Search

As a researcher, I’m interested in the political, ecological, and cultural debates around mosquito-borne diseases and the solutions proposed to mitigate them.

When we received the task, my first impulse was to investigate about the contemporary effects of anthropogenic climate change in mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans. But I was afraid to make the same mistake that I did in my PhD research. I wrote my PhD proposal while based in the US, more specifically in New England, during the Zika epidemic, and proposed to understand how scientists were studying ecological climate change and mosquitoes in Brazil. However, once I arrived in the country the political climate was a much more pressing issue, with the dismantling of health and scientific institutions.

Thus, after our meeting yesterday, and Jason Ludwig’s reminder that the theme of our Field Campus is the plantation, I decided to focus on how it related to mosquitoes in New Orleans.

The Aedes aegypti mosquito and the yellow fever virus it can transmit are imbricated in the violent histories of settler-colonialism and slavery that define the plantation economy. The mosquito and the virus arrived in the Americas in the same ships that brought enslaved peoples from Africa. The city of New Orleans had its first yellow fever epidemic in 1796, with frequent epidemics happening between 1817 and 1905. What caused New Orleans to be the “City of the Dead,” as Kristin Gupta has indicated, was yellow fever. However, as historian Urmi Engineer Willoughby points out, the slave trade cannot explain alone the spread and persistance of the disease in the region: "Alterations to the landscape, combined with demographic changes resulting from the rise of sugar production, slavery, and urban growth all contributed to the region’s development as a yellow fever zone." For example, sugar cultivation created ideal conditions for mosquito proliferation because of the extensive landscape alteration and ecological instabilities, including heavy deforestation and the construction of drainage ditches and canals.

Historian Kathryn Olivarius examines how for whites "acclimatization" to the disease played a role in hierarchies with “acclimated” (immune) people at the top and a great mass of “unacclimated” (non-immune) people and how for black enslaved people "who were embodied capital, immunity enhanced the value and safety of that capital for their white owners, strengthening the set of racialized assumptions about the black body bolstering racial slavery."

As I continue to think through these topics, I wonder how both the historical materialities of the plantation and the contemporary anthropogenic changes might be influencing mosquito-borne diseases in New Orleans nowadays? And more, how the regions’ histories of race and class might still be shaping the effects of these diseases and how debates about them are framed?

Due to the mass destruction of the area, the first few days’ data were not able to collect (not  only the destruction, but the rescue was the first priority). Therefore, the scientific committee  used models to simulate and analyse the data (might not be accurate on the early stage). After  the rescue, many countries have provided data to assist the works. For the long‐live radioactive  substances, the data was able to collect with the ground soils. Furthermore, prediction can be  made with the pass experiences and the basic models.

The received data can be managed and visualised into charts or map tiles (e.g. open street maps or satellite maps). The data is visualized in the panel of “Visualize Your Story “with four modes of visual features.

• Branded Deployment
• Map Mode
• Timeline Mode
• Activity Analytics Mode

“… the murders occurred where it all began — in the remote forests of southeast Guinea, where superstition overwhelms education and whispers of Ebola stoke fear and sometimes violence.”

“The increase in violence marks a new dark chapter in the fight against Ebola…”

Since the article reported that this is the fourth edition of the design, most of the problems are solved during the refurbishment of product. So there are not many problems with the design as they tested with the publics. But they plan to make the bridge “stronger, longer, lighter, more compact and quicker to set up”.

This study has let the news agencies to have a new term to report with the articles that relevant to public health and mass imprisonment when introducing contents to the general publics. The data and observations been made within the epidemiological study has assisted the new articles to explain the incarcerated group in a more colloquial and easy understanding way.

“When public health authorities talk about an epidemic, they are referring to a disease that can spread rapidly throughout a population, like the flu or tuberculosis.

But researchers are increasingly finding the term useful in understanding another destructive, and distinctly American, phenomenon — mass incarceration.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/opinion/mass-imprisonment-and-public-…]

“Since the 1970s, the correctional population in the US has ballooned by 700 percent.  This phenomenon is often referred to as mass incarceration.” [http://www.philly.com/philly/blogs/public_health/Mass-Incarceration-A-P…]

Professional uses citations:

Image

From the links provided within the article, relevant information about Hurricane Katrina can be viewed with the commentary and archival articles that published in The New York Times that written by other authors.

Also the author has made in contact with Memorial Medical Center in Uptown New Orleans to focus on the investigation into the detail situations happened with the floodwaters. Afterwards, gained more information on the lethal injection issues.

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricane-katrina?inline=nyt-class…]

[http://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/hurricanes-and-tropical-storms-hur…]

This policy is drafted by United State Environmental Protection Agency. And their mission is to protect human health and the environment via the development and enforcement with regulations. 

Convention on Early Notification of a Nuclear Accident.  The convention is aimed to take a high level safety in any nuclear activities to prevent accidents  or in the case of the accident happened, minimizing the consequences of the nuclear effects.  Furthermore, the convention is encouraging countries (state) that undertaking the nuclear  activities can exchange information on the accidents in order to gained an internationally  cooperation on nuclear safeties.