In The News

The Caribbean Brain Drain: Nursing a Grievance

April 12, 2010
According to the World Bank, only one-quarter of nurses in the English-speaking Caribbean remain working in their countries. The rest leaves to work abroad, where working and living conditions are significantly better. The economic incentives of working abroad outweigh the challenges of staying. This is not a new phenomenon: it has been taking place for almost two centuries and is not confined to...

Marketing to Brazil's Emerging Middle Class

Seth Kugel March 31, 2010
The purchasing power of lower- and middle-class Brazilians is expanding rapidly, creating new opportunities and markets for global companies. Pharmaceutical company GlaxoSmithKline, for instance, has repackaged a denture adhesive and is trying to sell it in slum communities in Rio de Janeiro. But the transition to the new market is not easy. For one thing, no one in these communities knows what a...

E-Waste Trade Ban Won’t End Environmental Threat

Joe Kullman March 25, 2010
While the US Congress considers a ban on the trading of electronics waste (e-waste), the larger, global problem remains unaddressed. Currently, many developed nations export their technological waste to developing nations for “backyard recycling”, where it releases harmful toxins into the environment. Trade bans, like the one Congress is considering, are intended to remove the environmental...

Silicon Sweatshops: An illness in Suzhou

Kathleen E. McLaughlin March 19, 2010
A large number of workers at a plant in China that makes components for Apple products have become sick from handling a chemical used to clean the glass screens for products like the iPod and iPhone. The company doesn't have the necessary permits to use the chemical, n-hexane, but continues to do so to shave a few seconds off its production time. Apple, meanwhile, refuses to answer questions...

How the US Exports Its Mental Illness

Ethan Watters January 28, 2010
Mental illness is experienced differently around the world. But with Americans dominating the discussion on mental health, how such diseases are classified and treated has become homogenized. This could end up causing more harm than good. Exacerbating the situation is the presence of multinational drug companies that need to sell more product. For example, in Japan, whose clinical definition of...

Cold War Offered Odd Benefit – It Limited Species Invasions

January 11, 2010
For supporters of globalization, isolationism is usually thought to have negative consequences. But for Eastern Europe, cut off during the Cold War, such isolation had a positive impact on preventing environmental damage that can occur from the influx of invasive species – birds, in this case. A study conducted by scientists at Oregon State University found that Eastern Europe saw its non-...

Scientists Use Cell Phone Records to Predict Spread of Malaria

Aaron Hoover December 18, 2009
Employing a method for epidemiology research from Europe, scientists at the University of Florida have used cell phones records to track the how malaria might spread in Zanzibar. Calls made by Zanzibar residents while travelling in Tanzania were recorded, showing a small group occasionally visits a region with a high rate of malarial infection. While individuals don’t infect one another with the...