One person's wreck is another person's low-tech solution

Darkfrog submitted, created time 3 weeks 2 days (www.nytimes.com)

Many of us have become disillusioned with traditional recycling, but I've got to love this one.

This is a neonatal incubator made out of car parts. The headlights become a heater. The fans control climate. Even the alarm is reused. In the United States, this would be a curiosity, but in the developing world, it could help health care workers avoid thousands of preventable infant deaths. Each incubator can be built for under $1000 (standard incubators cost forty times that).

But there isn't actually a serious incubator shortage in the developing world

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Food crisis calls for renewed vigor in agricultural research

Darkfrog submitted, created time 8 months 1 week (www.nature.com)

Agricultural research may not sound flashy--it includes everything from high-yield crop varieties to pest and weed control--but experts claim that a lack of it is the underlying cause of our current food shortages in the developing world, and that it is likely to be the cause of future shortages if the problem is not corrected.

While there is a focus on agricultural research in the developing world, this is limited to four countries: China, Brazil, South Africa and India. At the same time, there is less and less transfer of technology and information from first-world countries like the U

5 comments | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: technology transfer agriculture insects economics politics patents biofuels biofuel Developing countries food shortages agricultural crop third-world nations

Africa and Asia face severe crop losses from climate change within 20 years

jane2007 submitted, created time 11 months 5 days (news-service.stanford.edu)

Agriculture is the human enterprise most vulnerable to changes in climate. According to a new study : many of the world's poorest regions could face severe crop losses in the next two decades because of climate change,

Submit comment | Blog It | Email It | Keywords: developing nations third-world nations climate threats economics agriculture crop losses climate climate change