Sau Paulo (Brazil): Madagascar's nature is so unique that 82 per cent of its plant species and 90 per cent of its animals are endemic, found exclusively on the island off the coast of Southeast Africa. A population so impoverished that the country's human development index (HDI) is one of the lowest in the world and lives among this rare biodiversity, creating the problem of balancing conservation with economic and social growth.
Two studies published in the journal Science by researchers affiliated with 50 organisations worldwide, including a Brazilian biologist supported by FAPESP, provide a portrait of Madagascar's biological riches and the main threats to nature the conservation outlook.
"From the conservation standpoint, Madagascar faces similar challenges to Brazil. It's a developing country with extremely poor remote areas. Both need to work on conservation and improve social conditions," said Thais Guedes, a co-author of both articles. Guedes is a researcher at the State University of Campinas's Institute of Biology (IB-UNICAMP) with a scholarship from FAPESP.
In one of the articles, the team of researchers presents a comprehensive up-to-date review of the literature on the evolution, distribution and uses of the island's biodiversity, showing that its plants and animals are so locally distinctive that extinction of only one species could spell the end of an entire evolutionary lineage.
"Madagascar has species that are unique in the world, but it's far more than that. There are categories broader than species that only exist there, such as the lemurs (Lemuroidea), an entire order of birds (Mesitornithiformes) and all Mantella frog species (Mantellidae) except three. Loss of one species could mean the end of an entire lineage that took millions of years to evolve," Guedes said.
Indeed, three lemur lineages (koala, monkey, and sloth lemurs) have already become extinct, as have the island's two hippopotamus species, the Grandidier's giant tortoise (Aldabrachelys grandidieri), and the elephant bird order (Aepyornithidae). According to experts, megafauna extinctions have serious consequences for the ecosystem's functioning.
The study includes updates that reveal 11,516 vascular plant species (82 per cent of which are endemic) and 1,215 bryophytes (28 per cent of which are endemic) have been described. In terms of terrestrial and freshwater vertebrates, 95 per cent of the island's mammals, 56 per cent of its birds, 81 per cent of its river fish, and 98 per cent of its reptiles are unique to the island and cannot be found anyplace else on the planet.
Opportunities:
The other piece reflects on Madagascar's biodiversity degradation and suggests conservation opportunities for the island. The fact that a considerable proportion of the population makes a living from woods by collecting firewood or hunting, according to the authors, represents an opportunity for development based on the sustainable use of biodiversity.
Madagascar has 1,916 (5 per cent) of the 40,283 plant species used by people globally, with 595 being native to the island. With 28 million inhabitants, 10.4 per cent of the territory is legally protected.
"To date, the focus has been on creating protected areas and keeping people out of them as much as possible in order to reduce the impact of human activity on biodiversity. Unfortunately, this hasn't produced the expected results, because poor communities - the vast majority of the population - need to cook and heat their homes and have no option other than to cut down trees in the existing reserves in order to get firewood," says Alexandre Antonelli, who led both studies. A biologist from Sao Paulo state, Antonelli is Director of Science at the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Kew Gardens) in London, England (UK).
Given these challenges, the authors propose that the emphasis should be on restoring vegetation elsewhere rather than on creating additional protected areas in order to relieve the strain on current conservation units. Among the five options identified for the country are reforestation and conservation based on scientific evidence and efficacy. The writers consulted scholars in Madagascar and other regions of the world, as well as conservation activists and politicians, to come up with their recommendations.
The authors also advocate for increased biodiversity monitoring and the creation of species databases. Furthermore, they emphasise the importance of increasing the efficacy of existing protection by engaging communities and giving possibilities for training and revenue-generating.
In this context, conservation and restoration initiatives should include landscapes and communities adjacent to protected areas. Actions to conserve forests should take into account the main causes of biodiversity loss, which include poverty and food insecurity, problems that also affect Brazil, despite the peculiarities of each country.
"It's very important to both countries and the world that they protect their forests and restore degraded areas, which capture and store large amounts of carbon. They're essential to combat global warming. When forests are cleared, the consequences affect the most marginalized groups in society," Antonelli said.
The consequences of deforestation, he continued, include lack of drinking water from rivers and water tables, heightened risks of landslides in hilly areas, fewer pollinating insects to service croplands near forests and less capacity for human communities to cope with extreme heatwaves owing to lack of shade and disappearance of the chill factor fueled by evapotranspiration from forests.
"Generally speaking, our description of biodiversity in Madagascar is shaped by knowledge of plants and vertebrates. We don't know much about invertebrates or fungi, for example," Guedes said. "We need to sample these poorly understood groups and use multiple metrics of diversity in future studies. For both Madagascar and Brazil, we advise policymakers to take into account not only species diversity but also the evolutionary history of these places." —ANI

Madagascar's nature is so unique that 82 per cent of its plant species and 90 per cent of its animals are endemic, found exclusively on the island off the coast of Southeast Africa.

Despite Peculiarities, Conservation Challenges Similar In Madagascar, Brazil

Philadelphia: An observational research of more than 329,000 Medicare admissions discovered that the quality and cost of care for older patients receiving hospital care from an allopathic (M.D.) or an osteopathic (D.O.) physician are comparable. The study was published in the journal, 'Annals of Internal Medicine'. Medical education in the United States falls under two types of programs--allopathic medical schools that award a Doctor of Medicine, or M.D. degree, and osteopathic schools that award a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine, or D.O. degree. Approximately 90 and 10 percent of practicing physicians in the United States have M.D. and D.O. degrees, respectively. Education requirements between programs are very similar, but osteopathic programs focus on holistic care and physical manipulation of the body. Osteopathic physicians are also more likely to practice in rural and underserved areas and pursue careers in primary care compared with allopathic physicians, contributing to narrowing the gaps in disparities in access to health care in the United States. Researchers from the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the University of Tokyo studied 329,510 Medicare admissions between 2016 and 2019 to determine whether quality and care costs differ between hospitalized patients treated by allopathic or osteopathic physicians. Of these admissions, 253,670 (77.0%) and 75,840 (23.0%) received care from allopathic and osteopathic physicians, respectively. The data showed no clinically important differences in mortality, readmission, length of stay, and healthcare spending between the two groups. The findings were consistent across a range of medical conditions and across the severity of patient's illness, suggesting that any differences between allopathic and osteopathic medical schools, either in training or the types of students who enrol, are not associated with differences in costs or quality of care in the inpatient setting. According to the authors, these findings should be reassuring for policymakers, medical educators, and patients. An accompanying editorial from authors at the University of California San Francisco and Eastern Virginia Medical School highlights the similarities between allopathic and osteopathic practices because of the workplace and educational standardization. However, the authors also highlight that despite these similarities, the medical field has been reluctant to accept osteopathic medical students into their preferred specialities, causing increasingly pronounced disparities in competitive programs. A new distributional cost-effectiveness analysis of gene therapy versus standard-of-care for sickle cell disease (SCD) found that while gene therapy is cost-ineffective by conventional measures, it can be an equitable therapeutic strategy for persons living with SCD in the United States when equity, cost, and value of treatment are considered together. These findings highlight systemic health inequities faced by persons with sickle cell disease (SCD). The authors say this is the first quantitative consideration of health equity for patients with SCD regarding the decision between gene therapy and standard care and the first study of its kind in any rare disease. The analysis is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Persons with SCD face substantial mortality risks and decreased quality of life for every year they live with the disease. SCD occurs more often in people whose ancestors came from sub-Saharan Africa and other parts of the world where malaria is or was common. In the United States, patients are predominantly drawn from socially disadvantaged ethnic minority populations. Gene therapy treatment would allow for lifelong disease remission without the concomitant risks associated with allotransplantation, but it is prohibitively expensive. Researchers from Yale University School of Medicine studied claims data and other published sources to compare gene therapy versus standard-of-care in patients with SCD by using conventional cost-effectiveness and distributional cost-effectiveness measures. While conventional cost-effectiveness analysis does not capture the effects of treatments on disparities, distributional cost-effectiveness uses equity weights to incorporate these considerations. The authors found that the total quality-adjusted life years, or QALYs, for persons receiving gene therapy treatment for SCD, would cost $2.8 million versus $1.2 million for persons receiving standard care. According to the authors, the inequality aversion parameter would need to be 0.90 for the full SCD population for gene therapy to be preferred per distributional cost-effectiveness standards. This is right in line with benchmark values previously reported in the United States for inequality aversion (range: 0.5-3.0), with higher values representing a higher emphasis on reducing a particular health disparity. An accompanying editorial from the Centre for Health Economics, University of York; York, United Kingdom highlights that the results of this analysis do not provide a simple answer to how much U.S. healthcare payers should be willing to pay for increasing health equity. Still, it does provide quantitative information that can help facilitate transparent and consistent decision-making. The author argues that to help reduce health disparities, healthcare payers need to invest more in equity-enhancing technologies for conditions that disproportionately affect socially disadvantaged populations and are often underdiagnosed and poorly managed in such populations. An exploratory analysis of the LoDoCo2 (Low-Dose Colchicine 2) randomized, controlled, double-blind trial found that daily therapy with a low dose of colchicine was associated with lower incidences of both total knee replacement and total hip replacement surgeries. The analysis is published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Osteoarthritis is an increasingly common joint disease that can be associated with low-grade inflammation in response to weight-bearing traumatic injury. Previous studies have demonstrated an association between the use of anti-inflammatory therapies and the slowing of osteoarthritis disease progression. Colchicine is effective in many inflammatory and fibrotic conditions, but it is not currently recommended for the treatment of osteoarthritis. Its long-term effects have also not been assessed. Researchers from Sint Maartenskliniek and Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen, the Netherlands conducted an exploratory analysis of the LoDoCo2 trial to examine whether colchicine, 0.5 mg daily, reduced incident total knee replacements and total hip replacements. In the study, 5,522 participants aged 35 to 82 at 43 centers in Australia and the Netherlands, received 0.5 mg of colchicine daily or a matching placebo during a median follow-up of 28.6 months. The authors found that 2.5 per cent of persons receiving colchicine had total knee replacement or total hip replacement compared with 3.5 per cent of persons who received a placebo. The effects were consistent for men, but there was insufficient statistical power to determine whether these benefits may have extended to women as well. According to the authors, the exploratory observations support the hypothesis that inflammation plays a role in the progression of osteoarthritis. They also note that colchicine has been widely used in many patients with other diseases and is generally considered to have a favourable safety profile, which makes it a good candidate for the treatment of osteoarthritis over longer periods. —ANI

 An observational research of more than 329,000 Medicare admissions discovered that the quality and cost of care for older patients

Quality And Cost Of Care For Patients Treated By Allopathic Or Osteopathic Practitioner Are Similar: Study

Washington: Thousands of people gathered in the US capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King Jr’s galvanising “I have a dream” speech, which is considered one of the pivotal events in the 1960s American civil rights movement, The Washington Post reported. The 1963 march is believed to have brought more than 2,50,000 people in Washington to push for an end to discrimination on the basis of race, colour, religion, sex, or national origin. The people gathered again at the Lincoln Memorial here on Saturday to declare that King’s dream is "newly threatened and the fruits of his work are at risk," as per The Post. On a sweltering August day, the marchers came from distant cities to the site where King stood to assert that his crusade was being assailed, that court rulings, legislation and political extremism have undone or stymied the racial and social progress of the last half-century. The day-long rally consisted of speeches by leaders of civil and human rights groups, and representatives from an array of other organizations, The Post reported. “If I could speak to my grandfather today, I would say, ‘I’m sorry we still have to be here to rededicate ourselves to finishing your work, and ultimately realizing your hidden dream,’” King’s granddaughter Yolanda Renee King told the crowd. Her father, King’s eldest son, Martin Luther King III, said: “I’m very concerned about the direction our country is going in. … Instead of moving forward, it feels as if we are moving backward.” “Democracy, voting rights and the rights of women and children must be protected, and gun violence must end, he said. Echoing the words of his father 60 years ago, he said, “then maybe one day we will be a great nation,” Washington Post quoted him as saying. College students, retirees, a psychotherapist, a landscaper, members of Black sororities and fraternities and a sprinkling of 1963 March veterans, among others, converged before the memorial to hear the speakers and be heard themselves. They carried signs that read “Stop Voter Suppression,” “Immigration is not a crime” and “Protect LGBTQ+ families.” Among the speakers, was Andrew Young Jr., who at 91 is one of the last living civil rights leaders of his generation and was present at the 1963 march. His career included turns as Atlanta mayor, a member of Congress and a United Nations ambassador. He reminded the crowd of the power of voting. The ballot is “the passport to freedom and opportunity,” Young said, urging people to keep their focus forward. “Don’t look at all the things that are wrong — look back at where we were … years ago when we had the first March on Washington,” The Post quoted Young as saying. Potesta, an 18-year-old political science student from Seattle, said he in part chose to go to college in DC to attend marches and protests. “I am transgender,” he said. “For me, seeing transgender rights be attacked all throughout the United States has just been really awful,” The Post quoted him as saying. “I would really like to see that amended,” he said. He also expressed solidarity with African Americans, whom he said “are still missing equality of opportunity”. Trancoso, a Black immigrant from Trinidad and Tobago who worked for years as a nursing supervisor before retiring, travelled from Brooklyn and said that the threat to ‘Black progress’ was most symbolized by January 6, 2021, assault on the Capitol, which stood gleaming at the opposite end of the National Mall. “The ease with which the insurrectionists made their way into the seat of the US government suggested to her that their grievances are much more likely to find sympathy, even though they represent a grave threat to democracy,” Trancoso said. “They were allowed to go in,” she added. “They were privileged to storm the Capitol, to want to lynch the vice president of America.” Had a Black mob tried to do such a thing, she said, they would have been gunned down,” The Post quoted Trancoso as saying. However, the crowd appeared to fall well short of the 75,000 people its organizers had estimated would attend. Tens of thousands from across the country came to the 1963 March, a gathering that helped spur the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 — the most important civil rights legislation since the post-Civil War era of Reconstruction. The legislation outlawed segregation in theaters, restaurants and hotels in the US, according to the National Archives. It banned discrimination in employment and ended segregation in public places such as swimming pools, libraries and public schools. Notably, the months leading up to the 1963 March were bloody and full of conflict between activists and racists. After the speeches, the crowd marched to the Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial, where a commanding 30-foot-tall granite statue of the leader overlooks the Tidal Basin. The statue stands across the water from the memorial to Thomas Jefferson, who wrote in the Declaration of Independence that “all men are created equal,” but who was the owner of people he enslaved, The Washington Post reported. —ANI

Thousands of people gathered in the US capital to commemorate the 60th anniversary of Martin Luther King

US: Thousands Gather To Commemorate Martin Luther’s ‘Dream’ Speech, Cite Similarities In Today’s Situation

Washington: While Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green, a new study revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer in colour than typically thought. Despite the commonly-held belief that Neptune is a deep azure and Uranus has a pale cyan appearance, the study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, showed that both worlds are in fact a similar shade of greenish blue. Astronomers have long known that most modern images of the two planets do not accurately reflect their true colours. The misconception arose because images captured of both planets during the 20th century -- including by NASA’s Voyager 2 mission, the only spacecraft to fly past these worlds – recorded images in separate colours. The single-colour images were later recombined to create composite colour images, which were not always accurately balanced to achieve a "true" colour image, and – particularly in the case of Neptune – were often made "too blue". In addition, the early Neptune images from Voyager 2 were strongly contrast enhanced to better reveal the clouds, bands, and winds that shape our modern perspective of Neptune. "Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to ‘true’ colour, those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced, and therefore made artificially too blue," said Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford. "Even though the artificially-saturated colour was known at the time amongst planetary scientists -- and the images were released with captions explaining it -- that distinction had become lost over time. "Applying our model to the original data, we have been able to reconstitute the most accurate representation yet of the colour of both Neptune and Uranus," he said. In the new study, the researchers used data from Hubble Space Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. In both instruments, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colours. This means that STIS and MUSE observations can be unambiguously processed to determine the true apparent colour of Uranus and Neptune. The researchers used these data to re-balance the composite colour images recorded by the Voyager 2 camera, and also by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This revealed that Uranus and Neptune are actually a rather similar shade of greenish blue. The main difference is that Neptune has a slight hint of additional blue, which the model reveals to be due to a thinner haze layer on that planet. —IANS While Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green, a new study revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer in colour than typically thought. Despite the commonly-held belief that Neptune is a deep azure and Uranus has a pale cyan appearance, the study, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, showed that both worlds are in fact a similar shade of greenish blue. Astronomers have long known that most modern images of the two planets do not accurately reflect their true colours. The misconception arose because images captured of both planets during the 20th century -- including by NASA’s Voyager 2 mission, the only spacecraft to fly past these worlds – recorded images in separate colours. The single-colour images were later recombined to create composite colour images, which were not always accurately balanced to achieve a "true" colour image, and – particularly in the case of Neptune – were often made "too blue". In addition, the early Neptune images from Voyager 2 were strongly contrast enhanced to better reveal the clouds, bands, and winds that shape our modern perspective of Neptune. "Although the familiar Voyager 2 images of Uranus were published in a form closer to ‘true’ colour, those of Neptune were, in fact, stretched and enhanced, and therefore made artificially too blue," said Professor Patrick Irwin from the University of Oxford. "Even though the artificially-saturated colour was known at the time amongst planetary scientists -- and the images were released with captions explaining it -- that distinction had become lost over time. "Applying our model to the original data, we have been able to reconstitute the most accurate representation yet of the colour of both Neptune and Uranus," he said. In the new study, the researchers used data from Hubble Space Telescope’s Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) and the Multi Unit Spectroscopic Explorer (MUSE) on the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope. In both instruments, each pixel is a continuous spectrum of colours. This means that STIS and MUSE observations can be unambiguously processed to determine the true apparent colour of Uranus and Neptune. The researchers used these data to re-balance the composite colour images recorded by the Voyager 2 camera, and also by the Hubble Space Telescope’s Wide Field Camera 3 (WFC3). This revealed that Uranus and Neptune are actually a rather similar shade of greenish blue. The main difference is that Neptune has a slight hint of additional blue, which the model reveals to be due to a thinner haze layer on that planet. —IANS

While Neptune is fondly known for being a rich blue and Uranus green, a new study revealed that the two ice giants are actually far closer

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Despite Peculiarities, Conservation Challenges Similar In Madagascar, Brazil

Inam Ansari

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Despite Peculiarities, Conservation Challenges Similar In Madagascar, Brazil

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