Category Archives: environment

Tick saliva discovery could be key to treating blood and immune disorders – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

The discovery of how the proteins in a tick’s saliva stop a human’s immune system from running amok could be the answer to treating life-threatening blood disorders, researchers say.

Source: Tick saliva discovery could be key to treating blood and immune disorders – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

New Finnish Forestry Act could mean the end of Sami reindeer herding – Intercontinental Cry

Sámi Culture Under Threat There is an urgent need to ensure that Metsähallitus and others are prevented from undermining present or future opportunities for the Sámi to practice and foster their culture. The new Act needs to include clauses that provide a protective zone and mechanisms for the Sámi to safeguard their cultural practices. These are missing from the existing legal proposal leaving both Indigenous Sámi leaders and Arctic scientists concerned about the proposed new reforms. “Sámi reindeer herding and the Sámi way of life are in danger of disappearing if the new Forestry Act legislation passes in the Finnish Parliament. In this case we will have few opportunities to influence the decision making over our lands. Rather, our territories will be controlled by market economy values,” says Jouni Lukkari, President of the Finnish Section of the Sámi Council.

Source: New Finnish Forestry Act could mean the end of Sami reindeer herding – Intercontinental Cry

Curcumin may help fight drug-resistant tuberculosis | Vaccine News

Asians have long used turmeric to treat a variety of health conditions. Turmeric also has antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and potentially anticancer properties. The health investigators discovered that provoking macrophages, which are human immune cells, can fight off experimentally infected cells within cultures. The infected cells have Mycobacterium TB, which causes TB bacteria to grow and spread through humans. Curcumin is able to stimulate these macrophages to fight the disease. This process was able to activate a cellular molecule, nuclear factor-kappa B. Curcumin can modulate the immune system against Mycobacterium TB, which suggests that it could be used as a new TB treatment that wouldn’t cause as much drug-resistance as traditional methods. “Our study has provided basic evidence that curcumin protects against Mycobacterium tuberculosis infection in human cells,” Dr. Xiyuan Bai, lead author of the study that appears in Respirology, said. “The protective role of curcumin to fight drug-resistant tuberculosis still needs confirmation, but if validated, curcumin may become a novel treatment to modulate the host immune response to overcome drug-resistant tuberculosis.”

Source: Curcumin may help fight drug-resistant tuberculosis | Vaccine News

Water crisis in Marathwada worsens as 7 dams dry up – Times of India

{A shift of 5% of total water for agriculture in India can mean famine conditions and will pull down India’s resources significantly – do not know at present how drop in this state will affect overall needs}

A top bureaucrat said, “Last year, only one dam had reached zero level. This time, there are seven of them, so we are forced to lift water from the dead stock, which will not last long.” Marathwada has 11 big dams in all. The Jaikwadi one is the largest, with an irrigation potential of 2.37 lakh hectares and storage capacity of 2,171 million cubic litres. The other dams at zero level are Majalgaon, Manjara, Lower Terna, Manar, Siddheshwar and Sina-Kolegaon.

Source: Water crisis in Marathwada worsens as 7 dams dry up – Times of India

Puerto Rico Braces for Its Own Zika Epidemic – The New York Times

A quarter of the island’s 3.5 million people will probably get the Zika virus within a year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and eventually 80 percent or more may be infected. “I’m very concerned,” Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, the C.D.C. director, said in an interview after a recent three-day visit to Puerto Rico. “There could be thousands of infections of pregnant women this year.” The epidemic is unfolding in one of the country’s most popular vacation destinations, where planes and cruise ships disembark thousands of tourists daily. Anyone could carry the virus back home, seeding a mosquito-borne outbreak or transmitting it sexually. Health officials here have begun intensive efforts to stop the virus, which has been linked to abnormally small heads and brain damage in babies born to infected mothers, and to paralysis in adults.

Source: Puerto Rico Braces for Its Own Zika Epidemic – The New York Times

Avian Flu Diary: FDA On Proposed Oxitec Mosquito Trials In The Florida Keys – Que  this is the end, my friends?

{Mosquitoes are not pests! They are one of nature’s vectors for passing on diseases whose purposes are to rebalance unbalanced ecologies or ecologies that have been dramatically disturbed. Most of the imbalances are caused by human expansion into new areas, deforestation, and industrialized monocultures of grains, fruits, vegetables. The really bad news? If we zap this vector rather than adjust how we disrupt the environment, another vector will take its place with perhaps a more deadly disease.}

Now, with the spread of Dengue, CHIKV and Zika in the Americas – along with the growing degree of insectacide resistance around the world – suddenly GM mosquitoes, Wolbachia, and other novel control methods are getting a lot of attention again.

Source: Avian Flu Diary: FDA On Proposed Oxitec Mosquito Trials In The Florida Keys

IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Around half of Mongolia’s 3.1 million people rely on livestock production. But with oversupply, prices have plunged on animal products such as milk, wool, meat and camel hair.  Each sheep or goat – the most common livestock – is worth around $30. A cow is worth between $250 and $500, depending on meat quality. A camel is worth about $500, and a horse about $200 to $250, according to estimates by the Asian Development Bank.   “Consequently, there is an incentive to increase animal numbers, leading to the colossal numbers we see today, at over 50 million head of livestock, which degrades the precious pasturelands,” said Robert Schoellhammer, country director for the ADB. The trend has been devastating when combined with climate change. The average temperature in Mongolia has increased by 2.1 degrees Celsius since 1940, more than double the rise of average global temperatures, according to the UN Environment Programme. In its 2014 Global Climate Risk Index, the advocacy group German Watch ranked Mongolia the eighth most vulnerable country to direct economic losses from weather-related events.

Source: IRIN | Mongolian livestock succumb en masse to the freezing dzud

Seeds of salvation – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

It’s Bente Navaerdal’s job to check on the vault. When she first came to Svalbard, she thought she would stay just three years, but it didn’t take long before the remote Arctic archipelago had a hold on her. “I felt it the moment I landed at the airport, ‘Yeah, this is my place on Earth’,” she says. An engineer, she is now into her fourth year on Svalbard and has no intention of leaving anytime soon. “I hope that in three, four, five years I can feel like, ‘OK, now I am finished with Svalbard and I can go back [to the mainland]’, but I’m not sure,” she says. “I’m really not sure.”

Source: Seeds of salvation – ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)