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Researchers have found a ‘striking’ new side effect from eating fast food - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/04/15/researchers-have-found-an-alarming-new-side-effect-from-eating-fast-

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Researchers at George Washington University have linked fast-food consumption to the presence of potentially harmful chemicals, a connection they argue could have “great public health significance.” Specifically, the team found that people who eat fast food tend to have significantly higher levels of certain phthalates, which are commonly used in consumer products such as soap and makeup to make them less brittle but have been linked to a number of adverse health outcomes, including higher rates of infertility, especially among males.

Recent #Fast_Food Consumption and #Bisphenol A and
Phthalates Exposures among the U.S. Population in
NHANES, 2003–2010
▻http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/wp-content/uploads/advpub/2016/4/ehp.1510803.acco.pdf

Background: Phthalates and bisphenol A (BPA) are widely used industrial chemicals that may adversely impact human health. Human exposure is ubiquitous and can occur through diet, including consumption of processed or packaged food

[...]

Conclusion: Fast food may be a source of exposure to DEHP and DiNP. These results, if confirmed, could inform individual and regulatory exposure reduction strategies.

#phtalates #santé

A new federal report discusses an unexpected theory for why murders are rising in U.S. cities - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/06/15/the-unexpected-way-the-ferguson-effect-might-be-causing-more-murder/?tid=sm_tw

More people were murdered in large U.S. cities last year than in 2014 — the first substantial increase in homicides in a quarter-century, after years of improving safety on American streets — and criminologists still are not sure why. There has been a fierce debate about the causes of the violence, but one possible explanation has not received enough public attention so far, according to the the author of a report published Wednesday by the Justice Department.

The theory — one of several that criminologist Richard Rosenfeld presents in the paper — suggests that, after a number of widely discussed law-enforcement killings of young black men during the past couple of years, residents of predominately black and disadvantaged urban neighborhoods further lost confidence in the police.

A loss of trust could have made residents of those places less likely to share information with law enforcement about dangerous criminals. With a newfound sense of impunity, these criminals might have begun committing even more crimes. And threatened by the violence, neighbors might have armed themselves instead of going to the police for protection, the theory suggests.

“When persons do not trust the police to act on their behalf and to treat them fairly and with respect, they ... become more likely to take matters into their own hands,” Rosenfeld writes. “Disputes are settled informally and often violently.”

Greenland witnessed its highest June temperature ever recorded on Thursday - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/10/greenland-witnessed-its-highest-june-temperature-ever-recorded-on-th

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Nuuk, Greenland’s capital, soared to 75 degrees (24 Celsius) Thursday, marking the warmest temperature ever recorded in the Arctic country during June. Nuuk sits on Greenland’s southwest coast, where the country’s warmest weather typically occurs.

It was warmer in Nuuk than it was in New York City, where the high was only 71 degrees.

The Danish Meteorological Institute has confirmed on a preliminary basis that the Nuuk measurement would replace the previous record of 73.8 degrees (23.2 Celsius), which was set in Kangerlussuaq on June 15 in 2014. That temperature was also recorded in southwest Greenland about 200 miles (320 km) north of Nuuk.

John Cappelen, a senior climatologist at the DMI, told The Washington Post that the warm weather was brought on by winds from the east that set up between high pressure over northeast Greenland and low pressure south of Greenland. When winds come from the east over Nuuk, they blow downhill, which leads to an increase in temperature. This is the result of adiabatic warming, where air is compressed from low pressure (at the top of a mountain) to high pressure (at sea level). It’s the same kind of dry warmth that occurs as a result of Santa Ana winds in Southern California.

Thursday’s toasty reading in Nuuk marks the second exceptionally warm temperature recorded in southwest Greenland since April, when the ice melt season began about a month prematurely.

#climat #cartographie

The forgotten story of European refugee camps in the Middle East - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/06/02/the-forgotten-story-of-european-refugee-camps-in-the-middle-east

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WorldViews
The forgotten story of European refugee camps in the Middle East
By Ishaan Tharoor June 2

A picture from 1945 of a camp for Greek refugees in Nuseirat, southern Palestine. (United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration)
Tens of thousands of refugees fled a war. They journeyed across the Eastern Mediterranean, a trip filled with peril. But the promise of sanctuary on the other side was too great.

No, this is not the plight faced by Syrian refugees, desperate to escape the desolation of their homeland and find a safer, better life in Europe. Rather, it’s the curious and now mostly forgotten case of thousands of people from Eastern Europe and the Balkans who were housed in a series of camps across the Middle East, including in Syria, during World War II.

#réfugiés

Cartographers beware: India warns of $15 million fine for maps it doesn’t like - The Washington Post

▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2016/05/06/cartographers-beware-india-warns-of-15-million-fine-for-maps-it-doesnt-like/?wpmm=1&wpisrc=nl_wv

C’est une histoire sans fin qui commence à être assez bien documenté :) (i.e. on en parle de plus en plus, donc moi, j’archive).

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Let’s start with a basic fact: India claims much more land than it controls.

Thus, any map of India and its neighbors makes an inherently political statement based on how it depicts their borders. The issue is particularly thorny because the border disputes are with India’s great rivals: Pakistan and China.

On Thursday, a draft law reflecting India’s sensitivity over maps was uploaded by the government online before being swiftly removed for reasons unknown. The draft law would define how India’s international borders are drawn once and for all, and punish offenders with up to seven years in jail or fines ranging from $150,000 to $15 million. It would also require all individuals and companies producing maps in India, and all Indian citizens doing so globally, to procure a license from the government.

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Kashmir Missing From India’s Map; Facebook CEO, Chinese Footage Spark Fresh Controversy

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The state of Jammu and Kashmir has gone missing from the map of India. Although, this wouldn’t be a first. There have been repeated map controversies over Kashmir between India and Pakistan.

This time, the troublemaker is CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg and latest China’s CCTV channel footage, that may spark a fresh controversy between India and Pakistan.

Zuckerberg shared a post about the Facebook’s internet.org that showed India’s map without Kashmir.

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Map of Kashmir lands Economist in censor trouble | delhi | Hindustan Times
▻http://www.hindustantimes.com/delhi/map-of-kashmir-lands-economist-in-censor-trouble/story-0Dk3GPzysf2UhtI69cTS3K.html

The Economist magazine has accused India of hostile censorship after officials prevented the distribution of the latest edition, because of a map showing the disputed borders of Kashmir.

Customs officers ordered that 28,000 copies of the news weekly should have stickers manually placed over a diagram showing how control of Kashmir, a tiny Himalayan region, is split between India, Pakistan and China.

Both India and Pakistan claim the whole of the Himalayan region and have gone to war twice over its control since 1947.

#inde #pakistan #cachemire #frontières

Why a housing scheme founded in racism is making a resurgence today - The Washington Post
▻https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/05/13/why-a-housing-scheme-founded-in-racism-is-making-a-resurgence-today

“Pretty much everywhere I go, people say ’I’ve been hearing about this,’” Satter says. “Contract” selling is making a comeback.

In this model, buyers shut out from conventional lending are offered an alternative: They can make monthly payments on a home directly to the seller, instead of a bank, with the promise of receiving the deed only once the property is entirely paid off, 20 or 30 years down the road. In the meantime, they have few of the legal protections of a typical home buyer but all of the responsibilities of one. They don’t build equity with time. They can be easily evicted. And if that happens, they lose all of their investment.

According to the Detroit Free Press, more homes were bought in Detroit last year using such “land contracts” or “contracts for deeds” than conventional mortgages. In a series of recent stories, the New York Times has reported that Wall Street is now betting on this market, with investors buying foreclosed homes by the thousands and selling them on contract. Earlier this week, the Times reported that the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is now investigating the practice’s resurgence, although it is not by definition illegal.

What is particularly alarming about the trend, though, is that we’ve seen it before. In its earlier incarnation, it was an explicitly racist form of exploitation. And now it is victimizing the same groups again: mostly lower income and minority home buyers who can’t access traditional credit.

“There’s nothing new here in the slightest,” Satter says. “This is just a continuation of the same old game. That’s what’s so disturbing.”

In the earlier era when this was common, between the 1930s and 1960s, contract lending was in some cities the primary means middle-class blacks had to buy homes. Real estate agents and speculators jacked up the price of properties two- or threefold. Then when families fell behind on a month’s payment or on repairs, they were swiftly evicted. The sellers kept their deposits and found the next family.

Fascinating maps show where and why men die early and women survive - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonkblog/wp/2015/07/14/fascinating-maps-show-where-and-why-men-die-early-and-women-survive

Depending on the location and the age group, some places have a lot more women than men, and vice versa — as a fascinating series of maps by Dadaviz’s Jishai Evers shows.

Evers used data from the U.S. Census to create the gif below, showing places in the U.S. where there are more women than men, and vice versa, for different age groups.

The counties with more men than women are shown in blue, and the counties with more women than men are shown in pink. The graphic cycles through maps for Americans of different age groups, starting with people who are five years and younger and ending with people who are 85 years and above.

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The animation shows the map changing from predominantly blue (male) to predominantly female (pink) as it focuses on older age groups. The reasons behind this change are complex and fascinating.

First, let’s look at why the map starts off blue. At birth, odds are slightly better than even that a baby will be a male. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the overall chance of having a boy is 51.2 percent, meaning that for every 1,000 girl babies born, there will be 1,050 boys.

That ratio can be affected by a few different factors, including the age and race of the mother, as well as the birth order of the child. According to the CDC, the percentage of male babies tends to decrease with birth order — meaning a woman’s first child is slightly likelier than her sixth, seventh or eighth child to be a boy. The CDC also found that younger and older mothers (women younger than 15 and older than 35) are slightly more likely to have a girl than mothers between the ages of 15 and 35.

So-called “sex selection” — choosing to have a boy or girl baby through in vitro fertilization or selective abortion — may also influence the sex ratio. As poll by Gallup in 2011 shows, more Americans prefer having boys to girls, a preference that has actually changed little since the 1940s.

#hommes #femmes #vie #mort #inégalités #cartographie