Non ancora in Sierra Leone e in Guinea paese dal quale, scrive\u00a0Martin Eisenrink<\/a>\u00a0di Science,<\/em>\u00a0sar\u00e0 pi\u00f9 difficile eliminarla:<\/p>\n Pratima Raghunathan, an epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta who’s currently supporting the Ebola effort in Guinea, notes that the virus never got out of control in Conakry the way it did in the other two capitals, Monrovia and Freetown. One reason may be that treatment centers in the Conakry region had enough beds early on, so that patients weren’t turned away, she says.<\/em><\/p>\n On the other hand, distrust of the government, resentment against teams raising awareness, and rumors have hampered the response more in Guinea than elsewhere. The worst setback happened in September, when eight Ebola workers and journalists were killed with machetes and clubs in a remote village called Womey. (Eleven people were sentenced to life in prison for the murders last week.) In April, two people were seriously wounded when an Ebola team was attacked in Boffa prefecture; the only functioning ambulance there was badly damaged. In For\u00e9cariah, now the virus’s main holdout, resistance to the anti-Ebola efforts has been fierce as well.<\/em><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Su Science<\/em>\u00a0<\/strong> The domesticated soil landscape is one of Earth\u2019s most valuable commodities. For example, nearly $3816 billion (U.S. dollars) in agricultural products were produced globally in 2012 (…)<\/em> da affiancare alla dichiarazione ieri dei\u00a0ministri per l’agricoltura del G20<\/a> riuniti ad Ankara. Hanno scoperto che lo spreco del 30% delle risorse alimentari\/anno \u00e8<\/p>\n \u00a0a global problem of enormous economic, environmental and societal significance.<\/em><\/p>\n – il gruppo coordinato da Anna Moroni<\/a>, della Statale di Milano (complimenti!), ha messo a punto<\/a> una tecnica “bio-optogenetica” – usando una proteina e la luce azzurra – per aprire\/chiudere un canale potassio (Blink1) nei neuroni. L’hanno provato sui pesciolini Danio<\/em>, ma non \u00e8 solo uno strumento di ricerca:<\/p>\n Besides an obvious application for inhibiting neuronal activity, this channel will also find applications in the control of cellular processes, which require long-term stabilization of the membrane voltage such as cell cycle regulation or the control of hormone secretion.<\/em><\/p>\n – in uno studio di popolazioni vaccinate contro il morbillo dagli anni ’50 in Inghilterra, Galles e Danimarca, Michael Mina et al.<\/a> \u00a0hanno trovato un’immunizzazione di 5 anni in media contro altre malattie infettive:<\/p>\n Measles vaccination is one of the most cost-effective interventions for global health, and our results imply further immunological dividends: mortality (and probably morbidity) reductions linked to measles vaccination might be much greater than previously considered. This is of particular importance today where, especially in wealthy nations, reduced opportunistic infections during acute measles immunosuppression, added to the comparative rarity of infection, has led to a public view of measles as a benign childhood disease. <\/em><\/p>\n Malattia benigna un cavolo. La vaccinazione di massa ha ridotto la mortalit\u00e0 infantile del 30-50% nei paesi mediamente poveri e del 90% nelle popolazioni pi\u00f9 povere, e dove non c’\u00e8, tra il 2000 e il 2012 morbillo ha ucciso 122 mila bambini<\/a>.<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Oggi alla radio, un ascoltatore citava la ricerca ritrattata dall’editore e ripubblicata altrove da S\u00e9ralini et al. secondo la quale gli Ogm indurrebbero tumori. \u00a0Sul Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics<\/em>, il filosofo <\/a>della bioetica(e dell’etica scientifica)\u00a0David Resnik <\/a>trae lezioni dalla triste storia:<\/p>\n In September 2012, Gilles-Eric S\u00e9ralini and seven coauthors published an article in\u00a0<\/em>Food and Chemical Toxicology claiming that rats fed Roundup\u00a9-resistant genetically modified maize alone, genetically modified maize with Roundup\u00a9, or Roundup\u00a9 for 2 years had a higher percentage of tumors and kidney and liver damage than normal controls. Shortly after this study was published, numerous scientists and several scientific organizations criticized the research as methodologically and ethically flawed. In January 2014, the journal retracted the article without the authors\u2019 consent on the grounds that the research was inconclusive. In June 2014, Environmental Sciences Europe published a slightly modified version of the retracted paper. The publication, retraction and subsequent republication of the S\u00e9ralini study raise important scientific and ethical issues for journal editors…\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n David Resnick si occupa anche di etica scientifica, per es. in questo paper <\/a><\/strong>di cui raccomando la lettura, in particolare ai promotori di ciarlatanerie…<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n Dopo un’analisi dei costi e benefici affidata a esperti, l’universit\u00e0 della Western Australia rinuncia<\/a> al “consensus centre” di Bj\u00f8rn Lomborg e agli Aus $4 milioni ricevuti dal governo federale per finanziarne solo met\u00e0 del costo. Povero Lomborg, la sua “metodologia<\/a>” per negare l’importanza dei cambiamenti climatici non fa pi\u00f9 profitti…<\/p>\n *<\/p>\n L’Economist<\/em> che lo sponsorizzava ha deciso che gli scienziati del clima sono pi\u00f9 affidabili di lui, e pubblica un bell’articolo<\/a><\/strong> sugli “attribution studies” degli eventi meteorologi estremi come ondate di caldo. Ha molto apprezzato la ricerca degli amici di Steph (che continua a battere la fiacca),<\/p>\n In an attempt to give the overall picture, a new study in\u00a0<\/em>Nature Climate Change<\/span> by Erich Fischer and Reto Knutti, both of the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, moved away from individual events to consider heatwaves and rain storms in general. They took all the heat and precipitation extremes between 1901 and 2005, defining extremes as events likely to occur once every 1,000 days. By running the climate models with and without climate change, they found that 0.85\u00b0C of warming (the rise since the industrial era began) has made such heat extremes four or five times more likely, roughly the same as in the Australian study. The authors attribute 75% of the heat extremes, and 18% of the precipitation extremes, to observed global warming. Worryingly, the risk of an extreme event seems to rise exponentially as mean temperatures creep up. The probability of a heat extreme is twice as great at 2\u00b0C of warming than at 1.5\u00b0C.<\/em><\/p>\n That does not mean, alas, that the science of weather attribution will be able to forecast particular droughts or heatwaves, only to say that more of them are likely to happen. That is a useful addition to climate science. People are routinely told about\u2014and routinely ignore\u2014the bad things they are doing to the climate. The attribution studies show that the climate is doing bad things back.<\/em><\/p>\n *<\/p>\n L’oligopolio dell’editoria scientifica si restringe<\/a>:<\/p>\n Springer Nature was created through the combination of Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Macmillan, Macmillan Education and Springer Science+Business Media in May 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" L’OMS ha pubblicato gli aggiornamenti su Ebola; l’epidemia \u00e8 finita in Liberia (l’ultimo caso risale a marzo) There have been a total of 26 593\u00a0reported\u00a0confirmed, probable, and suspected cases\u00a0of\u00a0EVD in Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone (figure 1, table 1),\u00a0with 11\u00a0005 reported deaths (outcomes for many cases are unknown). A total of 9 new confirmed cases… Continua a leggere O's digest – cont.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,17,20],"tags":[224,926,2109,4617,5042,7108],"class_list":["post-27738","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clima","category-genetica","category-medicina","tag-agronomia","tag-bjrn-lomborg","tag-ebola","tag-morbillo","tag-optogenetica","tag-vaccini","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27738","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27738"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27738\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":43642,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27738\/revisions\/43642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archivio.ocasapiens.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/dingo.care2.com\/pictures\/greenliving\/1013\/1012322.large.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
\n– uno speciale con tre papers – presentati da\u00a0Elizabeth Pennisi<\/a>\u00a0e Greg Gibson<\/a>– su genotipo, fenotipo e variabilit\u00e0 del genoma umano tra una persona e l’altra ma anche nei diversi tessuti di una stessa persona, a cura del Genotype-Tissue Expression (GTEx) Consortium<\/a>,
\n–\u00a0Ronald Ramunson et al. <\/a>riassumono i problemi dei suoli – circa 300.000 tipi diversi, di cui meno di un decimo \u00e8 ben studiato – per l’agricoltura, lo stoccaggio del carbonio, le risorse idriche, i cambiamenti climatici, la sicurezza alimentare:<\/p>\n
\nAgricultural soil erosion is one of the most destructive human perturbations to soil sustainability. Given little opportunity or desirability for further agricultural expansion, stewardship of our existing domesticated soil is essential for sustained human prosperity. Yet despite the importance of soil conservation, the implementation of practices to minimize soil erosion has not followed apace with the severity of the problem.<\/em><\/p>\n