Health Trotter

October 07, 2021 at 03:30PM On Oct. 6, the World Health Organization recommended use of the first vaccine to fight malaria . The decision is momentous and highly anticipated for many reasons: among them is that this is the first vaccine to help reduce the risk of deadly severe malaria in young children in Sub-Saharan Africa, where the disease remains a leading killer. The vaccine offers hope that there can be a circle of learning from one pandemic to the next. Malaria, our oldest pandemic, may offer insights on how we can survive contemporary scourges like COVID-19. Malaria evolved at least 2.5 million years ago and first infected humans in rural parts of Africa. It then spread to all continents save Antarctica—notably, killing off armies ranging from those trying to conquer ancient Rome to those battling to control the Pacific in World War II. Malaria, according to historians, may have killed more people than any other pandemic. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] Malaria cha...

August 09, 2021 at 03:30PM In so many ways, not much has changed since the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC)—perhaps the premiere climate science-and-policy organization in the world—published its last major report in 2014. Just as it was seven years ago, the latest edition, published on Aug. 8, is largely gloomy in outlook, with grim warnings of what the future looks like given the self-destructive trajectory to which humanity seems to have committed itself. However, there are some subtle differences that, on deeper investigation, are truly incredible, indicating just how far down the nightmarish path we actually are. In each of the IPCC’s six Assessment Reports, the group has compiled a “summary for policymakers,” in which its findings are distilled down to what it most wants to communicate to those occupying seats of power around the world. The language choices, therefore, are no accident. Indeed, the 42-page document that comprises the 2021 ...

January 09, 2021 at 03:30PM There are very few things that Ángel León hasn’t done with the fruits of the sea. In 2008, as a young, unknown chef, he took a loin from one fish and attached it to the loin of another, using collagen to bind the two proteins together. He called them hybrids and served them to unsuspecting diners at Aponiente , his restaurant in the southern Spanish port town of El Puerto de Santa María, just across the bay from Cádiz. He discovered that fish eyes, cooked at 55°C in a thermal circulator until the gelatin collapsed, made excellent thickening agents for umami-rich sauces. Next he found that micro-algae could sequester the impurities of cloudy kitchen stocks the same way an egg white does in classical French cooking. In the years since, León has used sea bass to make mortadella; mussels to make blood sausage; moray eel skin to mimic crispy pigskins; boiled hake to fashion fettuccine noodles; and various parts of a tuna’s head to create a towering, gel...