Decolonising science: Researchers out to demystify scientific data through African languages
There’s no original isiZulu word for dinosaur. Germs are called amagciwane, but there are no separate words for viruses or bacteria. A quark is ikhwakhi (pronounced kwa–ki); there is no term for red shift. And researchers and science communicators using the language, which is spoken by more than 14 million...
Revealed: Research funders suppress nutrition, sexual health, physical activity and substance use results
A survey of public-health researchers has found numerous instances of trial results being suppressed on topics such as nutrition, sexual health, physical activity and substance use, with 18 per cent of respondents reporting that they had, on at least one occasion, felt pressured by funders to delay reporting, alter or...
Africa’s first youth games raise hopes the continent is getting ready to host Olympic Games
For decades, African athletes have travelled all over the world to take part in the Olympic Games. At the recent Tokyo Games, they took home gold, silver and bronze medals. And yet Africa has never hosted the Games, and some people are asking what it would take for the Olympics to be held on...
Bleak future: Biodiversity is not in decline, what’s changing rapidly are ecosystems
In June 2018, 180 cars fanned out across Denmark and parts of Germany on a grand insect hunt. Armed with white, funnel-shaped nets mounted on their car roofs, enthusiastic citizen naturalists roamed through cities, farmlands, grasslands, wetlands and forests. The drivers sent the haul from their ‘InsectMobiles’ to scientists at...
Ethiopia detains Tigrayan children for ‘supporting’ rebels against government
Young children among those held amid a new wave of detentions of ethnic Tigrayans suspected of supporting Tigray forces in Ethiopia’s growing war, one detainee says, while witnesses and a human rights watchdog describe fresh disappearances in recent weeks. In an interview with The Associated Press on a hidden phone,...
Sports research shows female athletes twice more likely to develop concussions than male counterparts
Liz Williams was standing pitch-side at a women’s rugby match and she did not like what she was seeing. Williams, who researches forensic biomechanics at Swansea University, UK, had equipped some of the players with a mouth-guard that contained a sensor to measure the speed of head movement. She wanted...
US gun violence: Counselling ties high suicide incidence to easy firearm access in homes
The risk of death by suicide in the United States is higher when guns are easily accessible in a home, research finds. However, keeping firearms unloaded and locked away in homes resulted in a decreased suicide and homicide incidence in the past five years, according to the findings. This was...
How overmedication may lead to 150,000 premature deaths, 4.6m inpatients and cost US taxpayer $62 billion
When the risk of the medications outweighs their potential benefits, patients are in danger of significant health consequences. Every day, 750 older adults are hospitalised due to serious side-effects from their medications, including falls, allergic reactions and internal bleeding. With each additional medication prescribed, the risk of an adverse reaction...
Tackling overmedication: Half of all doctors in US accepted $2.4 billion bribes from drug firms to prescribe their products
When my grandmother Carol Mitchell was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease in 2010 at the age of 72, she was prescribed a drug called carbidopa/levodopa. She swallowed the little oblong pill four times a day – 7 am, 11 am, 3 pm and 7 pm. In the years that followed, her...
US army exit from Afghanistan sets stage for Taliban warlords to scramble for drug profits and power
The United States spent more than $8 billion over 15 years on efforts to deprive the Taliban of their profits from Afghanistan’s opium and heroin trade, from poppy eradication to airstrikes and raids on suspected labs. As the United States wraps up its longest war, Afghanistan remains the world’s biggest...
