Tracey Koehlmoos: Disaster preparedness and resiliency

This week I have had the pleasure of attending a workshop in Honolulu with the centre for excellence for disaster management and humanitarian assistance (CoE-DMHA). The CoE is interested in thinking about resiliency and support for relief and rebuilding from a multi-lateral perspective. With its partners from the Oak Ridge and Argonne National Laboratories, the CoE is […]

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Andrew Burd: Karma

Karma is a word that has distinct cultural meanings and can relate to spiritual or more secular events. Whatever the context, the general meaning concerns actions and consequences. After the devastating earthquake in Sichuan, China in 2008 it was an acknowledged faux pas for Sharon Stone to relate the death and destruction to “bad karma” over the […]

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Tomohisa Shoko, Yasuhiro Otomo, and Atsushi Shiraishi: The next day of the disaster – a report from a Japanese disaster medical assistance team

Pictured: Tomohisa Shoko, the corresponding author. On 11 March 2011, at 2:46 pm Japan time, a massive 9.0-magnitude earthquake struck off the Pacific coast of Japan’s Tohoku (northeastern) region. The maximum seismic intensity, level seven (on the Japan Meteorological Agency’s scale), was recorded in Kurihara City, northwestern Miyagi Prefecture. About 25 minutes after the quake, […]

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David Kerr: Geoenvironmental medicine and technology

The world did not end last month after all. Harold Camping, the founder of the Family Radio Network purchased space on 1,200 billboards across the United States proclaiming doomsday for May 21st. This is the third time he has been caught offside in his predictions for the end of the world. However, around that time an […]

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