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Ebola death toll in West Africa rise to 467, WHO says

                                                            

The number of people killed by the deadly Ebola virus in West Africa has risen to 467, the World Health Organization (WHO) has said.

Sixty-eight of the deaths had been recorded since 23 June, the WHO said.

The number of cases had risen from 635 on 23 June to 759, a 20% increase, the WHO added.

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Oldest Baby Boom in North America Sheds Light on Native American Population Crash

Sites like Pueblo Bonito in northern New Mexico reached their maximum size in the early A.D. 1100s, just before a major drought began to decrease birth rates throughout the Southwest. Credit: Nate Crabtree

Scientists chart an ancient baby boom—in southwestern Native Americans from 500 to 1300 AD

phys.org - June 30, 2014

Washington State University researchers have sketched out one of the greatest baby booms in North American history, a centuries-long "growth blip" among southwestern Native Americans between 500 to 1300 A.D.

It was a time when the early features of civilization—including farming and food storage—had matured to where birth rates likely "exceeded the highest in the world today," the researchers write in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

A crash followed . . .

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CLICK HERE - PNAS - RESEARCH - Long and spatially variable Neolithic Demographic Transition in the North American Southwest

 

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China Leads World to Solar Power Record in 2013

earth-policy.org - by J. Matthew Roney - June 18,2014

In the last two years, countries around the world have added almost as much new solar photovoltaics (PV) capacity as had been added since the invention of the solar cell. . .

. . . China—the leading manufacturer of PV—had until recently installed very little solar power at home. Those days are over.

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Trash Concentration in Ocean as Dangerous as Climatic Change

      

timesofindia.indiatimes.com - June 17, 2014

SYDNEY: Large concentrations of trash in the oceans, also known as "plastic soups", are as dangerous as climatic change, one of the experts in the field, Mike Moore said, Australian media reported.

These high concentrations of ocean garbage "are currently killing a more animals than climate change", Moore said.

. . . "We are facing a new phenomenon. In fact, it is a new habitat which does not have precendents in the planet's history," Moore added.

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CLICK HERE - Tracking the garbage deserts of the ocean

RESEARCH - Origin, dynamics and evolution of ocean garbage patches from observed surface drifters

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Technology: using power for good

Social media and increasingly accessible smartphones help groups mobilise around the world. Photograph: Prasit Chansareekorn/Flickr Vision

Image: Social media and increasingly accessible smartphones help groups mobilise around the world. Photograph: Prasit Chansareekorn/Flickr Vision

theguardian.org - March 13th, 2014 - Hansdeep Singh, Jaspreet Singh and Linda Raftree

Technology has huge potential to be used for social good. Mobiles and mapping software can be used to gather data, and visualise patterns and trends; predictive analytics can be used to help translate 'big data' into useful statistics; unmanned aerial vehicles can monitor real-time crises; and social media helps mobilise groups around the world.

These technologies are getting more accessible to diverse groups by the day.

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Facebook Conducted Psychological Experiments On Unknowing Users

      

CREDIT: AP Photo/Gus Ruelas

thinkprogress.org - by Annie-Rose Strasser - June 28, 2014

The latest way that Facebook has been peeking into its users’ personal lives may be the most surprising yet: Facebook researches have published a scientific paper that reveals the company has been conducting psychological experiments on its users to manipulate their emotions.

The experiments sought to prove the phenomenon of “emotional contagion” — as in, whether you’ll be more happy if those in your Facebook news feed are.

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RESEARCH STUDY - Experimental evidence of massive-scale emotional contagion through social networks

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'Drastic action is needed' now to stop Ebola epidemic

(CNN) -- The World Health Organization says "drastic action is needed" to stop the deadly Ebola virus outbreak in West Africa. It has sent teams of experts to help locals deal with the epidemic and WHO plans to meet next week to discuss how to contain it.

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Ebola in West Africa: 'The epidemic is out of control'

With Ebola continuing to spread in Guinea, Sierra Leone and Liberia, bringing the epidemic under control will require a massive deployment of resources by governments in West Africa and aid organizations, according to the international medical organization Médecins Sans Frontières/Doctors Without Borders (MSF), which also warned that it has reached the limits of what its teams can do.

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Deep Underground, Oceans Of Water May Be Trapped In A Crystal Sponge

Earth's surface oceans are quite apparent, even from satellite images of our blue marble, but now scientists have found oceans' worth of water are hidden deep in Earth's mantle, locked up in a mineral called ringwoodite. 
Credit: NASA/NOAA

npr.org - by L. Carol Ritchie - June 15, 2014

. . . Scientists have discovered evidence of a vast reservoir of water hiding up to 400 miles beneath the surface.

The discovery could transform our understanding of how the planet was formed, suggesting that Earth's water may have come from within, rather than from collisions with large, icy comets.

The water is trapped in a blue mineral called ringwoodite that sits in the mantle, a hot, rocky layer between the Earth's crust and outer core.

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CLICK HERE - STUDY - Dehydration melting at the top of the lower mantle

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World Refugee Day: Global Forced Displacement Tops 50 Million for First Time in Post-World War II Era

      

Photo: UNHCR

unhcr.org - June 20, 2014

GENEVA, June 20 (UNHCR) The UN refugee agency reported today on World Refugee Day that the number of refugees, asylum-seekers and internally displaced people worldwide has, for the first time in the post-World War II era, exceeded 50 million people.

UNHCR's annual Global Trends report, which is based on data compiled by governments and non-governmental partner organizations, and from the organization's own records, shows 51.2 million people were forcibly displaced at the end of 2013, fully 6 million more than the 45.2 million reported in 2012.

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