Battling brain drain: Training doctors in Ethiopia
ANN ARBOR — Brain drain is so severe in Ethiopia that the nation’s health minister has complained there are more Ethiopian doctors in Chicago than in his own country. (more…)
Author Archives: Guest Post
India’s Daily Readership of Online News and Information Jumps 34 Percent in the Past Year
Times of India Leads Online News Ranking, While Also Generating Significant Traffic from Abroad
New Delhi, 1 October 2013 – comScore, Inc., a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a report highlighting online news readership in India based on data from its comScore MMX service. The report showed that there has been significant growth in daily readership of news and information content in the past year, with an increase of 34 percent to 9.4 million average daily visitors to the category. (more…)
Establishing World-Class Coral Reef Ecosystem Monitoring in Okinawa
Enduring two typhoons over a three-week period in August, Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) researchers, working in partnership with the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University (OIST), have successfully deployed an OceanCube Observatory System in waters off Motobu Peninsula, Japan — a biodiversity hotspot that is home to ecologically significant coral reefs. The observatory system enables real-time monitoring of temperature, salinity, and other chemical, biological and physical data critical to understanding the health of and changes in the coral reef ecosystem.
Okinawa is situated at the northernmost end of the border between the Pacific and the Indian Oceans. The coral reefs there support the highest diversity of endemic species, plants and animals in the world. These coral reefs are also economically valuable, generating as much as 3 trillion yen ($30 billion) globally, and 250 billion yen ($2.5 billion) in Japan. (more…)
How Does Video Conferencing Benefit a Business?
Cost control is one of the major challenges that companies face and when it’s for a small business, things come to survivability. Thus, the latest technologies and tools that promise to cut down the costs of a company is readily tested and accepted by the small business concerns. VoIP/IP telephony or online applications to make cheap/free calls are always welcome by the business owners who would like to enjoy anything doesn’t have a price tag attached to it.
There are many business owners who work with overseas clients and frequently travelling is not a very feasible option. Travelling abroad is not at all a financially viable option, if it has to be undertaken quite frequently. Phone conferences were a great way to have one-to-one meetings but it had its own downsides – they were costly and very difficult to arrange. Phone conferences often proved to be confusing and led to misunderstandings. Internet and especially after the advent of broadband, it has become really easy for medium and small-scale companies to maintain cheaper communication channels with their clients. (more…)
NABU International startet Petition für die kleinsten Delfine der Welt
Nur internationaler Protest kann ihr Aussterben jetzt noch verhindern
Berlin – Erneut ist an der Küste Neuseelands ein Maui-Delfin tot aufgefunden worden. Damit hat sich der Bestand der kleinsten und seltensten Meeresdelfine der Welt weiter verringert. Zurzeit rechnen Experten nur noch mit zirka 46 lebenden Tieren. Noch vor vierzig Jahren gab es etwa 1800 Maui-Delfine. Verantwortlich für den Rückgang der Population ist die Küstenfischerei mit Stell- und Schleppnetzen.
„Erst kürzlich hat die neuseeländische Regierung einen neuen Schutzplan für einen weiteren kleinen Teil des Verbreitungsgebietes der Maui-Delfine aufgelegt. Diese Pläne sind jedoch völlig unzulänglich und zielen darauf ab die Öffentlichkeit zu beschwichtigen“, sagt Thomas Tennhardt, Vorsitzender der NABU International Naturschutzstiftung, die sich seit ihrer Gründung für den Schutz der Mauis engagiert. „Neuseeland ignoriert die dringenden Empfehlungen der weltweiten Wissenschaftsgemeinschaft. Damit riskiert das Land sein grünes Image.“ (more…)
Made in IBM Labs: Scientists Turn Data into Disease Detective to Predict Dengue Fever and Malaria Outbreaks
IBM teams up with Johns Hopkins University and UC San Francisco to help public health officials model, predict and track the possible spread of infectious diseases
SAN JOSE, Calif., – 30 Sep 2013: Scientists from IBM are collaborating with Johns Hopkins University and University of California, San Francisco to combat illness and infectious diseases in real-time with smarter data tools for public health. The focus is to help contain global outbreaks of dengue fever and malaria by applying the latest analytic models, computing technology and mathematical skills on an open-source framework.
Vector-borne diseases, like malaria and dengue fever, are infections transmitted to humans and other animals by blood-feeding insects, such as mosquitoes, ticks and fleas. (more…)
Warme und saure Sintflut?
WWF zum Klimabericht des IPCC: „Klimaschutz und Meeresschutz verbinden“ zum Klimabericht des IPCC: „Klimaschutz und Meeresschutz verbinden“
Der vom Menschen gemachte Klimawandel hat stärkere Auswirkungen auf die Weltmeere als bislang bekannt. Dies geht aus den heute in Stockholm vorgestellten Ergebnissen des Klimabericht des IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel of Climate Change) hervor. Die vom Menschen verursachten CO2-Emissionen wirken direkt auf die Ozeane: Die Meere werden saurer, weil das Meerwasser CO2 aus der Atmosphäre aufnimmt und sich daraus Kohlensäure bildet. (more…)
A new strategy to stop the TB bacterium
Mycobacterium tuberculosis, the bacterium that causes tuberculosis may have an Achilles’ heel: It needs a particular enzyme to survive. Inhibiting that enzyme’s function, researchers have shown, will kill the bacteria, pointing toward a design strategy for new TB drugs.
PROVIDENCE, R.I. [Brown University] — To stay ahead in the race against drug-resistant infections, scientists constantly search for and exploit vulnerabilities in deadly bacteria. Now, researchers from Brown and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have used a novel compound to exploit an Achilles’ heel in the bacterium that causes tuberculosis. (more…)