Herbal abortion helps African women
August 27, 2011
Researchers at the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Copenhagen, have examined a number of plants which are used for illegal abortions in Tanzania. The lab tests show that several of the plants can make the uterus tissue contract and that the plants therefore can be used to stop lethal bleedings after birth. This new knowledge is now to be conveyed in rural Tanzania where access to medicine often is difficult.
Every year around 350,000 women die globally due to post partum bleedings – blood loss during child birth. On the African continent, one in 16 women die during their pregnancy and in some countries the number is as high as every eighth woman. The reason is poor access to medical assistance often because the women either lack money or because they live to far away. The knowledge about herbs, which can help the uterus contract after childbirth is therefore often the only life saving opportunity in remote rural areas.
Danish researchers have therefore tested 22 abort inducing plants in the lab on rat tissue, and several of the plants had close to the same effect as the control drug acetylcholin.
“Half of the plants we tested made the uterus tissue contract strongly whereas 11 of the extracts induced contractions with short intervals. Seven of the plants worked in both ways,” explains Associate Professor Anna K. Jäger from the Department of Medicinal Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen.
Anna K. Jäger is Ethno Pharmacologist, which means her research is founded in the meeting with different cultures’ traditional healers and she investigates whether the traditional medicine contains active drugs that have a proved effect on diseases.
These research results will now be used for health promotion in Africa, and for this the researchers are planning a series of information seminars in the organizations of traditional healers and birth attendants in Tanzania. In Tanzania abortion is illegal and this brings the pregnant women to the traditional healers.
Through interviews with local birth attendants, the Danish doctor Vibeke Rasch from Odense University Hospital has learned about 22 plants, which are used by women who do not have access to abortion in the hospitals. Two of the collected African plants are placed in the vagina and the others are taken as a tea or a plant extract.
With the project People and Plant Medicine, researchers investigate whether the plants used in traditional medicine has pharmacological effects making the plants suitable for medicine. It is important to identify the plants which work, but also to sort out the ineffective and harmful plants. The goal of the project is to share this knowledge with the practitioners and users of plant medicine in as many local African societies as possible.
The laboratory work is done in collaboration with Associate Professor Uffe Kristiansen from the Department of Pharmacology and Pharmacotherapy.
Contact: Anna K. Jaeger
ankj@farma.ku.dk
454-085-2902
University of Copenhagen
Study says climate cycles are driving wars
August 24, 2011
In the first study of its kind, researchers have linked a natural global climate cycle to periodic increases in warfare. The arrival of El Niño, which every three to seven years boosts temperatures and cuts rainfall, doubles the risk of civil wars across 90 affected tropical countries, and may help account for a fifth of worldwide conflicts during the past half-century, say the authors. The paper, written by an interdisciplinary team at Columbia University’s Earth Institute, appears in the current issue of the leading scientific journal Nature.
In recent years, historians and climatologists have built evidence that past societies suffered and fell due in connection with heat or droughts that damaged agriculture and shook governments. This is the first study to make the case for such destabilization in the present day, using statistics to link global weather observations and well-documented outbreaks of violence. The study does not blame specific wars on El Niño, nor does it directly address the issue of long-term climate change. However, it raises potent questions, as many scientists think natural weather cycles will become more extreme with warming climate, and some suggest ongoing chaos in places like Somalia are already being stoked by warming climate.
“The most important thing is that this looks at modern times, and it’s done on a global scale,” said Solomon M. Hsiang, the study’s lead author, a graduate of the Earth Institute’s Ph.D. in sustainable development. “We can speculate that a long-ago Egyptian dynasty was overthrown during a drought. That’s a specific time and place, that may be very different from today, so people might say, ‘OK, we’re immune to that now.’ This study shows a systematic pattern of global climate affecting conflict, and shows it right now.”
The cycle known as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, or ENSO, is a periodic warming and cooling of the tropical Pacific Ocean. This affects weather patterns across much of Africa, the Mideast, India, southeast Asia, Australia, and the Americas, where half the world’s people live. During the cool, or La Niña, phase, rain may be relatively plentiful in tropical areas; during the warmer El Niño, land temperatures rise, and rainfall declines in most affected places. Interacting with other factors including wind and temperature cycles over the other oceans, El Niño can vary dramatically in power and length. At its most intense, it brings scorching heat and multi-year droughts. (In higher latitudes, effects weaken, disappear or reverse; La Niña conditions earlier this year helped dry the U.S. Southwest and parts of east Africa.)
The scientists tracked ENSO from 1950 to 2004 and correlated it with onsets of civil conflicts that killed more than 25 people in a given year. The data included 175 countries and 234 conflicts, over half of which each caused more than 1,000 battle-related deaths. For nations whose weather is controlled by ENSO, they found that during La Niña, the chance of civil war breaking out was about 3 percent; during El Niño, the chance doubled, to 6 percent. Countries not affected by the cycle remained at 2 percent no matter what. Overall, the team calculated that El Niño may have played a role in 21 percent of civil wars worldwide – and nearly 30 percent in those countries affected by El Niño.
Coauthor Mark Cane, a climate scientist at Columbia’s Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, said that the study does not show that weather alone starts wars. “No one should take this to say that climate is our fate. Rather, this is compelling evidence that it has a measurable influence on how much people fight overall,” he said. “It is not the only factor–you have to consider politics, economics, all kinds of other things.” Cane, a climate modeler, was among the first to elucidate the mechanisms of El Niño, showing in the 1980s that its larger swings can be predicted – knowledge now used by organizations around the world to plan agriculture and relief services.
The authors say they do not know exactly why climate feeds conflict. “But if you have social inequality, people are poor, and there are underlying tensions, it seems possible that climate can deliver the knockout punch,” said Hsiang. When crops fail, people may take up a gun simply to make a living, he said. Kyle C. Meng, a sustainable-development Ph.D. candidate and the study’s other author, pointed out that social scientists have shown that individuals often become more aggressive when temperatures rise, but he said that whether that applies to whole societies is only speculative.
Bad weather does appear to tip poorer countries into chaos more easily; rich Australia, for instance, is controlled by ENSO, but has never seen a civil war. On the other side, Hsiang said at least two countries “jump out of the data.” In 1982, a powerful El Niño struck impoverished highland Peru, destroying crops; that year, simmering guerrilla attacks by the revolutionary Shining Path movement turned into a full-scale 20-year civil war that still sputters today. Separately, forces in southern Sudan were already facing off with the domineering north, when intense warfare broke out in the El Niño year of 1963. The insurrection abated, but flared again in 1976, another El Niño year. Then, 1983 saw a major El Niño–and the cataclysmic outbreak of more than 20 years of fighting that killed 2 million people, arguably the world’s bloodiest conflict since World War II. It culminated only this summer, when South Sudan became a separate nation; fighting continues in border areas. Hsiang said some other countries where festering conflicts have tended to blow up during El Niños include El Salvador, the Philippines and Uganda (1972); Angola, Haiti and Myanmar (1991); and Congo, Eritrea, Indonesia and Rwanda (1997).
The idea that environment fuels violence has gained currency in the past decade, with popular books by authors like Jared Diamond, Brian Fagan and Mike Davis. Academic studies have drawn links between droughts and social collapses, including the end of the Persian Gulf’s Akkadian empire (the world’s first superpower), 6,000 years ago; the AD 800-900 fall of Mexico’s Maya civilization; centuries-long cycles of warfare within Chinese dynasties; and recent insurgencies in sub-Saharan Africa. Last year, tree-ring specialists at Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory published a 1,000-year atlas of El Niño-related droughts; data from this pinpoints droughts coinciding with the downfall of the Angkor civilization of Cambodia around AD 1400, and the later dissolution of kingdoms in China, Vietnam, Myanmar and Thailand.
Some scientists and historians remain unconvinced of connections between climate and violence. “The study fails to improve on our understanding of the causes of armed conflicts, as it makes no attempt to explain the reported association between ENSO cycles and conflict risk,” said Halvard Buhaug, a political scientist with the Peace Research Institute Oslo in Norway who studies the issue. “Correlation without explanation can only lead to speculation.” Another expert, economist Marshall Burke of the University of California, Berkeley, said the authors gave “very convincing evidence” of a connection. But, he said, the question of how overall climate change might play out remains. “People may respond differently to short-run shocks than they do to longer-run changes in average temperature and precipitation,” he said. He called the study “a useful and illuminating basis for future work.”
Scientist contacts:
Solomon Hsiang smh2137@columbia.edu 315-256-8176
Kyle Meng km2455@columbia.edu 914-629-6274
Mark Cane mcane@ldeo.columbia.edu 845-365-8344
More information: Kevin Krajick, Senior Science Writer, The Earth Institute
kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu 212-854-9729
The Earth Institute, Columbia University mobilizes the sciences, education and public policy to achieve a sustainable earth. Through interdisciplinary research among more than 500 scientists in diverse fields, the Institute is adding to the knowledge necessary for addressing the challenges of the 21st century and beyond. With over two dozen associated degree curricula and a vibrant fellowship program, the Earth Institute is educating new leaders to become professionals and scholars in the growing field of sustainable development. We work alongside governments, businesses, nonprofit organizations and individuals to devise innovative strategies to protect the future of our planet. www.earth.columbia.edu
Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, a member of The Earth Institute, is one of the world’s leading research centers seeking fundamental knowledge about the origin, evolution and future of the natural world. More than 300 research scientists study the planet from its deepest interior to the outer reaches of its atmosphere, on every continent and in every ocean. From global climate change to earthquakes, volcanoes, nonrenewable resources, environmental hazards and beyond, Observatory scientists provide a rational basis for the difficult choices facing humankind in the planet’s stewardship. www.ldeo.columbia.edu
Contact: Kevin Krajick
kkrajick@ei.columbia.edu
212-854-9729
The Earth Institute at Columbia University
Radical overhaul of farming could be ‘game-changer’ for global food security
August 22, 2011
According to the authors of new research released today at the World Water Week in Stockholm, a radical transformation in the way farming and natural systems interact could simultaneously boost food production and protect the environment – two goals that often have been at odds. The authors warn, however, that the world must act quickly if the goal is to save the Earth’s main breadbasket areas – where resources are so depleted the situation threatens to decimate global supplies of fresh water and cripple agricultural systems worldwide.
A new analysis resulting from the joined forces of the International Water Management Institute (IWMI) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) outlines the urgent need to rethink current strategies for intensifying agriculture, given that food production already accounts for 70 to 90 percent of withdrawals from available water resources in some areas. The report, An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water and Food Security, finds that in many breadbaskets, including the plains of northern China, India’s Punjab and the Western United States, water limits are close to being “reached or breached.” Meanwhile, 1.6 billion people already live under conditions of water scarcity, and the report warns that number could soon grow to 2 billion. The current situation in the Horn of Africa is a timely reminder of just how vulnerable to famine some regions are.
“Agriculture is both a major cause and victim of ecosystem degradation,” said Eline Boelee of IWMI, the lead scientific editor of the report. “And it is not clear whether we can continue to increase yields with the present practices. Sustainable intensification of agriculture is a priority for future food security, but we need to take a more holistic ‘landscape’ approach.”
Meanwhile, a separate report by IWMI, Wetlands, Agriculture and Poverty Reduction, warns against seeking to protect wetlands by simply excluding agriculture. It argues that policies focused simply on wetland preservation and ignore the potential of ‘wetland agriculture’ to increase food production and contribute to reducing poverty.
“Blanket prohibitions against cultivation do not always reduce ecosystem destruction and can make things worse,” said Matthew McCartney of IWMI, who co-authored the report. “For example, the grassy ‘dambo’ wetlands of sub-Saharan Africa often provide vital farmland to the rural poor. Banning farming in these areas, however, has exacerbated rather than reduced ecosystem destruction. It has prompted deforestation upstream and led to a shift from farming to grazing in the wetlands themselves so that, overall, there has been a much greater impact on these natural systems. What is needed is a balance: appropriate farming practices that support sustainable food production and protect ecosystems.”
New Alliance Between Agriculture and Environment Groups
The two reports seek a new path toward achieving both food security and environmental health. They focus on radically reorienting practices and policies so that farming occurs in ‘agroecosystems’ that exist as part of the broader landscape, where they help maintain and supplement clean water, clean air and biodiversity.
“We are seeing a growing trend of alliances between traditionally conservationist groups and those concerned with agriculture,” said David Molden, Deputy Director General for Research at IWMI. UNEP is the voice of the environment of the United Nations, and IWMI is part of the world’s largest consortium of agricultural researchers, the Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (CGIAR).
“For instance,” Molden continued, “UNEP has adopted food security as a new strategic concern. And IWMI and its partners in the CGIAR are developing a multi-million dollar research program that will look at water as an integral part of ecosystems to help solve issues of water scarcity, land and environmental degradation. IWMI has also recently become a key partner with the Ramsar Convention on Wetlands on the topic of the relationship between wetlands and agriculture.”
“The various political, research and community alliances now emerging are challenging the notion that we have to choose between food security and ecosystem health by making it clear that you can’t have one without the other,” he added.
Examples of Successful Integration in the Field
UNEP and IWMI and collaborators have identified multiple opportunities to use trees on dryland farms that will intensify the amount of food produced per hectare of land area while helping to improve the surrounding ecosystem. They note that by integrating trees and hedgerows, farmers can prevent runoff and soil erosion and retain more water for nourishing their crops.
Another example of innovative thinking include better water and soil management in rainfed systems in sub-Saharan Africa, which have demonstrated the ability to reverse land degradation while at the same time increasing crop yields by twofold or threefold.
Overall, the authors say it’s time for decision-makers at the international, national and local level to embrace an agroecosystem approach to food production. These changes could include providing more farmers with incentives to adopt improved practices through ‘payments for environmental services (PES)’.
One example being explored by the CGIAR’s Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) is the potential for benefit sharing in river basin areas of Peru, Ecuador and Colombia. Upstream users value the water for irrigation and ecotourism and also have a spiritual affiliation with the ecosystem. The hydropower companies need a steady stream to support electrification of the growing urban population downstream. Large-scale farms and agro-industry also need increasing supplies of water.
“More and more agriculture needs to be brought into the ‘green economy’,” said Alain Vidal of the CPWF. “We need to value farming practices that protect our precious water resources in the same way we are beginning to value forest management that helps reduce greenhouse gas emissions, especially because those natural resources support the livelihoods of the most vulnerable.”
In the report, An Ecosystem Services Approach to Water and Food Security, experts from UNEP, IWMI and 19 other organizations acknowledge that one major impediment to adopting a more sustainable approach to food production is that it requires a new level of cooperation and coordination among officials and organizations involved in agriculture, environmental issues, water management, forestry, fisheries and wildlife management – individuals and groups who routinely operate in separated, disconnected worlds.
“It is essential that in the future we do things differently. There is a need for a seminal shift in the way modern societies view water and ecosystems and the way we, people, interact with them,” said David Molden. “Managing water for food and ecosystems will bring great benefits, but there is no escaping the urgency of this situation. We are heading for disaster if we don’t change our practices from business as usual.”
The International Water Management Institute (IWMI) is a nonprofit, scientific research organization focusing on the sustainable use of land and water resources in agriculture, to benefit poor people in developing countries. IWMI’s mission is “to improve the management of land and water resources for food, livelihoods and the environment.” IWMI has its headquarters in Colombo, Sri Lanka, and regional offices across Asia and Africa. The Institute works in partnership with developing countries, international and national research institutes, universities and other organizations to develop tools and technologies that contribute to poverty reduction as well as food and livelihood security (www.iwmi.org).
The CGIAR Challenge Program on Water and Food (CPWF) was launched in 2002 as a reform initiative of the CGIAR. The CPWF aims to increase the resilience of social and ecological systems through better water management for food production (crops, fisheries and livestock). The CPWF does this through an innovative research and development approach that brings together a broad range of scientists, development specialists, policymakers and communities to address the challenges of food security, poverty and water scarcity. The CPWF is currently working in six river basins globally: Andes, Ganges, Limpopo, Mekong, Nile and Volta (www.waterandfood.org).
U.S. Troops May Stay in Afghanistan Until 2024
August 20, 2011
The United States and Afghanistan are reportedly close to signing a strategic pact that could keep thousands of U.S. troops in that country until 2024, the Daily Telegraph reports. While a withdrawal of American troops has already begun following an agreement to hand over security for the country to Kabul by the end of 2014, the new proposed deal, would keep American Special Forces and Air Force troops in addition to the military officers who are training the Afghan Army and police. Many Afghans worry they will be abandoned when the troops leave in 2014. But one senior member of Afghan President Hamid Karzai’s council said the Taliban could possibly reject the deal—and it could even hurt the whole peace process. Afghanistan’s neighbors Iran and our supposed partner Pakistan are also against the deal.
Muammar Gaddafi prepares to flee Libya
August 19, 2011
The same day that Libyan rebels captured a key oil refinery in Zawiyah, only a half hour from the leaderships stronghold in Tripoli, Col. Muammar Gaddafi is preparing to run for his life, ending his 42-year rule according to many reports. Gaddafi is reportedly planning to go to Tunisia or Venezuela where he and his family will be granted exile, in a matter of days. The Libyan president has apparently begun packing his belongings, according to a number of Arab media. But some warned that these intelligence reports may not be enough to assume Gaddafi’s exit, given his history of instability.
First quantitative measure of radiation leaked from Fukushima reactor
August 15, 2011
Observations of radioactive sulfur that formed when seawater was used to cool reactors and spent fuel ponds reveal the amount of radiation leaked from damaged fuel
Atmospheric chemists at the University of California, San Diego, report the first quantitative measurement of the amount of radiation leaked from the damaged nuclear reactor in Fukushima, Japan, following the devastating earthquake and tsunami earlier this year.
Their estimate, reported this week in the early, online edition of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is based on a signal sent across the Pacific Ocean when operators of the damaged reactor had to resort to cooling overheated fuel with seawater.
“In any disaster, there’s always a lot to be learned by analysis of what happened,” said senior author Mark Thiemens, Dean of the Division of Physical Sciences at UC San Diego. “We were able to say how many neutrons were leaking out of that core when it was exposed.”
On March 28, 2011, 15 days after operators began pumping seawater into the damaged reactors and pools holding spent fuel, Thiemens’ group observed an unprecedented spike in the amount of radioactive sulfur in the air in La Jolla, California. They recognized that the signal came from the crippled power plant.
Neutrons and other products of the nuclear reaction leak from fuel rods when they melt. Seawater pumped into the reactor absorbed those neutrons, which collided with chloride ions in the saltwater. Each collision knocked a proton out of the nucleus of a chloride atom, transforming the atom to a radioactive form of sulfur.
When the water hit the hot reactors, nearly all of it vaporized into steam. To prevent explosions of the accumulating hydrogen, operators vented the steam, along with the radioactive sulfur, into the atmosphere.
In air, sulfur reacts with oxygen to form sulfur dioxide gas and then sulfate particles. Both blew across the Pacific Ocean on prevailing westerly winds to an instrument at the end of the pier at UC San Diego’s Scripps Institution of Oceanography where Thiemens’ group continuously monitors atmospheric sulfur.
Using a model based on NOAA’s observations of atmospheric conditions the team determined the path air took on its way to the pier over the preceding 10 days and found that it led back to Fukushima.
Then they calculated how much radiation must have been released. “You know how much seawater they used, how far neutrons will penetrate into the seawater and the size of the chloride ion. From that you can calculate how many neutrons must have reacted with chlorine to make radioactive sulfur,” said Antra Priyadarshi, a post-doctoral researcher in Thiemens’ lab and first author of the paper.
After accounting for losses along the way as the sulfate particles fell into the ocean, decayed, or eddied away from the stream of air heading toward California, the researchers calculated that 400 billion neutrons were released per square meter surface of the cooling pools, between March 13, when the seawater pumping operation began, and March 20, 2011.
The trace levels of radiation that reached the California coast never posed a threat to human health. “Although the spike that we measured was very high compared to background levels of radioactive sulfur, the absolute amount of radiation that reached California was small. The levels we recorded aren’t a concern for human health. In fact, it took sensitive instruments, measuring radioactive decay for hours after lengthy collection of the particles, to precisely measure the amount of radiation,” Thiemens said.
Concentrations a kilometer or so above the ocean near Fukushima must have been about 365 times higher than natural levels to account for the levels they observed in California.
The radioactive sulfur that Thiemens and his team observed must have been produced by partially melted nuclear fuel in the reactors or storage ponds. Although cosmic rays can produce radioactive sulfur in the upper atmosphere, that rarely mixes down into the layer of air just above the ocean, where these measurements were made.
Over a four day period ending on March 28th, they measured 1501 atoms of radioactive sulfur in sulfate particles per cubic meter of air, the highest they’ve ever seen in more than two years of recordings at the site.
Even intrusions from the stratosphere – rare events that bring naturally produced radioactive sulfur toward the Earth’s surface – have produced spikes of only 950 atoms per cubic meter of air at this site.
The nuclear reaction within the cooling seawater marked sulfur that originated in a specific place for a discrete period of time. That allowed researchers to time the transformation of sulfur to sulfur dioxide gas and sulfate particles, and measure their transport across the ocean, both important factors for understanding how sulfate pollutants contribute to climate change.
“We’ve really used the injection of a radioactive element to an environment to be a tracer of a very important process in nature for which there are some big gaps in understanding,” Thiemens said.
The event also created a pulse of labeled sulfur that can be traced in the streams and soils in Japan, to better understand how this element cycles through the environment, work that Thiemens and colleagues in Japan have already begun.
Another Backstab? Pakistan Likely Granted China Access to Downed US Helicopter
August 15, 2011
More disturbing news this morning about Pakistan, who is supposed to be our ally in the fight against terrorism. The Financial Times reports Pakistan’s intelligence service has allowed a team of Chinese technicians to inspect the wreckage of the top-secret US special forces helicopter that crashed during the during the raid to kill Osama bin Laden. Read more
U.S. set to call for al-Assad to step down as violence mounts in Syria
August 10, 2011
Source: Wikipedia. Author Fabio Rodrigues Pozzebom / ABr
The United States appears to be moving toward issuing an explicit call for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, U.S. government sources have leaked. The news comes after several Arab nations condemned the violence, also prompting the United Nations Security Council to meet again Wednesday, a week after issuing a strong statement condemning the government crackdown on opposition protesters and calling for the violence to stop. Read more
McAfee Reports of Massive 5-Year Hacking Plot
August 3, 2011
Computer software security firm McAfee, has uncovered evidence of a five-year-long hacking effort of more than 70 government and private organizations—and experts are pointing to China as the likely culprit. McAfee’s report says it found security breaches dating back to mid-2006 and included one attack that lasted for 28 straight months against an unidentified Asian country’s national Olympic committee. Targets include the Associated Press, the International Olympic Committee, the United Nations, a U.S. Department of Energy lab, and a dozen U.S. security firms. All the evidence came from a single server, and McAfee said hundreds of other servers have been used in similar attacks. While McAfee did not name a culprit, a computer expert familiar with the study said the attacks, the biggest ever recorded, appear to have originated in China. The hackers were apparently after information on such matters as U.S. military systems, satellite communications, electronics, and natural-gas companies.
Banned: Netherlands Coffee Shops Will No Longer Sell Marijuana to Tourists
May 28, 2011
Another thing I hate about right wing governments. The new conservative Dutch government Friday announced that by the end of the year, the country’s famed marijuana-dispensing coffee shops would start to close to tourists and be open only to Dutch citizens by the end of the year. In the past the Netherlands has somewhat catered to travelers looking for exotic fun, which has generated a significant amount of international tourism for the country. But marijuana is not actually legal, just simply a crime that was not actively enforced by the police. Backed by the far-right party of anti-immigrant politician Geert Wilders’ coalition government, the new regulation will only allow Dutch citizens to enter the marijuana-dispensing coffee shops, and even they will face new restrictions. Dutch citizens will have to sign up for a year’s membership at a specific shop, which will only be allowed to have up to 1,500 members.