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Hi,
I, just a few days ago, had a great learning experience while reading a series of tweets by Peter Kalmus, an avid tweeter and NASA climate scientist. In them he explains how distant targets for the fight against our climate crisis actually hamper the fight. Setting our sights on preventing the elusive additional 1.5 degrees Celsius of global heating by 2030, let alone the much harder but still most likely unachievable goal of 2C, just gives time and cover to the polluters and ecocide perpetrators. Letting them and our societies set goals way off into the distance (yes 8 years is a long time, and 28 years is beyond perception) just gives us a false feeling of security, thinking that we have lots of time to get there, lots of time for achieving the adjustments necessary. But we don’t and this is problematic, first because even 1.5C is not safe, as we are learning from our current 1.2C of global heating. We are already seeing disastrous outcomes all over the world, pretty well every time we get news. This should really make us think twice. And then there’s the anniversaries which we so quickly forget. This week is the one year anniversary of the British Columbia trio of atmospheric rivers that killed five people and displaced over 20,000, killed hundreds of thousands of animals and flooded the land so badly that recovery is still underway.
Clearly hoping and aiming for 1.5C, but realistically 2.0C+ at best, is certainly the recipe for more frequent and greater disasters, ones that will affect billions of people. They may or may not be globally devastating, but who knows. Maybe we haven’t yet internalized that for each additional increment in global heating we’re not only increasing the probability of (can we go beyond 100%?) and locking in greater disasters likely for centuries. We are currently contributing to creating a world and future none of us want, even now, let alone waiting for 2030 or 2050, far beyond my time horizon.
We just achieved a global population of 8 billion, which is set to increase by about 25% by 2050. With so many more people in the way of harm and contributing to it, the future of keeping to illusive targets doesn’t even seem rational. We should be setting annual targets and legislating compliance and punishing those not keeping to them. We should be putting on the table concrete plans for winding down the oil industry while ramping up the renewables and clean energy sources and making big changes to agriculture. But what are we doing?
To see what we’re doing read on in today’s Planetary Health Weekly (#46 of 2022) for:
- CLIMATE & BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES:
- Glaciers in the Alps are melting faster than ever – and 2022 was their worst summer yet,
- As scientists warn Brazil’s rainforest in nearing a point of irreversible decline, Lula makes ambitious deforestation pledge,
- COP27: sharp rise in fossil fuel industry delegates at climate summit,
- COP27: BP chief listed as delegate for Mauritania,
- Activists hoped Egypt’s COP27 would bring a focus on Africa – they were disappointed,
- Who’s driving climate change? New data catalogs 72,000 polluters and counting,
- Why this investor doesn’t back companies that use carbon offsets,
- 'World-first’ hydrogen project raises questions about its role in fuelling future homes,
- France to require all large car parks to be covered by solar panels,
- Just Stop Oil (Climate crisis advocate): do radical protests turn the public away from a cause? Here’s the evidence,
- Human influence on the 2021 British Columbia floods,
- Selected tweets by Peter Kalmus
- CORONVIRUS UPDATES:
- What if COVID reinfections wear down our immunity?
- Inside the anti-vaxxer civil war,
- ‘Immunity debt’: why experts say this new term promotes Covid-19 ‘misinformation’,
- Estimated global proportions of individuals with persistent fatigue, cognitive and respiratory symptom clusters following symptomatic Covid-19,
- Various data charts and information, THEN
- BEZ’S BLOG #11: 'Return To Early Life',
- Three experimental Ebola vaccines head to Uganda,
- Canada officially in a flu epidemic after crossing seasonal threshold,
- Uganda’s President Museveni slams ‘Western double standards’ over coal mine plan,
- Crunch time as crisp makers adopt plastic-free packets,
- NextEra and Portland General Electric open US’ first wind-solar-battery project,
- Should ‘radical’ climate activism be penalized?
- Fighting For A Shot (Part 3): Canada has failed to deliver on its Covid-19 promises to the world – and some say they will never forget,
- Hides and seeking opportunity: Kanina Terry shares traditional wisdom with youth,
- Quotes on the climate crisis by leaders Guterres, Scholz and Macron,
- Apple TV+ announced programming partnership with Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai,
- Psychological strategies for the long haul of climate action,
- Fodor’s no list 2023 (places to reconsider travel to),
- Avian flu threatens British food staples, from English breakfast to Christmas dinner,
- Upcoming book - The Climate Book: Facts and the Solutions by Greta Thunberg,
- Universities need a “professor-entrepreneur” career track to support innovation, and lastly
- ENSHOTS of First Snow in Seguin, Ontario.
Do read on, enjoy the newsletter and follow the closing of COP27. Best, david
David Zakus, Editor and Publisher
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SUNRISE AT WHITEFISH LAKE |
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IN COMPLETE SOLIDARITY WITH UKRAINE SEEKING PEACE AND VICTORY |
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AND WITH THE BRAVE PROTESTERS IN IRAN |
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CLIMATE & BIODIVERSITY CRISES UPDATES |
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Left: University of Salford students on a Alpine glacier visit in 2009 looking toward the tongue of the Gorner Glacier. Right the same view in 2022. Credit: Neil Entwistle
Finally, after what was arguably the worst summer on record for glaciers, snow has begun to fall in the European Alps. It is much needed. Over the 19 years that I have visited and studied the glaciers in Switzerland, I have not seen a summer like 2022. The scale of change is staggering.
Glaciologists like me used to use the word “extreme” to describe annual ice loss of around 2% of a glacier’s overall volume. This year Switzerland’s glaciers have lost an average of 6.2% of their ice – extreme indeed.
The new flurries of snow will form a protective blanket to shield and reflect 90% of the sun’s radiation back into the atmosphere and limits the warming and melting of the ice beneath. When snow falls over the winter, and then subsequently doesn’t melt over the summer, it adds to the mass of a glacier. Over a few similar years, gravity would take over and glaciers would start to advance downhill.
However over the past century, that has not been the case. The protective layers of snow have not been thick enough to offset the warming summer temperatures and on average glaciers around the world have been wasting away since the end of the little ice age in the mid-late 1800s. Read more at: The Conversation
SEE ALSO:
At CNN: As scientists warn Brazil’s rainforest is nearing a point of irreversible decline, Lula makes ambitious deforestation pledge
As president-elect Lula Da Silva comes into power, projects like reforestation are now at the crossroads of climate and political history in Brazil, a country that is home to one of the planet’s most significant stores of biodiversity.
For nearly four years, the government of President Jair Bolsonaro was accused of undoing the environment progress of Lula, who served as president from 2003 through 2010. Data from Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research show the rate of deforestation under Bolsonaro’s presidency climbed by more than 70% from 2018 to 2021.
Already the Amazon rainforest is emitting more carbon dioxide than it absorbs in some locations — a shift that could have an enormous negative impact on global warming trends. And scientists warn the precious rainforest is nearing a point of irreversible decline and is less capable of recovering from disturbances like drought, logging and wildfires.
Lula’s record as former president shows his government was able to cut deforestation rates dramatically by the end of his term in 2010. And his new promise goes even further: to reach zero deforestation in Brazil. This would be substantially more ambitious than his previous government’s goal to eliminate illegal deforestation, not deforestation of all kinds.
Speaking at the UN’s COP27 climate summit on Wednesday in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, Lula told a jam-packed conference room that “Brazil is back to resume its ties with the world,” and there is “no climate security for the world without a protected Amazon, and we will do whatever it takes to have a different vision in the degradation.”
He also promised to punish those who are responsible for the deforestation in Amazon, and announced a new ministry for indigenous people “so that the indigenous people themselves can present and propose to the government about policies that can derive their survival with dignity and security, peace and sustainability.”
At BBC: COP27: Sharp rise in fossil fuel industry delegates at climate summit
The number of delegates with links to fossil fuels at the UN climate summit has jumped 25% from the last meeting, analysis shared with the BBC shows. Campaign group Global Witness found more than 600 people at the talks in Egypt are linked to fossil fuels. That's more than the combined delegations from the 10 most climate-impacted countries. Around 35,000 people are expected to attend the COP27 summit in the Red Sea resort of Sharm el-Sheikh.
"COP27 looks like a fossil fuel industry trade show," said Rachel Rose Jackson, from Corporate Accountability, one of a group of campaigners who released the data along with the Corporate Europe Observatory. "We're on a carousel of madness here rather than climate action. The fossil fuel industry, their agenda, it's deadly. Their motivation is profit and greed. They're not serious about climate action. They never have been and they never will."
The biggest single delegation at COP27 is from the United Arab Emirates, who will host COP28 next year. They have 1,070 people on the ground here, up from just 170 last year. The analysis found that 70 of that delegation were connected to fossil fuel extraction.
At BBC: COP27: BP chief listed as delegate for Mauritania
The BBC has learned that BP chief executive Bernard Looney was registered as a poor country delegate for COP27. Mr Looney is on the official UN lists as a delegate from Mauritania, a west African nation where BP has major investments. Four other BP employees are also included as part of the Mauritania team here. BP says Mr Looney was invited to COP27 by the Mauritanians for a signing ceremony and is no longer here.
At CNN: Activists hoped Egypt’s COP27 would bring a focus on Africa. They were disappointed
The crowd was loving what Bhekumuzi Bhebhe had to say, cheering loudly as he yelled “don’t gas Africa!” into the megaphone.
Standing under the baking Egyptian sun at the COP27 UN climate summit in Sharm el-Sheikh on Tuesday, Bhebhe, a South Africa-based climate campaigner, was protesting against what he says is an attempt by rich countries to bribe Africa into investing in planet-warming fossil fuels. In his mind, it’s yet another example of the hypocrisy western countries have showed toward the continent – which has barely contributed to the climate crisis but is experiencing some of its most devastating effects.
“Is this justice?!” he asked his fellow protesters. “No!” the crowd yelled back.
The Egyptian government, which is hosting and presiding over the UN-sponsored climate talks, had promised this year’s summit would finally be the “African COP” that would put the needs of the continent front and center.
But according to many representatives of countries across Africa, that promise remains largely unfulfilled.
Mohamed Adow, the director and founder of Power Shift Africa, a non-governmental organization focused on accelerating renewable energy there, said at an event on Sunday that the developments so far show the conference was “African in the name only.”
Any hopes that the summit would really focus on Africa were dashed early, when the conference participants denied a request by a group of African governments to include a discussion about the continent’s “special needs and circumstances” on the official agenda.
At NY Times: Who’s Driving Climate Change? New Data Catalogs 72,000 Polluters and Counting
A nonprofit backed by Al Gore and other big environmental donors says it can track emissions down to individual power plants, oil fields and cargo ships.
At CNBC: Why this investor doesn't back companies that use carbon offsets
Zachary
Bogue, a co-founder of the Silicon Valley venture capital firm DCVC, does not
invest in companies that depend on carbon offsets to make their business model
work. That's not an indictment of the idea. Bogue wants a carbon credit market
to exist, but right now, he does not see the kind of regulation and
verification in the space that is needed. The Finnish nonprofit and startup
Compensate found that 90% of carbon capture projects it analyzed for a white
paper out in 2021 were ineffective.
At The Guardian: ‘World-first’ hydrogen project raises questions about its role in fuelling future homes
The criticisms of the project provide a microcosm for the long-running debate over hydrogen’s place in the energy transition. Proponents argue hydrogen is a vital piece in the jigsaw, notably in helping to turn heavy industry green. Detractors claim it is too expensive and focus should be put instead on boosting production on other forms of power, such as wind and solar. Short-term cost concerns have partly been addressed by the fact wholesale gas prices have increased this year. This week, specialist ITM Power said price rises had underlined the benefits of switching to green hydrogen production.
At The Guardian: France to require all large car parks to be covered by solar panels
(Climate Crisis Advocacy) At The Conversation: Just Stop Oil: do radical protests turn the public away from a cause? Here’s the evidence
Members of the protest group Just Stop Oil recently threw soup at Van Gogh’s Sunflowers in the National Gallery in London. The action once again triggered debate about what kinds of protest are most effective.
After a quick clean of the glass, the painting was back on display. But critics argued that the real damage had been done, by alienating the public from the cause itself (the demand that the UK government reverse its support for opening new oil and gas fields in the North Sea).
Dramatic protest isn’t going away. Protagonists will continue to be the subject of (mostly) negative media attention, which will lead to widespread public disapproval. But when we look at public support for the protesters’ demands, there isn’t any compelling evidence for nonviolent protest being counterproductive. People may “shoot the messenger”, but they do – at least, sometimes – hear the message.
At Science Direct: Human
influence on the 2021 British Columbia floods
A strong atmospheric river made landfall in southwestern British Columbia, Canada on November 14th, 2021, bringing two days of intense precipitation to the region. The resulting floods and landslides led to the loss of at least five lives, cut Vancouver off entirely from the rest of Canada by road and rail, and made this the costliest natural disaster in the province's history. Here we show that when characterised in terms of storm-averaged water vapour transport, the variable typically used to characterise the intensity of atmospheric rivers, westerly atmospheric river events of this magnitude are approximately one in ten year events in the current climate of this region, and that such events have been made at least 60% more likely by the effects of human-induced climate change. Characterised in terms of the associated two-day precipitation, the event is substantially more extreme, approximately a one in fifty to one in a hundred year event, and the probability of events at least this large has been increased by a best estimate of 45% by human-induced climate change. The effects of this precipitation on streamflow were exacerbated by already wet conditions preceding the event, and by rising temperatures during the event that led to significant snowmelt, which led to streamflow maxima exceeding estimated one in a hundred year events in several basins in the region. Based on a large ensemble of simulations with a hydrological model which integrates the effects of multiple climatic drivers, we find that the probability of such extreme streamflow events in October to December has been increased by human-induced climate change by a best estimate of 120–330%. Together these results demonstrate the substantial human influence on this compound extreme event, and help motivate efforts to increase resiliency in the face of more frequent events of this kind in the future.
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SARS-CoV-2 & COVID-19 UPDATES |
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The pandemic continues all over the world and is now complicated by epidemic flu and RSV (most common in children). However, information about Covid-19's prevalence and outcomes is increasingly hard to find, and many erroneously feel it's over. It is not. Covid is still a life threatening disease associated with many complications and infecting and killing many. Many health authorities are calling for widespread public health measures. Collective action, data reporting and leadership have all but disappeared.
Over the last week, cases are down by about 10% to 350,000/day (though this is under-reported); deaths are down slightly to about 1300/day; and vaccinations down about two-thirds to only about 600,000/day Way too many not still not immunized, including getting boosters, especially among children and those 60+.
Vaccination, despite ongoing concerns about waning immunity and slander against it, along with other proven public health measures, remain the best ways to keep yourself and others safe from serious consequences. Get all the shots/boosters you can, and practise other public health measures (like masking) especially indoors with crowds.
See below for a few global stats and current hotspots.
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"It is the plague in seemingly all sincerity." Bob Woodward |
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Credit: Shutterstock.
But researchers saw further promise in what they called hybrid immunity: people who had been infected with COVID and then received mRNA vaccines would, it was assumed, develop a formidable protection through raised levels of antibodies (proteins made by the immune system to battle infection).
However variants emerged, capable of evading those antibodies. Many people who had been vaccinated or already had endured a bout of COVID were experiencing “breakthrough infections.” What could put the brakes on this ever-evolving virus, which can kill, damage organs and linger for months?
The answer from many scientists has been T cells — our bodies’ line of immune defence after antibodies. T cells can spot and attack viruses and even remember previous invaders. As virologist Vincent Racaniello titled one of his articles: “T cells will save us from COVID-19.”
But what if COVID wears down T cells in people who get it, and does so increasingly with each reinfection? That concern lies at the heart of a rolling, rancorous scientific debate, a lot of it conducted on Twitter. A person at the centre of the storm, sounding alarms about T cell “dysregulation” since the early days of the pandemic, has been a U.S. immunologist named Anthony Leonardi. Read more at Tyee
SEE ALSO:
At The Daily Beast: Inside the Anti-Vaxxer Civil War
Dr. Robert Malone became a star among COVID-19 vaccine skeptics last December when he appeared on Joe Rogan’s podcast. Even among opponents of the vaccine, Malone stood out for his claim that the responses to the virus were driven by a phenomenon he called “mass formation psychosis”—essentially, the idea that society had been hypnotized during the pandemic.
The Rogan appearance turned Malone into perhaps the most visible vaccine critic in the country, and it sparked controversy for Rogan’s employer, Spotify. After the episode, musician Neil Young pulled his music from the streaming giant.
Despite Malone’s popularity with anti-vaccine activists, he’s still managed to piss off many of the biggest anti-vax conspiracy theorists over his refusal to back their nuttiest suppositions. Two of the loudest voices in that community—right-wing shock jock Stew Peters, and pro-Trump personality Dr. Jane Ruby—have settled on the story that Malone is actually working with the CIA.
At Global News: ‘Immunity debt’: Why experts say this new term promotes COVID-19 ‘misinformation’
The term “immunity debt” is circulating widely online as an explanation for a significant surge in respiratory illness in Canada, but infectious diseases experts say the term and the narratives around it are “dangerous” and can promote COVID-19 “misinformation.”
Two variations of how “immunity debt” is being interpreted have emerged in recent weeks, as emergency departments and children’s hospitals across the country have been swamped with more patients sick with respiratory viruses than they can handle.
At JAMA Network: Estimated Global Proportions of Individuals With Persistent Fatigue, Cognitive, and Respiratory Symptom Clusters Following Symptomatic COVID-19 in 2020 and 2021
This observational analysis involved bayesian meta-regression and pooling of 54 studies and 2 medical record databases with data for 1.2 million individuals (from 22 countries) who had symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection. The modeled estimated proportion with at least 1 of the 3 self-reported Long COVID symptom clusters 3 months after symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection was 6.2%, including 3.7% for ongoing respiratory problems, 3.2% for persistent fatigue with bodily pain or mood swings, and 2.2% for cognitive problems after adjusting for health status before COVID-19.
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New COVID-19 'hazard index' launches for Canadian provinces |
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Two charts below from Dr. Jeff Gilchrist on Twitter (@BogochIsaac) November 14, 2022 |
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Credit: New York Times
Let’s explore what being of low birthweight does to brain development. In my September Blog (#9) on early life I explained how conditions in your early life from conception to age two (first thousand days) are when perhaps half of your adult health is programmed. This suggests that the impact of personal health-related behaviors we practice in later life may not matter as much for our health as we think. Last month we found that being poor is bad for your health, and especially living in the U.S. is not so good for being healthy. Birthweight is a proxy measure of development in the fetal period. Being born of low birthweight compromises how healthy you can become, although like all population health factors, it doesn't imply that you can't rise above early life circumstances and be healthy despite having low birthweight.
Attachment issues in the next two years after being born are critical too. A wag once said "choose your parents carefully." That is not an individual decision but one that societies make. Having national policies that give paid time off once you have a baby promote better health. Poverty in a country is a policy choice. The United States has the most poverty of all rich nations, again because that is something Americans seemingly choose to have.
Let's begin by looking at brain development issues and how they are affected by early life conditions.
Birthweight & school performance
An important study looked at all births in Florida from 1992 to 2002 and tracked their birthweight with scores on standardized tests in school. One can question whether these tests measure brain development but consider them a proxy indicator.
The New York Times newspaper produced an interactive report allowing exploration of the findings. Those with higher birthweights did better on the tests, peaking around 9 to 10 pounds and then declining slightly.
This graph above illustrates the relationship. The mother's education also had a major impact as demonstrated on the graph below.
The range of test scores for mothers that did not graduate from high school showed that at the high birthweight end, the children did not do much better than those at the low birthweight end for mothers who did graduate from high school. Again at the high end, the test scores were comparable to low birthweights of those mothers with some college, and so on to college graduates.
These graphs apply to populations. The light shades around the blue lines represent ranges, or confidence intervals. It doesn't mean that if your mother did not get much education that you are doomed to not do well in school. My mother had two years of formal education, my birthweight was 9 pounds, 6 ounces and I did well in school.
The interactive feature on the website allows looking at racial distinctions and mother's ages. Babies born to Black mothers had the worst test scores and Asian mothers had the best. Measures of school quality did not influence the results.
One response to these findings is to make sure mothers graduate from high school or better, from college. However, mothers who themselves were born of low birthweight may not have the brain development to do well in school, and they may not have the economic resources to go to college, which is expensive in the U.S.
A look at rates of low birthweight of American mothers and their educational status show that Black college graduate mothers have babies with the highest rates of low birthweight compared to any other radicalized group of any educational status. We will discuss the importance of racism in a future blog.
Consider natural experiments to illustrate the importance of the first nine months. If you were pregnant and near Ground Zero in New York on September 11, 2001 you were more likely to deliver a low birthweight baby. These children have been followed and found to have compromised neurodevelopment. If you were a pregnant Arab woman living in California at that time, you also were more likely to have a low birthweight baby and deliver pre-term. Hurricane Katrina and the Quebec Ice Storm are other examples of disasters affecting cognitive development in the infants who were in utero then. The main takeaway is that development in utero affects brain development significantly.
Fetal size is related to poverty in the middle-trimester of pregnancy. Other studies demonstrate that poor mothers give birth to babies with compromised brain development. Fathers matter too. Dads who had cumulative early life stress father babies with smaller brains. Research suggests that socioeconomic status before a fetus is conceived matters for later outcomes. The admonition in last month's blog to not be poor or to have poor parents is what society needs to do.
We saw in Blog #9 that conditions that foster secure attachment, the sense of an infant feeling wanted and cared for in ways that depend on cultural values during the first few years after birth are critical as well. Early attachment styles can be inferred from the adult attachment interview. Diabetics with secure attachment in early life have lower mortality rates than those with various forms of insecure attachment. Reasons may relate to the biology of those with secure attachment. Attachment also affects outcomes in other health conditions.
Popular books looking at the importance of early life issues in adulthood include a long-standing best-seller, The body keeps the score: brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma by Dr. Bessel Van Der Kolk. It has been on the New York Times list for more than 2 years and has been published in 38 languages! Van Der Kolk talks about trauma. As an emergency physician trauma to me was what was observable in the emergency department. Stabbings, car crashes, gun shot wounds, beatings and the like. It took me a while to embrace today's popular use of the word trauma.
The next blog (December 15) will explore this popular term trauma and how it connects with ACEs or Adverse Childhood Experiences.
Read more from Dr. Bezruchka at PHW Blogs
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Credit: iStock
Three experimental Ebola vaccine candidates are being shipped to Uganda to aid in combatting the ongoing outbreak in the country, which has so far seen 129 confirmed cases and 37 deaths, according to the Ministry of Health of Uganda.
The outbreak, caused by a version of the virus that originated in Sudan, has reached Uganda’s capital, Kampala, and is affecting six other districts, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
There is an approved and available vaccine for a different type of Ebola virus, the species named “Zaire ebolavirus.” However, the species named “Sudan ebolavirus” does not have an approved vaccine available.
The three experimental vaccine candidates being sent to Uganda are currently in development to protect against that species. As they help fight the current outbreak, their use in the country will also supply additional data for clinical trials. The shipment of the vaccine candidates is part of a large-scale coordinated effort between health agencies, including the World Health Organization (WHO) and the CDC, and the Ugandan government to fight the outbreak.
Read more at The Hill
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Credit: CTV News
The latest FluWatch report confirms what experts have been warning could happen as an early rise in influenza cases spreads across Canada: we’re now officially in the midst of a flu epidemic.
“At the national level, influenza activity has crossed the seasonal threshold, indicating the start of an influenza epidemic. All surveillance indicators are increasing and most are above-expected levels typical of this time of year,” the report said.
The latest numbers from Canada’s national surveillance system, which tracks the spread of influenza and influenza-like illnesses, reports an 11.7% positivity rate in Canada in the week ending Nov. 5, 2022, an increase from 6.3 per cent reported in the two weeks before— thereby crossing the threshold of 5% positivity over that period and putting Canada into flu epidemic territory.
Across Canada, the percentage of hospital visits by patients with flu-like symptoms has been above the seasonal average, along with those reporting cough and fever as symptoms. The FluWatch report for the week ending Nov. 5, 2022, showed there were 78 hospitalizations cases related to Influenza.
The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), meanwhile, is reporting a rising number of cases in much of the country (as illustrated above).
Read more at the CTV News
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Ugandan President Yoweri Museveni. Credit: Abubaker Lubowa/Reuters/File
Uganda’s President Yoweri Museveni has slammed Western countries over what he calls a “reprehensible double standard” in their response to the energy crisis brought about by the Russian invasion of Ukraine.
In a Twitter post on Sunday, Museveni singled out Germany for demolishing wind turbines to allow for the expansion of a coal-fueled power plant as Europe battles an energy crisis triggered by the Russia/Ukraine war.
Germany had proposed phasing out coal-fired power plants by 2030 to reduce carbon emissions. But Europe’s largest economy has now been forced to prioritize energy security over clean energy as gas supplies from Russia froze. Just like Germany, many other European countries are reviving coal projects as alternatives to Russian energy.
Museveni, 78, says Europe’s switch to coal-based power generation “makes a mockery” of the West’s climate targets.
“News from Europe that a vast wind farm is being demolished to make way for a new open-pit coal mine is the reprehensible double standard we in Africa have come to expect. It makes a mockery of Western commitments to climate targets,” the Ugandan leader said, while further describing the move as “the purest hypocrisy.”
“We will not accept one rule for them and another rule for us,” said Museveni, who has ruled the east African nation for 36 years.
Read more at CNN
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Spudos mail-order crisps come in biodegradable, plastic-free packets. Credit: Spudos
While most of us don't give crisps, or as they say in North America, potato chips, much thought as we crunch on them, their manufacture and sale is a huge industry.
Worldwide sales in 2021 totalled $32.2bn (£26.6bn), according to one study, and in the UK alone it is widely reported that six billion packets of crisps are consumed every year. Meanwhile, data for the US says Americans typically eat 1.85 billion pounds (839 million kg) of potato chips per year.
A problem with this consumption is the packaging - most crisps continue to be sold in single-use, non-recyclable plastic packets. These can take decades to finally decompose.
In the meantime, it is smaller crisps firms who are leading the way in terms of more eco-friendly packaging, such as Canadian business Humble Potato Chips. It was launched earlier this year by Alicia Lahey and her husband Jeff.
Their compostable crisp packets are also made mostly from cellulose, and are certified plastic-free. They are said to have a comparable shelf life to plastic bags, and are now on sale in both Canada and the US.
"We started Humble Potato Chips for our son Wilder," says Ms Lahey. "When he was born we began to hope for a future that wasn't just our own.
In the UK, Herefordshire-based farmers Sean Mason and Mark Green launched sustainable crisps brand Two Farmers in 2018. They were inspired to seek biodegradable packaging after being fed up with finding empty plastic crisp packets on their farms. The duo ultimately spent four years trying to find suitable packets that would enable them bring the crisps to market. "Eventually we visited a packaging show, and came across sustainable cellulose film, and combined it with plant-based biodegradable ink and glue," says Mr Mason.
In March this year Del Currie launched Spudos, which now supplies crisps to more than 65 so-called "zero-waste shops" across the UK and Republic of Ireland. These are stores that aim to eliminate packaging, and instead encourage customers to turn up with their own containers, which they fill from dispensers. For internet orders from customers both across the UK and overseas, Spudos packages its crisps and flavourings in packets made from a natural material called cellulose, which is derived from wood pulp. These decompose in about 45 days.
Read more at BBC Business News
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Credit: Utility Dive
Renewable energy advocates believe the Inflation Reduction Act will pave the way for more hybrid storage projects like Wheatridge Renewable Energy Facilities, which opened in Morrow County, Oregon, last week. The joint effort from NextEra Energy Resources and Portland General Electric is the nation’s first utility-scale project combining wind and solar generation with energy storage, according to the companies.
The installation includes 300 MW of wind, 50 MW of solar and 30 MW of battery storage. The Wheatridge system uses electricity from the solar assets to charge the batteries; the storage can provide continuous power for four hours. A NextEra subsidiary built and will operate the combined facility. PGE owns 100 MW of the output, and the subsidiary owns the rest, which it will sell to PGE under 30- and 20-year power purchase agreements.
Read more at: We Don't Have Time
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Climate protesters blocked a busy street in Berlin in October. Credit: Odd Andersen/AFP/Getty Images
Whether throwing food at art or gluing themselves to streets, climate activists are replacing large marches with small, bold acts. Some politicians say they've crossed the line.
"Why didn't your mother abort you?" a passerby shouted angrily at environmental protection activists who were blocking Berlin's busy Frankfurter Allee during a recent protest.
This exchange illustrates the increasing divisions in Germany when it comes to the ever more conspicuous displays of civil disobedience employed by organizations such as Letzte Generation ("Last Generation"). A gap is growing between those who say they will fight for their future by any means within reason, and those who say that many such attention-grabbing tactics have crossed the line into criminality.
"When crimes are committed and other people are endangered, every limit of legitimate protest is crossed," Interior Minister Nancy Faeser, of the Social Democrats (SPD), said on Monday. "All this has nothing whatsoever to do with democratic debate. The offenders must be prosecuted quickly and consistently."
Faeser was referring to an incident last week in which Letzte Generation activists were blamed for blocking a street in the capital that first responders needed to use. The special operations vehicle took several minutes longer to get to an accident site. The bicyclist involved in the accident later died, with some suggesting the delay was responsible for the woman's death and others questioning whether it could be solely blamed on the activists' actions. This week, the Berlin emergency services released a statement in which it said that the traffic caused by the protest did cost the woman her life. Read more at DW (German News)
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FIGHTING FOR A SHOT (PART 3): Canada's Failure to Deliver |
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Canada has failed to deliver on its COVID-19 promises to the world — and some say they won’t forget it |
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Credit: TOMMY TRENCHARD/SUSAN KAO TORONTO STAR PHOTO ILLUSTRATION
Tebogo Siwela is frank about why he
signed up to have an untested vaccine injected into his arm. Mostly, for the money.
When COVID-19 hit, Siwela, a lanky young
musician fond of immaculately pressed shirts and trendy wide-brimmed hats, was
making a living showing tourists around Johannesburg, South Africa. Then, very
quickly, he wasn’t.
“I won’t lie. With the
vaccine trial, I heard my friends talking that there’s money being offered,” he
says.
Vaccine trials have run at
dozens of sites around the world operated under strict ethical guidelines, and
organizers were typically not allowed to pay volunteers. But organizers were able
to compensate participants for their food and travel. For Siwela, the baby of
his family who helps support his parents, the 300 rand per visit — roughly $25
— became a lifeline.
“At first I was scared,
because I also thought of the long-term effects or any effects,” Siwela says of
the trial. “But at the end of the day, I was like, ‘I need that money.’”
Siwela explains that his home town of Soweto was hit hard by COVID-19 restrictions, and that many of his out-of-work friends joined the vaccine trial. But every time he went for a checkup or a shot, researchers would explain a bit of the science behind the vaccines, and he gradually came to believe not only in the safety of the shots, but in the importance of helping vet them for the world.
Siwela’s experience is, in many ways, an illustration of how murky vaccine equity can be. The head of this particular study had pushed hard for trials to be done in South Africa, in the hopes it would help generate local effectiveness data — something that can help a local regulator make a faster decision to authorize a drug.
But Siwela would go on to watch as his neighbours were left waiting for vaccines, even as they were given out to protect others around the world. Vaccine supply was initially slow in South Africa, and while the country has started to catch up, the same is not true in the rest of the African continent. Read more at The Star
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SPOTLIGHT ON INDIGENOUS WELLNESS |
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Hides and Seeking Opportunity: Kanina Terry Shares Traditional Wisdom With Youth |
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Credit: Future Pathways
Trained as a chef, Kanina Terry hasn’t worked in food services for years. She prefers to cook for herself and her family or with students or with organizations in her classroom. What lights her up most is how she’s engaging with her culture. Terry is reclaiming food practices and traditions she was not taught because of the impacts of residential schools and colonialism.
That process has been challenging. “I don't live on reserve. I don't have close connections to people from my community who still have that knowledge,” she shared. Terry has learned through trial and error, through people from other communities and by observing their practices.
Kanina Terry lives in Sioux Lookout and is a member of Lac Seul First Nation. She works with Connected North and TakingITGlobal as a content provider, sharing with youth all over Canada about food, food skills, Indigenous food sovereignty and Indigenous food reclamation. She also talks about hide tanning, an art she spends most of her time on.
Her journey to become an educator in cultural practices was a long and winding one.
On her journey to becoming a cultural educator, Terry learned how to trust herself to know when to walk away from something that wasn’t fulfilling her anymore. ”Just because someone wants you to do it and just because you're good at it doesn't mean that you should do it,” she explained. Working on hides, she’s in the best shape of her life and fulfilled.
Reclaiming food practices and traditions she was not taught because of the impacts of residential schools and colonialism has been empowering. Connecting with youth across the country, she is able to facilitate Indigenous knowledge transfer and bring relevance to practices that have been going on since time immemorial. Kanina Terry’s had the opportunity to stretch herself into something she’s proud of, much like the hides she works on with care.
Read more at Fireside Chats from Future Pathways
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Credit: DW
See what three world leaders have to say:
António Guterres
"Humanity has a choice: cooperate or perish," Guterres told the conference in the Egyptian resort of Sharm el-Sheikh. "It is either a Climate Solidarity Pact or a Collective Suicide Pact."
The UN chief warned that, on the current trajectory, "we are on a highway to climate hell with our foot still on the accelerator."
Guterres called for a pact between the world's richest and poorest countries to accelerate a shift from fossil fuels to alternative energy sources. He called for more rapid delivery of funds to help less affluent nations reduce emissions, and to buffer them against the unavoidable impact of climate change.
"The two largest economies — the United States and China — have a particular responsibility to join efforts to make this pact a reality," he said.
Guterres also said COP27 must agree on a "clear, time-bound roadmap" for loss and damage that delivers "effective institutional arrangements for financing."
"Getting concrete results on loss and damage is a litmus test of the commitment of governments to the success of COP27," he said.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz
Speaking in Sharm el-Sheikh, Chancellor Olaf Scholz has promised to increase by 2025 German contribution for international climate financing to €6 billion ($6.02 billion) annually.
In addition, Germany will provide €170 million ($170.5 million) for a global protective umbrella to cushion the damage caused by climate catastrophes such as droughts, hurricanes or floods.
In his speech, Scholz warned against a "renaissance of fossil fuels" such as oil, gas and coal. "For Germany, I say there will be no such thing," he said.
He also reiterated the goal that Germany should become climate-neutral by 2045. "Not less but more speed, more ambition, more cooperation in the transition to renewable energies is the imperative of our time," Scholz said.
French President Emmanuel Macron
addressed the impact of the Russia-Ukraine war on climate commitments.
"Even if our world has changed, the climate issue cannot be a balancing item of the war unleashed by Russia on Ukrainian soil (...) We will not sacrifice our commitments to the climate due to the Russian threat in terms of energy so all countries must continue to uphold all their commitments," he said.
Read more at DW: COP27: UN chief warns world is on path to 'climate hell'
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- November 6-18, 2022: COP 27 UN Climate Change Conference (Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt)
- November 15-17, 2022: Smart City Expo World Congress, 15-17 November 2022 (Barcelona, Spain)
- November 24-25, 2022: Circularity: Driving Circular Innovation (Sydney, Australia)
- November 21-23, 2022: Canadian Conference on Global Health Join us in Toronto for the 28th Canadian Conference on Global Health (CCGH). This year's hybrid event will explore the theme of: "Inclusive Global Health in Uncertain Times: Research and Practice".
- November 29-30: World Ocean Summit Asia-Pacific: Harnessing the Changing Tides in Singapore
- December 7-8, 2022: The 4th International Conference on Rare Diseases (Vienna, Austria)
- December 7-19, 2022: COP15 UN Biodiversity Conference (Montreal, Canada)
- April 14-16, 2023: CUGH's Annual Global Health Conference - Global Health at a Crossroads: Equity, Climate Change and Microbial Threats
- May 23-25, 2023: The Battery Show Europe (Stuggart, Germany).
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FYI#1 SPOTLIGHT ON MEDIA |
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Apple TV+ Announces Programming Partnership with Nobel Laureate Malala Yousafzai |
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Youngest Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. Credit: Apple TV+
Apple has unveiled a multiyear programming partnership with women’s rights activist and youngest Nobel laureate Malala Yousafzai. Building on Malala’s longstanding relationship with Apple, her original programming for Apple TV+ will span dramas, comedies, documentaries, animation, and children’s series, and draw on her ability to inspire people around the world.
“I believe in the power of stories to bring families together, forge friendships, build movements, and inspire children to dream,” said Malala Yousafzai. “And I couldn’t ask for a better partner than Apple to help bring these stories to life. I’m grateful for the opportunity to support women, young people, writers, and artists in reflecting the world as they see it.”
Malala and her new production company Extracurricular join Apple’s burgeoning roster of creative visionaries, including Oprah Winfrey, Steven Spielberg, Tom Hanks, Will Smith, Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Idris Elba, Martin Scorsese, Leonardo DiCaprio, Octavia Spencer, Kumail Nanjiani, Alfonso Cuarón, and more.
At age 16, Malala published her best-selling memoir, “I Am Malala.” She’s since written two more books, starred in a documentary about her early life, and created Assembly, a digital publication for girls and young women available on Apple News. Since launching in 2018, Assembly has published stories from young women in more than 100 countries and in over 20 languages.
Malala also founded Malala Fund to champion every girl’s right to 12 years of safe, free, quality education. In 2018, Apple became Malala Fund’s first Laureate partner, supporting the organization’s work with local advocates and teachers in eight countries where girls face significant education challenges.
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Authors MICHAEL E. MANN and THOMAS S. BATEMAN , Professors. Credit: Newsweek
It's "now or never" stated the newest report of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), referring to the urgent need for governments, businesses and citizens to accelerate efforts to become a low-carbon society.
Meanwhile, the war in Ukraine threatens to increase fossil fuel production and use at the very time we must dramatically reduce it. While we are making headway toward achieving needed reductions in carbon emissions, we are not yet making nearly enough progre
We need robust climate action, from here on, to keep planetary temperatures from exceeding the catastrophic 3 degrees Fahrenheit warming level. Fossil fuel industry-funded opposition to decarbonization policies remains a key obstacle to action, but one that we can overcome. Human behavior is thus both an obstacle and a high-leverage key to prevailing. We must alter our psychology if we are to cultivate a suitable future.
1) Essential Climate Mindsets: Urgency and Agency
We need both urgency and agency in our minds and actions. Believing we cannot make a significant difference—low agency—is a common explanation, rationalization and excuse for meager action.
2) Self-nudge
3) Be Ambidextrous: Explore and Exploit
4) Find Intrinsic Motivation: Policy interventions offering extrinsic rewards (for instance, incentives to reduce energy use) can prompt people to change in the short run. Long-term, though, we must find motivation by behaving in ways that are inherently satisfying and gratifying.
Each of us can customize our intrinsic motivators because the opportunities for helpful climate action are vast: preventing bad things, promoting good things, locally or beyond, mitigating carbon emissions and adapting to oncoming changes. Variety alone—exploring possibilities, trying new things and activating a diverse repertoire—is intrinsically rewarding.
If you complete or tire of one climate project, you can find others that will re-energize you through the satisfactions of stewardship, caring for other people and species, or enhancing justice. The intrinsic rewards of creating a purer environment and seeing communities and natural systems recover, thrive and flourish will be profound. Keep self-nudging, stay active, find new intrinsic motivators, and rotate, merge and replenish them.
5) Leverage Both Progress and Setbacks
6) Beware Moral License and Other Reasons to Slacken
Climate actions compete with other pursuits for attention, time and money. Any righteous actions we take, and any progress we make, can justify subsequent slacking via moral licensing. We do a good thing and then permit ourselves to relax and turn our attention to other things.
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FYI #3 |
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Fodor’s No List 2023 (Places to Reconsider Traveling To) |
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1. Fistral Beach in Newquay, Cornwall, in August 2022.
2. Tourists crowd the floating dock on Phi Phi Leh, Thailand, in April 2022.
Credits: G Scammell / Alamy Stock Photo; ZUMA Press, Inc. / Alamy Stock Photo
Maybe the world is trying to tell us to slow down. So far
this year, we’ve clocked 29
climate-related disasters that have each caused more than a billion dollars
worth of damage, from a catastrophic “monsoon
on steroids” in Pakistan to a pair of hurricanes that swept away
bridges and homes in Puerto Rico and Florida, and record
heat waves and drought that killed thousands of people and
agricultural crops across Europe. The latter even exposed “hunger
stones,” rocks engraved to mark low water levels during historic
droughts. A circa 1900 inscription on one in Děčín, along the Elbe River in the
northern Czech Republic, reads, “If you see me, then weep”—an ominous reminder
that no pocket of the planet has gone untouched by climate change.
For all the good it
can do in bolstering local economies and connecting cultures, tourism is a
significant contributor to climate change. Three years after the word “covid”
entered our daily vocabulary, tourism numbers from April to July 2022 exceeded pre-pandemic levels. Travel
currently accounts for about 8% of global greenhouse gas emissions, and is poised to increase by 2030. And there
are plenty of unquantified effects of overtourism: stress on supply chains, destruction of
wildlife habitat, and overcrowding. As climate change intensifies, the damage
may make popular destinations inhospitable to travelers and cause their
economies to plummet.
Anti-tourism
movements and travel boycotts, especially to destinations accused of human
rights or environmental violations, might seem like easy solutions. But they don’t usually have the desired effect. Simply choosing one destination over another
doesn’t tell those in power—municipal governments—why you’re spending your
dollars elsewhere. More than anyone else, blanket boycotts affect the lowest-paid
and most vulnerable workers,
typically women, migrants, and people of color.
For this year’s No
List, we’re highlighting destinations to reconsider visiting in 2023 in three
main categories: natural attractions that could use a break in order to heal
and rejuvenate; cultural hotspots that are plagued with overcrowding and
resource depletion; and locations around the world immediately and dramatically
impacted by water crises.
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FYI #4 |
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Avian Flu Threatens British Food Staples, from English Breakfast to Christmas Dinner |
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Egg shortages could be on the cards as avian flu sweeps through Europe. Credit: Sam Mellish / Contributor / Getty Images
The classic English fry-up and traditional Christmas turkey
dinner could be under threat as Britain deals with the impact of rising cases
of avian flu.
Fried, poached, scrambled and boiled eggs may well be off the
menu as some British supermarkets have warned that supplies could be disrupted,
while grocery stores have also made moves to bolster turkey stocks ahead of the
festive season.
The current avian flu outbreak is the largest ever experienced
in the U.K., and the government ordered for all poultry and captive birds in
England to be kept indoors from Nov. 7 to
try to contain the highly infectious disease.
Governments across Europe have culled bird populations to limit
the spread of avian flu. Almost six million birds have been killed in the Netherlands since
October 2021, while Spain, Bulgaria, Denmark and France have also been badly
affected.
Nearly 50 million birds have been killed in Europe this year as
countries try to contain the disease, according to the EU's Food Safety Agency.
The U.S. is also feeling the effects of surging bird flu cases
and turkey prices have shot up 73% compared
to last year in the run up to Thanksgiving.
Avian flu is believed to have
caused the death of more than 410 million birds since 2003, when it
was first detected outside of China.
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FYI #5: FUTURE READING: UPCOMING BOOK |
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THE CLIMATE BOOK: THE FACTS AND THE SOLUTIONS by Greta Thunberg |
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Credit: Book Cover
We still have time to change the world. From Greta Thunberg, the world’s leading climate activist, comes the essential handbook for making it happen.
You might think it’s an impossible task: secure a safe future for life on Earth, at a scale and speed never seen, against all the odds. There is hope – but only if we listen to the science before it’s too late.
In The Climate Book, Greta Thunberg has gathered the wisdom of over one hundred experts – geophysicists, oceanographers and meteorologists; engineers, economists and mathematicians; historians, philosophers and indigenous leaders – to equip us all with the knowledge we need to combat climate disaster. Alongside them, she shares her own stories of demonstrating and uncovering greenwashing around the world, revealing how much we have been kept in the dark. This is one of our biggest challenges, she shows, but also our greatest source of hope. Once we are given the full picture, how can we not act? And if a schoolchild’s strike could ignite a global protest, what could we do collectively if we tried?
We are alive at the most decisive time in the history of humanity. Together, we can do the seemingly impossible. But it has to be us, and it has to be now.
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FYI#6: SPOTLIGHT ON EDUCATION |
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Universities Need a “Professor-Entrepreneur” Career Track to Support Innovation |
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Credit: MATT CLARKE/THE NEW YORK TIMES NEWS SERVICE
Postsecondary institutions should introduce a
“professor-entrepreneur” career track for academics who have an interest in
practical research, writes McMaster University Associate Professor Tohid Didar.
Didar writes that Canada has seen challenges fostering a culture of innovation.
Creating advanced manufacturing opportunities through pathways such as a
“professor-entrepreneur” career track would enable researchers to better
support manufacturers who do not have in-house researcher and development
teams. As “professor-entrepreneurs,” researchers could complete industry-based
sabbaticals, participate in trade shows and industry expos, and gain specific
funding and legal assistance. Didar writes that this would enrich the faculty
members’ teaching and research and make it more likely that their innovations
are used by manufacturers.
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FIRST SNOW, MUCH MORE TO COME!! |
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Whitefish Lake, Seguin, Ontario |
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Photo Credits: David Zakus |
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THANKS FOR READING THE FREE
PLANETARY HEALTH WEEKLY
Current News on Ecological Wellness and Global Health
To Subscribe and access Archives of all Past Issues & Yearly Indexes GO TO: planetaryhealthweekly.com
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