World

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) released its Human Development Report 2011. It " argues that the urgent global challenges of sustainability and equity must be addressed together – and identifies policies on the national and global level that could spur mutually reinforcing progress towards these interlinked goals". In this report, there is a ranking, the Human Development Index (HDI). The HDI is a way to measure the development. It combines indicators in three main dimensions: health, education and living standards. The mathematical way used to combine these indicators is explained in a technical note (PDF). The interest is of course to have a single number to use in comparison for both social and economic development. It’s not the only element to take into account to compare development. It’s merely a starting point giving an overview of development. An in-depth discussion about development and comparison between countries will need to go further and analyze each indicator separately (as well as other indicators if possible). ...

Today, 11th of July 2011, is World Population Day. For that occasion, and as the world population is expected to surpass 7 billion this year, the UNFPA is launching a new campaign: 7 billion people - 7 billion actions. They highlight 7 key issues to explore: Poverty and inequality: reducing poverty and inequality also slows population growth. Women and girls: unleashing the power of women and girls will accelerate progress on all fronts. Young people: energetic and open to new technologies, history’s largest and most interconnected population of young people is transforming global politics and culture. Reproductive health and rights: ensuring that every child is wanted and every childbirth safe leads to smaller and stronger families. Environment: all 7 billion of us, and those who will follow, depend on the health of our planet. Ageing: lower fertility and longer lives add up to a new challenge worldwide: providing for aging populations. Urbanization: the next two billion people will live in cities, so we need to plan for them now. These issues are not new. They are not even original: most bodies or meetings looking at issues for the future have approximately the same issues. But at least it’s another initiative to raise awareness, to think about them. And, most importantly, to act to tackle them. ...

TB stands for tuberculosis. It’s an infectious bacterial disease caused by Mycobacterium tuberculosis, which most commonly affects the lungs. It is transmitted from person to person via droplets from the throat and lungs of people with the active respiratory disease. Like all other World Days regarding infectious diseases, it is meant to raise awareness about its global epidemiological aspects and the efforts to eliminate it. For tuberculosis, March 24th was chosen because Robert Koch first described Mycobacterium tuberculosis on March 24th, 1882. He then received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for this in 1905. ...

I continue in the serie of “World x Day” and for a reason still unknown even to myself, I thought today was the World Epilepsy Day (it’s in fact on March 26th, called Purple Day). But, anyway, epilepsy is “a common chronic neurological disorder characterized by seizures. […] Epilepsy is usually controlled, but cannot be cured with medication, although surgery may be considered in difficult cases.” ( Wikipedia). Out of curiosity, I was looking for mathematical models for the description of the epidemiology of epilepsy. But unfortunately, I couldn’t find anything. Probably because epilepsy is not an infectious disease for which tentative mathematical models have more predictive power (in terms of the population scale and time scale). The epidemiology of noninfectious diseases is primarily a study of risk factors associated with the chance of developing the disease. Nothing very fancy for a mathemarical model! ;-) (But if you find something, feel free to share! Thanks in advance!) ...

It doesn’t seem jolly but last Friday, it was the World Cancer Day. About this, the WHO set up a nice website about cancer control. Following my previous post on Jamie Oliver and the top 15 causes of death in the USA, I started to collect similar data from other countries. Linking this to cancers, the annual statistics on cancers in Belgium can be found on the Belgian Cancer Registry. The latest numbers are however from 2006. Here are the top 15 cancers in Belgium in 2006 (all sexes and regions mixed): ...

Following my previous post about an e-conference, Daneel Ariantho provided me with interesting informations … The conference about scientific patents was part of Second Nature, (scientific journal) Nature’s home in the virtual world of Second Life. Following their description, Second Nature is home to scientific exhibitions, ongoing projects and regular events. The conference in itself was given in November 2007 but, unfortunately, nor slides nor podcast are available. In real life, if you miss a conference, you still have a copy of the slides or, at least, the abstract ;-) . ...

While looking for pictures related to patents, I found these interesting ones taken by Daneel Ariantho on Flickr. They depict a virtual conference about scientific patents. It could be interesting to get more information about 1) the content of this conference and 2) the kind of conferences organized in these virtual worlds. It could also be interesting to see the social aspects of these conferences (are your contact better/different in a virtual conference?) and the “quality control” (of speakers, of posters, of advertizers, …).