Give a damn
Our favourite newsletter editions are the ones where we get to tell you about new charity partners. Talk is nice, but action is way, way better, which is why we're so pleased to introduce you to Fondo Guadalupe Musalem. They're a small charity from Oaxaca, Mexico that provides financial support, counseling and tutoring to 25 young women from rural or indigenous communities each year. It's a great program - most of the participants complete high school and become leaders in their communities, with many going on to study at university.
Unfortunately, they've been hit hard by the pandemic and the switch to online learning. Schools in Mexico have been closed since April last year, and look set to remain that way until well into 2022. Most of the young women don't have internet at home, and only two or three have access to a computer, with the rest having to borrow mobile phones. FGM are helping with data and phone cards, but that still doesn't solve the problem of computers.
We're sending them US$4,350 to buy 25 tablets, one for each young woman. They'll be able to use them to attend school, and also participate in the extra workshops on topics such as dating violence, sexual and reproductive health, leadership, gender equality, community engagement and human rights. A huge thank you to each and every one of you for your subscriber fees, which made this possible, and in particular to Sandra Thomson, one of the readers of this newsletter, who came to us with the idea in the first place.
Find out more about Fondo Guadalupe Musalem over here.
Good news
Hungary will close its last coal plant in 2025, halving the time of its original plan to reach 90% carbon neutral electricity generation by 2030. The Matra power plant site will transition to a solar farm, replacing coal jobs with new opportunities for workers, who will also receive support from the EU’s transition fund. Seven European countries now have coal free 2025 targets. Euractiv
The Canadian government has committed $2.75 billion to help public transit and school buses transition to electric power over the next five years. It’s part of the government’s progressive plan to tackle climate change while creating new jobs in Canada’s growing electric van manufacturing industry. Funds will also be provided for the installation of new charging stations for zero-emission vehicles. Electrek
Infant mortality rates in the Philippines have dropped by 80% since the 1950s and are continuing to decline thanks to new regulations that allow hospital births to include traditional birth practices crucial to Filipino culture. Women who give birth in hospital can choose to have a traditional birth attendant help with delivery while also having access to necessary medicine. Borgen
Egypt used to have one of the highest hepatitis C burdens in the world - in 2015 it accounted for 40,000 deaths per year, 7.6% of all deaths—and depressed national GDP growth by 1.5%. Three years ago, the government started a huge public health effort, screening 67 million people, and providing free treatment for two million. It worked. This year the hepatitis C burden has fallen to 2%, and public health officials say they are on track to eliminate it altogether. Egypt Today
Australian researchers have found that the annual rates of new cases of adults diagnosed with type 2 diabetes is stable or falling in Australia, Europe, the United States, and a number of high income countries in Asia. The study is the first to focus on diabetes incidence, the number of people who develop type 2 diabetes each year rather than total number of people who suffer from the disease at any given time. Baker
A new study has shown that cancer deaths in Europe have plummeted in the last three decades. Compared to the peak mortality rate, recorded in 1988, 4.9 million cancer deaths will have been averted in the EU and over one million in the UK by the end of 2021. Predicted death rate declines between 2015 and 2021 include:
7.8% decline for breast cancer
4.8% decline for colorectal cancer in men and a 9.6% decline in women
8.7% decline for prostate cancer
3.5% decline for uterine cancer
8.9% decline for ovarian cancer
14.1% decline for stomach cancer in men and a 16.3% decline in women.
China has doubled the number of wild animals protected under its conservation rules, imposing hefty fines on the trading and consumption of 500 species, including many birds and wolves. It comes after 30 years of Chinese environmental groups fighting for animals to be added to the protected list. It’s hoped the ban will also help combat global trafficking of wild animals. Eco Business
An undercover investigation by a non-profit media organization has forced South Korea's largest dog meat auction house to close. The closure follows a wider crackdown on dog meat farming across the country, with advocates now calling for an amendment to the country’s Animal Protection Act that would permanently ban all slaughtering and processing of dogs for food. World Animal News
A federal judge has banned future oil and gas development in Ohio’s Wayne National Forest. It’s a big win for conservation groups who fought a three year legal battle to protect the 40,000 acres of Ohio’s only national park. It’s a trend that looks set to continue after President Biden’s recent moratorium on new oil and gas leasing on federal public lands. Biological Diversity
Nothing restores a river or a local economy like removing a dam. River restoration practitioners in America worked around challenging COVID restrictions to remove 69 dams across 23 states in 2020, reconnecting over a 1,000 km of river for fish and wildlife and revitalizing local economies. American Rivers
An Alaskan archipelago dubbed the "Rat Islands" have become a shining example of how quickly nature can bounce back. 18th century shipwrecks introduced rats to the islands, almost destroying their fauna and flora, but in 2008 conservationists started a removal program on one of them, Hawadax Island, and within 11 years the ecosystem had fully recovered. "We were surprised that the level of recovery unfolded so quickly -- we thought it would be longer." Science Daily
Indistinguishable from magic
An international team of paleontologists has made one of the greatest dinosaur finds of all time, a fossilized nest in China, containing an oviraptor crouched over two dozen eggs, seven of which still contain embryos. The extraordinary discovery provides the first hard evidence that dinosaurs were brooding parents, laying their eggs and incubating them over time. Science Alert
Ghana received its first COVID-19 vaccines last week, and tens of thousands of doses have already been delivered via drone. The drones cover almost a third of the country's population, and can deliver to hospitals and temporary mobile clinics within 30-40 minutes, allowing the cold chain to be preserved. Over the next year, drones will distribute something like 2.5 million doses across the country.
Between November 2020 and January 2021, dozens of doctors from around the world used augmented reality to perform surgeries — ranging from a knee procedure in the UAE to a shoulder replacement in South Africa - while surgeons from other continents provided advice in real time. “We had a French perspective, we had an American perspective, we had a Latin American perspective. One-quarter of the world was inside that operating room.” Digital Trends
Soft robotics, soft robotics, soft robotics. How many times have you heard us bang on about this? Now you know why. A soft robot, modelled on a stingray, managed to survive for 45 minutes at the bottom of the Mariana Trench, the deepest part of the world’s oceans. Think about the avenues of research this opens up for marine biology, not to mention the dark uncharted depths waiting to be explored. Nature
French chemists have, for the first time, demonstrated at the molecular level that the lipids from fatty foods interact with the tannins from red wine to improve the taste. It's scientific proof for something most foodies already know: that you're best off pairing a high tannin red wine like Cabernet, Nebbiolo or Syrah with rich foods like paté or Camembert, or best of all, a greasy hamburger.
Scientists have shown that a two week course of CBD (the second most prevalent active ingredient of cannabis) helps restore the function of two proteins that clear up the buildup of dead cells and plaque in the human brain, a hallmark of Alzheimer's disease. The CBD also improves cognition by reducing levels of a third protein, associated with Alzheimer's high inflammation levels. Science Daily
Information superhighway
Ellen Cushing on forgetting how to be normal after 12 months of pandemic time. What time do parties end? How tall is my boss? What does a bar smell like? Are babies heavy? This is the fog of late pandemic, and the internet has a name for it. Smooth brain. We are unconsciously forgetting what life used to be like in order to survive. Nobody is working at their best, and that's okay. Atlantic
While we're on the subject, here's Lisa Feldman Barrett demolishing the myth of the triune brain, the idea that our brain evolved in three layers: the instinctive lizard brain, the emotional monkey brain, and the human neocortex. As neuroscience improves, it's revealing most of this as nonsense. Your brain creates your mind while it controls your body. It's all intimately intertwined. Nautilus
We tried as hard as we could to stay away from Harry and Meghan, until Jonah Goldberg forced our hand. This is really good. What they represent isn't just tabloid fodder, but the changing of the guard between two powerful types of elites: the Old Gods of aristocracy, and the New Gods of celebrity. "We are what we worship, and we worship ourselves." The Dispatch
This is a lovely piece by Marie Mutsuki Mockett, who says that in an age of repeating natural disasters, we're going to need to ditch Western binaries in favour of older storytelling traditions, like the animism of ancient Japan. We need new words that allow us to see nature again, inspired not necessarily by animism itself, but the flexibility that gave rise to it in the first place. Emergence
The sweariest, most honest interview on clean energy you will read this year, by one of the world's most successful investors. "The size of the problems these startups are tackling, the talent and passion of the founders, their success in recruiting other amazing people to join them in their missions, and the embrace of the financial world that this is the most valuable path forward? Hell yeah that makes me hopeful." Forbes
Think you know what it means to be a digital native? Think again. Get ready to feel really, really old, as we introduce you to CodeMiko. Layers upon layers of recursive, simulated identity, brought to life via Unreal Engine and Twitch for hundreds of thousands of fans by a super talented Gen-Z coder in a full-body motion capture suit. William Gibson eat your heart out. We don't even know what to call this. Kotaku
Humankind
Meet Muzalema Mwanza, a mother and civil engineer who is combating the high rates of maternal and infant mortality in Zambia with a simple, low-cost delivery kit that gives pregnant women access to a clean and safe delivery for their newborns.
Muzalema has always been passionate about social entrepreneurship. As an engineer she ran her own construction company, worked on an innovative women’s fish farm and mentored high school girls on STEM projects. However, it wasn’t until her first pregnancy in 2017 that Muzalema experienced the challenges facing pregnant women in rural Zambia where maternal fatalities are 50 times higher than the global average.
Due to a critical shortage of medical supplies, women must bring their own birthing materials, like sterile gloves and surgical blades, to hospital or risk being turned away. When it took Muzalema 10 separate shopping trips to collect her list of mandatory items she realised it was the high cost and low availability of these items that forced many mothers to give birth at home, often with unskilled birth attendants and unsterilized equipment.
At 36 weeks pregnant, she used her engineering background to develop a prototype of a cheap, disposable birthing kit, which she used during her own childbirth and established the Safe Motherhood Alliance. Using low-cost technology and local materials, Muzalema created a delivery kit that had the essential components recommended by the World Health Organization to reduce risk of infection at the cost of US$10 per unit. In partnership with the Department of Health, Muzalema has now distributed her birth kits to 3,500 health clinics across Zambia.
We're all done here folks, thanks as always for reading. Shout out to Sandra and her gang over at the Canadian Friends of Oaxaca for shining a spotlight onto the wonderful FGM program, and a big round of applause to all of you, our subscribers, for making the donation of those tablets possible.
We'll see you next week.
Much love,
FC HQ
