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Treating Patients to Talk Time

An ingenious scheme to encourage people to take their TB meds. Tuberculosis treatment is a drag. Patients...

 Nikhil Swaminathan
07.20.09

An ingenious scheme to encourage people to take their TB meds. Tuberculosis treatment is a drag. Patients require a six-month course of antibiotics to clear the lung infection, which plagues a third of the world's population and kills 2 million each year. Sure, after roughly two to three months, symptoms such as a lingering cough and fever will subside. But halting the regimen then allows the bacteria to acquire antibiotic resistance, creating TB strains that are tougher to control as they spread. Getting patients to stay on their meds is tough enough in the developed world, but in areas short on health care facilities, it can be nearly impossible.X out TB is a system designed by Massachusetts Institute of Technology students that uses a carrot-and-stick principle to keep TB sufferers popping their pills. Patients receive a dispenser that every 24 hours releases a strip of paper with a string of numbers on it. This test stamp contains chemicals that react to metabolites from TB drugs in urine to highlight a subset of those numbers. A compliant patient can text message the code from a successful test to a central database and-as in a pilot study of 30 patients in Nicaragua-be rewarded with free cell phone minutes. The program is now being tested in Kirachi, Pakistan, and will soon be employed in Indonesia, as well.According to X out TB team member Elizabeth Leshen, the microfluidics technology that makes the test reliable could be engineered to detect remnants of drugs associated with other diseases, such as HIV. And while mobile phone minutes (which are provided by local carriers) are valuable to people in the developing world, they are not the key to the system. "If, in certain areas, there is another, more powerful incentive that can be easily distributed through an existing infrastructure," she says, "we can incorporate that alternative incentive in the place of cell phone minutes."Photo by Jose Gomez-MarquezBack to interactive site

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Youth activists gather to fight climate change at UN Summit: 'We need to transform anger into action'

Julian Meehan

Young leaders from around the world are gathering at the United Nations Headquarters in New York Saturday to address arguably the most urgent issue of our time. The Youth Climate Summit comes on the heels of an international strike spearheaded by Greta Thunberg, the 16-year-old climate activist from Sweden, who arrived in New York via emissions-free sailboat earlier this month.

Translated from Swedish, "berg" means "mountain," so it may feel fated that a young woman with Viking blood in her veins and summit in her name would be at the helm. But let's go out on a limb and presume Thunberg, in keeping with most activists, would chafe at the notion of pre-ordained "destiny," and rightly so. Destiny is passive — it happens to you. It's also egomaniacal. Change, on the other hand, is active; you have to fight. And it is humble. "We need to get angry and understand what is at stake," Thunberg declared. "And then we need to transform that anger into action."

This new generation of activists' most pernicious enemy is denial. The people in charge — complacent politicians and corporation heads who grossly benefit from maintaining the status quo — are buffered from real-life consequences of climate change. But millions of people don't share that privilege. For them, climate change isn't an abstract concept, but a daily state of emergency, whether it comes in the form of "prolonged drought in sub-Saharan Africa…devastating tropical storms sweeping across Southeast Asia, the Caribbean and the Pacific…[or] heatwaves and wildfires," as Amnesty International reportsare all too real problems people are facing on a regular basis.

RELATED: Greta Thunberg urges people to turn to nature to combat climate change

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The Planet

18 of the best signs from New York's Climate Strike march

Millions of people in over 150 countries across the globe marched for lawmakers and corporations to take action to help stop climate change on Friday, September 20.

The Climate Strikes were organized by children around the world as an extension of the of the "Fridays for Future" campaign. Students have been walking out of classrooms on Fridays to speak out about political inaction surrounding the climate crisis.

"We need to act right now to stop burning fossil fuels and ensure a rapid energy revolution with equity, reparations and climate justice at its heart," organizers say.

There's no doubt the visual images from the marches send a powerful message to those on the ground but especially those watching from around the world. GOOD's own Gabriel Reilich was on the scene for the largest of the Climate Strikes. Here are 18 of the best signs from the Climate Strike march in New York City.

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How you can get involved in the Global Climate Strike

September 20th marks the beginning of a pivotal push for the future of our planet. The Global Climate Strike will set the stage for the United Nations Climate Action Summit, where more than 60 nations are expected to build upon their commitment to 2015's Paris Agreement for combating climate change.

Millions of people are expected to take part in an estimated 4,000 events across 130 countries.

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The Planet

Why the iPhone 11 is making people with trypophobia experience panic and revulsion

Do you have it?

via Apple

When the iPhone 11 debuted on September 10, it was met with less enthusiasm than the usual iPhone release. A lot of techies are holding off purchasing the latest gadget until Apple releases a phone with 5G technology.

Major US phone carriers have yet to build out the infrastructure necessary to provide a consistent 5G experience, so Apple didn't feel it necessary to integrate the technology into its latest iPhone.

A dramatic new feature on the iPhone 11 Pro is its three camera lenses. The three lenses give users the the original wide, plus ultrawide and telephoto options.

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Health

Woman dreams she swallowed her engagement ring and wakes up with it missing

Dreams can have a powerful effect on us.

via I love butter / Flickr

We often dismiss our dreams as nonsensical dispatches from the mind while we're deep asleep. But recent research proves that our dreams can definitely affect our waking lives.

People often dream about their significant others and studies show it actually affects how we behave towads them the next day.

"A lot of people don't pay attention to their dreams and are unaware of the impact they have on their state of mind," said Dylan Selterman, psychology lecturer at the University of Maryland, says according to The Huffington Post. "Now we have evidence that there is this association."

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