The Millennium Villages Project (MVP) stands out among development efforts in Africa. Since its launch in 2004, it has attracted generous donations and high-wattage supporters — including Hollywood actor Angelina Jolie and United Nations secretary-general Ban Ki-moon — for its work on alleviating poverty in rural Africa. The programme has delivered aid to at least 500,000 people in 10 countries, and has been emulated in others.
The Sendai Nuclear Power Plant on the island of Kyushu broke a four-year lull on 11 August when it switched one of its reactors back on. The restart is the first since Japan’s nuclear-power industry ground to a halt two years ago following safety concerns in the wake of the 2011 Fukushima Daiichi disaster.
An analysis of 85 Ebola virus sequences collected in Guinea from July to November 2014 provides insight into the evolution of the Ebola virus responsible for the epidemic in West Africa; the results show sustained transmission of three co-circulating lineages, each defined by multiple mutations.
West Africa is currently witnessing the most extensive Ebola virus (EBOV) outbreak so far recorded. Until now, there have been 27,013 reported cases and 11,134 deaths. The origin of the virus is thought to have been a zoonotic transmission from a bat to a two-year-old boy in December 2013. From this index case the virus was spread by human-to-human contact throughout Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia.
A novel Ebola virus (EBOV) first identified in March 2014 has infected more than 25,000 people in West Africa, resulting in more than 10,000 deaths. Preliminary analyses of genome sequences of 81 EBOV collected from March to June 2014 from Guinea and Sierra Leone suggest that the 2014 EBOV originated from an independent transmission event from its natural reservoir followed by sustained human-to-human infections. It has been reported that the EBOV genome variation might have an effect on the efficacy of sequence-based virus detection and candidate therapeutics.
When Ebola broke out in West Africa in December 2013, triggering the largest-ever epidemic of the disease, there was no vaccine or drug that had been shown to be safe and effective in people. Just 20 months later, a vaccine seems to confer total protection against infection, according to the preliminary results of a trial in Guinea.
Volcanic eruptions contribute to climate variability, but quantifying these contributions has been limited by inconsistencies in the timing of atmospheric volcanic aerosol loading determined from ice cores and subsequent cooling from climate proxies such as tree rings. Here we resolve these inconsistencies and show that large eruptions in the tropics and high latitudes were primary drivers of interannual-to-decadal temperature variability in the Northern Hemisphere during the past 2,500 years.
Atmospheric methane is the second most important greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide, and is responsible for about 20% of the global warming effect since pre-industrial times. Rice paddies are the largest anthropogenic methane source and produce 7–17% of atmospheric methane. Warm waterlogged soil and exuded nutrients from rice roots provide ideal conditions for methanogenesis in paddies with annual methane emissions of 25–100-million tonnes. This scenario will be exacerbated by an expansion in rice cultivation needed to meet the escalating demand for food in the coming decades.
