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Climate Change 'Grave Threat' to Security and Health

Wed, 2011-10-19 22:12 — admin

submitted by Nguyen Huu Ninh, friend of The Global Resilience System, lead author of 2007 IPCC report

by Richard Black - BBC News - October 17, 2011

Food security was interwoven with the climate issue, speakers told the conference

Climate change poses "an immediate, growing and grave threat" to health and security around the world, according to an expert conference in London.

Officers in the UK military warned that the price of goods such as fuel is likely to rise as conflict provoked by climate change increases.

A statement from the meeting adds that humanitarian disasters will put more and more strain on military resources.

It asks governments to adopt ambitious targets for curbing greenhouse gases.

The annual UN climate conference opens in about six weeks' time, and the doctors, academics and military experts represented at the meeting (held in the British Medical Association's (BMA) headquarters) argue that developed and developing countries alike need to raise their game.

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RN Volunteer Opportunities for First Aid Support in Cities Across America

Sun, 2011-10-16 18:05 — Kathy Gilbeaux

nationalnursesunited.org - RN Response Network - October 13, 2011

As a past volunteer for the Registered Nurse Response Network (RNRN), we wish to thank you again for your desire to help people and communities in need.

Now we are asking for your help again, to join our first aid efforts in cities across the U.S. where Americans are rallying for real solutions to our national economic emergency.

You were there when we dispatched volunteers to assist with the recovery effort following a tsunami in South Asia, a hurricane on the Gulf Coast, Southern California wildfires, the earthquake in Haiti, and with contributions following this spring’s disaster in Japan.

RN volunteers have made a difference on each occasion, even when we have faced huge hurdles, including substantial governmental impediments, for example, to placing volunteers on the ground in Haiti. Yet on each occasion, RNRN did act, and sent as many volunteers as possible in these heroic humanitarian efforts.

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Bin Laden Death: 'CIA Doctor' Accused of Treason

Fri, 2011-10-07 21:58 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC News - October 6, 2011

Bin Laden was top of the US 'most wanted' list

A Pakistani commission investigating the US raid that killed Osama Bin Laden says a doctor accused of helping the CIA should be tried for high treason.

Dr Shakil Afridi is accused of running a CIA-sponsored fake vaccine programme in Abbottabad, where Bin Laden was killed, to try to get DNA samples.

He was arrested shortly after the 2 May US raid that killed the al-Qaeda chief.

The commission has been interviewing intelligence officials and on Wednesday spoke to Bin Laden family members.

Pakistan, which was deeply embarrassed by the raid, has described the covert US special forces operation as a violation of its sovereignty.

A government commission, headed by a former Supreme Court judge, has been charged with discovering how the US military was able to carry out the raid deep within Pakistan without being detected.

It is also investigating how Bin Laden was able to hide in Abbottabad, a garrison town, for several years.

DNA sought

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IT and Information Sharing Environments for Community Health Resilience

Thu, 2011-09-29 09:44 — mdmcdonald

Information Technology (IT) and Information Sharing Environments (ISEs) are crucial to the evolution of community health resilience. Most people working to improve community health resilience do not understand the nuances of Information Sharing Environments, and how the rapid shifts in IT, mobile devices, social media, cloud computing, peer to peer parallel processing, smart grids, and the linking of millions of people, mobile devices, computers, and sensors are creating a societal mind, which is transforming community health resilience and the health and human security of Americans.

If you have thoughts on these topics, please comment within this collaboratory thread.

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The Power of the 21st Century Librarian

Wed, 2011-09-28 11:19 — mdmcdonald

Michael D. McDonald, Dr.P.H.

It can be argued that libraries have their origins in the swarm behavior of individuals and groups acquiring and sharing cultural artifacts (e.g, pictographs, books) as the fundamental repositories of knowledge within a community and the broader society. Librarians have played a key role in the founding and differentiation of America at its origins. Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, for example, played key roles in deepening and broadening the tradition of knowledge sharing within the early United States.

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'Wi-fi Refugees' Shelter in West Virginia Mountains

Wed, 2011-09-14 10:32 — Kathy Gilbeaux

BBC News - September 12, 2011

Nichols Fox lives alone in a home powered primarily by gas just outside the Quiet Zone

Dozens of Americans who claim to have been made ill by wi-fi and mobile phones have flocked to the town of Green Bank, West Virginia

There are five billion mobile phone subscriptions worldwide and advances in wireless technology make it increasingly difficult to escape the influence of mobile devices. But while most Americans seem to embrace continuous connectivity, some believe it's making them physically ill.

Diane Schou is unable to hold back the tears as she describes how she once lived in a shielded cage to protect her from the electromagnetic radiation caused by waves from wireless communication.

"It's a horrible thing to have to be a prisoner," she says. "You become a technological leper because you can't be around people.

"It's not that you would be contagious to them - it's what they're carrying that is harmful to you."

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Explosion at French Nuclear Waste Plant

Mon, 2011-09-12 16:21 — Kathy Gilbeaux

The Guardian - September 12, 2011

Rescue workers and medics land by helicopter at the Marcoule nuclear site, in France. Photograph: Claude Paris/AP

An explosion at a French nuclear waste processing plant that killed one person and injured four others sparked fears of a radioactive leak on Monday.

An emergency safety cordon was thrown around the Marcoule nuclear site near Nimes in the south of France immediately after a furnace used to melt nuclear waste exploded and caused a fire. It was lifted later in the day after France's nuclear safety agency, the Autorité de Sûreté Nucléaire (ASN), said there was no danger to the public.

Reports said the body of one male worker at the plant had been "found carbonised", but there was no evidence that the explosion had caused any radioactive leak, though the ASN admitted there was the "possibility of a leak of low-level radioactivity, but no shooting of radioactivity in the air". There was no information as to the cause of the explosion.

The accident came just a week after the French president, Nicolas Sarkozy, bucked the anti-nuclear trend following Japan's Fukushima disaster and pledged €1bn (£860m) of new investment in atomic power.

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When Capitalism Converges With Resilience

Tue, 2011-08-30 12:08 — mdmcdonald

It is hard to argue against that fact that the U.S. and even "Communist" China, for that matter, have great influence in global markets and on health and human security -- for their own people as well as human populations world-wide. The power of capital within global, regional, national, and local markets has been transforming the world since the growth of the industrial revolution, which has only accelerated since the broad introduction of global communication and computing in the 20th century. That said, there has been growing criticism of the destructive nature of market fundamentalism and laissez faire economics in the face of a growing awareness of ecosystem carrying capacities, and the problems inherent in growth economies in decline. So what happens when capitalists become aware of the destructive nature of growth economies, where populations are exceeding the carrying capacities of ecosystems and mass consumption economies begin to collapse?

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Mobile Phone Keeps Tabs on Malaria

Fri, 2011-08-05 00:33 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Albert Gomez

Israel21c.org - July 28, 2011

A Gates Foundation grant will help an Israeli scientist further develop his cell-phone imaging system for diagnosing and staging the serious African disease.

Mosquitoes carry Malaria, a disease that is now the second-leading cause of death in Africa.

A simple mobile-phone imaging system developed in Israel for diagnosing and monitoring malaria has won its developers a $100,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

The grant is shared by biomedical engineer Dr. Alberto Bilenca of Ben-Gurion University of the Negev (BGU) and his research partner, Dr. Linnie Golightly of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York.

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