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Viewpoint: Drinkable Book: The Pages Contain Instructions and Can Be Used as High-Tech Water Filters
Here's a very clever idea: A book that not only contains information about clean drinking water printed on its pages, but the actual pages themselves can be torn off and used as high-tech filters that will remove 99% of bacteria from the filtered water. The idea came out of Dr. Theresa Dankovich's chemistry PhD work at McGill University in Montreal, during which she invented a new bactericidal silver nanoparticle paper and a green method of producing it using cheap and benign processes. She and her team are now trying to make the Drinkable Book a reality to contribute to the effort to bring clean water to the 663 million people who don't have access to it, according to the World Health Organization/ UNICEF Joint Monitoring Project.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Environment, Health Care, Impact Assessment
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34 Indigenous Crops Promoting Health and Feeding the World
Every day, plant species across the globe are disappearing. The U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) reports that approximately 75 percent of the Earth’s plant genetic resources are now extinct, and another third of plant biodiversity is expected to disappear by 2050. Up to 100,000 plant varieties are currently endangered worldwide.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Tags
- nutrition
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Cocoa Farmers Embrace Telemedicine
Kuapa Kokoo Farmers' Union - a farmers' cooperative, has introduced a telemedicine project to help effectively tackle the health needs of the Ghanaian cocoa farmer.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Health Care
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Reaching the Base of the Pyramid — and cutting carbon in the process
Ghana’s per capita income is $31 a week, according to the World Bank. But the roughly 500 female farmers who cultivate and harvest the leaves of moringa oleifera trees in the Tamale region of the West African nation earn five times that amount. That's because the women supply ground leaves of the nutrient-rich moringa plant to Oakland-based Kuli Kuli Foods, which markets and sells energy bars, teas and nutrition supplement powders made from the "superfood" at stores including Whole Foods.
- Categories
- Agriculture
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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Smartphones help Tanzanian women secure land rights
In an effort to help Tanzania's authorities secure village land rights, USAID launched a project to map geographic and demographic data using mobile phone technology, with the aim of speeding up land rights registration.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Technology
- Region
- Sub-Saharan Africa
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PRESS RELEASE: Tech-based social solutions competition looking for nominations
The competition, organized by Siemens Stiftung, seeks to identify innovative technical solutions to tackle global challenges in basic supply in the developing world.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy, Health Care, Technology
- Tags
- infrastructure
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July’s Most Popular Posts on NextBillion: From the value of female mobile money agents to the power of Latin America’s BoP
From the benefits of training women as mobile money agents to the remarkable size and vibrancy of Latin America's BoP, the month of July brought some compelling content to NextBillion. We highlight the three most-read and most-shared posts of the month.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Energy
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UPDATE: Powerful Partnership: Teaching case spells out how Walmart and USAID collaborate to meet global challenges
When Walmart started striving for greater social impact through its supply chains and the U.S. Agency for International Development came to embrace the private sector, a unique collaboration was formed. A new teaching case explains how these high-powered partners are seeking integrated solutions to increasingly complex global problems.
- Categories
- Agriculture, Education
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