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Showing posts from April 4, 2014

World’s oldest weather report found in Egypt

If you thought weather prediction was a recent phenomenon, you would be in for a surprise if told that weather prediction was done in ancient Egypt some 3,500 years ago! A new translation of a 40-line inscription on a six-foot-tall 3,500-year-old calcite block from Egypt — called the Tempest Stela — describes rain, darkness and “the sky being in storm without cessation, louder than the cries of the masses”.

Dengue and malaria add to poverty: WHO

An Aedes aegypti mosquito. Vector-borne diseases are adding to the vicious cycle of poverty and have a significant impact of socio-economic status of communities, the World Health Organisation (WHO) has said. While countries in South-East Asia have made substantial economic progress, dengue and malaria fuel a vicious cycle of poverty and are still killing thousands of people. On World Health Day — April 7 — the WHO has impressed upon countries to prevent and control vector-borne diseases including dengue, kala-azar, lymphatic filariasis and malaria, among others. Forty per cent of the global population at risk of malaria lives in the WHO South-East Asian region — home to a quarter of the world’s population. Malaria is endemic in 10 of the 11 countries of the region: Bangladesh, Bhutan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, India, Indonesia, Myanmar, Nepal, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Timor-Leste. Maldives is the only country that has remained free of malaria since 1984. Sri La