Good Food is First Food. It is not junk food. It is the food that connects nature and nutrition with livelihoods. This food is good for our health; it comes from the rich biodiversity of our regions; it provides employment to people. Most importantly, cooking and eating give us pleasure. …
This year marks the 200th anniversary of the first successful human-to-human blood transfusion, conducted by James Blundell, an English obstetrician working just across the Thames from The Economist’s offices. Today blood is big business—with global exports worth more, in 2016, than global exports of aeroplanes. But that trade is distorted …
Cities in the United States are increasingly seeing concrete in place of greenery as urban areas lose an estimated 36m trees annually, according to a study from the Forest Service. Tree cover in urban areas has declined at a rate of around 175,000 acres per year, while impervious cover – …
Tourism accounts for around 8 per cent of global greenhouse gas emissions, according to a new study that marks the first attempt to quantify the industry’s total carbon footprint. In an ambitious paper published in the scientific journal Nature Climate Change, an international team of scientists has quantified the environmental …
Tourism contributes significantly to global gross domestic product, and is forecast to grow at an annual 4%, thus outpacing many other economic sectors. However, global carbon emissions related to tourism are currently not well quantified. Here, we quantify tourism-related global carbon flows between 160 countries, and their carbon footprints under …
The US government has announced a $408m budget support to Uganda’s HIV prevention and treatment effort. The funding will be disbursed under the US President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR). According to the embassy, the funding was announced on April 20, in Washington by the Global AIDs Co-ordinator, Ambassador …
The evolution of knowledge about porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome (PRRS) is now enabling pork producers and their veterinarians to make headway combatting this difficult and costly disease.
Hurricane Harvey made landfall in August 2017 as the first land-falling category 4 hurricane to hit the state of Texas since Hurricane Carla in September 1961. While its intensity at landfall was notable, most of the vast devastation in the Houston metropolitan area was due to Harvey stalling near the …
North America is in the midst of its most serious drug-overdose crisis in history. From 1999 through 2015, drug-overdose deaths approximately tripled in the United States, and the majority of such deaths now involve an opioid. In 2016 alone, there were 64,000 drug-overdose deaths in the United States — more …
Making sense of recent energy trends can seem like a high-stakes Rorschach test. Some experts see the boom in renewable energy and the shift away from coal in many countries as evidence that the world is beginning to turn a corner on global warming. Others see simply a continuing reliance …
Prenatal exposure to organophosphate (OP) pesticides has been linked with poorer neurodevelopment and behaviors related to autism spectrum disorders (ASD) in previous studies, including in the Center for Health Assessment of Mothers and Children of Salinas (CHAMACOS) study, a birth cohort living in the agricultural Salinas Valley in California. The …
This study investigated potential changes in future precipitation, temperature, and drought across 10 hydrologic regions in California. The latest climate model projections on these variables through 2099 representing the current state of the climate science were applied for this purpose. Changes were explored in terms of differences from a historical …
An analysis was made of the loss of life directly caused by Hurricane Harvey. Information was collected for 70 fatalities that occurred directly due to the event. Most of the fatalities occurred in the greater Houston area, which was most severely affected by extreme rainfall and heavy flooding. The majority …
California has the most polluted cities in the United States, a report issued on Wednesday said, as President Donald Trump's administration seeks to force the state to weaken its vehicle emissions standards. The study published by the American Lung Association—which covers the period from 2014 to 2016, the year before …
Scientists with the USDA Forest Service estimate that between 2009 and 2014, tree cover in the Nation's urban/community areas declined by 0.7 percent, which translates to losing an estimated 36 million trees or approximately 175,000 acres of tree cover annually. Pavement and other impervious cover increased at a rate of …
Nearly 60% of U.S. children live in counties with PM2.5 concentrations above air quality standards. Understanding the relationship between ambient air pollution exposure and health outcomes informs actions to reduce exposure and disease risk.
Emergency risk communication (ERC) programs that activate when the ambient temperature is expected to cross certain extreme thresholds are widely used to manage relevant public health risks. In practice, however, the effectiveness of these thresholds has rarely been examined. The goal of this study is to test if the activation …
The US, through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), has earmarked $75m (sh274b) towards improving food and nutrition security in Karamoja sub-region. The US government in a statement on April 5, announced the launch of two new five-year activities to improve food and nutrition security in and to …
The US EPA is pursuing a rollback of earlier plans (implemented under Obama’s presidency) to raise the new-vehicle fuel-efficiency standard to nearly 50 miles per gallon by 2025 (that would be a fleet-level requirement, not model level). In response to that, 11 US states have now revealed an intention to …
The production of Renewable Natural Gas (RNG) from organic waste for use as a vehicle fuel is an emerging strategy that businesses, states, and municipalities in the United States are pursuing to make use of waste-derived methane and lower the carbon footprint of vehicle fleets. This working paper explores RNG’s …
