Climate Change and "historical responsibilities"

The historical responsibility of countries listed in the Annex I of the Convention on Climate Change has been used extensively as a justification for the lack of action of countries not included in Annex I to reduce their greenhouse gas emissions. We analyzed the contribution of non-Annex I countries to the CO2 emissions in the period 1850 - 2006 to assess their relative contribution to total CO2 emissions. In the period 1980 - 2006 non-Annex I countries represented 44% of the total but this contribution increased in the period 1990 - 2006 to 48%. If we extrapolate present trends to 2020 they will represent 56% in the period 1990 - 2020. The "historical responsibility" of Annex I countries is therefore decreasing. If we take 1990 as the starting year in which the Climate Convention recognized clearly that greenhouse gases are interfering dangerously with the climate system, it becomes very difficult to attribute "blame" and "guilt" to Annex I for their historical contributions. It becomes also quite clear the need of non-Annex I countries to engage with Annex I countries in the effort to reduce emissions. The Copenhagen Accord has no mention of "historical responsibilities".

Dengue virus type 3 adaptive changes during epidemics in São Jose de Rio Preto, Brazil, 2006–2007

Global dengue virus spread in tropical and sub-tropical regions has become a major international public health concern. It is evident that DENV genetic diversity plays a significant role in the immunopathology of the disease and that the identification of polymorphisms associated with adaptive responses is important for vaccine development. The investigation of naturally occurring genomic variants may play an important role in the comprehension of different adaptive strategies used by these mutants to evade the human immune system. In order to elucidate this role we sequenced the complete polyprotein-coding region of thirty-three DENV-3 isolates to characterize variants circulating under high endemicity in the city of São José de Rio Preto, Brazil, during the onset of the 2006-07 epidemic. By inferring the evolutionary history on a local-scale and estimating rates of synonymous (dS) and nonsynonimous (dN) substitutions, we have documented at least two different introductions of DENV-3 into the city and detected 10 polymorphic codon sites under significant positive selection (dN/dS > 1) and 8 under significant purifying selection (dN/dS < 1). We found several polymorphic amino acid coding sites in the envelope (15), NS1 (17), NS2A (11), and NS5 (24) genes, which suggests that these genes may be experiencing relatively recent adaptive changes. Furthermore, some polymorphisms correlated with changes in the immunogenicity of several epitopes. Our study highlights the existence of significant and informative DENV variability at the spatio-temporal scale of an urban outbreak.

Natural History on Blocks, in Bodies, and on the Hearth: Juvenile Science Literature and Games, 1850-1875.

This article examines the role of domestic spaces and images in mid-nineteenth-century science writing for children. Analyses of John Mill’s The Fossil Spirit, A.L.O.E.’s Fairy Frisket, John Cargill Brough’s The Fairy Tales of Science, Annie Carey’s “Autobiography of a Lump of Coal,” and an assortment of boxed games reveal a variety of ways in which overwhelming scientific concepts are domesticated. Moreover, juvenile science literature contributes this appeasing domestication to the broader scientific discourse, consistently framing natural history in terms of human experience.