And more. . .
We begin with Outbreak News Today and a feverish development:
Malaysia dengue count nears 20,000, PM Najib warns public to take precautions
During the 44 day period from Jan. 4 to Feb. 16, 2015, Malaysia has recorded nearly 20,000 dengue fever cases, or an average of more than 439 cases daily.
Of the 19,349 reported dengue cases this year, about 58 percent or 11,167 cases were reported from Selangor alone.
The dengue fever fatality count remains at 44 from January 1 to February 7. This compares to 17 dengue related deaths during the same period in 2014.
Nikkei Asian Review covers an Indian outbreak:
Swine flu claims nearly 600 lives
India is beefing up efforts to combat an outbreak of swine flu that has taken nearly 600 lives since January, with the states of Rajasthan and Gujarat worst affected.
Of the 585 lives claimed by the deadly H1N1 virus so far, 100 died in just three days leading up to Feb. 15, according to health officials.
Nearly 8,500 people in India had been confirmed with the virus up to the middle of this month.
A notable climate change consequence from VICE News:
Climate Change Is Helping to Spread Deadly Viruses
The ebola outbreak stunned the world, as it rampaged across the globe, killing tens of thousands. But climate change may spark a whole host of similar, global epidemics, according to new scientific research.
Ebola and the West Nile virus are just two examples of the many diseases that have recently spread into unexpected places, as climactic fluctuations have pushed species into new environments, zoologist Daniel Brooks says in a paper published today in a British journal.
As animal and plant life have moved, so have the parasites attached to them — and those parasites can leap to new species much more easily than previously thought, Brooks told VICE News. When a parasite latches onto a new host organism, the organism is much more vulnerable to the novel pathogen.
“Climate change does result in species moving around, and with respect to pathogens those movements actually create an enormous number of opportunities for parasites to jump into hosts they’ve never seen before,” Brooks told VICE News.
More from Environmental News Network:
Climate change may affect tick life cycles, Lyme disease
A new study suggests that changing climate patterns may be altering the life cycles of blacklegged ticks in the northeastern United States, which could increase transmission among animals – and ultimately humans – of certain pathogens, including the bacterium that causes Lyme disease.
Other colder regions of the country that have sufficient populations of blacklegged ticks – particularly Wisconsin and Minnesota – may also experience a higher risk of Lyme disease. However, the changing life cycles of the ticks may result in a less-likely probability of transmitting a more deadly pathogen that results in Powassan encephalitis, the researchers say.
Results of the research are being published this week in a special issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B dedicated to climate change and vector-borne diseases.
A team of scientists led by Taal Levi of Oregon State University and Richard Ostfeld of the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies analyzed 19 years of data on blacklegged ticks in the Northeast and their relationship to “host” animals ranging from small rodents to deer and other larger mammals. They then overlaid the results with climate data and used computer models to predict what may happen in the future.
From Medical Daily, a virulent mutation:
Aggressive New HIV Virus Strain In Cuba Progresses To AIDS In Less Than 3 Years
It’s been a little over 30 years since HIV/AIDS first emerged as one of the deadliest diseases known to man, and in that time we’ve made great strides toward eliminating it out for good. Awareness remains high, fewer people are partaking in risky sexual behavior, and millions of people are undergoing antiretroviral therapy (ART) to keep their immune systems strong. We’re fortunate to have made these advances because a new study has now identified a more aggressive strain of the HIV virus.
The strain, called CRF19, has been spotted in parts of Africa, but it’s been found to be more widespread throughout Cuba. Researchers from the Rega Institute for Medical Research in Belgium found the strain is capable of turning from an infection to full-blown AIDS within three years, a lot faster than the average conversion time period of about 10 years.
“We have a collaborative project with Cuba and the Cuban clinicians had noticed that they recently had more and more patients who were progressing much faster to AIDS than they were used to [seeing],” said Professor Anne-Mieke Vandamme, a professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Rega, according to Voice of America. “In this case, most patients had AIDS even at diagnosis.”
From the Los Angeles Times, a case of drugs, not hugs:
Rampant medication use found among L.A. County foster, delinquent kids
Los Angeles County officials are allowing the use of powerful psychiatric drugs on far more children in the juvenile delinquency and foster care systems than they had previously acknowledged, according to data obtained by The Times through a Public Records Act request.
The newly unearthed figures show that Los Angeles County’s 2013 accounting failed to report almost one in three cases of children on the drugs while in foster care or the custody of the delinquency system.
The data show that along with the 2,300 previously acknowledged cases, an additional 540 foster children and 516 children in the delinquency system were given the drugs. There are 18,000 foster children and 1,000 youth in the juvenile delinquency system altogether.
Big Pharma fails, flees, via the Independent:
Dementia research: Drug firms despair of finding cure and withdraw funding after catalogue of failures
Drug companies are retreating from the search for a dementia cure after “repeated and costly failures” to develop a breakthrough drug, a major report has warned.
Scientific and financial challenges have meant that, between 1998 and 2012, there were 101 unsuccessful attempts to develop drugs for Alzheimer’s disease, with only three drugs gaining approval for treating symptoms of the disease, according to the study.
The report, compiled by the Dementia Forum of the World Innovation Summit for Health (Wish), warned that a “history of failures” has created “funding fatigue” among donors and “Big Pharma”. Major drug companies had halved the number of research programmes into central nervous system disorders, a category which includes dementia, between 2009 and 2014, the report said. Experts said that with no known cure and a huge increase in cases expected within a decade, “a massive step change in research funding” was needed.
A notable correlate from the Observer:
Dementia hits women hardest – study
Research finds disease now leading cause of death in British women; many are also carers before succumbing themselves
Women are bearing the brunt of the dementia epidemic that is spreading through Britain. A study by Alzheimer’s Research UK reveals that the condition has not only become the leading cause of death among British women but that women are far more likely to end up as carers of sufferers than men – suffering physical and emotional stress and job losses in the process.
“Women are carrying the responsibility of care for their loved ones, only later to be living with the condition,” states the report, entitled Women and Dementia: A Marginalised Majority. “Women are dying from dementia but not before it has taken a considerable toll on minds and bodies. In the UK, dementia hits women the hardest.”
The study, to be published next month, calls for the government to make a significant increase in its funding of dementia research and an improved investment in care.
From Ensia, our brain-altering chemical dependence:
What are we doing to our children’s brains?
Environmental chemicals are wreaking havoc to last a lifetime
The numbers are startling. According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, about 1.8 million more children in the U.S. were diagnosed with developmental disabilities between 2006 and 2008 than a decade earlier. During this time, the prevalence of autism climbed nearly 300 percent, while that of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder increased 33 percent. CDC figures also show that 10 to 15 percent of all babies born in the U.S. have some type of neurobehavorial development disorder. Still more are affected by neurological disorders that don’t rise to the level of clinical diagnosis.
And it’s not just the U.S. Such impairments affect millions of children worldwide. The numbers are so large that Philippe Grandjean of the University of Southern Denmark and Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Philip Landrigan of the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York — both physicians and preeminent researchers in this field — describe the situation as a “pandemic.”
While earlier and more assiduous diagnosis accounts for some of the documented increase, it doesn’t explain all of it, says Irva Hertz-Piccioto, professor of environmental and occupational health and chief of the University of California, Davis, MIND Institute. Grandjean and Landrigan credit genetic factors for 30 to 40 percent of the cases. But a significant and growing body of research suggests that exposure to environmental pollutants is implicated in the disturbing rise in children’s neurological disorders.
Agence France-Presse covers unregulated ozone-eaters:
Scientists alarmed at short-term ozone-eroding gases
Environmental scientists raised concern Monday at rising levels of gases that attack Earth’s protective ozone layer, including manmade chemicals not covered by a key UN treaty.
Researchers at Leeds University in northern England said two computer models highlighted the impact of so-called “very short-lived substances” — VSLS — that deplete the stratospheric shield.
The damage they do to the ozone layer is significant and likely to increase, they said, as emissions of man-made chlorine gases rise.
Ironically, one of the chemicals named in the report, dichloromethane, is used in the manufacture of substitutes for ozone-depleting gases outlawed by the UN’s 1987 Montreal Protocol.
After the jump, taps running dry in São Paulo, the U.K. launches a climate response program for two continents, the mystery of urban robins turned into rhapsodical night owls, demands for more Mexican sea turtle protections, noise pollution turns us deaf to nature, deserted Soviet nuclear subs threaten a maritime Chernobyl, on to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, starting with a call for a “hot” water purge, Japan launches the search for a permanent nuclear waste dump, and the government retains the right to recycle, TEPCO vows more safety training for Fukushima workers, and two major aftershock hit from the disastrous 3/11/11 reactor-annihilating 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tidal wave. . .
From the New York Times, no taps for a dying water supply:
Taps Start to Run Dry in Brazil’s Largest City
São Paulo Water Crisis Linked to Growth, Pollution and Deforestation
Endowed with the Amazon and other mighty rivers, an array of huge dams and one-eighth of the world’s fresh water, Brazil is sometimes called the “Saudi Arabia of water,” so rich in the coveted resource that some liken it to living above a sea of oil.
But in Brazil’s largest and wealthiest city, a more dystopian situation is unfolding: The taps are starting to run dry.
As southeast Brazil grapples with its worst drought in nearly a century, a problem worsened by polluted rivers, deforestation and population growth, the largest reservoir system serving São Paulo is near depletion. Many residents are already enduring sporadic water cutoffs, some going days without it. Officials say that drastic rationing may be needed, with water service provided only two days a week.
Behind closed doors, the views are grimmer. In a meeting recorded secretly and leaked to the local news media, Paulo Massato, a senior official at São Paulo’s water utility, said that residents might have to be warned to flee because “there’s not enough water, there won’t be water to bathe, to clean” homes.
The U.K. launches a climate response program for two continents, via StarAfrica:
UK-funded climate change program for Africa, Asia launched in Dakar
The building of resilience and adaptation to climate change and disasters program (BRACED) was launched Tuesday in Dakar, with the aim of reaching five million people in the Sahel and South Asia which are vulnerable to the effects of climate change, APA can report.
“The aim of BRACED is to strengthen the resilience of the five million people deemed exposed to extreme climate and disaster in particular the women and children. The program covers six African countries and seven South-east Asian ones,” Dr. Aliou Diouf Gory the Coordinator of Enda Energy and the BRACED program declared.
He was speaking on the sidelines of the launch of BRACED financed up to 142 million pounds sterling by the Department for International Development of the United Kingdom (DFID).
The mystery of urban robins turning into night owls, via BBC News:
Mystery of robins’ nighttime singing probed
A new project at Glasgow University aims to help resolve why robins are up all night singing in cities.
Dr Davide Dominoni believes that city lights convince the birds there is no end to the day.
Robins are adapted to hunting insects in dim light, so are thought to be particularly sensitive to the effects of artificial lighting.
The researcher said blue light from neon signs was likely to be especially disruptive to the birds’ body clock.
Demands for more Mexican sea turtle protections, via Fox News Latino:
Environmental groups press Mexican gov’t for more protection for sea turtles
The Mexican government should immediately impose regulations on the fishing industry in Baja California Sur state’s Gulf of Ulloa to avoid U.S. penalties over the deaths of loggerhead sea turtles and take measures to protect the endangered species, two environmental groups said.
A U.S. government decision to ban Mexican fish products would have dire economic consequences for Mexico, the Mexican Center for Environmental Law, or CEMDA, and Defenders of Wildlife said in a statement.
“That is why it is essential for the Mexican government to prepare and implement regulations for the fishing industry in the region quickly and effectively,” the environmental groups said.
Noise pollution turns us deaf to nature, via the Guardian:
Noise pollution is making us oblivious to the sound of nature, says researcher
Gift of hearing birdsong and trickling water is being lost to a process of ‘learned deafness’, says US scientist, as people screen out background noise
The tranquil chorus of the natural world is in danger of being lost to today’s generation as people screen out the noises that surround them, a senior US researcher warns.
Rising levels of background noise in some areas threaten to make people oblivious to the uplifting sounds of birdsong, trickling water, and trees rustling in the wind, which can often be heard even in urban centres, said Kurt Fristrup, a senior scientist at the US National Park Service.
The problem was exacerbated by people listening to iPods through their earphones instead of tuning in to the birds and other sounds of nature that can easily be drowned out by traffic, music and others noises, he said.
Deserted Soviet nuclear subs threaten a maritime Chernobyl, via TheLocal.no:
Soviet subs risk ‘slow Chernobyl’ in Norway
One of Norway’s leading environmentalists has warned that derelict Soviet nuclear submarines close to the country’s northern borders risk causing a “Chernobyl in slow motion”.
Nils Bøhmer, a nuclear physicist and chief executive of the Bellona Foundation, told Norway’s Dagbladet newspaper that several ships and submarines deserted in the Barents and Kara Seas could start to leak radioactive waste within as little as ten years.
“We fear what could be called a Chernobyl in slow motion, where radioactive waste seeps out into the sea.” he said. “The Radiation Protection Authority has estimated that it may start to leak in 10 to 15 years time.”
On to Fukushimapocalypse Now!, starting with a call for a “hot” water purge, via the Los Angeles Times:
Inspectors urge Japan to dump water from Fukushima plant into ocean
Nearly four years after Japan’s massive March 2011 earthquake and tsunami, the country has made “significant progress” toward stabilizing and decommissioning the ravaged Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear power plant, international nuclear inspectors said Tuesday.
However, the nearly 160 million gallons of contaminated water stored on-site pose massive logistical challenges, and examiners strongly urged Japan to consider controlled discharges of the liquid into the Pacific Ocean once it is treated.
The situation at the crippled plant remains “very complex” and “the benefits [of discharges] could be very, very huge” said Juan Carlos Lentijo, who led the team of 15 inspectors from the International Atomic Energy Agency on a nine-day mission that follows surveys in April and November 2013.
More from RT:
Japan’s progress in Fukushima clean-up ‘significant’, but threat remains – UN nuclear watchdog
“Japan has made significant progress since our previous missions,” Juan Carlos Lentijo, IAEA Director of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology and the group leader, said in a statement.
“The situation on the site has improved – progressive clean-up has led to reduced radiation dose levels in many parts of the site.”
“The situation, however, remains very complex, with the increasing amount of contaminated water posing a short-term challenge that must be resolved in a sustainable manner,” Lentijo said. “The need to remove highly radioactive spent fuel, including damaged fuel and fuel debris, from the reactors that suffered meltdowns poses a huge long-term challenge.”
Japan launches the search for a permanent nuclear waste dump, via Jiji Press:
Japan Govt to Take Lead in Choosing N-Waste Disposal Site
Japan’s Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry proposed to a panel of experts on Tuesday that the government will take the lead in choosing a site for final disposal of high-level radioactive waste from nuclear reactors.
The proposal to revise the country’s basic policy on radioactive waste disposal for the first time since 2008 is aimed at facilitating the site selection process.
The government plans to adopt a new basic policy on the disposal at a cabinet meeting as early as in March, the first policy revision since Tokyo Electric Power Co.’s Fukushima No. 1 plant was crippled by a powerful earthquake and subsequent tsunami in March 2011 in the nation’s worst nuclear accident.
And the government retains the right to recycle, via Kyodo News:
Japan eyes allowing retrieval of radioactive waste after disposal
The Japanese government said Tuesday it will consider allowing future generations to retrieve high-level radioactive waste from a final disposal facility should there be possible nuclear policy changes or development of new technologies.
The government aims to include the plan in its revised basic policy on the final disposal of highly radioactive waste, as it is currently reviewing the nation’s stalled process to find a final site for fuel waste — which will require management for tens of thousands of years.
Prime Minister Shinzo Abe’s administration is seeking to revive the country’s nuclear plants idled following the 2011 Fukushima meltdowns although the majority of the public remains opposed to the use of atomic power. The government has been under criticism over its stance to promote nuclear power without resolving the issue of the final disposal of nuclear waste, especially after the 2011 nuclear crisis.
TEPCO vows more safety training for Fukushima workers, via the Asahi Shimbun:
TEPCO vows safety first in training program for workers at Fukushima
Tokyo Electric Power Co. submitted its plan to provide wide-ranging training programs for workers engaged in decommissioning of its crippled nuclear power plant in Fukuskima Prefecture following a string of accidents, some of them fatal.
“We will promote safety awareness among contractors through communication in the management of daily operations,” said a report by the operator of the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear power plant.
“Our operational coordination meetings will also properly arrange work areas and times to ensure thorough safety control,” the report went on.
The number of serious work-related accidents at the facility, which experienced a triple meltdown as a result of the 2011 earthquake and tsunami disaster, doubled in 2014 from the previous year.
And to close, a pair of seismic reminders from the Wall Street Journal:
Megaquake Aftershocks Jolt Japan Four Years On
Two earthquakes that struck off the coast of northeastern Japan on Tuesday were both aftershocks of the Great East Japan Earthquake four years ago, Japan’s meteorological agency said.
The first quake, which occurred a little after 8 a.m., had a preliminary magnitude of 6.9. It triggered a tsunami alert and 10- to 20-centimeter waves were observed in some locations. The quake was the 830th aftershock of magnitude 5 or higher, according to the agency’s website. Around 300 of those occurred within two days of the main earthquake on March 11, 2011.
A second quake with preliminary magnitude of 5.7 struck around 1:46 p.m. Tuesday, and it was also an aftershock of the 2011 earthquake, the agency said. No tsunami alert was issued after the second quake, and there have been no reports of damage from either.
