A couple of things.....

....related to population and development.

Firstly some good interactive maps courtesy of the Office for National Statistics which allow you to examine aspects of the population structure across the UK. We are familiar with the idea that population structure varies between LEDCs and MEDCs but the variations within a MEDC like the UK are less often examined. It is, for example, interesting to see where the population is significantly aged or juvenile and to ask why. The map below is just one of many maps which you can create and then follow changes from the present until 2031 (click on the map to link to the site)

Secondly the United Nations Development Programme has just published its annual report which comprises many findings relating to population and development. This year's report particularly focuses on migration and is accompanied by a short video...

A ranking of the world's countries by HDI (Human Development Index) has also just been published today. The place to be, it would seem, is Norway and as for where you wouldn't want to live, click here to link to the report! And while you are on that page, it would also be worthwhile to follow the hyperlink to 'Getting and using Data'.

Gapminder has been up-dated

This is just in case there are any 'new' Higher Geographers who are exceptionally keen and would like to look at development indicators over their holiday!I have flagged up the excellent Gapminder website before. It is the one which lets you look at how a variety of development indicators change over time and space. The website has just been up-dated with an extra 100 indicators. If you haven't seen it before, click on the graph above to link and go to Gapminder World.

Microsoft versus Malaria

Click on the headline above to link to an excellent article about clinical trials of a malaria vaccine.

However, REMEMBER that if the question of ways of controlling malaria crops up in the exam, do NOT say that a vaccine esists!!

Malaria up-date

I understand that Mrs W has given you quite a lot of work on malaria to do this week and that some of it involves accessing some of my older postings on malaria from last session. In addition to that, you might like to follow up some of these links which have all appeared on the BBC health pages in the last few months..... (Click images to link to each)

Firstly a study which suggests that "Sea cucumbers could provide a potential new weapon to block transmission of the malaria parasite"

Secondly "Nets boost Africa's malaria fight " Insecticide-treated nets can reduce overall child mortality by 20% .Countries in sub-Saharan Africa are making significant progress in fighting malaria, new statistics from Unicef and the World Health Organisation show.

Next ..."Scientists and global health campaigners have welcomed the early results of a malaria vaccine trial in African infants" and finally.....

"Targeting a key protein may help overcome the malaria parasite's increasing resistance to conventional drugs, UK researchers say."

Remember... it is the detail you can glean from articles like this that will make your answers stand out from the crowd!

It's the world but not as we know it!

Here is a map of the world drawn so that territory size is in relation to population..Here is another one which shows total GDP (ie not per capita) by country..

And here is one which shows the number of primary aged girls who are not receiving schooling..

Finally, the consequence might be .....

This map shows books borrowed and so is a measure of a) provision of libraries and b) literacy

All of these maps come from the Worldmapper website which has 366 similar maps showing the scale of socioeconomic disparity around the world. One word of warning - remember that the maps show totals rather than per capita figures. You must therefore always bear map 1 above in mind when drawing conclusions from the maps.

African case study for Development and Health

The Guardian has today launched a new area of its website which is devoted to life in one village in Uganda (click banner to link). With the help of sponsors Barclays Bank and Amref (an African medical and research foundation) and with donations from Guardian readers, they hope to transform the lives of the people who live in Katine over the next three years..

The project is also launched in today's edition of the Guardian in a long article by its Editor. The article begins "With the right flight connections, a journey from the 21st century to the 14th century can take just over 12 hours. It begins in the hot, crowded duty-free hell of Heathrow's terminal 3 and ends - through the bushes down a snaking mud track - by the marshes under a cloudless blue African sky.

This is an excellent on-line resource for Development and Health with resources in a variety of media - images, video, audio and text. It would provide some excellent case study material for Paper 2.

Childhood in China and a fishy treatment for Malaria

The second article on the consequences of China's one child policy is now on-line. It examines the pressures which 'lone' children in China are under to succeed. Click on the image to link to the BBC web page.

On a different aspect of human geography and relevant to Development and Health in paper 2 is this article in Labnews.co.uk which describes how effective a fish can be in the battle to control malaria in Kenya. It seems that the Nile Tilapia (above) has an insatiable appetite for mosquito larvae and can reduce populations of malaria-carrying mosquitoes by around 94%.

The malaria train

According to the BBC website today.... "A train carrying enough free mosquito nets for one in ten of the population of the Republic of Congo has been making its way through the country.... this is part of the largest ever distribution of nets - by the end of the year the government says every pregnant woman and child under five will have one."

If you click on the photo you will link to a photographic record of the initiative. This would be a good case study example of a strategy for controlling malaria - one of the things you have to study if you do the Development and Health option in Paper 2 (Environmental Interactions)

Malaria Awareness Day 2007

I heard quite by chance on the radio this morning that today is malaria awareness day. It seems that George Bush is making a lot of mileage out of his support for worldwide campaigns to eradicate the disease. You know that Google is American when you put 'malaria awareness day' into their search and the first few hits are all about George Bush!!

However.... if you scroll down beyond the White House propaganda, you will find some very good links to information about malaria. Try it and see!

Top of the list, after the White House, is the No More Malaria campaign.. (click on the banner above to link). On this website, you can access some good educational resources about malaria, and in particular, methods of controlling the disease. Some other 'celebrities have also been getting in on the act..

Click on the image to hear what David Beckham has to say about the campaign.


Roll Back Malaria, the WHO campaign to control and eradicate malaria has also dedicated website coverage to malaria awareness day.. (again, click to link)In their words..."Africa Malaria Day is every year commemorated on 25 April. This day has been set aside by African governments committed to rolling back malaria and meeting the United Nations malaria-related Millennium Development Goals. It is, therefore, an opportunity for the RBM Partnership to show solidarity with African countries battling against this scourge by supporting several events and activities around the world."

And, if you really want to read about what the White House has to say on the subject, you can read about it here!

GM mosquito bred to destroy malaria

Headline news in 'The Times' today.....


Scientists in America are 'engineering' a new weapon in the fight aginst malaria which kills over 2.5 million people in the world each year. They have genetically modified mosquitoes to resist infection by the malaria parasite and if these mosquitoes are released into areas where malaria is common, it is hoped they would interbreed with native populations of mosquitoes until their resistance to the parasite is gradually spread. In that way, transmission to humans would be reduced.

The idea is not new but in the past the GM mosquitoes were weaker than their 'wild' counterparts and quickly died out. The new breed of GM mosquitoes is much more robust.

Despite the huge potential which this method of controlling malaria offers, there are bound to be protests from environmentalists who believe that it is wrong to replace naturally occurring species with genetically modified 'variants'.

You can read the article in full by clicking here. It includes the following facts and statistics...

— Malaria killed people in the Fens until the 19th century
— It has been predicted that global warming may result in malaria returning to Britain
— Malaria infects between 300 million and 500 million people a year, mainly in Africa
— In sub-Saharan Africa, malaria affects mostly young children, with almost 3,000 dying every day
— Symptoms include neck stiffness, convulsions, abnormal breathing and fever of up to 40C (104F)
— Distribution of the tropical disease mainly affects developing countries. About 90 per cent of cases are in Africa
— It costs £6.8 billion a year in Africa in lost GDP. Death and disability lead to the loss of 45 million years of productive life each year
— Alexander the Great, Genghis Khan, Oliver Cromwell, Caravaggio and David Livingstone are thought to have died of it
— Those who had it but recovered include Lord Nelson, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Gandhi and Hemingway

Development resources courtesy of Noel

One of the most rewarding aspects of this digital world we teachers now inhabit is that there is less and less need for us to 'reinvent the wheel'. Resources can be quickly and easily shared; PowerPoint presentations, digital images and movie files nightly wing their way through cyberspace as Geography teachers exchange resources. Indeed, many of the resources I use in class with you have come from virtual colleagues in other parts of the UK and beyond. It is also pleasing for me to know that some of the materials I produce are being used in classrooms far removed from Dundee.

Many of my virtual colleagues are also writing blogs for their pupils and you can see links to them in the sidebar. I have been watching with interest some recent postings on development by a teacher colleague in Somerset, whose blog you can link to by clicking the banner above.

Those of you who are not in the Dales this weekend (and the rest when you get back) might like to explore them.... Once you have reached Noel's blog, select 'development' from the categories in the sidebar and scroll down the postings until you find the following:
Feb 11th - Darfur Case Study
Feb 4th - Some more Development Questions
Jan 30th - Using Gapminder to measure Development (You have used Gapminder already with Mrs W)
Jan 28th Development Mapping Homework

I never thought I'd be getting a teacher in Somerset to set homework for my class!

Globalisation and the car industry

A few weeks ago (Saturday 27th January) I posted about globalisation and gave you a few links to resources on the subject which feature on the BBC website. Since then they have put up a few new pages specifically about the global car industry.

Here, for example is a pie chart showing the source of cars sold in the US in 1955 and, for comparison, a similar graph for 2005.

If you click on either of the graphs, you will link to the relevant page of the BBC website and be able to explore the topic further.

There is also a linked article here about Toyota production in the US.

A different way of looking at the world

Here is how we normally view the world.....

The area of each country is roughly proportionate to its actual size . However, the map can be redrawn with the sizes of countries made bigger or smaller in order to represent something of interest. These maps, like the one below showing child mortality, are called cartograms.

They are an excellent way of displaying social and economic data. You can see more of these intriguing maps by clicking on either of the maps above. You could spend a useful few minutes looking for connections between them. Look at Africa, for example, and consider what the maps show about GDP, child mortality, spending on healthcare and the incidence of HIV infection.

Slumbering elephant becomes waking tiger!

Which country is home to one in six members of the human race, contains a third of the world's poorest people and yet has an increasingly consumer-oriented middle-class twice the size of the population of Germany?
Today, the image below is as representative of the country as the one on the left.

Click on either image to reveal the answer

You could also link to this excellent profile of the country in question and read the sections on population, economy and living standards. The metaphors in the title should then make sense!

France is a province of Paris!

There is a very long history of centralisation of economic and political activity in France. Everything of importance in France happens in Paris... or so the Parisians would have you believe! However, a nice little mapping tool which has received some attention today in the geography circles I network in (sad, I know) shows there to be some truth in this assertion. The map above was produced by Yale University's geographically based economic data project ... and it does indeed show a concentration of economic activity around Paris.

The same website allows you to produce maps for many countries in the world which means that it is possible to look at the distribution of economic activity both within and between countries. Here, for example, are the maps for the UK, USA and India.....

What do they show about regional development in the three countries?

Surprisingly, despite its predominantly rural population, India would appear to have a more even spread of economic activity than the UK with few areas showing up as blue.

USA... a nation of two halves?

Globalisation : a new fangled word

'Globalisation' is a word which didn't exist when I was at school... or university.......or in any of the textbooks I used when I first started teaching... or even when I had been teaching for quite a long time! However, globalisation is very much part of the vocabulary of geography in the 21st century and understanding it is fundametal to an understanding of how the global economy works - what drives it, where it is driven and who the winners and losers are.

It is sometimes difficult to find resources on globalisation which are written in a language that non-economists can understand but this week the business pages of the BBC website have done just that. Starting last Sunday, there has been a series of articles which have been an easy to read guide to globalisation. You can link to them by clicking the headlines...
Globalisation shakes the world
The Rise of the Bangalore Tigers
Multinationals lead India's IT Revolution
Globalisation : The Key Facts

Finally, there is a stimulating on-line discussion on globalisation which you can link to here. There are a huge range of views on the subject from all over the world.

Stopping malaria before the bite

You have recently started to look at malaria as an example of a disease affecting LEDCs. When you start to look at strategies for controlling the disease, one of the things which Mrs W will be emphasising is that there is, as yet, no vaccine which will offer protection from contracting the disease.There are, however, reports today of a vaccine which, when administered to people living in affected areas, will kill the parasite within the mosquitoes who injest the blood of vaccinated victims. You have to think about this! What this means is that there would be no benefit to vaccinated individuals (they might still contract the disease) but there could be long term benefits for their community. The snag is....... how many people will agree to be vaccinated if there is no benefit to their own health? You can read about this new development in the fight against malaria by clicking on the image above.

You might also like to have a look over the holidays at the Roll Back Malaria website which contains a wealth of material which is relevant to this section of the Development and Health unit.

Birth rate harms poverty goals

In an article (click on the image to link) which is reminiscent of many of the views on population which prevailed in the 50s and 60s, there was an interesting article (another one!) on the BBC website last Friday.

A UK parliamentary group is maintaining that the Millennium Development Goals relating to poverty reduction cannot be met without curbing current population growth in LEDCs.

They draw attention to Africa in particular, where the BR remains high, population numbers are rising rapidly and where the numbers of people living in extreme poverty has increased by 140 million in just over ten years.

If you read the article, you should be able to make a list of what it cites as the consequences of a high BR. There is also another link to follow to an associated and interesting article on the BBC's Green Room pages.

Size matters!

The things you find on the BBC website......

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/6161691.stm

A couple of issues relevant to geography are raised by this article
a) what connection might there be with the slowing down of the BR decline in India?
b) what are the implications for a country which already has the highest rates of HIV infections?

Development Indicators

In the Development and Health unit of the course you have recently been studying indicators of economic development and, in particular, you have been looking at contrasts of development within and between LEDCs. Unfortunately, textbooks (even new ones!), frequently carry development data which is out of date. It is, however, possible to access fairly accurate and up-to-date figures by looking at the World Bank's annual Development Indicators resource.

This is a very weighty publication but if you click on the image above, you will link to a facility which allows you to find abstracted development information based on 50 indicators for almost every country in the world. It is a 'data query' service which allows you to select the countries and years you want to look at and the indictors you wish to obtain data for. You can then opt to view the results as an Excel spreadsheet.

A quick and easy exercise would be to choose a range of LEDCs including some of the NICs which you have been studying with Mrs W and then to draw up a table of data for selected indicators. Which indictors best reveal the differences in economic development? However, are these necessarily the 'best' indicators of development? Which NICs are the current front runners in economic development? Where are most of the world's least economically developed countries?