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Traditional top-down strategies to reduce climate-change-related risks have often failed to produce tangible results in vulnerable urban areas of the Global South. Approaches based on the co-production of adaptation solutions between diverse stakeholders offer promising alternative strategies. This contribution draws on our experiences in growing informal and low-income urban areas in two Latin American cities, Medell�n (Colombia) and Puebla (Mexico). These communities lack adequate access to clean water and are exposed to risks related to increasingly frequent high-intensity rainfall events, making water management a key consideration for risk reduction. However, the factors driving insufficient water access and the perceptions of risks vary in each location, demonstrating the need for context-specific solutions. We explore how increasing community agency and co-creating knowledge for risk management between diverse stakeholders at a range of geographical scales can contribute to redressing existing social and environmental injustices, by identifying, implementing, and scaling up technically appropriate and culturally sustainable solutions aimed at reducing climate-change-related risks.

To evaluate the potential use of carbamazepine, gabapentin, and nitrous oxide as alternatives to symptom-triggered benzodiazepine administration for the treatment of alcohol withdrawal syndrome (AWS), a literature review was conducted.English-language reports of clinical trials of these agents in AWS, particularly trials that compared them with benzodiazepines or anticonvulsants or used them as benzodiazepine-sparing therapy, were reviewed. Six randomized, double-blind trials compared carbamazepine with agents used in the United States. The results suggest that carbamazepine may be useful for this indication, particularly in outpatient settings, although adverse effects and drug interactions may limit its usefulness. The role of gabapentin is unclear because of the lack of randomized, double-blind, controlled trials and the conflicting results of existing case series and open-label trials. Two poorly designed trials of nitrous oxide had conflicting results.Because of the limitations in evidence accrued so far, the routine use of carbamazepine and gabapentin for the treatment of AWS cannot be recommended, and nitrous oxide should be avoided for this indication.

The Gaza Strip is one of the world’s most fragile states and faces substantial public health and development challenges. Climate change is intensifying existing environmental problems, including increased water stress. We provide the first published assessment of climate impacts on diarrhoeal disease in Gaza and project future health burdens under climate change scenarios. Over 1 million acute diarrhoea cases presenting to health facilities during 2009–2020 were linked to weekly temperature and rainfall data and associations assessed using time-series regression analysis employing distributed lag non-linear models (DLNMs). Models were applied to climate projections to estimate future burdens of diarrhoeal disease under 2 °C and 1.5 °C global warming scenarios. There was a significantly raised risk of diarrhoeal disease associated with both mean weekly temperature above 19 °C and total weekly rainfall below 6 mm in children 0–3 years. A heat effect was also present in subjects aged > 3 years. Annual diarrhoea cases attributable to heat and low rainfall was 2209.0 and 4070.3, respectively, in 0–3-year-olds. In both age-groups, heat-related cases could rise by over 10% under a 2 °C global warming level compared to baseline, but would be limited to below 2% under a 1.5 °C scenario. Mean rises of 0.9% and 2.7% in diarrhoea cases associated with reduced rainfall are projected for the 1.5 °C and 2 °C scenarios, respectively, in 0–3-year-olds. Climate change impacts will add to the considerable development challenges already faced by the people of Gaza. Substantial health gains could be achieved if global warming is limited to 1.5 °C.

In the face of the rapidly dwindling carbon budgets, negative emission technologies are widely suggested as required to stabilize the Earth’s climate. However, finding cost-effective, socially acceptable, and politically achievable means to enable such technologies remains a challenge. We propose solutions based on negative emission technologies to facilitate wealth creation for the stakeholders while helping to mitigate climate change. This paper comes up with suggestions and guidelines on significantly increasing carbon sequestration in coffee farms. A coffee and jackfruit agroforestry-based case study is presented along with an array of technical interventions, having a special focus on bioenergy and biochar, potentially leading to “negative emissions at negative cost.” The strategies for integrating food production with soil and water management, fuel production, adoption of renewable energy systems and timber management are outlined. The emphasis is on combining biological and engineering sciences to devise a practically viable niche that is easy to adopt, adapt and scale up for the communities and regions to achieve net negative emissions. The concerns expressed in the recent literature on the implementation of emission reduction and negative emission technologies are briefly presented. The novel opportunities to alleviate these concerns arising from our proposed interventions are then pointed out. Our analysis indicates that 1 ha coffee jackfruit-based agroforestry can additionally sequester around 10 tonnes of CO2-eq and lead to an income enhancement of up to 3,000–4,000 Euros in comparison to unshaded coffee. Finally, the global outlook for an easily adoptable nature-based approach is presented, suggesting an opportunity to implement revenue-generating negative emission technologies on a gigatonne scale. We anticipate that our approach presented in the paper results in increased attention to the development of practically viable science and technology-based interventions in order to support the speeding up of climate change mitigation efforts.

We have previously demonstrated that ibotenate (IBO) injected into the pedunculopontine tegmental nucleus (PPTg) damages all neurones there while quinolinate (QUIN) makes relatively selective lesions of cholinergic neurones. We now compare the effects of two anaesthetics, sodium pentobarbitone and Avertin (tribromoethanol/tert-amylalcohol dissolved in ethanol, saline and phosphate buffer) on three doses of IBO and QUIN in the PPTg. Diaphorase-positive cell loss after QUIN was attenuated under barbiturate, the relative selectivity of QUIN for diaphorase-positive neurones was lost and lesion volumes were uniformly small compared with lesions made under Avertin anaesthesia. IBO toxicity was unaffected by anaesthesia. These data are discussed with reference to the actions of excitotoxins at glutamate receptor subtypes and interactions of barbiturates with the GABAA receptor.

This article reads ‘pandemic, plague, pestilence and the tropics’ through Covid-19, climate change and the discourse of tropicality. It asks: What happens, as seems to be the case today, when the temperate/tropical oppositions around which tropicality revolves start to unravel because the aberrations and excesses (here of epidemic disease and extreme weather) hitherto deemed to belong to tropical areas, and as constitutive of their otherness, are found in temperate ones? This question is broached with a focus on the United Kingdom as one such ‘temperate’ place that currently finds itself in this situation (although the argument has broader resonance), and with Aimé Césaire’s ideas about the choc en retour (boomerang effect) of Western colonisation and la quotidienneté des barbaries (the daily barbarisms) by which this effect works. Evidence and feelers from science, theory, politics, and the media are used to consider how sensibilities of tropicality, and especially (as Césaire enquired) distinctions between the ‘normal’ and ‘pathological,’ and ‘immunity’ and ‘susceptibility,’ permeate the way Covid-19 and climate change are perceived and felt in the temperate world.

We report on the use of the chemostat as an optimal device to create time-invariant conditions that allow accurate sampling for various omics assays in Escherichia coli, in combination with recording of the dynamics of the physiological transition in the organism under study that accompany the initiation of glucose repression. E. coli cells respond to the addition of glucose not only with the well-known transcriptional response, as was revealed through quantitative PCR analysis of the transcript levels of key genes from the CRP (cAMP receptor protein) regulon, but also with an increased growth rate and a transient decrease in the efficiency of its aerobic catabolism. Less than half of a doubling time is required for the organism to recover to maximal values of growth rate and efficiency. Furthermore, calculations based on our results show that the specific glucose uptake rate (qs ) and the H+/e− ratio increase proportionally, up to a growth rate of 0.4 h–1, whilst biomass yield on glucose (Yx / s ) drops during the first 15 min, followed by a gradual recovery. Surprisingly, the growth yields after the recovery phase show values even higher than the maximum theoretical yield. Possible explanations for these high yields are discussed.