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Israel-Palestine
Gaza Encampments Expand
New satellite images being provided to the media by Planet Labs is revealing the rapid expansion of tent encampments in the Gaza strip’s southernmost city of Rafah. The images show how over a million people now live around a United Nations facility in a city that had a pre-war population of 270,000. Residents of Gaza have been displaced further and further south by operations by the Israeli Defense Forces to eliminate the threat of the militant group Hamas, an ongoing war which has killed 24,762 Palestinian people, according to the Gaza health ministry. Tents are among the supplies being distributed by aid groups, but inspection backups and other logistical challenges are causing bottlenecks which slow delivery to those in need. Conditions in the camps are dire, with essentially no sanitation, strained food supplies, and little access to banking, which means even when supplies are available to purchase, refugees cannot access their own funds to buy them.
This interactive map depicts the rapid expansion of the refugee encampment in the southern Gaza city of Rafah from early December to mid-January. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: New York Times
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United States
Record High Cancer Diagnoses
New cancer diagnoses in the U.S. are expected to reach over 2 million for the first time in 2024, driven in large part by an alarming increase in cancers among young Americans, according to new American Cancer Society research. Experts say this demographic shift comes with psychological, physical, and financial burdens that are less common among older patients, such as career and caregiving responsibilities. It is also linked to poor diets, sedentary lifestyles, and exposure to chemicals. People aged younger than 50 years were the only ones out of three age groups (50-64 and 65 and older) to experience an increase in overall cancer incidence during the time period studied. The U.S. cancer death rate has been cut by a third in the last 30 years, partly due to improved screening, a sharp drop in smoking, and more effective treatments against certain cancers. However, diagnoses have been increasing for some cancers, and there are strong racial and ethnic disparities in cancer deaths.
This map depicts the number of new cancer diagnoses by state predicted for 2024. Click on the map to learn more.
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Graphic Source: Daily Mail
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World
Genetic Risk for Multiple Sclerosis
A recent study by genetic researchers at the University of Cambridge in England has revealed how northern Europeans have a higher risk of developing multiple sclerosis (MS) than their southern or eastern counterparts. Researchers were able to analyze genetic material provided by a gene bank containing examples of early humans that originated from west Asia and Europe. They found that the risk of MS was found in the genes of cattle herders who inhabited northern Europe 5,000 years ago. In comparing modern DNA with ancient DNA, they found markers pointed to herders known as the Yamnaya, horse riders who migrated from the Pontic steppe, eastern grasslands in what is currently Ukraine and Russia. Evidently, those genes that made them more susceptible to MS also protected them from infections that come from their sheep and cattle.
This map depicts the percentage of the population of European countries with steppe ancestry. Click on the map to learn more.
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Q: What mountain range is home to two-thirds of the European Union’s old-growth forests?
A: The Carpathians
The Carpathians hold Europe’s largest remaining tracts of primary and old-growth forests. The Carpathian Mountain chain forms an arc across Central and Eastern Europe. 54% of the range lies within Romania, with the rest traversing the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, and Ukraine. The Carpathians provide habitat for the largest European populations of brown bears, wolves, chamois, and lynxes, with the highest concentration in Romania, as well as over one-third of all European plant species. Romania is home to the second-largest area of virgin forests in Europe after Russia, totaling 250,000 hectares (65% of the European Union’s old-growth forests). The Southern Carpathians constitute Europe’s largest unfragmented forest area. While forests in Romania have been subject to massive illegal logging, forests in Ukraine remain largely intact. Forests in Slovakia and Poland are increasingly threatened by European Union biofuel demands.
Source
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Q: What country’s vast swamp has historically proved to be an impenetrable barrier to navigation along the Nile?
Stay tuned for the answer to today’s question in Monday’s DailyGeo.
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