It is estimated that 72% of emerging zoonotic disease events originate from wildlife. Many of these diseases pose serious risks to human health, as demonstrated by the 2014 Ebola virus disease (EVD) outbreak in West Africa. Trade that brings wildlife into close proximity with humans and domestic animals provides an interface for pathogen transmission.

The mean global climate has warmed as a result of the increasing emission of greenhouse gases induced by human activities. This warming is considered the main reason for the increasing number of extreme precipitation events in the US. While much attention has been given to extreme precipitation events occurring over several days, which are usually responsible for severe flooding over a large region, little is known about how extreme precipitation events that cause flash flooding and occur at sub-daily time scales have changed over time.

The fuel economy of gasoline vehicles will increase to meet 2025 corporate average fuel economy standards(CAFE). However, dedicated compressed natural gas(CNG) and battery electric vehicles (BEV) already exceed future CAFE fuel economy targets because only 15% of non-petroleum energy use is accounted for when determining compliance. This study aims to inform stakeholders about the potential impact of CAFE on life cycle greenhouse gas(GHG) emissions, should non-petroleum fuel vehicles displace increasingly fuel efficient petroleum vehicles.

We use numerical climate simulations, paleoclimate data, and modern observations to study the effect of growing ice melt from Antarctica and Greenland. Meltwater tends to stabilize the ocean column, inducing amplifying feedbacks that increase subsurface ocean warming and ice shelf melting.

Original Source

While the finance minister took care to express the commitment of his government to poor and vulnerable people while presenting the Union Budget for 2016–17, this stated commitment has not been backed by adequate increases in allocations to areas of critical interest to the poor. It is likely that resource constraints will continue to be a serious hindrance in important areas like nutrition, health and livelihood support. (Letter)

The provision of low-cost sanitary napkins to women in rural areas is not an answer to the myriad problems they face in menstrual management. Apart from the need for a mechanism for ensuring the quality of the products and reducing the environmental cost of non-reusable products, the need is for a change in the attitude towards menstruation. It is because this is a taboo topic ruled by religio-cultural conventions that rural women face not only discomfort but also problems linked to reproductive health.

The Rapid Survey on Children shows a new trend of an increased access to healthcare by marginalised communities like Dalits, Adivasis and Other Backward Classes which have made substantial gains in the last decade. However much needs to be achieved in the realm of nutrition and sanitation where these communities remain acutely deprived.

When the annals of corporate accountability, culpability and negligence in India are compiled, the erstwhile Union Carbide Corporation (UCC) is sure to top the list. But not far behind will be Hindustan Unilever (HUL). On4 March, HUL reached an out-of-court settlement with 591 of its former employees from the now defunct thermometer plant in Kodaikanal. The very fact it did is an acknowledgement that the workers were exposed to occupational hazards, something it had stubbornly denied for over a decade.

After the 2011 Tohoku earthquake, thirteen thousand hectares of farmlands were damaged by massive Tsunami near coastal sites in Miyagi, Japan. Some eighty percent of the damaged farmlands have been recovered in 2014, but subsidence and high salinity groundwater make it difficult to completely remove salinity from the soil.

Chicken meat has the highest per capita consumption among all meat types in North America. The practice of feeding 3-nitro-4-hydroxyphenylarsonic acid (Roxarsone, Rox) to chickens lasted for over 60 years. However, the fate of Rox and arsenic metabolites remaining in chicken are poorly understood. Researchers aimed to determine the elimination of Rox and metabolites from chickens and quantify the remaining arsenic species in chicken meat, providing necessary information for meaningful exposure assessment.