#Developing Countries

[batboyblog]

Things Biden and the Democrats did, this week #22

June 7-14 2024

Vice-President Harris announced that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is moving to remove medical debt for people's credit score. This move will improve the credit rating of 15 million Americans. Millions of Americans struggling with debt from medical expenses can't get approved for a loan for a car, to start a small business or buy a home. The new rule will improve credit scores by an average of 20 points and lead to 22,000 additional mortgages being approved every year. This comes on top of efforts by the Biden Administration to buy up and forgive medical debt. Through money in the American Rescue Plan $7 billion dollars of medical debt will be forgiven by the end of 2026. To date state and local governments have used ARP funds to buy up and forgive the debt of 3 million Americans and counting.

The EPA, Department of Agriculture, and FDA announced a joint "National Strategy for Reducing Food Loss and Waste and Recycling Organics". The Strategy aimed to cut food waste by 50% by 2030. Currently 24% of municipal solid waste in landfills is food waste, and food waste accounts for 58% of methane emissions from landfills roughly the green house gas emissions of 60 coal-fired power plants every year. This connects to $200 million the EPA already has invested in recycling, the largest investment in recycling by the federal government in 30 years. The average American family loses $1,500 ever year in spoiled food, and the strategy through better labeling, packaging, and education hopes to save people money and reduce hunger as well as the environmental impact.

President Biden signed with Ukrainian President Zelenskyy a ten-year US-Ukraine Security Agreement. The Agreement is aimed at helping Ukraine win the war against Russia, as well as help Ukraine meet the standards it will have to be ready for EU and NATO memberships. President Biden also spearheaded efforts at the G7 meeting to secure $50 billion for Ukraine from the 7 top economic nations.

HHS announced $500 million for the development of new non-injection vaccines against Covid. The money is part of Project NextGen a $5 billion program to accelerate and streamline new Covid vaccines and treatments. The investment announced this week will support a clinical trial of 10,000 people testing a vaccine in pill form. It's also supporting two vaccines administered as nasal sprays that are in earlier stages of development. The government hopes that break throughs in non-needle based vaccines for Covid might be applied to other vaccinations thus making vaccines more widely available and more easily administered.

Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced $404 million in additional humanitarian assistance for Palestinians in Gaza, the West Bank and the region. This brings the total invested by the Biden administration in the Palestinians to $1.8 billion since taking office, over $600 million since the war started in October 2023. The money will focus on safe drinking water, health care, protection, education, shelter, and psychosocial support.

The Department of the Interior announced $142 million for drought resilience and boosting water supplies. The funding will provide about 40,000 acre-feet of annual recycled water, enough to support more than 160,000 people a year. It's funding water recycling programs in California, Hawaii, Kansas, Nevada and Texas. It's also supporting 4 water desalination projects in Southern California. Desalination is proving to be an important tool used by countries with limited freshwater.

President Biden took the lead at the G7 on the Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment. The PGI is a global program to connect the developing world to investment in its infrastructure from the G7 nations. So far the US has invested $40 billion into the program with a goal of $200 billion by 2027. The G7 overall plans on $600 billion by 2027. There has been heavy investment in the Lobito Corridor, an economic zone that runs from Angola, through the Democratic Republic of Congo, to Zambia, the PGI has helped connect the 3 nations by rail allowing land locked Zambia and largely landlocked DRC access Angolan ports. The PGI also is investing in a $900 million solar farm in Angola. The PGI got a $5 billion dollar investment from Microsoft aimed at expanding digital access in Kenya, Indonesia, and Malaysia. The PGI's bold vision is to connect Africa and the Indian Ocean region economically through rail and transportation link as well as boost greener economic growth in the developing world and bring developing nations on-line.

[thoughtlessarse]

The most vulnerable nations on Earth are facing a “tidal wave” of debt repayments as a Chinese lending boom starts to be called in, a new report has warned. The analysis, published on Tuesday by Australian foreign policy thinktank the Lowy Institute, said that in 2025 the poorest 75 countries were on the hook for record high debt repayments US$22bn to China. The 75 nations’ debt formed the bulk of the total $35bn calculated by Lowy for 2025. “Now, and for the rest of this decade, China will be more debt collector than banker to the developing world,” the report said. The pressure to repay was putting strain on local funding for health and education as well as climate change mitigation. “China’s lending has collapsed exactly when it is needed most, instead creating large net financial outflows when countries are already under intense economic pressure,” it said. The loans were largely issued under President Xi Jinping’s signature belt and road initiative (BRI), a state-backed global infrastructure investment programme which has underwritten national projects from schools, bridges and hospitals to major roads and shipping and air ports. The lending spree turned China into the largest supplier of bilateral loans, peaking with a total of more than $50bn in 2016 – more than all western creditors combined.

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[wylanzahn]

How do you keep from Copy/Pasting existing Cultures into your Worlds?

Basically just as the title says, and I'm sure there's been pleeeeenty of discussion on the topic, but I'm genuinely curious what makes your cultures unique and original (especially when the modern aura of writing is "everything's been done"). Furthermore, is having a copy/paste culture a bad thing? For context, I'm primarily a Game Master (GM) who also on occasion writes as well as works in the TTRPG actualplay space. When you have an audience (whether friends or fans) is it necessarily a bad thing to have familiar locations, themes, and even characters that mimic real life? Can it be easier for an audience to just assume we're in "Ancient Rome" or "Habsburg controlled Austria"?

For me I do like creating totally original locations with their own weird political systems influenced by magic, gods, monsters, and anything else fantastical--BUT sometimes I find a setting is more interesting of just "what if Romans could directly interact with their deities?". For me I just find the idea of almost "alternate history" but in my uniquely fantastical setting interesting. However, I also understand that some people like genuinely different worlds with no trace of the real world left behind.

When creating unique cultures I try to combine elements to create something more unique. For example I'm currently working on the ancient periods of my current homebrew world, and specifically in a portion I haven't particularly worked on before. In Evrosea, a sort of "ancients world" where Greco-Roman culture lives on well into the medieval 15th Century (of course technology has changed and evolved) I find myself studying more ancient histories. I knew from before I fully began working on worldbuilding Erosea that there was some sort of "Roman Empire" which spread its tongue as a sort of lingua franca across the continent of Dulgren (aka why Common exists in my D&D world). Also originating from the region of Evrosea was the sorta monolithic pantheon of "new gods" (aka Catholicism). So I have the ideas of imperialism and religious importance in this region. So the very clear start was Rome itself, but how could I make this Rome unique? Well here's what I found from my research on Ancient Rome:

Many pre-settlers, and even contemporaries of Ancient Rome, in Italy were nomadic grazers and herders.

The Aeneid, which tells one of the many origin stories of Ancient Rome, ties in the ancient Greek tale of the Trojan War, and makes Rome the successors of Troy.

That many of their religious practices were tied up with the Senate (especially after the abolishment of the crown).

Finally, while perhaps never directly ruled by the Etruscans, their neighbors were much more confederate like and were similar in culture rather than being a unified people or kingdom.

Taking the information I found I twisted and jumbled much of this random history and constructed a group of nomads who controlled the fertile valleys of Uvemos (home region of the ancient Carinaens, my replacement for the Romans).

Many of these nomads worshipped similar sounding gods (if not outright the same gods), and most of them lived off the lands of Uvemos. Only a select few of whom ever settled into cities. However, long after the first nomads of Uvemos walked the hilly countryside arrived a band of pirates and raiders, terrors of the ancient world, many knew not their names, but they quickly accrued a nickname, "The Sea People" (see Sea Peoples on Wikipedia for more, TL;DR a bunch of random marauders who attacked or even helped cause the collapse of some Bronze Age Civilizations). One such pirate was said to be the Prince Laogonus, an exile from Apeiros, who was said to be a direct descendant of the God King Ulios himself. Laogonus settled down on the banks of Janian Sea in a small dirt settlement near to the roaming tribes of Uvemos. Many years later the small city of Carina was established as a blossoming trade hub by the many different tribes of Uvemians. Of these tribes was born a Chieftain's daughter, Aurora. Aurora was said to be descended from the god blood of Ulios, and when she prayed to her great grandsire on the eve of battle she was enveloped in holy light-- thus becoming the world's first cleric. Of her legacy were many rituals formed and practices established, and the civitas mille clericorum* was born.

*(civitas mille clericorum) meaning "city of a thousand clerics," named after the heavy religious undertones established by the first cleric Aurora, at least according to legend.

Super cool right?? I combined some other ideas than the ones I established such as the Sea People from the Collapse of the Bronze Age, as well as these kind of Shinto-like-beliefs in the Carinaen religion, which, to me at least, seems the most like what Ancient Roman beliefs would look like to us today (though I didn't really get to talk about in my blurb). I like taking existing pillars of cultures and extending them, now rather than just being a complete Roman rip-off there's more of this nomadic or tribal culture, at least to early Carinaen history, there's more of a nautical legacy (unlike Rome, who didn't establish a truly working navy up until the Punic Wars), and finally the city of Carina is a beacon for holy warriors and classes like Paladins and Clerics (again this is D&D so that's oriented towards that).

But tell me what you think, and how best do you come up with your fictional cultures/countries? Do you merely copy off of pre-existing cultures or do you fully work from the ground up? I'm super curious to hear what you all have to say!

I'm also tagging a couple friends since I'm curious of your responses @hessdalen-globe, @northernthiefcranberry, @kerghoulen, and the ever wonderful @somethingclevermahogony.

Also guys I need you to pull me out, I'm this close to dropping out of the arts and trying to get into Harvard to do Ancient Studies. Send Help.

[aurianneor]

Useful Ecology

We’re hearing about a whole range of ecological measures.

We need to buy eco-friendly cleaning products, insulate our homes, change our boilers and have a Canadian well, buy less plastic, sort our waste, drive eco-friendly cars, limit our speed on the roads, limit our water consumption when we shower or flush the toilet, limit your consumption of concrete, have a compost in our garden, limit our consumption of meat, use Aleppo soap and limit our consumption of sun creams, use a solar oven, invest in ecological energy (wind turbines, photovoltaic panels, hydroelectric plants), buy second-hand. Electricity, oil and food prices are rising under the pretext of ecology.

Mining, lithium extraction, nuclear power plant waste, large factories, construction, petroleum, intensive agriculture (soil pollution, exorbitant water consumption). Multinationals pollute far more than private individuals, and are not subject to any ecological measures to limit their pollution. The world’s richest people, especially via multinationals, are responsible for the world’s biggest ecocides: they destroy forests such as the Amazon rainforest, pollute rivers, destroy the seabed, impose conditions on farmers such that they destroy the land, which is in danger of becoming sterile due to the use of chemicals, and mistreat animals. What’s more, chemicals such as pesticides are causing the extinction of entire animal species. They should be judged internationally, not according to the laws they decide at national level in each country.

Some sectors, such as agriculture and construction, are even subsidized. Others even receive the Legion of Honor (e.g. Total).

Revealed: the 20 firms behind a third of all carbon emissions – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/09/revealed-20-firms-third-carbon-emissions

90% of industrial pollution comes from manufacturing things: housing, vehicles and clothing. Obsolescence, changing standards that force people to equip themselves, and the use of consumption as a status object are all very harmful.

How Buying Stuff Drives Climate Change – Columbia University – Columbia Climate School: https://news.climate.columbia.edu/2020/12/16/buying-stuff-drives-climate-change/

The measures mentioned at the beginning are useful for preserving the environment and limiting consumption, but they are minor measures compared to those that should be taken on a global scale.

How companies blame you for climate change – BBC: https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20220504-why-the-wrong-people-are-blamed-for-climate-change

But most of the pollution is still to come. Developing countries want factories, energy, cars and meat. If we don’t help them, this will happen with highly polluting coal-fired plants, petroleum and intensive agriculture (sometimes carried out in deserts, which sucks up all the water the population needs). We need to look at ecology on a global scale, and not just take measures in developed countries, otherwise the ozone layer will suffer and the air will become unbreathable.

“If left unchecked, climate change will cause average global temperatures to increase beyond 3°C, and will adversely affect every ecosystem. Already, we are seeing how climate change can exacerbate storms and disasters, and threats such as food and water scarcity, which can lead to conflict. Doing nothing will end up costing us a lot more than if we take action now.” Goal 13: Take urgent action to combat climate change and its impacts – ONU: https://www.un.org/sustainabledevelopment/climate-change/

We must help developing countries to develop in a way that is healthy for humanity.

This is difficult. It’s not a question of sending money, because experience shows that the money would be diverted to corrupted individuals. It means that having people on the ground to check that the ecological work is being done is necessary. People need to be educated about ecology and given the means to put ecological measures in place. For developing countries to become low-emission countries like those in Europe, $2,400 billion a year would be needed. At present, fossil fuel subsidies total $5,000 billion a year. Switching to renewable energies would cost half as much as maintaining fossil fuels. António Guterres, attacked the use of subsidies in May 2024, declaring, “What we are doing is using taxpayers’ money – which means our money – to boost hurricanes, to spread droughts, to melt glaciers, to bleach corals. In one word – to destroy the world”. Taxes subsidize the destruction of the planet instead of saving it. This is one of the topics to be discussed at COP 29 from November 11 to 22, 2024.

Money, money, money: Financing plans for the climate transition – i4ce: https://www.i4ce.org/en/publication/financing-transition-multi-scale-challenge-climate/

After Bonn and towards COP 29: the battle on finance and the role of financing plans for the transition – i4ce: https://www.i4ce.org/en/after-bonn-towards-cop29-battle-finance-role-financing-plans-transition-climate/

How do we rein in the fossil fuel industry? Here are eight ideas – The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2019/oct/14/how-rein-in-fossil-fuel-industry-eight-ideas

Global Fossil Fuel Subsidies Remain Large: An Update Based on Country-Level Estimates – IMF: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2019/05/02/Global-Fossil-Fuel-Subsidies-Remain-Large-An-Update-Based-on-Country-Level-Estimates-46509

China and Russia invest in developing countries without any ecological conscience. We need to be diplomatic with these countries to get them to take ecology into account.

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Ecologie efficace: https://www.aurianneor.org/ecologie-efficace/

Eficiencia ecológica: https://www.aurianneor.org/eficiencia-ecologica/

Fund: https://www.aurianneor.org/fund-according-to-the-latest-international/

Juste une question de culture; et de politique…: https://www.aurianneor.org/juste-une-question-de-culture-et-de-politique/

Ecoterrorism: https://www.aurianneor.org/ecoterrorism/

The richest 1% are at war with the rest of the world: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-richest-1-are-at-war-with-the-rest-of-the-world/

My hormones want admiration: https://www.aurianneor.org/my-hormones-want-admiration-i-want-to-shine-im/

Protecting water: https://www.aurianneor.org/protecting-water/

Peru, biodiversity in danger: https://www.aurianneor.org/peru-biodiversity-in-danger/

Consumption: Dream & Reality: https://www.aurianneor.org/consumption-dream-realitymore-love/

Bright idea of the century: https://www.aurianneor.org/bright-idea-of-the-century-the-light-bulb/

Stop the all-concrete approach: https://www.aurianneor.org/stop-the-all-concrete-approach/

Tomorrow – Chap 2: L’énergie: https://www.aurianneor.org/tomorrow-chap-2-lenergie-demainlefilm/

40 ans, un risque maîtrisé?: https://www.aurianneor.org/40-ans-un-risque-maitrise-votez-pour-defendre/

Tomorrow – Chap 1: Agriculture: https://www.aurianneor.org/tomorrow-chap-1-agriculture/

Nano Confiance: https://www.aurianneor.org/nano-confiance-affaire-des-oeufs-contamines-les/

Meat and environment, is that possible?: https://www.aurianneor.org/meat-and-environment-is-that-possible-no-if/

Solar Oven: https://www.aurianneor.org/solar-oven/

Clean Clothes: https://www.aurianneor.org/clean-clothes-shirt-on-your-back/

The eco comfort, a way of life: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-eco-comfort-a-way-of-life-how-to-use/

Hydrogen-powered aircraft: https://www.aurianneor.org/hydrogen-powered-aircraft/

Healthy Road: https://www.aurianneor.org/healthy-road-be-healthier-with-fewer-traffic/

Piste scooter / Moto: https://www.aurianneor.org/piste-scooter-moto-healthy/

Le Paon Scooter: https://www.aurianneor.org/le-paon-scooter-good-for-your-budget-compared/

The artistic blur of ecological cars: https://www.aurianneor.org/the-artistic-blur-of-ecological-cars-i-what-this/

Zero emission transport: https://www.aurianneor.org/zero-emission-transport/

Free public transport: https://www.aurianneor.org/free-public-transport/

Healthy Hair, The advice of a Wookie for hair: https://www.aurianneor.org/healthy-hair-the-advice-of-a-wookie-for-hair-and/

Healthy Skin: https://www.aurianneor.org/healthy-skin-wikipedia-aleppo/

Le savon: https://www.aurianneor.org/le-savon-le-meilleur-desinfectant-le-meilleur/

Healthy Tan: https://www.aurianneor.org/environment-health-perspective-sunscreens-damage/

Sun Cream: https://www.aurianneor.org/sun-cream-differences-entre-ecran-solaire-mineral/

[jcmarchi]

3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/3-questions-bridging-anthropology-and-engineering-for-clean-energy-in-mongolia/

3 Questions: Bridging anthropology and engineering for clean energy in Mongolia

In 2021, Michael Short, an associate professor of nuclear science and engineering, approached professor of anthropology Manduhai Buyandelger with an unusual pitch: collaborating on a project to prototype a molten salt heat bank in Mongolia, Buyandelger’s country of origin and place of her scholarship. It was also an invitation to forge a novel partnership between two disciplines that rarely overlap. Developed in collaboration with the National University of Mongolia (NUM), the device was built to provide heat for people in colder climates, and in places where clean energy is a challenge. 

Buyandelger and Short teamed up to launch Anthro-Engineering Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale, an initiative intended to advance the heat bank idea in Mongolia, and ultimately demonstrate its potential as a scalable clean heat source in comparably challenging sites around the world. This project received funding from the inaugural MIT Climate and Sustainability Consortium Seed Awards program. In order to fund various components of the project, especially student involvement and additional staff, the project also received support from the MIT Global Seed Fund, New Engineering Education Transformation (NEET), Experiential Learning Office, Vice Provost for International Activities, and d’Arbeloff Fund for Excellence in Education.

As part of this initiative, the partners developed a special topic course in anthropology to teach MIT undergraduates about Mongolia’s unique energy and climate challenges, as well as the historical, social, and economic context in which the heat bank would ideally find a place. The class 21A.S01 (Anthro-Engineering: Decarbonization at the Million-Person Scale) prepares MIT students for a January Independent Activities Period (IAP) trip to the Mongolian capital of Ulaanbaatar, where they embed with Mongolian families, conduct research, and collaborate with their peers. Mongolian students also engaged in the project. Anthropology research scientist and lecturer Lauren Bonilla, who has spent the past two decades working in Mongolia, joined to co-teach the class and lead the IAP trips to Mongolia. 

With the project now in its third year and yielding some promising solutions on the ground, Buyandelger and Bonilla reflect on the challenges for anthropologists of advancing a clean energy technology in a developing nation with a unique history, politics, and culture. 

Q: Your roles in the molten salt heat bank project mark departures from your typical academic routine. How did you first approach this venture?

Buyandelger: As an anthropologist of contemporary religion, politics, and gender in Mongolia, I have had little contact with the hard sciences or building or prototyping technology. What I do best is listening to people and working with narratives. When I first learned about this device for off-the-grid heating, a host of issues came straight to mind right away that are based on socioeconomic and cultural context of the place. The salt brick, which is encased in steel, must be heated to 400 degrees Celsius in a central facility, then driven to people’s homes. Transportation is difficult in Ulaanbaatar, and I worried about road safety when driving the salt brick to gers [traditional Mongolian homes] where many residents live. The device seemed a bit utopian to me, but I realized that this was an amazing educational opportunity: We could use the heat bank as part of an ethnographic project, so students could learn about the everyday lives of people — crucially, in the dead of winter — and how they might respond to this new energy technology in the neighborhoods of Ulaanbaatar.

Bonilla: When I first went to Mongolia in the early 2000s as an undergraduate student, the impacts of climate change were already being felt. There had been a massive migration to the capital after a series of terrible weather events that devastated the rural economy. Coal mining had emerged as a vital part of the economy, and I was interested in how people regarded this industry that both provided jobs and damaged the air they breathed. I am trained as a human geographer, which involves seeing how things happening in a local place correspond to things happening at a global scale. Thinking about climate or sustainability from this perspective means making linkages between social life and environmental life. In Mongolia, people associated coal with national progress. Based on historical experience, they had low expectations for interventions brought by outsiders to improve their lives. So my first take on the molten salt project was that this was no silver bullet solution. At the same time, I wanted to see how we could make this a great project-based learning experience for students, getting them to think about the kind of research necessary to see if some version of the molten salt would work.

Q: After two years, what lessons have you and the students drawn from both the class and the Ulaanbaatar field trips?

Buyandelger: We wanted to make sure MIT students would not go to Mongolia and act like consultants. We taught them anthropological methods so they could understand the experiences of real people and think about how to bring people and new technologies together. The students, from engineering and anthropological and social science backgrounds, became critical thinkers who could analyze how people live in ger districts. When they stay with families in Ulaanbaatar in January, they not only experience the cold and the pollution, but they observe what people do for work, how parents care for their children, how they cook, sleep, and get from one place to another. This enables them to better imagine and test out how these people might utilize the molten salt heat bank in their homes.

Bonilla: In class, students learn that interventions like this often fail because the implementation process doesn’t work, or the technology doesn’t meet people’s real needs. This is where anthropology is so important, because it opens up the wider landscape in which you’re intervening. We had really difficult conversations about the professional socialization of engineers and social scientists. Engineers love to work within boxes, but don’t necessarily appreciate the context in which their invention will serve.

As a group, we discussed the provocative notion that engineers construct and anthropologists deconstruct. This makes it seem as if engineers are creators, and anthropologists are brought in as add-ons to consult and critique engineers’ creations. Our group conversation concluded that a project such as ours benefits from an iterative back-and-forth between the techno-scientific and humanistic disciplines.

Q: So where does the molten salt brick project stand?

Bonilla: Our research in Mongolia helped us produce a prototype that can work: Our partners at NUM are developing a hybrid stove that incorporates the molten salt brick. Supervised by instructor Nathan Melenbrink of MIT’s NEET program, our engineering students have been involved in this prototyping as well.

The concept is for a family to heat it up using a coal fire once a day and it warms their home overnight. Based on our anthropological research, we believe that this stove would work better than the device as originally conceived. It won’t eliminate coal use in residences, but it will reduce emissions enough to have a meaningful impact on ger districts in Ulaanbaatar. The challenge now is getting funding to NUM so they can test different salt combinations and stove models and employ local blacksmiths to work on the design.

This integrated stove/heat bank will not be the ultimate solution to the heating and pollution crisis in Mongolia. But it will be something that can inspire even more ideas. We feel with this project we are planting all kinds of seeds that will germinate in ways we cannot anticipate. It has sparked new relationships between MIT and Mongolian students, and catalyzed engineers to integrate a more humanistic, anthropological perspective in their work.

Buyandelger: Our work illustrates the importance of anthropology in responding to the unpredictable and diverse impacts of climate change. Without our ethnographic research — based on participant observation and interviews, led by Dr. Bonilla, — it would have been impossible to see how the prototyping and modifications could be done, and where the molten salt brick could work and what shape it needed to take. This project demonstrates how indispensable anthropology is in moving engineering out of labs and companies and directly into communities.

Bonilla: This is where the real solutions for climate change are going to come from. Even though we need solutions quickly, it will also take time for new technologies like molten salt bricks to take root and grow. We don’t know where the outcomes of these experiments will take us. But there’s so much that’s emerging from this project that I feel very hopeful about.

[tsukiyo-7]

Just speaking this into existence but the term "3rd World Country" is an outdated term born during the Cold War and with distinct Imperialist/Colonialist connotations; it is highly discouraged already in academic discourses and it would be best to drop it altogether in news outlets and daily life.

There are more suited options, although not perfect and all-encopassing, some arguably can still hold negative connotations, but you can use them to your discretion and sensibility:

Developing Countries; Global South; LICs & MICs (Low & Middle-income Countries); Majority World.

[coolmaycroft]

The last few days I was reblogging discourse about how Americans' view of the world is distorted by their culture, and I just wanted to bring this as a an example, because I have somewhat experience with this phenomenon.

A society valuing fitness and physical education is a thing developed countries get to have due to the public investment and fostering of this cultural aspect. With education's budget getting reduced over the last pOTUS terms and the economy stagnating there's just not as many resources to give youngsters sports clubs and places to stay active.

Coming from a country where education budgets are laughable, my perception is that a strong emphasis on exercise in education is a rich, posh thing. Elite private schools are the ones with 3 fields and courts for sports. Rich kids are the one who can go and buy all the gear like track shoes, rackets, bats, etc. because all that stuff is expensive but not necessary to stay healthy.

When I used to help coordinate exchange students one thing that stood out was that the Germans, Fins, Russians, etc. would comment on how everyone was so bad at sports and how bare the equipment for sports was in the country's schools.

Because yeah, when people are more concerned with making the weekly expenses match the income and the education sector also doesn't think coordinated students are important, you're gonna have a society where anyone scoring 5 goals in a game is exceptional.

Most of the blame on this reddit thread was put on parents and technology (and because I am a contrarian I put no blame on these whatsoever), but almost no one was asking why modern parents had no time to play with their kids, or why weren't there places where kids could go stay active.

[morganablenewsmedia]

Nigeria Freed From IMF Debt

Nigeria freed from IMF debt as tt is removed from list of indebted countries After many years of ridden with debt, Nigeria has been finally removed from the list of IMF-indebted countries. Nigeria, under the stewardship of President Bola Ahmed Tinubu, has recorded a great success following its ability to clear the country off IMF loan. International Monetary Fund (IMF) has taken Nigeria away from…

[sholawilde]

[youthchronical]

Climate Change Made South Sudan Heat Wave More Likely, Study Finds

After a blistering February heat wave in South Sudan’s capital city caused dozens of students to collapse from heat stroke, officials closed schools for two weeks. It was the second time in less than a year that the country’s schools closed to protect young people from the deadly effects of extreme heat. Climate change, largely caused by the burning of fossil fuels in rich nations, made at least…

[thewordenreport]

What is keeping poor countries from developing economically? Is it just the lack of foreign direct-investment? Or might the stagnation of subsistance-level labor be a factor. After all, forests develop in stages. See: https://thewordenreport-governmentandmarkets.blogspot.com/2025/02/poverty-impeding-development.html

[healthbioethics]

Delayed Treatment for Broken Bones: A Hidden Crisis in Developing Countries

Imagine breaking your leg and not being able to get the care you need for days, weeks, or even months. This is a harsh reality for many in developing countries, where delayed treatment for long bone fractures leads to devastating consequences. Learn more about this urgent health concern and what can be done to address it by visiting this link: https://yefeed.com/in-developing-countries-delayed-presentation-of-patients-with-traumatic-long-bone-fractures-remains-106

[inkintheinternet]

The Science of Lab on a Chip

By Arjuwan Lakkdawala

Ink in the Internet

Science nowadays looks so much like The Jetsons cartoon, where lots of technology would be folded into a little chip or box. The technological leaps have been phenomenal, and what makes this more fascinating in this era, than past breakthrough discoveries, is that the Internet has given us a front row seat of the entire show as it unfolds.

That is not all, we are so connected that it's possible to contribute progressive ideas to science or any project or situation. There is always someone reading and posts go viral faster than we can say cheese.

While this attribute of the Internet makes it very entertaining. There is a serious aspect to the science itself. The aspect of saving lives. The scientists of the world are heroes, innovating not only to progress science but also to invent impactful devices and medication methods in developing countries, we in the privileged first world countries may not think often about the suffering of third world countries. But the elites in academia have made them a priority. Still, despite these efforts there are several issues in getting the proper aid to those countries.

In African regions there is the problem of counterfeit medicines that cause annually thousands of deaths. So a messaging system to scan the barcodes on the medication that could be sent to a website for verification was developed.

Another crisis in developing countries is that women often die during childbirth from blood loss. Due to lack of available medical equipment and blood donors, the same blood lost would be transfused back into the patient using kitchen things and guize to filter the blood  - which done in this way is unhygienic and dangerous. For this the Sisu Global Health developed the Hemafuse for hygienic and steril blood transfusion.

Other inventions like 3D printers are also of significant impact in developing countries. Some examples for instance include; printing prosthetics, setting up field hospitals, or printing a lab-in-a-box.

In this regard is one very interesting invention, which is the lab-on-a-chip. It may sound impossible for a whole lab to be on a chip that can be anywhere from the size of your fingernail to a few inches. This product hasn't been industrialised but it is being used in several medical settings, and constant improved models are in the works.

As technology advances devices are getting miniature and miniature. This is to make it conveniently possible to pack more technology in smaller spaces. But other benefits as scientists emphasis is that it reduces human error. This is more crucial in the medical field than anywhere else.

So how are devices getting so miniature that we can have a lab-on-a-chip?

How did they do it. How does it work. I researched these questions and the answer is complex science, but I will give a detailed overview.

Let's start with the science of chips (not the eating ones) a computer chip is the brain of every type of artificial intelligence. Chips are made mostly from silicon (hence the name Silicon Valley.)

Silicon is made from sand and it's the most abundant natural resource on earth after oxygen.

As we know computers started very large and got smaller, now we have handheld devices that are so slick they are practically flat, and are packed with compute power and huge memory storage.

This is mainly the magic of microchips and transistors. As chips got smaller so did transistors, and they are what gives the chips their compute power. In a powerful optimized chip the size of your fingernail there could be 50 billion transistors.

Transistors have shrunk to the size of atoms.

(Basically the size of atoms, I did extensive research to understand this, and this is what I make of it. The "transistor" is simply layers of silicone, no wires, or hardware, then atoms with an electric charge (ions) are split into negative and positive charged ones known as cations (positive) and anions (negative) and these are fired into the silicone layers, changing their atomic composition, and hence creating an electrical circuit the size of atoms without wires. We know atoms are so small we cannot see them even with a microscope, and this is how devices are getting miniature and compute power is getting bigger. A single transistor circuit can hold two stages of the binary commands by which computer software is programmed. That is 1 and 0. So 50 billion transistors can hold a very large memory capacity and compute power. An electrical current by battery or a direct powerline activates the transistor configuration of postive and negative atoms, which are controlled by the three layers of each transistor.)

The next question is how is it possible for machines to engineer at such nano and microscales. This is the great secret behind such technological leaps - I like to give it a layman term 'light engineering,' and not so much a layman term 'chemical engineering.'

The silicone used in chips and the materials (polymers) used in lab-on-a-chip are modified chemically to be sensitive to different wavelengths of light and even waves of sound, and these techniques are used in a major part of such miniature engineering.

A chip starts basically as an ingot of silicone, then it is sliced into strips technically called 'wafers' this is coated with photo sensitive material, and then it is put in a lithography machine that has a blueprint known as the 'mask' that gets imprinted on it. This is repeated on layers of silicone; building an electrical circuit for the transistors. Then atoms of different charges are blasted in the electrical patterns made on the silicone. This process takes place in a clean room, dust is hazardous to it for it can damage the chips.

After a set of other modifications the chips are tested and ready to be used in devices. Depending on the tech used in the manufacturing, there could be a few billion to 50 billion transistors nearly the size of atoms in the chip.

The material widely used in lab-on-a-chip are polymers, and they are fabricated with the technology of microfluidics. This means that the lab-chips will have microchannels and chambers where test fluids will be pushed through or stored as the tests go on. Fluids at such microscales behave very differently than what we are used to in observations in large volumes. The science of microfluidics explores and takes advantage of the change in fluid dynamics of the microscale. The microchannels and chambers are etched on the chip using lithography - the same technology used in manufacturing microchips and transistors.

Those lab-chips could have high-tech analytical tools like spectrometers and gas chromography attached to them, and in built pressure systems to move the fluids.

There are also organs-on-a-chip, these mimic microenvironments and the effect on specific organ micro simulation, and are more precise than traditional culture tests. Lab-chips are said to be faster than normal conventional labs, cost much less, reduce human error, and being portable can be of significant impact were medical care is needed but a lab or hospital is not possible.

Lab-on-a-chip are used in blood tests, diagnostics of bacteria and viruses, DNA/RNA and HIV tests, and more applications are being developed.

Micro technology had a revolution in the medical field in the 70s, described as "scientists first had only a street light, where testing was not possible of more than a single gnome at a time, and then we had a floodlight."

This happened after scientific methods of studying atoms in physics was applied to molecular biology, and then chemical engineering branched out into biochemical and biomedical engineering. Scientists made technological breakthroughs and discovered that the human body worked like a very high-tech sophisticated biological machine, and it was possible to apply engineering methods to it - resulting in the science of biochemical engineering and systems biology, etc. Scientists started to look for ways to merge biology with mechanical engineering like prosthetics, artificial organs, and so on.

Arjuwan Lakkdawala is an author and independent researcher in science.

X/Twitter/Instagram: Spellrainia Email: arjuwan.writer@gmail.com

Copyright ©️ Arjuwan Lakkdawala 2024

Sources:

Yale School of Medicine, Yale Medicine Magazine - human body as machine

AIChe, The Global Home of Chemical Engineers - chemical engineers are advancing biomedicine

University of Alberta, Faculty of Engineering, Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering - biochemical and biomedical engineering

ElveFlow, An ELVESYS Brand - introduction to lab-on-a-chip

ASML, Our Technology, lithography - using light to print tiny patterns on silicon - is a fundamental step in mass producing microchips

News-Medical, Life Sciences - what us microfluidics? by susha cheriyedath, M.Sc., reviewed by Afsaneh khetrapal BSc

ElveFlow, An ELVESYS Brand - definition of microfluidics

Semiconductor Engineering, Deep Insights for the Tech Industry - understanding memory by Alex yoon

Homepage.cs.uri.edu - how computers work the CPU and memory

Royal Society of Chemistry - microfluidic diagnostics for the developing world, xiaole mao and tony jun huang

The Borgen Project, blog latest news - health technologies for developing countries

University Wafer - how to fabricate a computer chip from silicon

Nano Werk - transistors explained - what they are and what they do

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