Russian nuclear disaster: No matter the consequences of lingering radiation, there are massive benefits to people leaving
Some other research teams have not found significant radiation effects on the genetic diversity or abundance of certain animals around Chernobyl nuclear disaster scene. In one widely publicised 2015 survey of a Belarus area near the power plant, a team of scientists determined that the numbers of elk, roe deer...
Radiation at Chernobyl in Russia have fallen since initial accident, but scientists disagree on its impact on wildlife
Is Chernobyl a radioactive wasteland reeling from chronic radiation, or a post-nuclear paradise with thriving populations of animals and other life forms? Studies don’t always agree about levels of mutations and other ill effects. Thirty-five years after the meltdown at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant in northern Ukraine, reports often...
Kenyan scholar: Right working culture pays dividends when juggling between academia and parenting in Africa
In the fifth instalment of an eight-part series about African women in science, Elizabeth Kimani-Murage, head of maternal and child well-being at the African Population and Health Research Center (APHRC) in Nairobi, describes the importance of quiet hours to write as an early-career public-health researcher. After I earned my master’s...
African woman’s odyssey: How political mess at home sends continent’s younger generation into modern day slavery in America
On October 30, 2020, Julliana Essengue, a Cameroonian woman on the run from persecution at home, left the Border Patrol station where she’d been held. But when she arrived in Bradenton, Florida, in November, Dalmacy’s cousin was unable to house her, although he did put her up in a hotel....
Black odyssey: ‘As the baby was crying…one officer threw the bottle away and said the baby was too old to continue drinking milk
As their limited opportunities in Brazil and the discrimination against them in Mexico demonstrated, poor Black migrants like Julliana Essengue from Cameroon and Dalmacy from Haiti are at the bottom of a de facto migrant hierarchy. In their attempt to reach the United States, which is often still a safer...
Tale of daring Cameroonian woman who risks her life in Panamanian jungle where Colombian thugs call the shots to reach America
Hundreds of thousands of migrants to the United States of America have made the dangerous trip since 2010. According to a March 2021 report from Duke University, three-quarters of these migrants are from Cuba and Haiti, with increasing numbers coming from the Indian subcontinent and African countries, notably Eritrea, the...
A woman’s odyssey of justice: Essengue was told to leave Cameroon, if not, the military would take her to Yaoundé…and kill her
Sometime during that week, an official in the detention camp in Cameroon accosted Julliana Essengue and ordered her to have sex with him. “I said no,” she told me. “When I refused, he forced me, and he slept with me. And later, his colleagues came and did the same thing....
From Africa to the Americas: The odyssey of a black migrant running away from war in Cameroon
Julliana Essengue arrived in Tapachula, Mexico, from São Paulo, Brazil, in March 2020. She was broke but determined to reach the United States. After nearly two months traversing rain forests, borders and rivers by bus, car, boat, and foot, she needed money. At first, Essengue and her travel companions squatted....
Age should not be a barrier to pursuing a PhD: Nutritionist in Kenya shares advice for prospective students
Rose Okoyo Opiyo is a Kenyan nutritionist at the University of Nairobi and was a panellist at a webinar held last month titled Pursuing a PhD in Africa: Bridging the gender gap. The webinar was organised by the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA), a group of research...
Banning books undermines young people’s ability to engage in meaningful and complex discussions about history and literature
Maya Mackey, an 18-year-old college freshman in Texas, said reading Toni Morrison’s “Beloved” last semester was transformative. “You can learn about the plantation system, the horrors of slavery, the generational trauma, but you’re not going to get the full impact until you actually see it on an individual level, which...
