Health38
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Water, Water Everywhere, But Nary a Drop to Drink
It is a unique challenge of our generation that many in the developing world have cellular phones and TVs, but lack reliable access to water. Odd, perhaps, given that water is marketed as essential for life, a human right, and heart rending pictures of women and children walking miles to fetch water are routinely flashed…
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“The Population Bomb: Defused or Still Ticking?” Seminar Recap
“Thank you for coming on this gorgeous day, to sit in an airless, lightless room and discuss how to save the world,” said John Mutter, director of Columbia’s PhD in Sustainable Development and a member of the Earth Institute faculty, in welcoming the audience of the Sustainable Development Seminar, “The Population Bomb: Defused or Still…
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Celebrating International Women’s Day: Triumphs and Challenges
There is much to celebrate, this International Women’s Day. Three fabulously courageous women won last year’s Nobel Peace Prize, and just a year earlier the United Nations established UN Women, a new agency dedicated to gender equality worldwide and headed by another strong woman leader and role model, former President of Brazil Michelle Bachelet. School…
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One Planet, Too Many People?
Can we manage the needs of 9 billion people for water, food and energy without depleting our resources and ruining the environment? “The solutions,” says Tim Fox, “are all within the capability of existing technology.”
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U.S., 5 Nations to Cut Methane, Soot Emissions
The United States and five other countries agreed this week to fund an effort to cut emissions of methane, soot and other pollutants to start to slow the rate of human-induced climate change.
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Malaria and the Mason-Dixon
When push came to shove, it was a microscopic virus that would draw the frontiers of a nation, and help to decide the life and livelihood of millions upon millions of the Americans who came to live there.
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Does La Niña Lead to Flu Pandemics?
Four major flu pandemics of the last century, including the deadly 1918 flu, were all proceeded by La Niña conditions in the Pacific, according to a recent paper.
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Breakthrough in Saving Lives in Rural Africa
It’s mid-morning in the Tiby Millennium Village in Mali. Rokia, a community health worker, sits with a young mother in a spare courtyard of the household. Gently she asks the key questions.
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Fast & Cheap: Shortcuts to Curb Global Warming
Relatively cheap, simple steps using existing technologies could cut projected global warming by one degree Fahrenheit – a substantial amount — by focusing on sources of methane and soot, concludes a new study by an international team of scientists.