Solutions

(originally posted November 10, 2012)

A hexayurt is a shelter designed for people with a small housing budget.

The Hexayurt can be made from about $300 of materials from Home Depot, plus about $100-150 of mail-ordered tape. Depending on the construction technique, it takes 4-8 hours to prepare at home and 1-4 hours of assembly at your destination.

Here are the specifics on the 8 ft. version (aka H12) . . .

http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_playa_checklist

From the 8' Hexayurt instructions, you can probably learn to make any other hexayurt design.  Here is a photo of  the 12 ft. version (aka H18) . . .

http://www.flickr.com/photos/agb/241075522/in/photostream/

Here is additional information on the Hexayurt shelter . . .

http://www.appropedia.org/Hexayurt_playa

PR NEWSWIRE                                                                                                  May 7, 2015

(Scroll down for interview with Bill Gates)

At its Global Partners Forum, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation will announce the Child Health and Mortality Prevention Surveillance Network (CHAMPS), a network of disease surveillance sites in developing countries. These sites will help gather better data, faster, about how, where and why children are getting sick and dying. This data will help the global health community get the right interventions to the right children in the right place to save lives. The network will also be invaluable in providing capacity and training in the event of an epidemic, such as Ebola or SARS. The Gates Foundation plans an initial commitment of up to $75 million on the effort.

Now the threat from Ebola seems to be receding, rich countries must not revert to their former myopia. Listening to other countries’ needs and investing in women and children would be a start

THE GUARDIAN Commentary  by Chelsea Clinton and Devi Sridar                May 6, 2015

Amnesia has set in across the world as the fear and global attention given to Ebolarecedes. But this is not a new phenomenon. With Sars, avian flu, swine flu and Mers, there were repeated calls to fix the global health system to avoid previous mistakes. We cannot continue to be surprised when a health crisis emerges and we need to start to take a long-term, inclusive perspective to ensure health security across the world. Myopia was a key factor in the failure to respond to Ebola in a rapid and effective way.

There are three immediate steps that should be taken:

Read complete article.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/may/06/ebola-global-health-priorities-chelsea-clinton

Image: Governer Jerry Brown.

huffingtonpost.com - April 29th 2015 - Kate Sheppard

California Gov. Jerry Brown issued an executive order Wednesday directing the state to cut is greenhouse gas emissions 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030, the toughest proposed cuts of any state in the nation.

The 2030 target will ensure that California can meet its emissions target for the middle of this century, which calls for an 80 percent cut by 2050, Brown said. The state is already on pace to meet its goal of bringing heat-trapping emissions down to 1990 levels by 2020, a target set under a 2006 state law.

(VIEW COMPLETE ARTICLE)