Ann Arbor (Informed Comment) – On the occasion of former President Jimmy Carter’s death, I am reprinting this column with some updates. The guinea worm may be the second major human disease after smallpox to be completely eradicated. It is a parasite that you get from drinking water with small fleas in it. The larvae […]
The guinea worm may be the second major human disease after smallpox to be completely eradicated. It is a parasite that you get from drinking water with small fleas in it. The larvae of the worm are in the fleas, and they migrate into your muscles. After growing there for a year, as a long thread gathered in a bump, the worm works its way out over two or three days, which is extremely painful and potentially debilitating. The disease mainly existed in Central Africa, and especially in South Sudan. At its height it afflicted 3.5 million people in 21 countries. The technical name for the disease is dracunculiasis.
The Carter Center is reporting that in 2024, only 7 human cases were reported worldwide! Carter had wanted to outlive the disease and he came very close.
After he left the White House, Jimmy Carter did a lot of traveling for his foundation. In Africa, he saw those suffering from the guinea worm, and asked what could be done about it. He was told that the flea that carries the larvae is big enough so that even just filtering water through cloth would get rid of it.
From 1986, Carter put together a coalition of the World Health Organization and health ministries in the afflicted countries (which then included Pakistan) to get the word out to people about the need for water filtration.
“Jimmy Carter,” Digital, ChatGPT, 2024
He even at one point in the mid-1990s helped negotiate a ceasefire between the north and the south in Sudan so that his activists could reach affected villagers and teach them how to filter the water!
The CDC says, “Since 1986, WHO has certified 200 countries, areas, and territories as dracunculiasis-free. Five countries with ongoing endemic dracunculiasis (Angola, Chad, Ethiopia, Mali, and South Sudan), plus Sudan, which has not yet completed its dossier and follow-up visit, have not been certified by WHO.”
Carter showed what a determined person can accomplish through single-minded purpose driven by compassion, and the pursuit of strategic partnerships and cooperation. He brought a debilitating disease’s toll down from 3.5 million people over nearly two dozen countries to almost zero. The former president has given the world a model that should be deployed to solve other pressing problems. He was one of the world’s few true heroes.
( RFE/RL ) – New Syrian de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television channel that he wants relations with Iran and Russia, but he insisted any ties must be based on mutual “respect.” Russia and Iran were major allies of Syria under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad until the totalitarian […]
( RFE/RL ) – New Syrian de facto leader Ahmad al-Sharaa told the Saudi-owned Al Arabiya television channel that he wants relations with Iran and Russia, but he insisted any ties must be based on mutual “respect.”
Russia and Iran were major allies of Syria under the regime of President Bashar al-Assad until the totalitarian leader was ousted by rebels in early December.
The West is closely watching the new ruler’s actions, including the depth of any future ties with Tehran and Moscow.
“Syria cannot continue without relations with an important regional country like Iran,” Sharaa told Al Arabiya in a wide-ranging interview on December 29.
But relations “must be based on respect for the sovereignty of both countries and noninterference in the affairs of both countries,” he added.
Sharaa urged Tehran to rethink its regional policies and interventions and pointed out that opposition forces protected Iranian positions during the fighting to oust Assad, even though rebels knew Iran was a major backer of the president.
Sharaa said he had expected positive overtures from Iran following these actions but said they have not been forthcoming.
Sharaa, previously known by the nom de guerre Abu Muhammad al-Jolani, said that while he expects Moscow to withdraw its forces from Syria, he also spoke of “deep strategic interests” with the “second most powerful country in the world.”
“We don’t want Russia to exit Syria in a way that undermines its relationship with our country,” he told Al-Arabiya, without providing details.
“All of Syria’s arms are of Russian origin, and many power plants are managed by Russian experts…. We do not want Russia to leave Syria in the way that some wish,” he said.
According to flight data analyzed by RFE/RL, Russia is reducing its military footprint in Syria and shifting some of its assets from the Middle Eastern country to Africa.
To offset the potential loss of its air base in Hmeimim and naval base in Tartus, Russia appears to be increasing its presence in Libya, Mali, and Sudan, although experts say the loss of Syrian bases is a major blow to the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, Sharaa also said that organizing elections in the country could take up to four years and that a new constitution could require three years to be finalized.
The leader expressed hope that the new U.S. administration under Donald Trump — set to take office on January 20 — would lift sanctions on his country.
“We hope the incoming Trump administration will not follow the policy of its predecessor,” Sharaa said.
The rebels who ousted Assad were led by Sharaa’s Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) Islamist group, a U.S. and EU-designated terrorist organization.
Sharaa has publicly pledged to adopt moderate policies regarding women’s rights, national reconciliation, and relations with the international community, although world leaders say they remain wary of the new rulers pending concrete actions.
Copyright (c)2024 RFE/RL, Inc. Used with the permission of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty
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By Ellen Welti, Smithsonian Institution (The Conversation) -More than one-third of all animals on Earth, from beetles to cows to elephants, depend on plant-based diets. Plants are a low-calorie food source, so it can be challenging for animals to consume enough energy to meet their needs. Now climate change is reducing the nutritional value of […]
Human activities are increasing atmospheric carbon dioxide levels and raising global temperatures. As a result, many plants are growing faster across ecosystems worldwide.
Some studies suggest that this “greening of the Earth” could partially offset rising greenhouse gas emissions bystoring more carbon in plants. However, there’s a trade-off: These fast-tracked plants can contain fewer nutrients per bite.
We believe long-term changes in the nutritional value of plants may bean underappreciated cause of shrinking animal populations. These changes in plants aren’t visually evident, like rising seas. Nor are they sudden and imminent, like hurricanes or heat waves. But they can have important impacts over time.
Plant-eating animals may need more time to find and consume food if their usual meal becomes less nutritious, exposing themselves to greater risks from predators and other stresses in the process. Reduced nutritional values can also make animals less fit, reducing their ability to grow, reproduce and survive.
In particular, human deficiencies in iron, zinc and protein areexpected to increase in the coming decadesbecause of rising carbon dioxide levels. These declines are expected to have broad impacts on human health and even survival, with the strongest effects among populations that are highly dependent on rice and wheat, such as in East and Central Asia.
Grass tissue from a tallgrass prairie in Kansas shows nutrient levels in the plant falling as the plant grows from May through September. Kaspari and Welti, 2024,CC BY-ND
Nutrient dilution affects wild species too. Here are some examples.
Dependent on bamboo
Giant pandas are a threatened species with great cultural value. Because they reproduce at low rates and need large, connected swaths of bamboo as habitat, they areclassified as a vulnerable specieswhose survival is threatened by land conversion for farming and development. Pandas also could become a poster animal for the threat of nutrient dilution.
The giant panda is considered an “umbrella species,” which means that conserving panda habitat benefits many other animals and plants that also live in bamboo groves. Famously, giant pandas are entirely dependent on bamboo and spend large portions of their days eating it. Now, rising temperatures arereducing bamboo’s nutritional valueand making it harder for the plant to survive.
Mixed prospects for insects
Insects are essential members of the web of life that pollinate many flowering plants, serve as a food source for birds and animals, and perform other important ecological services. Around the world, many insect species are declining indeveloped areas, where their habitat has been converted to farms or cities, as well as innatural areas.
Many insects are plant feeders that are likely to be affected by reduced plant nutritional value. Experiments have found that when carbon dioxide levels increase,insect populations decline, at least partly due to lower-quality food supplies.
Not all insect species are declining, however, and not all plant-feeding insects respond in the same way to nutrient dilution. Insects that chew leaves, such asgrasshoppers and caterpillars,suffer the most negative effects, including reduced reproduction and smaller body sizes.
Declines in plant food quality are most likely to affect places where nutrients already are scarce and animals struggle now to meet their nutritional needs. These zones include the ancient soils of Australia, along with tropical areas such as the Amazon and Congo basins. Nutrient dilution is also an issue in the open ocean, where rapidly warming waters are reducing the nutritional content of giant sea kelp.
Certain types of plant-feeding animals are likely to face greater declines because they need higher-quality food. Rodents, rabbits, koalas, horses, rhinoceroses and elephants are all hind-gut fermenters – animals that have simple, single-chambered stomachs and rely on microbes in their intestines to extract nutrients from high-fiber food.
These species need more nutrient-dense food than ruminants – grazers like cattle, sheep, goats and bison, with four-chambered stomachs that digest their food in stages. Smaller animals also typically require more nutrient-dense food than larger ones, because they have faster metabolisms and consume more energy per unit of body mass. Smaller animals also have shorter guts, so they can’t as easily extract all the nutrients from food.
More research is needed to understand what role nutrient dilution may be playing in declines of individual species, including experiments that artificially increase carbon dioxide levels and studies that monitor long-term changes in plant chemistry alongside animals in the field.
Over the longer term, it will be important to understand how nutrient dilution is altering entire food webs, including shifts in plant species and traits, effects on other animal groups such as predators, and changes in species interactions. Changes in plant nutritional value as a result of rising carbon dioxide levels could have far-reaching impacts throughout ecosystems worldwide.
The Conversation is an independent, not-for-profit media outlet that works with academic experts in their fields to publish short, clear essays on hot topics.
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