Word: malariae
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...African nature, the circle of life has fangs: mosquito bites man, fish eats mosquito, crocodile eats fish, man shoots crocodile, man dies of malaria. But for a few weeks a year, South Africa witnesses the climax of a somewhat gentler natural cycle. Most of the time, Namaqualand is a featureless swath of scrub desert running from just north of Cape Town up the coast to Namibia. From August to October, however, these plains explode in a display of wild flowers. What was once brown, dusty and flat is transformed into a sea of pinks, oranges, yellows, whites, purples and reds...
...Cell Host & Microbe, the findings center around one gene variation that blocks a receptor from being expressed on the surface of red blood cells. Scientists had previously studied this genetic variant - found almost exclusively in Africans and their descendants - because it also conferred protection against an early form of malaria. (The malaria parasite needed the receptor to infect blood cells; without the receptor, the parasite starved and died.) More than 90% of sub-Saharan Africans lack the red-blood-cell receptor, along with two-thirds of African-Americans. But the variant that once saved its carriers from one disease...
Scientists have hypothesized other health consequences of climate change before, some better supported by evidence than others: heat waves that kill, new breeding grounds for mosquitoes that spread deadly malaria or dengue fever, and stagnant warm air pockets that trap disease-causing smog. But in this study, says lead researcher Tom Brikowski, he and his colleagues are pretty sure they've traced a direct relationship between human health and temperature - no mosquitoes or air pollution are needed to make the link. Even in the belt region where kidney stones are common and populations have adjusted their lifestyles to the heat...
...Lomborg says the Copenhagen Consensus tends to focus on problems that have clear, applicable and economical solutions - which explains why climate change, despite its potential for long-term catastrophe, ranks beneath threats like parasitic worms and malaria on the group's list. To Lomborg - who says he believes in global warming but is skeptical of its severity - fighting climate change just isn't a good way to spend our money. We know for certain that supplying vitamins to impoverished children will save lives - but we don't know for sure that spending billions to reduce carbon emissions will have...
...year-old son; he's always been too weak to learn to stand. Others arrive so swollen - their bellies distended and extremities bloated from the fluid that leaks out of weakened blood vessels - that medical staff have trouble finding veins for the IV lines needed to fight malaria or other opportunistic infections. But on the other hand, there has always been the risk that long-term food aid simply encourages populations to stay on land that can no longer sustain them...