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?

al.com - August 24, 2011

Oil bubbles to the surface of the Gulf of Mexico within one mile northeast of BP's Macondo well on August 23, 2011. (Press-Register/Jeff Dute)

MOBILE, Alabama -- Oil is once again fouling the Gulf of Mexico around the Deepwater Horizon well, which was capped a little over a year ago.

Tuesday afternoon, hundreds of small, circular patches of oily sheen dotted the surface within a mile of the wellhead. With just a bare sheen present over about a quarter-mile, the scene was a far cry from the massive slick that covered the Gulf last summer.

Floating in a boat near the well site, Press-Register reporters watched blobs of oil rise to the surface and bloom into iridescent yellow patches. Those patches quickly expanded into rainbow sheens 4 to 5 feet across.

Each expanding bloom released a pronounced and pungent petroleum smell. Most of the oil was located in a patch about 50 yards wide and a quarter of a mile long.

 guardian.co.uk - August 9, 2011

Apple chief Steve Jobs unveils the second generation iPad. Sales of the tablet last quarter were three times the sales in its first three months. Photograph: Kimihiro Hoshino/AFP/Getty Images

Stock market turmoil in Wall Street has helped Apple pip oil group Exxon to become the world's most valuable company.

The tech company has been closing in on Exxon for some time and was "just" $50bn (£30bn) away from taking the lead when it reported yet another quarter of record-breaking earnings on 19 July.

As the US stock markets bounced back from last week's crash the tech firm overtook Exxon with a market value of $337bn compared to ExxonMobil's $334bn. Exxon could easily slip back into the lead if the recent fears for the global economy subside but the gap is so close that the two look certain to be battling it out for some time.

by Duncan Alfreds - news24.com - August 16, 2011

Tenesol Madagascar provides thermal and photovoltaic solutions.

http://www.tenesol.com/-Tenesol-Madagascar,226-.html

Cape Town - Rural communities in Madagascar are receiving access to safe drinking water and electricity with a solar power project.

"Solar energy is a life-giving technology that can improve the welfare and education of a country's population," said Benoit Rolland, managing director of Tenesol.

Typical of a poor country, the majority of Madagascar's population do not have access to clean drinking water and solar water pumps are an efficient way to ensure that communities get access to water.

Solar pumps have also been installed in Zambia where it has allowed farmers to irrigate land that would otherwise not be able to produce crops.

Cost-effective

Local communities in Madagascar are trained to maintain the solar pumps to ensure that they work optimally.

From: Intl Conference <***@***.***>

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.

NewScientist.com - August 3, 2011

Sellafield nuclear plant (Pic: Getty)

Paul Marks, senior technology correspondent

The 11 March earthquake and tsunami that crippled Japan's nuclear industry has claimed a commercial victim thousands of miles away: the Sellafield Mixed Oxide (MOX) plant in Cumbria, UK, is to close "at the earliest practical opportunity" the UK Nuclear Decommissioning Authority announced today.

The plant's only customer was the vastly-troubled Japanese nuclear industry, currently embroiled in a programme of plant shutdowns as the scale of the seismic menace some of its power stations face comes into sharper relief. A Sellafield spokesman said plans to close one plant in particular, at Hamaoka, was instrumental in sealing the MOX plant's fate.

Situated on the coast some 200 kilometres south of Tokyo, the Hamaoka nuclear power plant straddles two major geological faults and has been described by seismologist Katsuhiko Ishibashi at Kobe University as a "kamikaze terrorist waiting to explode".

sciencedailey.com - July 28, 2011

ScienceDaily (July 28, 2011) — Social media tools like Facebook, Twitter and Foursquare may be an important key to improving the public health system's ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters, according to a New England Journal of Medicine "Perspective" article from the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania to be published this week. From earthquakes to oil spills or other industrial accidents to weather-related events like heat waves and flooding, the authors suggest that harnessing crowd-sourcing technologies and electronic communications tools will set the stage to handle emergencies in a quicker, more coordinated, effective way.

Noting that more than 40 million Americans use social media Web sites multiple times a day, the researchers suggest that social media enables an unprecedented, two-way exchange between the public and public health professionals. Officials can "push" information to the public while simultaneously "pulling" in data from lay bystanders.

submitted by Mary Suzanne Kivlighan

Kaiser Family Foundation - July 19, 2011

The New Scientist reports on a software program that is being used "to identify a high correlation between the time and place where people tweet they have dengue and the official statistics for where the disease appears each season."

Researchers at two Brazilian National Institutes of Science and Technology worked together to create the software, which filters tweets containing the word "dengue" and user location details. "Dengue outbreaks occur every year in Brazil, but exactly where varies every season. It can take weeks for medical notifications to be centrally analyzed, creating a headache for health authorities planning where to concentrate resources," the publication notes. Using Twitter could speed up response time, according to Wagner Meira, a computer scientist at the Federal University of Minus Gerais who led the study (Corbyn, 7/18).

channel4.com - July 14, 2011

An aid worker in Somalia, the centre of the East Africa drought crisis which has hit 12m people, tells Channel 4 News he fears "death on an epic, unimaginable scale" if more is not done.

Jens Opperman, the head of charity Action Against Hunger in Somalia, said the situation is deterioriating and will continue to do so unless there is a significant increase in international support.

"We are witnessing unimaginable human suffering," he told Channel 4 News.

The Horn of Africa's worst drought in 60 years has hit people across Somalia, Kenya, Ethiopia and Djibouti. It has caused perhaps the most serious emergency in Somalia, where hundreds of thousands have become displaced as they desperately seek food and water.

Mr Opperman estimated that 2.8m people in Somalia are in urgent need of life-saving humanitarian assistance. He estimated that one in three children is currently on the brink of starvation.