True Left

In the relevant regions, the early 20th century witnessed very high GUD incidences especially in fast growing cities and socially changed semi-rural areas. This trend started around 1885, when European powers decidedly rushed to control the interior. Many sources explicitly state that syphilis was absent from nearly all forested areas where chimpanzees, gorillas, and sooty mangabeys live, up to 1885 [50]–[54], although it was present before in seaports with European presence [52], [55], [56], and in savannah-forest interface regions connected with Arab states [50]. Yaws (Treponema pallidum pertenue) has a longstanding and high prevalence in these forests [47], [52], and exhibits cross-immunity with syphilis (Treponema pallidum pallidum) [52]. However, this is not the explanation of why syphilis did not generate epidemics there during centuries. Indeed, these populations did experience epidemic syphilis, when they were recruited to cities, and when social disruption due to colonial practices entered deep in the yaws-riddled forests (e.g., in the networks of posts in the Ogooué (Gabon) and Sangha (French Congo) riversides, in the Équateur province (Belgian Congo), and in southern Cameroon [47], [54], [57]–[59]). Recent simulations show that syphilis epidemics are very dependent on highly promiscuous minorities [46]. Chancroid is also very dependent on CSWs for its spread [49], [60]. Since our review of colonial medical and ethnographic papers reveals that no CSWs with levels of sexual promiscuity comparable to those operating in the West existed in forested equatorial areas before organized colonialism (excepting in the coast and in the savannah-forest interface regions frequented by Arab traders) [56], [61]–[63], we assume that it was this absence of CSWs that was keeping syphilis, chancroid, and the other STDs at bay.

In the period 1890–1920, colonization produced generalized social disruption, sex work flourished, and syphilis (and to a lesser extent chancroid and LGV) invaded all these areas [50], [52]–[54], [57]. Except for tertiary and purely serological diagnoses, colonial doctors of this period were not mistaking yaws for syphilis. Most yaws cases are presented in children [52]; unlike syphilis, yaws is not venereal, seldom affects mucosa, and does not cause primary chancres [53], [64]. In addition, syphilis appeared correlated in time and space with other STDs and with presumed sexual promiscuity in a community (e.g, syphilis was frequent in the colonial posts, and absent in the still undisturbed villages around, and its incidence raised in the posts upon arrival of ships, caravans and military contingents [50], [52], [54], [58]).

A common ironical pun was “Nous leur avons apporté la syphilization” (“We have brought them syphilization”).GUD invasion accompanied the social disruption that resulted from colonial development of each region [47], [48], [50], [52]. We hypothesize that this promoted sexual transmission of several zoonotic SIVs. Among these zoonotic strains, those arriving to cities, not only could rapidly generate a larger hub of infected people but also, being placed at a major traffic node, would have had more long-term epidemic possibilities. Cities started to grow fast, and riverine traffic intensified only after 1920 [47], [65].

In Kinshasa (then Leopoldville), capital of the DRC (then Belgian Congo), GUD was much more intense in its early growth period, and then declined steadily after the mid 1930s (Figure 1; Text S1).

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The low incidences of phimosis in Mali and Senegal are explained by the Islamic practice of circumcision in childhood. The phimosis data support the findings of our ethnographic study that circumcision was far from general in Central Africa in 1910–35, and of lower rates in Kinshasa and Douala than in Brazzaville (Figures 3A and ​and4A;4A; Text S2; Dataset S1). Table 2 presents all the phimosis statistics we found that referred to a city; in addition to these, we collected many dozens of other phimosis statistics at the country level. They tend to corroborate the between country differences in circumcision levels that we obtained through the ethnographic approach (data not shown).

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The year 1958 was chosen as a time point beyond the window defined by our phylogenetic dating study; although the city population had considerably expanded, GUD infections were generally under control and circumcision was almost universal. Finally, we have explored a “pre-colonial village” scenario to reflect a large settlement in the region before colonization, characterized by a healthy population structure and the absence of GUD infections and sex work.

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A related important result of the simulations is the inability of zoonotic HIV to generate epidemics in the pre-colonial village scenario (characterized by the absence of GUD and CSWs), which explains the long standing absence of HIV epidemics in the pre-colonial environments. According to these results, the window of high permissivity for epidemic HIV emergence was open by the spread of GUD infections due to the organized colonization of the relevant African areas, and probably closed by the aggressive treatment campaigns against GUDs from the mid thirties.

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Independently of the regional differences encountered, our finding of a very widespread trend of adoptions of circumcision, in early 20th century, by ethnic groups previously not practicing it, and the resulting temporal increase of circumcision rates in most relevant countries, is a solid result. It explains, as far as we know for the first time, the discrepancy between modern levels of circumcision, as showed by the Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) [89], and the levels inferred from the Ethnographic Atlas [92], [93]

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Our simulations suggest that city size per se was not an important factor for initial HIV transmission. Therefore, we cannot rule out that the first transmissions (and possible initial adaptation of the virus) occurred in smaller settlements such as Bangui, Yaoundé, Kribi or Brazzaville. However, the larger size of Kinshasa and Douala in that period may have been important for, at least, three reasons. First, a larger city attracts more immigrants per unit time, and hence potentially more SIV infections. Second, their larger size reflected early industrialization associated with start-up infrastructure projects (fluvial and sea harbors, railways), and this led to hasty recruitment of young male labor force, and thus to a extremely male-biased sex ratio, favoring commercial sex work and GUD. In the 1920s and 1930s, industry, public works, and business in general, were more advanced in Kinshasa and Douala than in the other Central African cities. Accordingly, sex work was “by far more flourishing” in Kinshasa than in Brazzaville [129]. Douala was also a major center of sex work and GUD [59], [71], [130], [131]. In West Africa, sex work was widespread in Abidjan [79], [132], whereas it only “existed on a small scale” in Monrovia [133]. Thus, high GUD prevalence might have depended indirectly on population size.

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Thus, major, well-connected centers, such as Kinshasa and Douala (which were better served by railway and fluvial connections, and had far more traffic than the other cities), may have acted as an “attractor” and a “hub” for HIV epidemics. Although these ideas were not explicitly modeled in this study, they may help to understand why exactly two HIV-1 strains evolved and spread considerably in Central Africa, and perhaps may give clues on the origin of the subtypes.

The biggest oil spill in the history of the Keystone pipeline is dumping more than a half million gallons of crude into a creek in Kansas

An oil spill in a creek in northeastern Kansas this week is the largest for an onshore crude pipeline in more than nine years and by far the biggest in the history of the Keystone pipeline, according to federal data.
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After a drop in pressure on the pipeline that carries oil from Canada to the Texas Gulf Coast, the company said it shut down its Keystone system Wednesday night. Oil spilled into a creek in Washington County, Kansas, about 150 miles (240 kilometers) northwest of Kansas City.

Zack Pistora, a lobbyist for the Sierra Club in Kansas, noted the spill in his state was larger than all of the 22 previous spills combined on the Keystone pipeline, which began operations in 2010.

“This is going to be months, maybe even years before we get the full handle on this disaster and know the extent of the damage and get it all cleaned up,” he said.

In September 2013, a Tesoro Corp. pipeline in North Dakota ruptured and spilled 20,600 barrels, according to U.S. Department of Transportation data.

A more expensive spill happened in July 2010, when an Enbridge Inc. pipeline in Michigan ruptured and spilled more than 20,000 barrels into Talmadge Creek and the Kalamazoo River. Hundreds of homes and businesses were evacuated.

The Keystone pipeline's previous largest spill came in 2017, when more than 6,500 barrels spilled near Amherst, South Dakota, according to a U.S. Government Accountability Office report released last year. The second largest, 4,515 barrels, was in 2019 near Edinburg, North Dakota.

A growing chorus of architects argue we have to build differently with concrete — which contributes to global warming and environmental destruction on a scale that’s hard to fathom — or perhaps abandon it altogether.

[...]“The modernist utopian dream that the speed and malleability of concrete might solve housing crises, revolutionize cities and birth new ways of living and being was already being shattered by a spiraling capitalist cycle of speculation, construction, deterioration and demolition.”

[...]Most of humanity now lives in cities made possible by concrete. The majority of buildings, from skyscrapers to social housing, are made of concrete or contain large amounts of it. Even buildings made from steel, stone, brick or timber are almost always resting on concrete foundations and are sometimes masking an unseen concrete frame. Inside, concrete is ceilings and floors. Outside, it is bridges and sidewalks, piers and parking lots, roads and tunnels and airport landing strips and subway systems. It is water pipes, sewers and storm drains. It is electricity: dams and power plants and the foundations of wind turbines. Concrete is the wall between Israel and Palestine and the Berlin Wall and most other walls. It is “almost anything,” wrote the architect Sarah Nichols in an essay this year, “almost anywhere.”

[...]Concrete is modern, yet ancient. There’s a sense in which it was born in the bowels of volcanoes, formulated by the eruptions of the Earth. Around 100 B.C., Romans discovered that volcanic ash from the slopes of Mount Vesuvius could be mixed with lime and wetted to create a cement, to which they added aggregate. Roman concrete was used to build structures like the Pantheon and the Colosseum, original parts of which still stand today. The story goes that their recipe was lost until it was rediscovered in the ancient books of Vitruvius. What seems more likely is that the use of concrete became much rarer, but never completely died, and still circulated via artisanal builders and craftsmen, until engineers and scientists across Europe eventually understood and then industrialized it.

[...]Concrete is now the second-most consumed substance on Earth behind only water. Thirty-three billion tons of it are used each year, making it by far the most abundant human-made material in history. To make all that, we now devour around 4 billion tons of cement each year — more than in the entire first half of the 20th century, and over a billion tons more than the food we eat annually.

Such a monstrous scale of production has monstrous consequences. Concrete has been like a nuclear bomb in man’s conquest of nature: redirecting great rivers (often away from the communities that had come to rely on them), reducing quarried mountains to mere hills, and contributing to biodiversity loss and mass flooding by effectively sealing large swathes of land in an impermeable grey crust. The other key ingredients all bring their own separate crises, from the destructive sand mining of riverbeds and beaches to the use of almost 2% of the world’s water.

But most significantly, the carbon-intensive nature of cement has been catastrophic for the atmosphere. The kilns used to heat limestone are commonly run on fossil fuels, which produces greenhouse gases, and as it heats up, the limestone itself releases more CO2. Every kilogram of cement created produces more than half a kilogram of CO2. The greenhouse gas emissions of the global aviation industry (2-3%) are dwarfed by those of the cement industry (around 8%). If concrete was a country, it would be the third largest CO2 emitter, behind only the U.S. and China. In Chile, the region that houses most of the cement plants, Quintero, has become so polluted that it was nicknamed “the sacrifice zone.”

Radioactive capsule remains lost in Australia, mining company apologizes

A mining corporation on Sunday apologized for losing a highly radioactive capsule over a 1,400-kilometre stretch of Western Australia, as authorities combed parts of the road looking for the tiny but dangerous substance.

The caesium-137 ceramic source, commonly used in radiation gauges, emits dangerous amounts of radiation, equivalent to receiving 10 X-rays in an hour, Western Australia Chief Health Officer Dr. Andrew Robertson said. It could cause skin burns, and prolonged exposure could cause cancer.