E10: India adds 2.7 MW of solar an hour, maternal mortality falls by 80% in Tanzania, smoking rates plummet in the U.S. and much more:
Tony Morley, February 21st 2025
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"We are like tenant farmers chopping down the fence around our house for fuel when we should be using Nature's inexhaustible sources of energy – sun, wind and tide. … I’d put my money on the sun and solar energy. What a source of power! I hope we don’t have to wait until oil and coal run out before we tackle that." —Uncommon Friends: Life with Thomas Edison, Henry Ford, Harvey Firestone, Alexis Carrel & Charles Lindbergh”. Book by James Newton, 1987.
Researchers are drawing closer to a safe and effective vaccine for Norovirus.
"Despite the host of obstacles, scientists are working on clinical trials testing half a dozen different vaccine candidates."
"Whichever vaccine makes it through trials first may not earn the annual ritual status of the flu shot. A norovirus vaccine would likely be offered first to people aged 65 years and older as well as immunocompromised people, given that norovirus infections tend to be much worse for these groups, Fink says. It would probably be offered as a yearly dose timed with the peak period for norovirus, which is between November and April in the Northern Hemisphere."
Meghan Bartels
Cold exposure fatalities have fallen steadily over the last three decades
While cold deaths have fallen from more than 30,000 fatalities in 1995 to roughly 11,000 in 2022, cold exposure continues to impact the elderly and youth.
"By implementing proactive measures—both individual actions and comprehensive government policies—countries can reduce the global burden of cold-related deaths and injuries and better protect the most vulnerable populations."
Caroline Wilkerson
Smoking rates across the Unites States have fallen
"More than one-third (37.5%) of young adults in the U.S. smoked cigarettes in 1988, when the University of Michigan Institute for Social Research first started measuring data. This figure has declined by almost half in 2023, with less than one-fifth (18.8%) of young adults smoking cigarettes in the last 12 months."
"Today, fewer than one in five young American adults reported smoking cigarettes in the past year—with smoking having declined more than 50% from its peak."
Dorothy Neufeld
Strongest evidence yet that Ozempic and Wegovy reduce alcohol intake has just been published
The strongest evidence yet, recently published in JAMA Psychiatry, has helped bridge the gap between correlation and causation regarding the impact of drugs like Ozempic and Wegovy on reducing the severity of alcohol use disorder.
“We didn’t have any evidence of significant adverse effects or safety concerns with the medication in this population and we found overall that across several different drinking outcomes it reduced the quantity of alcohol that people consumed,”
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India adds an average of 67 megawatts of installed solar every 24 hours, 7 days a week, through all of 2024
"India added 24.5 GW of solar and 3.4 GW of wind capacity in 2024, doubling solar installations and increasing wind capacity by 21% from 2023, according to JMK Research & Analytics. These additions brought India’s total renewable energy capacity to 209.44 GW, with solar accounting for 47% of the total."
Uma Gupta
While globally civilization put on 41 MW of solar capacity every 24 hours, 7 days a week, through all of 2024
In 2004 it took roughly a year for civilization to deploy a gigawatt of solar capacity. By 2023 it had fallen to a gigawatt every 24 hours globally; while the price per watt fell from $6.21 to $0.31. Charlie Giattino for Our World In Data Source:
Charlie Giattino
Alzheimer's biomarkers now visible up to a decade ahead of symptoms
"Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh have devised a biomarker test that can spot small amounts of clumping tau protein in the brain and cerebrospinal fluid, which lead to Alzheimer's disease."
geralt / Pixabay
A four-year-old who received an advanced experimental CAR T-cell gene therapy for nerve-cell cancer has now been cancer-free for a record 18 years.
"18 years later, the patient has remained cancer-free and is now a mother of two children. It’s a remarkable gene therapy success story, published in Nature Medicine on February 17th, 2025 — the longest reported cancer remission following CAR T, engineered immune cell treatment."
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Internet access and use has grown dramatically across China, India, Indonesia and Pakistan
Between 2000 and 2023, internet access and use have grown dramatically in the four Asian countries, home to more than 40% of the total global population — helping drive economic growth, prosperity and education. https://ourworldindata.org/data-insights/internet-use-has-grown-rapidly-but-unevenly-across-asias-largest-countries
“Internet users in China rose from 2% in 2000 to 77% in 2023, while Indonesia’s users grew from 1% to 69%. The pace has been slower in South Asia, with India reaching 43% by 2020 and Pakistan 33% by 2022.” — Our World In Data
Tanzania has reduced maternal mortality by 80% in a seven-year period, from 556 deaths per 100,000 live births in 2016 to 104 per 100,000 in 2022
The success is attributable to an increased number of emergency obstetric and newborn care facilities, a growing health workforce, a strengthened obstetric referral network, capacity building, mentorship, and the conduct of maternal and perinatal death reviews and surveillance.
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