When we die, environmental conditions like temperature and humidity drive changes to our bodies. Understanding these processes helps investigators to estimate crucial details such as time of death. Forensic taphonomists Kara Adams and Victoria Gibbon explain their latest experiment, which involved dressing pig carcasses in human clothes.
Over the past few years, the Horn of Africa has suffered devastating droughts. At one stage, there were six failed rainy seasons and about 20 million people were at risk of famine. Climate adaptation researcher Bradley Hiller has found that this problem could be solved if Kenya, Ethiopia, Djibouti, South Sudan and Uganda developed a network of deep groundwater boreholes in drought hotspots. These would drill below shallow aquifers to provide water across the region.
Thousands of genetically modified mosquitoes have been released in Djibouti in an effort to stop the spread of the Anopheles stephensi mosquito, an invasive species that transmits malaria. Researchers first detected this species in Djibouti in 2012. In this article from our archives, Shüné Oliver and Jaishree Raman explain why it’s such a big threat to Africa’s anti-malaria efforts.
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