Feature Article

The concepts of vulnerability and resilience govern contemporary natural hazard-led disaster risk management approaches. However, the empirical assimilation of socioeconomic resilience and its calibration with poverty and vulnerability are very few, which inhibit a rational process of risk analysis and policy making. In this study, we performed an empirical investigation of socioeconomic resilience to natural hazard-triggered disasters regarding tropical cyclone affected communities in southwestern coastal Bangladesh.

Managing freshwater resources sustainably under future climatic and hydrological uncertainty poses novel challenges. Rehabilitation of ageing infrastructure and construction of new dams are widely viewed as solutions to diminish climate risk, but attaining the broad goal of freshwater sustainability will require expansion of the prevailing water resources management paradigm beyond narrow economic criteria to include socially valued ecosystem functions and services.

Religious beliefs, an important element of culture, influence adaptation to climate change. Less understood is how changing beliefs shape the adaptive capacity of communities responding to climate change. In the last century sub-Saharan Africa has experienced a transformation in beliefs. Since 1900 Christians have increased 70-fold while in rural areas Traditional Beliefs and associated Traditional Ecological Knowledge (TEK) continue to influence the lived practices of vulnerable rural communities.

Breast cancer is the leading cause of female cancer burden, and its incidence has increased by more than 20% worldwide since 2008. Some observational studies have suggested that the Mediterranean diet may reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Original Source

The Antarctic Ice Sheet stores water equivalent to 58 m in global sea-level rise. We show in simulations using the Parallel Ice Sheet Model that burning the currently attainable fossil fuel resources is sufficient to eliminate the ice sheet. With cumulative fossil fuel emissions of 10,000 gigatonnes of carbon (GtC), Antarctica is projected to become almost ice-free with an average contribution to sea-level rise exceeding 3 m per century during the first millennium.

Cryptosporidium is a protozoan parasite that can cause diarrhoea. Human faeces are an important source of Cryptosporidium in surface waters. We present a model to study the impact of sanitation, urbanization and population growth on human emissions of Cryptosporidium to surface waters. We build on a global model by Hofstra et al and zoom into Bangladesh and India as illustrative case studies.

Original Source

Arsenic has been linked to disrupted immune function and greater infection susceptibility in highly exposed populations. Well arsenic levels above the EPA limit occur in our U.S. study area and are of particular concern for pregnant women and infants. The researchers investigated whether in utero arsenic exposure affects the risk of infections and respiratory symptoms over the first year of life.

Original Source

Determining the time of emergence of climates altered from their natural state by anthropogenic influences can help inform the development of adaptation and mitigation strategies to climate change. Previous studies have examined the time of emergence of climate averages. However, at the global scale, the emergence of changes in extreme events, which have the greatest societal impacts, has not been investigated before.

Drought stress is a serious constraint, especially in rainfed rice production, and breeding for drought tolerance by selection based on yield under stress, though effective, is slow. Mapping quantitative trait loci (QTLs) for yield and its components under drought stress predominant in rainfed target populations of environment (TPE) will help overcome this limitation.

Nature has created excellent technologies around us, and as such, it is the chief mentor to humans on creativity and technology development. Nature uses fibre as a building block – natural structures like wood, bamboo, bone, muscle, etc. all have fibrous structure. Fibre spinning and weaving technologies are available in nature since time immemorial. Nature has also demonstrated sophisticated technologies useful in the development of technical textiles like functional surfaces, camouflage, structural colour, thermal insulation, dry-adhesion, etc.