The weight of nations: an estimation of adult human biomass.

BACKGROUND: The energy requirement of species at each trophic level in an ecological pyramid is a function of the number of organisms and their average mass. Regarding human populations, although considerable attention is given to estimating the number of people, much less is given to estimating average mass, despite evidence that average body mass is increasing. We estimate global human biomass, its distribution by region and the proportion of biomass due to overweight and obesity. METHODS: For each country we used data on body mass index (BMI) and height distribution to estimate average adult body mass. We calculated total biomass as the product of population size and average body mass. We estimated the percentage of the population that is overweight (BMI > 25) and obese (BMI > 30) and the biomass due to overweight and obesity. RESULTS: In 2005, global adult human biomass was approximately 287 million tonnes, of which 15 million tonnes were due to overweight (BMI > 25), a mass equivalent to that of 242 million people of average body mass (5% of global human biomass). Biomass due to obesity was 3.5 million tonnes, the mass equivalent of 56 million people of average body mass (1.2% of human biomass). North America has 6% of the world population but 34% of biomass due to obesity. Asia has 61% of the world population but 13% of biomass due to obesity. One tonne of human biomass corresponds to approximately 12 adults in North America and 17 adults in Asia. If all countries had the BMI distribution of the USA, the increase in human biomass of 58 million tonnes would be equivalent in mass to an extra 935 million people of average body mass, and have energy requirements equivalent to that of 473 million adults. CONCLUSIONS: Increasing population fatness could have the same implications for world food energy demands as an extra half a billion people living on the earth

Circular economy implementation: case studies in Wales

The recent IPPC report asserted: “To avoid mounting loss of life, biodiversity and infrastructure, ambitious, accelerated action is required to adapt to climate change, at the same time as making rapid, deep cuts in greenhouse gas emissions” (IPCC, February 2022). The Welsh Government declared a Climate Emergency in 2019 and their Net Zero Strategic Plan (2022) outlines the need to transition to a Circular Economy (CE) in Wales. This report aimed to support practitioners within public, private and third sector organisations by enhancing their knowledge of the implementation of CE principles. The ESF funded Circular Economy Innovation Communities (CEIC) programme, delivered by Cardiff Met and Swansea University, encountered a few organisations implementing CE principles and many more looking for 'how to' examples of the application of CE principles. The CEIC programme was designed to support public service and third sector organisations coproduce new regional circular economy service solutions, through regional CE innovation communities of practice. We obtained the support of the Wales Innovation Network to provide ‘how to’ cases to inspire practitioners to implement CE principles and help Welsh Government encourage public, private and third sector organisations to reduce their carbon footprint and transition to a CE as outlined in their ‘Beyond Recycling’ strategy

Fragmenting and becoming double": Supplementary twins and abject bodies in Helen Oyeyemi's the Icarus Girl

© 2016 SAGE Publications. This article uses readings of the abject body and writing as supplement in Helen Oyeyemi's novel, The Icarus Girl (2005) to argue against a critical trend that reads the postcolonial Bildungsroman as promising a positively transformed postcolonial identity. Through our reading of Oyeyemi's novel, we suggest that locating the debates and tropes conventionally mobilized within postcolonial gothic in the former colonial centre complicates subject formations and constructions of alterity. The Icarus Girl weaves together a Western literary tradition of gothic with the postcolonial Bildungsroman and we suggest that the interaction of these forms produces a reading focused on the abject, both in terms of physical abjection mapped onto bodies and places, and in the way writing functions as abject supplement. When bodies, borders, and writing disintegrate, the reading of the novel becomes a difficult process, one not easily co-opted into a critical discourse that tends to value a psycho-symbolic reading of the postcolonial gothic Bildungsroman and to promise a positively transformed postcolonial identity. Accordingly, we argue that The Icarus Girl is unable to find comforting resolutions, disrupt oppositional structures, and create a utopian hybrid space or to bring about a unified sense of self, meaning that it resists a redemptive or cathartic ending. We draw upon Kristeva's theories of the abject and Derrida's notion of the supplement in order to establish how Oyeyemi's novel resists the construction of a stable identity through its emphasis upon expulsion and disintegration. Unlike the majority of criticism on postcolonial gothic, which focuses on texts emanating from formerly colonized countries, this article considers what happens to postcolonial gothic when it is written within and about the former colonial centre. In The Icarus Girl the repercussions of the colonial period are experienced in the present day through experiences of racism, dislocation, and alienation within Britain

Human health and the global environment

After reading this chapter you will be able to describe the mechanisms through which human health depends on ecological systems; recognize the sources, pathways, impacts and control measures for environmentally mediated disease; discuss the contribution of human activity to climate change; and describe the processes through which climate change exacerbates health inequity

Climate change, long term conditions and sustainable healthcare

After reading this chapter you will be able to apply the concepts of primary, secondary and tertiary mental determinants of health; identify ways to improve population health, reduce healthcare costs and improve the environmental sustainability of health systems; and take action to improve health globally and locall

Challenges to professionalism: Social accountability and global environmental change

This article explores the concept of professionalism as it relates to social change and social accountability, and expands on them in the light of global environmental changes. Professionalism in medicine includes concepts of altruism, service, professional knowledge, self-regulation and autonomy. Current dialogues around social accountability suggest that medical schools should re-orientate their strategy and desired education, research and service outcomes to the health needs of the communities they serve.This article addresses the following questions: • How do we reconcile ideas of medical professionalism with the demands of creating a more equal, just, sustainable and socially inclusive society? • What new challenges do or will we face in relation to environmental degradation, biodiversity loss, ecosystem health and climate change? • How can medical schools best teach social and environmental responsiveness within a framework of professionalism? • How do medical schools ensure that tomorrow’s doctors possess the knowledge, skills and attitude to adapt to the challenges they will face in future roles?We offer ideas about why and how medical educators can change, recommendations to strengthen the teaching of professionalism and social accountability and suggestions about the contribution of an emerging concept, that of “environmental accountability”

A case of multiple cardiac calcified amorphous tumours

Cardiac calcified amorphous tumours of the heart are rare non-neoplastic cardiac masses that can present like a malignant mass or an intra-cardiac thrombus. We report an extremely unusual case of a 73 year old man who presented to hospital with dyspnoea and subsequent investigations revealed multiple cardiac CATs