Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • How Philadelphia Has Tried to Address Water Debt

    An income-based payment structure has alleviated water debt in Philadelphia. Decreasing federal aid to municipal water utilities in conjunction with rising costs associated with climate change has increased the cost of water, making it unaffordable for many. Philadelphia created an income-based program, which caps water bills at three percent of income. The Tiered Assistance Program, or TAP, also provides debt elimination for those who make their minimum payments. Advocates have successfully pushed for similar reforms in Baltimore.

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  • How the University of Arizona used No. 2 to solve its No. 1 problem

    Amongst other efforts, the University of Arizona has begun analyzing sewage to mitigate the spread of coronavirus as students return to campus for the new school year. The practice is known as wastewater-based epidemiology, and university officials have already been able to diagnose and isolate two asymptomatic cases due to this new initiative.

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  • The mosquito strategy that could eliminate dengue

    In Indonesia, Wolbachia-carrying mosquitoes are transmitting dengue at a much slower rate than those not infected with the bacterium according to a controlled research study that expands on existing experimentation conducted elsewhere in the world. Although the trial was cut short due to the prevalence of COVID-19, the results were substantial enough that researchers are encouraging efforts to scale the technology worldwide.

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  • Dengue breakthrough after mosquitoes laced with natural bacteria

    Injecting mosquito eggs with Wolbachia, a naturally occurring bacteria, is showing promise for reducing the cases of dengue in parts of Indonesia. Although dengue cases have been increasing, in areas of Indonesia where mosquitoes infected with Wolbachia were released, "their capacity to transmit the virus that causes dengue was vastly reduced," as compared to areas with untreated mosquito populations.

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  • Organic fertilizers to lift African farmers out of poverty

    After realizing that chemical fertilizer was doing more harm to the land than good in Burkina Faso, a Burkinese agronomist created a fertilizer from organic waste that has allowed the land to once again become fertile. Although the organic fertilizer promises a much higher increase in yields, chemical fertilizer is still widely used in the region.

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  • Africa declared free of wild polio in 'milestone'

    After decades of trying to contain polio, collaborative efforts have resulted in the eradication of the disease from Africa. Although there is still no known cure, vaccination campaigns and collective action from polio survivors have helped to achieve widespread immunization for children across the country.

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  • Why did 77 Ohio prisoners die of COVID-19, but just 10 in Pennsylvania?

    Pennsylvania prisons' relatively uncrowded conditions and approach to releasing people early when the pandemic hit have limited deaths in its prisons, making people incarcerated in Pennsylvania less than half as likely to die of COVID-19 as free Pennsylvanians. In neighboring Ohio, where COVID cases appeared simultaneously, the prison death rate has been nearly seven times higher than Pennsylvania's. Ohio's prisons are far more crowded, they rely much more on dorm-style housing, and their early-release rules were much more restrictive.

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  • For Quick Coronavirus Testing, Israel Turns to a Clever Algorithm

    The Israeli government is preparing to roll out a new form of pooled testing as the count of COVID-19 cases continues to increase. The methodology, which has already shown promise as a successful pilot project, works more efficiently than other pooled-testing efforts by using a combinatorial algorithm that was "developed a decade ago to speed the detection of rare genetic mutations."

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  • Vaccine Tech 30 Years in the Making Is Getting Put to the Ultimate Test

    A key set of entrants in the race to develop an effective COVID-19 vaccine use a genetic approach that has shown promising but preliminary results in human safety trials. Genetic vaccines, which have been in development for 30 years but have never undergone large-scale clinical trials or been used widely, differ from traditional vaccines, which inject a form of an actual pathogen to trigger an immune response. DNA and RNA vaccines can be developed much more quickly by using a small piece of genetic code to instruct a body's response. Initial human safety trials worked enough to move to large-scale tests.

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  • With the Hippo Roller, a revolution in fetching water rolls on

    After realizing the difficulty that people in South Africa were facing when carrying water back to their communities, two South African engineers devised a machine "that brings all the water back in one trip by rolling it." Users report that while it does not perform well on steep terrain, it can carry much larger amounts of water "effortlessly and in a single trip." So far, 60,000 of these large plastic drums have been sold, but the cost of the machine is often a barrier for those who live below the poverty line.

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