomami girl »  — Barbara Crane Navarro

Researchers develop models to predict epidemics of yellow fever, other mosquito-borne diseases

Yellow fever was the first human disease to have a licensed vaccine and has long been considered important to an understanding of how epidemics happen and should be combated. It was introduced to the Americas in the seventeenth century, and high death rates have resulted from successive outbreaks since then. Epidemics of yellow fever were associated with the slave trade, the US gold rush and settlement of the Old West, the Haitian Revolution, and construction of the Panama Canal, to cite only a few examples.

Centuries after the disease was first reported in the Americas, an international team of researchers will embark on a groundbreaking study to develop models that predict epidemics of yellow fever and other diseases caused by mosquito-borne arboviruses such as dengue, zika, and chikungunya.

Source: Researchers develop models to predict epidemics of yellow fever, other mosquito-borne diseases

Deforestation, forest conversion and palm oil | EurekAlert! (“deforestation and afforestation had significant correlations to disease outbreaks”)

Confirming past hypotheses, they found that both deforestation and afforestation had significant correlations to disease outbreaks. They found a strong association between deforestation and epidemics (such as malaria and Ebola) in tropical countries like Brazil, Peru, Bolivia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Cameroon, Indonesia, Myanmar and Malaysia. In contrast, temperate regions like the USA, China and Europe showed clear links between afforestation activities and vector-borne diseases like Lyme disease.

Their approach did not distinguish between different types of reforestation activities, but they did find a significant increase in disease outbreaks in countries with expanding palm oil plantations. This was especially striking in regions of China and Thailand, where there was relatively little deforestation. These areas appeared particularly susceptible to mosquito-borne diseases like dengue, zika and yellow fever.

Source: Deforestation, forest conversion and palm oil | EurekAlert!

Amazon deforestation drives malaria transmission, and malaria burden reduces forest clearing | PNAS

Our work provides clear large-scale evidence that deforestation increases malaria, by using econometric techniques that approximate the gold standard of randomized controlled trials with observational data where controlled experiments are impossible. The effects of deforestation on malaria are largest in the early stages of deforestation in the interior of the Amazon as forest edge habitat increases, promoting mosquito vector breeding habitat, survival, and human biting rate (5615), but the effects attenuate as forest loss progresses, forest edge area declines, and human settlements become larger and further removed from forest (1021). The key implication is that forest clearing has a direct impact on human health, in addition to the loss of other ecosystem services such as species diversity, water quality, and carbon storage, that is quantifiable and predictable at regional and decadal scales. Source: Amazon deforestation drives malaria transmission, and malaria burden reduces forest clearing | PNAS