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Climate Change Takes a Bite Out of Global Food Supply

Tue, 2012-10-02 00:21 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

A Pakistani fisherman talks with young boys. Rising ocean temperatures are pushing many fish away from the tropics towards the poles where waters are cooler. (Credit: Akbar Baloch/IPS)

commondreams.org - by Stephen Leahy - September 29, 2012

Humanity’s ability to feed itself is in serious doubt as climate change takes hold on land in the form of droughts and extreme weather, as well as on the world’s oceans.

Less well known to many is the fact that emissions from burning oil, coal and gas are both heating up the oceans and making them more acidic. That is combining to reduce the amount of seafood that can be caught, according to a new report released here.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

(SEE ADDITIONAL INFORMATION HERE - Ocean-Based Food Security Threatened in a High CO2 World)
http://resiliencesystem.org/ocean-based-food-security-threatened-high-co2-world

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Probability Maps Help Detect Food Contamination

Mon, 2012-10-01 22:51 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Sandia's stochastic network metholodogy accelerates spread of food-borne illness // Source: sandia.gov

submitted by Luis Kun

Homeland Security News Wire - October 1, 2012

Researchers demonstrate how developing a probability map of the food supply network using stochastic network representation might shorten the time it takes to track down contaminated food sources; stochastic mapping shows what is known about how product flows through the distribution supply chain and provides a means to express all the uncertainties in potential supplier-customer relationships that persist due to incomplete information

Uncovering the sources of fresh food contamination could become faster and easier thanks to analysis done at Sandia National Laboratories’ National Infrastructure Simulation and Analysis Center (NISAC).

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100 Million Will Die by 2030 if World Fails to Tackle Climate Change: Report

Thu, 2012-09-27 10:14 — Kathy Gilbeaux

Reuters - by Nina Chestney
September 27, 2012

(CLICK ON "READ MORE" AT THE BOTTOM OF THIS POST FOR LINKS TO THE REPORT )

LONDON: More than 100 million people will die and global economic growth will be cut by 3.2 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2030 if the world fails to tackle climate change, a report commissioned by 20 governments said on Wednesday.

As global average temperatures rise due to greenhouse gas emissions, the effects on the planet, such as melting ice caps, extreme weather, drought and rising sea levels, will threaten populations and livelihoods, said the report conducted by humanitarian organisation DARA.

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Report - Climate Vulnerability Monitor: A Guide to the Cold Calculus of A Hot Planet
http://daraint.org/climate-vulnerability-monitor/climate-vulnerability-monitor-2012/report/

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Obama uses UN speech to condemn extremism

Thu, 2012-09-27 10:02 — Maeryn Obley

Barack Obama paid a personal tribute to Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack on Benghazi. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

Image: Barack Obama paid a personal tribute to Chris Stevens, the US ambassador to Libya who was killed in the attack on Benghazi. Photograph: Mary Altaffer/AP

guardian.co.uk - September 25th, 2012 - Julian Borger

President Barack Obama today sought to reset US relations with the Arab world in the wake of anti-American riots triggered by an amateur video insulting the prophet Mohamed, that led to the death of the US ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens.

Obama used his speech to the UN general assembly, expected to be his last major foreign policy address before the November elections, to pay a personal tribute to Stevens, highlighting the murdered diplomat's passion for Arab culture and support for democracy, and present it a model for American-Arab relations.

The president also restated the US position on the Iran nuclear programme: that there was still time for diplomacy, but not "unlimited time".

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Whooping Cough Vaccine Loses Effectiveness Faster Than Thought, Study Finds

Tue, 2012-09-18 20:44 — Kathy Gilbeaux

huffingtonpost.com - by Mike Stobbe - September 12, 2012

NEW YORK — As the U.S. wrestles with its biggest whooping cough outbreak in decades, researchers appear to have zeroed in on the main cause: The safer vaccine that was introduced in the 1990s loses effectiveness much faster than previously thought.

A study published in Wednesday's New England Journal of Medicine found that the protective effect weakens dramatically soon after a youngster gets the last of the five recommended shots around age 6.

The protection rate falls from about 95 percent to 71 percent within five years, said researchers at the Kaiser Permanente Vaccine Research Center in Oakland, Calif.

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Study - NEJM - Waning Protection after Fifth Dose of Acellular Pertussis Vaccine in Children
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMoa1200850?query=featured_home

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Emergency Capacity Building Project - Tools and Resources

Tue, 2012-09-11 21:36 — Kathy Gilbeaux

submitted by Tim Siftar

ecbproject.org

The Project

Disasters and humanitarian emergencies are increasing in magnitude and complexity*. This presents a major challenge to NGOs that respond to these emergencies.

In order to address this challenge, emergency directors from 7 agencies - CARE International, Catholic Relief Services, International Rescue Committee, Mercy Corps, Oxfam GB, Save the Children and World Vision International- came together in 2003 to discuss the most persistent obstacles in humanitarian aid delivery. The Inter-Agency Working Group (IWG) on Emergency Capacity that emerged from this meeting launched a systematic analysis, resulting in the publication of a Report on Emergency Capacity in 2004.

Phase II - launched in 2008

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Trade-offs between water for food and for curbing climate change

Tue, 2012-09-04 15:45 — Maeryn Obley

submitted by Samuel Bendett

homelandsecuritynewswire.com - September 4th, 2012

Earth’s growing human population needs fresh water for drinking and food production. Fresh water, however, is also needed for the growth of biomass, which acts as a sink of carbon dioxide and thus could help mitigate climate change. Does the Earth have enough freshwater resources to meet these competing demands?

An American Geophysical Union release reports that J. Rockström and colleagues, in their recent study, estimate the order of magnitude of freshwater consumption needed to feed a population of nine billion people by 2050 and the amount of water needed to realize the planet’s full biomass carbon sequestration potential.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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Water research thrives as discrepancy between supply and demand for water grows

Thu, 2012-08-30 00:15 — Corey Watts

submitted by Samuel Bendett

www.homelandsecuritynewswire.com - August 28, 2012

Research into water is growing faster than the average 4 percent annual growth rate for all research disciplines, claims a new report presented by Elsevier and Stockholm International Water Institute (SIWI) during the 2012 World Water Week in Stockholm. The report, The Water and Food Nexus: Trends and Development of the Research Landscape, analyzes the major trends in water and food-related article output at international, national, and institutional levels. An Elsevier release reports that Elsevier and SIWI worked closely together on creating the report, which is based on the analysis of Scopus citation data by Elsevier’s SciVal Analytics team.

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(DOWNLOAD REPORT)

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Tiny Pacific Island Tops World Ocean Health Index

Thu, 2012-08-16 18:29 — Kathy Gilbeaux

      

Coral off Jarvis Island in the central Pacific. Photograph: Jim Maragos/AP

Uninhabited Jarvis island, halfway between Hawaii and Cook Islands, gets score of 86 compared with global average of 60

(FOR LINKS TO THE OCEAN HEALTH INDEX - CLICK "READ MORE")

guardian.co.uk - by John Vidal - August 15, 2012

An uninhabited Pacific island has come top of the first comprehensive ocean health index, which compares all the world's coastal countries and scores them for how well the seas around them benefit both man and nature.

Tiny 4.5 sq km Jarvis island, halfway between Hawaii and the Cook Islands, was briefly mined for seabird fertiliser in the 19th century but both the waters around it and the island itself have been left more or less untouched since then, which accounts for its top score of 86 out of 100 compared with a global average of 60.

(READ COMPLETE ARTICLE)

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ProMED - African Swine Fever - Ukraine (03): Europe, Threat

Sun, 2012-08-12 23:14 — Kathy Gilbeaux

thepigsite.com - August 8, 2012

ANALYSIS - The spread of African Swine Fever from the Caucasus to the east coast of the Crimean peninsula in Ukraine presents an alarming and concerning situation, writes Chris Harris.

The latest outbreak, discovered at the end of July and confirmed through PCR tests on samples taken from back yard pigs in the Zaporozhye region, is worrying because it represents not so much a gradual spread of the disease, but a dramatic jump.

The outbreak has occurred 170 kilometres from the Russian border.

(READ ARTICLE)

African Swine Fever in Ukraine

[DEFRA's International Disease Monitoring Preliminary Outbreak
Assessment "ASF in Ukraine" (Reference: VITT/1200 ASF) of 2 Aug 3012 ,
including a map and references, is available at
<http://www.defra.gov.uk/animal-diseases/files/poa-asf-ukraine-20120802.pdf>. - (3 page .PDF file)

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