Public Health Impacts of Climate Change

According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the leading scientific institution on climate change research, atmospheric concentration of carbon dioxide, the greenhouse gas most attributed to causing climate change, has increased by 31 percent since the 1750s. This increase is caused by human activities, primarily the burning of fossil fuels. As a result of increasing carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gas emissions, changes in the earth's climate have been observed. The IPCC has stated that the 1990s was the warmest decade on record, with 1998 being the warmest year since 1861, before which adequate data is lacking. It has been recorded that the global average temperature has increased by 0.6 degrees Celsius in the past century and has been accompanied by observed sea level rise. Severe weather events, like El Nino, have also become more frequent in the past decades as a result of the changing climate. Based on these past and current trends, scientists have forecasted likely future climate conditions. It has been predicted that, among other things, regional weather patterns will likely be altered,changes in global precipitation patterns will occur, an increase of severe weather events is probable, and a general shift of climate conditions to higher latitudes will result. These climatic changes, already being witnessed today, will have a significant impact on human existence. Even slight alterations in climate conditions have the potential to greatly alter society

Freedom of Information versus National Sovereignty: The Need for a New Global Forum for the Resolution of Transborder Date Flow Problems

This Note argues that the issues raised by transborder data flow restrictions must be dealt with on a global scale, not on a national basis. Part I of this Note discusses the international legal principles underlying the concept of freedom of information and the legal difficulties presented by the imposition of transborder data flow restrictions. Part II analyzes the perception among developing nations that sovereign rights are threatened by an unrestricted flow of information and discusses the measures developing nations are implementing to control this perceived threat. Part III analyzes several approaches suggested for dealing with the problems of transborder data flow restrictions and argues that a new international forum must be created to constructively address the legitimate concerns of the developing nations. This Note concludes that since the effective demise of Unesco, progress must be made toward creating a viable international forum to address the multilateral concerns over transborder data flow restrictions

Doing a leisure activity because there is nothing else to do: Related outcomes and intervention effects for adolescents

This study examined whether a leisure-focused intervention, HealthWise, was related to reduced youth polysubstance use and delayed sexual debut via reducing how often youth did leisure activities because there was nothing else to do. HealthWise was compared to a no-intervention control for 5,610 high school students from eighth to tenth grades in townships near Cape Town, South Africa. Three specific leisure activities were examined: spending time with friends, playing sports, and going to parks. Among girls, spending time with friends because there was nothing else to do significantly mediated the effect of HealthWise on reducing frequent polysubstance use in the past month. For boys, spending time in parks because there was nothing else to do mediated the effect of HealthWise on delayed sexual debut. Results partially supported the HealthWise logic model of impacting risky behaviors via leisure and the value of prevention programs addressing the reasons behind leisure choices

POPcorn: An Online Resource Providing Access to Distributed and Diverse Maize Project Data

The purpose of the online resource presented here, POPcorn (Project Portal for corn), is to enhance accessibility of maize genetic and genomic resources for plant biologists. Currently, many online locations are difficult to find, some are best searched independently, and individual project websites often degrade over time—sometimes disappearing entirely. The POPcorn site makes available (1) a centralized, web-accessible resource to search and browse descriptions of ongoing maize genomics projects, (2) a single, stand-alone tool that uses web Services and minimal data warehousing to search for sequence matches in online resources of diverse offsite projects, and (3) a set of tools that enables researchers to migrate their data to the long-term model organism database for maize genetic and genomic information: MaizeGDB. Examples demonstrating POPcorn's utility are provided herein