Researchers Discover Use of Radioactivity To End Poaching

Researchers from University of Utah with help from Kenya Wildlife Services have developed a new radioactivity method to end poaching which will save African elephants from extinction.

Through a means to measure radioactive carbon-14 deposited in tusks and teeth the researchers can reveal the year an animal died which can ascertain whether the ivory was taken illegally to curb elephants, hippos, rhinos and other wildlife.

The study is key in arresting poachers and ivory dealers claiming ivory they are using was taken before 1975 and 1989 when international agreements banned most trade of raw ivory from Asian and African elephants respectively.

“This could be used in specific cases of ivory seizures to determine when the ivory was obtained and thus whether it is legal as it has immediate applications to fighting the illegal sale and trade of ivory that has led to the highest rate of poaching seen in decades." Thure Cerling a researcher said.

Published in the journal ‘Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,’ researchers used open-air nuclear bomb tests  in the atmosphere after the 1952-1962 nuclear weapons tests by US and Soviet, and the 1945 nuclear bombs in Heroshima and Nagasaki, in Japan.

The method uses the "bomb curve," graph showing changes in carbon-14 levels in the atmosphere absorbed by plants and animals in the food chain after analysing samples from 29 animal and plant tissues, most killed and collected in Kenya between 1905 to2008.

“The analysis revealed that various tissues that formed at the same time have the same carbon-14 levels which can determine age of ivory within about a year,” the research states.

The samples from animals died between 1905 and 1953 had minimal carbon-14 because they died before atmospheric nuclear weapons tests. The sample animals killed after 1955 had higher level, which can pinpoint the date.

"The dating method is affordable and accessible to government and law enforcement agencies as it costs about $500 (Sh42,500) per sample and can incorporate the use of DNA,” the study said.

Currently 30,000 elephants are killed annually with 70 per cent of smuggled ivory going to China in an illegal trade that has funded organized crimes and militia in Darfur, Uganda, Sudan and Somalia. So far only 423,000 African elephants are left.

Manuel Odeny © 2013

Researchers use mobile phones to show map of malaria spread

A pioneer mobile phone research to map the spread of malaria in the country has shown the disease is moving from danger zones like Lake Victoria and Coast areas to central highlands like Nairobi.

Carried out between June 2008 and June 2009 researchers from Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), Wellcome Trust Research Programme, Harvard School of Public Health and six other institutions said the findings can be used to fight malaria in the country.

“The analysis provided in the journal ‘Science’ shows how we might use this information to mitigate and prepare areas subjected to the highest imported infection risk like Nairobi,” Dr Abdisalan Noor from KEMRI says.

The research mapped every call or text made by each of 14, 816, 521 Kenyan mobile phone subscribers to one of 11, 920 cell towers located in 692 different settlements and every time an individual left his or her primary settlement, the destination and duration of each journey was calculated.

This way the research didn’t factor only on information about the location of mosquitoes that carry malaria parasite but also behavior of people who can be infected through resident's probability of being infected and the daily probability that visitors travelling to particular areas would become infected.

An online press release by Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) says the study enabled the researchers to build a map of parasite movements between 'source' areas like coast and lake Victoria area which mostly emit disease, and 'sink' areas like Nairobi, which mostly receive disease.

"As Kenya begins to succeed in reducing malaria transmission in some areas but not others, cell-phone mapping of human movement between high and low-risk regions becomes a valuable planning tool," Professor Bob Snow, KEMRI-University of Oxford-Wellcome Trust Collaborative Programme said.

"Since many infected people have no symptoms, they can unintentionally carry the parasite during their travels and infect hundreds of others," he adds.

Lead researcher Prof Caroline Buckee who is an HSPH assistant professor of epidemiology, say the pioneer research through the geographic spread of the disease will understand the spread of malaria to improve traditional approaches to malaria control, which involve focusing on reducing disease in particular areas, are not sufficient.

USAID official training locals on net use

“The information available from this research will help public health officials decide where and how to control imported cases of malaria. For instance, official could send text message warning to the phones of people travelling to high risk areas, suggesting that they use a bed net,”  Prof Buckee says.

According to Buckee, Kenya was chosen as the subject of this study because its level of malaria prevalence is very geographically varied, it has excellent data on the disease’s spread, and nearly all Kenyans have cell phones.

The same method of harnessing mobile data was copied from Haiti to map how people where moving around after earth quake.

Malaria kills about 1 million people each year and threatens 40 million globally. Of those affected, 95 per cent are children under five in sub-Saharan Africa, report said.

© Manuel Odeny,  2012