The BBC reported a fascinating story from the UK today. Gordon Moore suffered severe damage to his skull 50 years ago and has worn a metal plate ever since. However, when surgeons removed the plate recently to treat an infection Gordon had, they found his skull had grown back beneath the plate. This is, apparently, extremely rare in adults - though less so in children whose bones are still growing. Now Gordon has had the plate removed and is, he says, very pleased he won't trigger airport metal detectors any longer.

My uncle once joked that this blog should be called 'reasons to be cautiously optimistic'! Well, that moniker could well apply to today's linked article from the Bangkok Post. The world's largest and longest HIV vaccine trial - conducted in Thailand - has just released some promising outcomes, showing that trial participants who received the experimental vaccine were 31% less likely to be infected with HIV over the 6 year trial period than those who received a placebo. So, not good enough to use more widely - but the kind of modest success that could yield significant clues as to what might work better. And with more focused research we may just get an HIV vaccine that bit quicker. Definitely a reason to be cautiously optimistic...

What a wonderful story this is from the BBC! It's about an Indian civil servant, SM Raju, who just led an effort to break the world record for the number of trees planted in one day - but that's really the least of his achievements. He took advantage of an Indian government commitment to guarantee families living below the poverty line 100 days of work a year, and used monies from this program to employ villagers to plant and protect trees. In his state, Bihar, almost half the population is below the poverty line, and on 30 August alone 300,000 of them planted trees that they will tend over the coming years in return for a living wage. SM Raju's initiative not only has environmental and economic benefits, it brings hope to communities that had been hopeless. As a result, fewer people are moving away from the area. And with his success story attracting more attention to the government policy that made it possible, it's quite likely others across the country will seek to replicate it.

I can't help but rave about Kim Clijsters - along with the article linked above from the New York Times! What a woman! After retiring from her tennis career, having a baby girl and raising her through her first 18 months of life, Kim returned to tennis this summer and today won the US Open women's singles title. On the way, she claimed victory over both the Williams sisters (quite a feat in itself) and several other top-seeded players, though she was at the tournament on a wildcard. She really is an inspiration - such character, dedication and grace. In a tournament that has seen a few tantrums on court, there were none today - from either Clijsters or her toddler daughter. Just some good tennis, and a great comeback story.

Poor RTBH has been neglected of late. Sorry about that! I've found recently that my creative, intellectual and emotional energy has been sucked into a range of other things - but I have to say that I've also struggled to find compelling, positive news. The continued anxiety around the world's financial and economic situation seems to have infected reporting on other issues. Perhaps the mood will lift a little now that a few big economies seem to be pulling themselves out of recession? Or perhaps reporters and readers alike will grow weary of the gloom and push towards optimism and hope... Who knows.

Anyway - I did find this interesting story today, in Newsweek (linked from the title above). It's a tantalizing piece on the ways in which some aspects of US healthcare reform may have knock-on social benefits. Specifically, there is evidence from pilot programs that home visits by nurses to support disadvantaged and teenage mothers have helped to cut crime. How? Well, it seems that the assistance given to mothers helped them stay healthy and happy and also reduced substance dependence. This translated into kids that were less likely to commit crime, being arrested half as often and convicted 80% less than similar children whose mothers weren't supported. It's a very interesting approach - and it's in the current draft US healthcare bill... though only time will tell if it'll stay there. Definitely one to watch.

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RTBH reader Karn just sent me something very cool. It's a film about how thousands of Estonian volunteers cleared their nation of garbage in just a day last year. It's 5 minutes long and well worth a watch - very inspirational and translatable to many other contexts. In fact, Karn tells me that Portugal is planning a similar event in March 2010. Hopeful happenings are infectious, it seems! Thanks, Karn!

Long-time RTBH readers may recall post 311 from August last year, which referred to the new undersea cable gradually being laid along the East African coastline. It's all part of a grand plan to get Africa connected to high-speed internet services, with all that means in terms of tapping into knowledge and market opportunities. Well, now it's finished. According to the BBC article linked from the post title above, launch ceremonies were held in Kenya and Tanzania this week, and some large companies have already started exploiting the new bandwidth. Bit by bit, governments in the region - Kenya's, for example - are laying fibre-optic cable to connect towns to the network, in the hope that schools will be able to access an expanded range of educational materials. The question, as the article points out, is when smaller towns and villages will benefit. Surely something worth funding by international donors and local governments alike?

I found this a bit late (it's from last weekend) but it's an extremely interesting piece - sad in some respects, but ultimately hopeful - from the UK's Guardian newspaper. It's about Alex Goodenough, a teenager from the UK with Asperger's syndrome, who has struggled to navigate his way through the UK educational system even with his mother battling on his behalf. Despite being let down along the way, Alex has emerged from school with a raft of A grades at GCSE, several more at AS and A level, and a place to study engineering at Cambridge later this year. It's an amazing story, of one woman's determination to get the best education for her son, and of a young man's eagerness to acquire knowledge - but to do that his own way. Alex seems happy in his own skin, whatever labels are applied to him by others. And so he should! His educational achievements thus far should make him, and his mother, proud, as well as offering hope to other children with Asperger's.

Over recent months, I've been boring my economist husband with views on what governments ought to be doing in response to the financial crisis, beyond bank bailouts - i.e. extending bridging funds to small businesses and putting in place more effective safety nets for individuals and families in trouble. Well, today I found a great article on CNN about an Ethiopian woman who is working to support communities in New Jersey in exactly this way. Alfa Demmellash watched her mother struggle to thrive economically, first in Ethiopia and then in the US. This inspired her to develop ways to support underserved entrepreneurs - especially women - to develop their business management skills in order to increase their prosperity. She founded the non-profit Rising Tide Capital, with her now husband, which has so far provided training and other support to more than 250 small businesses. 70% of those helped are single mothers. The CNN article includes several quotes from business owners who have increased their profits significantly whilst working with Alfa and her colleagues, which is amazing in the current economic context. If initiatives like these were taken to scale, it might be possible to stimulate the economy from the bottom up - possibly more effective than hoping bank bailouts will somehow trickle down...

I've been out of action for a while - my laptop expired! But I got back online today, just in time to find this great story on NPR. It documents the progress made in cleaning up the Cuyahoga River in Ohio, USA, over the last 40 years. Amazingly, this river was so polluted in the 1960s and 70s it caught fire (more than once). Most fish couldn't survive in the water, and it would certainly have been foolish to swim in it. But media coverage led to environmental activism, which in turn spawned regulation and ultimately the birth of the Environmental Protection Agency - and the Cuyahoga got cleaned up. Now, people kayak up and down the river, which is filled with all kinds of fish. As the NPR article points out, the waters aren't pristine, but they are much healthier. It seems the public spotlight is quite an effective bleaching agent!

A very positive milestone has been reached in the name of environmental justice, as reported in Nigerian newspaper This Day. For more than a decade, the Ogoni tribe in the Niger Delta has struggled to protect their land and their people from the damage done by local oil exploration and extraction. In the 1980s and 1990s, local protesters - many of them targeting their ire at Shell as the major corporation operating in the region - had some success in attracting international attention, but were then suppressed by Colonel Sani Abacha's military regime. Ultimately, several protesters - including local leader Ken Saro-Wiwa - were tried and hanged, all as Shell turned a blind eye. Indeed, many have postulated that Shell gave a helping hand to the Nigerian authorities... We may never know the details. However, the families of the protesters have now secured something of a victory, following a 13-year attempt to take Shell to court under an ancient US federal law, now winning an out-of-court settlement of $15.5m. Saro-Wiwa's son and other plaintiffs will use some of the funds to establish a community trust for the Ogoni, which will support projects in areas such as education, agriculture and small enterprise development. It's not a huge amount of money, but it will help. Perhaps more important are the ramifications of this case across Nigeria and globally, as the concept of corporate social responsibility is reinforced and multinationals are shown not to be above the law. This is Saro-Wiwa's legacy.