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Despite now having a vaccine for Ebola, the disease is currently spreading on the eastern edge of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and into Uganda. This series of maps from Reuters looks at Ebola's origin (Ebola is the name of a river in the DRC), where it has appeared, the range of probable disease vectors, and major population centers. graphics.reuters.com/HEALTH-EBOLA-CONGO/010081G62NR/index.html
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"Would you fight for your country?" A Gallup survey of more than 62,000 people in 64 countries found that an average of 61% of people surveyed said they would be willing to fight for their country. There were significant regional differences, though. In the Middle East and North Africa, 83% of respondents indicated a willingness to fight for their country. In Japan and Germany, by contrast, the numbers were 11% and 18%, respectively. This map shows the data for Europe and links to a news release with global data: https://brilliantmaps.com/europe-fight-war/
Next Sunday marks the 157-year anniversary of the warm rain that triggered what may have been the worst flooding episode in U.S. history: California's Great Flood of 1862. Early and heavy snowfall in Northern California and the Sierra Nevada mountains in late 1861 was suddenly melted by a warm "pineapple express" storm, flooding California's Central Valley and creating a "lake" 300 miles long and 20 miles wide down the middle of the state. The capital had to be moved from Sacramento, parts of which were under 30 feet of water, for several months, and regions of the Central Valley were uninhabitable until mid 1862. Because of the state's geography, a similar flooding event is considered by scientists to be a matter of when, not if. activenorcal.com/remembering-the-great-flood-that-put-northern-california-under-30-feet-of-water (Never heard of a pineapple express? Then you weren't reading this blog in January 2017 :-): www.learningoutsidethebox.net/blog/maps-in-the-news2813234.)
This data-rich GIF from the Pew Research Center shows each state's primary source of immigrants from 1850-2013. www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2015/10/07/a-shift-from-germany-to-mexico-for-americas-immigrants/ft_15-09-28_immigationmapsgif/
My high school "Philosophically Speaking" class discussed the issue of identity this week (e.g., am I my mind? or my body? or both? and how does our answer to this question shift depending on the situation?) A UPenn biologist and philosopher of science throws in another complication: am I just the cells that carry my DNA? or am I the collective of organisms that live within my body and without whom I couldn't survive?
"You yourself are swarming with bacteria, archaea, protists and viruses, and might even be carrying larger organisms such as worms and fungi as well. So are you a holobiont, or are you just part of one? Are you a multispecies entity, made up of some human bits and some microbial bits – or are you just the human bits, with an admittedly fuzzy boundary between yourself and your tiny companions? ... On this view, the ecological notion of holobiont (the host and all its resident microbes) is given additional properties. It’s an entity that’s coherent enough to have its own hologenome, made up of the host genome plus all the microbial genomes. A major implication of this theory is that natural selection doesn’t just act on the genome of individual organisms: it acts on the hologenome of holobionts, which are seen as single units that can evolve at the level of the holobiont. Today, researchers engage in fierce debate over which forces shape holobionts and host-microbiome systems. They can be roughly split into two factions, the ecological and the evolutionary. On the ecological side, holobionts are seen as complex and dynamic ecosystems, in constant flux shaped by individual interactions from the bottom up. So you are part of a holobiont. But this stands in opposition to the evolutionary account, which casts holobionts as higher-level entities akin to organisms or units of selection, and believes that they are shaped as a whole from the top down. On this view, you are a holobiont." aeon.co/ideas/i-holobiont-are-you-and-your-microbes-a-community-or-a-single-entity This map looks at territory once controlled by Iranic peoples (e.g., Persians, Bactrians, Scythians, Alans, Pashtuns).
www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/9pyfd4/lands_ever_historically_inhabited_and_or/ |
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