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The combined effects of declining fertility and increased longevity have accelerated population aging in different parts of the world. Unlike other countries, Puerto Rico is also experiencing unprecedented levels of working-age out-migration. The full impact of high out-migration on Puerto Rican demography is not fully understood. Placing Puerto Rico’s aging process in an international context is useful in identifying the role out-migration is having on the accelerated aging of the Puerto Rican society. Using the World Population Prospects 2019 estimates, we compared the pattern of rapid aging found for Puerto Rico with the trajectories of six other countries with the highest population of 65+ in the World, Europe, and the Caribbean from 1960 to 2020. Prior to 2010, the aging process in Puerto Rico was comparable to the other countries. After 2010, the percent of the population over 65 years in Puerto Rico nearly doubled from 13.1% to 21%. The nearly doubling of the percent of older adults is not observed in any of the comparison countries. We find that the rapid aging of Puerto Rico, changing from a linear trend to an exponential one, is a result of accelerating levels of out-migration, which is concentrated in the working-age population.

Novel coronavirus respiratory disease COVID-19 has caused havoc in many countries across the globe. In order to contain infection of this highly contagious disease, most of the world population is constrained to live in a complete or partial lockdown for months together with a minimal human-to-human interaction having far reaching consequences on countries' economy and mental well-being of their citizens. Hence, there is a need for a good predictive model for the health advisory bodies and decision makers for taking calculated proactive measures to contain the pandemic and maintain a healthy economy. This paper extends the mathematical theory of the classical Susceptible-Infected-Removed (SIR) epidemic model and proposes a Generalized SIR (GSIR) model that is an integrative model encompassing multiple waves of daily reported cases. Existing growth function models of epidemic have been shown as the special cases of the GSIR model. Dynamic modeling of the parameters reflect the impact of policy decisions, social awareness, and the availability of medication during the pandemic. GSIR framework can be utilized to find a good fit or predictive model for any pandemic. The study is performed on the COVID-19 data for various countries with detailed results for India, Brazil, United States of America (USA), and World. The peak infection, total expected number of COVID-19 cases and thereof deaths, time-varying reproduction number, and various other parameters are estimated from the available data using the proposed methodology. The proposed GSIR model advances the existing theory and yields promising results for continuous predictive monitoring of COVID-19 pandemic.

To date, very few treatments have been demonstrated to reduce the burden of morbidity and mortality from COVID-19. Although corticosteroids have been proven to reduce mortality in severe disease, there has been little convincing evidence on interventions that may prevent disease, reduce hospitalizations, and reduce the numbers of people progressing to critical disease and death. Ivermectin is a well-known medicine that is approved as an antiparasitic by the World Health Organization and the US Food and Drug Administration. It is widely used in lowand middle-income countries to treat worm infections. Also used for the treatment of scabies and lice, it is one of the World Health Organization’s Essential Medicines.1 With total doses of ivermectin distributed apparently equalling one-third of the present world population,1 ivermectin at the usual doses (0.2–0.4 mg/kg) is considered extremely safe for use in humans.1 In addition to its antiparasiticactivity, it has been noted to have antiviral and anti-inflammatory properties, leading to an increasing list of therapeutic indications. South African authorities approved the use of a drug used to control parasites in humans and livestock to treat coronavirus patients. Additionally, in January 2021, the South African Health Products Regulatory Authority (SAHPRA) announced that ivermectin, would be allowedfor use on compassionate grounds in a controlled-access program. Ivermectin locally has been used for the prevention and/or management of Covid-19 infection. This has resulted in a huge black market trade of ivermectin in South Africa as many health professionals and others have taken to social media and other platforms to profile this drug as an effective treatment for the covid-19 viral infection. Roman and colleagues (2021)1 conducted a systematic review and meta-analysis to evaluate treatment effects of Ivermectin (IVM) on clinical outcomes and adverse events (AEs) in people with COVID-19.

Two-thirds of the world population do not have access to safe, affordable and timely surgery. This global surgical crisis largely affects low and middle-income countries, and it will surpass the challenges created by communicable diseases. The barriers of access to surgery range from cost of surgery and patient transportation to availability and quality of surgical infrastructure and providers. Mercy Ships is a Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO) providing free world-class life-saving and life-transforming surgery to the poorest of the poor in West Africa. In order to address barriers to access surgical assessment and care, Mercy Ships switched from centralised patient selection mainly in port cities or capitals to decentralised selection strategy staffed by experienced nursing teams travelling to remote locations nearer to patients' homes. In this way, the under-served rural population is given equal opportunity to access Mercy Ships’ free specialised surgical services. In each country served by the Mercy Ships, a 5 year country engagement program is created to focus on improving the quality of life for people living with disease, disfigurement and disability through free direct medical service to reduce the burden of unmet surgical needs. Moreover, our Medical Capacity Building teams concentrate in improving infrastructure and quality control, equipment donation and maintenance. Lastly, Mercy Ships partner with government and policy makers to improve and strengthen their local surgical care delivery system as an indispensable part of the healthcare system. In this vast sea of global surgical crisis, the vision of the Mercy Ships is to eradicate the ‘disease of poverty’ and effectively do itself out of a job. Mercy Ships' new and the world's largest (37,000 ton) purpose-built hospital ship, the Global Mercy, is joining our current ship, the Africa Mercy (16,500 ton) to save lives and to strengthen local surgical care service. This will more than double our capacity and impact in sub-Saharan Africa following COVID-19 pandemic. Moreover our state-of-art on-board simulation laboratories and traditional practical training of local healthcare providers will further enhance and build their medical capacity. The Global Mercy will become the largest floating and training platform to train next generation African medical and health care professionals so that they can save countless lives by training others in the future. We therefore invite you to partner with us in bringing hope and healing to the forgotten poor in West Africa.

Aims: To review the patterns of early-onset (

The concept of smart cities is driven by the need to enhance citizens' quality of life. It is estimated that 70% of the world population will live in urban areas by 2050. The electric grid is the energy backbone of smart city deployments. An electric energy system immune to adverse events, both cyber and physical risks, and able to support the integration of renewable sources will drive a transformational development approach for future smart cities. This article describes how the future electric energy system with 100% electricity supply from renewable energy sources requires the “birth of security and resiliency” incorporated with its ecosystem.

The Anthropocene can be read as being the era when the demand humanity makes on the biosphere’s goods and services—humanity’s ‘ecological footprint’—vastly exceeds its ability to supply it on a sustainable basis. Because the ‘ecological’ gap is met by a diminution of the biosphere, the inequality is increasing. We deploy estimates of the ecological gap, global GDP and its growth rates in recent years, and the rate at which natural capital has declined, to study three questions: (1) at what rate must efficiency at which Nature’s services are converted into GDP rise if the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals for year 2030 are to be sustainable; (2) what would a sustainable figure for world population be if global living standard is to be maintained at an acceptably high level? (3) What living standard could we aspire to if world population was to attain the UN’s near lower-end projection for 2100 of 9 billion? While we take a global perspective, the reasoning we deploy may also be applied on a smaller scale. The base year we adopt for our computations is the pre-pandemic 2019.

Population forecasts are used by governments and the private sector for planning, with horizons up to about three generations (around 2100) for different purposes. The traditional methods are deterministic using scenarios, but probabilistic forecasts are desired to get an idea of accuracy, assess changes, and make decisions involving risks. In a significant breakthrough, since 2015, the United Nations has issued probabilistic population forecasts for all countries using a Bayesian methodology that we review here. Assessment of the social cost of carbon relies on long-term forecasts of carbon emissions, which in turn depend on even longer-range population and economic forecasts, to 2300. We extend the UN method to very-long range population forecasts by combining the statistical approach with expert review and elicitation. While the world population is projected to grow for the rest of this century, it will likely stabilize in the 22nd century and decline in the 23rd century.

Since the outbreak of the novel coronavirus (covid-19) pandemic from China in 2019, it has left the world leaders in great confusing due to its fast-paced propagation and spread that has left infected a world population of over Eleven Million persons with over five hundred and thirty four thousand deaths and counting with the United States of America, Brazil, Russia, India and Peru in the lead on these death toll. The pandemic whose increased mortality rate is targeted at ‘aged’ citizens, patients with low immunology as well as patients with chronic diseases and underlying health conditions. Study models covid-19 pandemic via a susceptible-infect-remove actor-based graph, with covid-19 virus as the innovation diffused within the social graph. We measure the rich connective patterns of the actor-based graph, and explore personal feats as they influence other nodes to adopt or reject an innovation. Results shows current triggers (lifting of inter-intra state migration bans) and shocks (exposure to covid-19 by migrants) will lead to late widespread majority adoption of 23.8-percent. At this, the death toll will climb from between 4.43-to-5.61-percent to over 12%.

As of September 2021, 117 COVID-19 vaccines are in clinical development, and 194 are in preclinical development as per the World Health Organization (WHO) published draft landscape. Among the 117 vaccines undergoing clinical trials, the major platforms include protein subunit; RNA; inactivated virus; viral vector, among others. So far, USFDA recognized to approve the Pfizer-BioNTech (Comirnaty) COVID-19 vaccine for its full use in individuals of 16 years of age and older. Though the approved vaccines are being manufactured at a tremendous pace, the wealthiest countries have about 28% of total vaccines despite possessing only 10.8% of the total world population, suggesting an inequity of vaccine distribution. The review comprehensively summarizes the history of vaccines, mainly focusing on vaccines for SARS-CoV-2. The review also connects relevant topics, including measurement of vaccines efficacy against SARS-CoV-2 and its variants, associated challenges, and limitations, as hurdles in global vaccination are also kept forth.

Despite the numerous strides that have been made towards ensuring food security since the launch of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the gap between the rich and poor across and within countries is still worryingly too large. Around 57.7% of the Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) population is food insecure compared to 26.4% of the world population. It is therefore necessary to make concerted efforts to improve food security in Sub-Saharan Africa and the rest of the developing world particularly among the poorest and most vulnerable groups. This paper employs propensity score matching analysis to explore gender heterogeneity in the impact of bonding and bridging social capital on household food security on the basis of a nationally representative sample of Zimbabwean households. It offers five major findings. First, female headed households are more likely to have bonding social capital than their male counterparts. Second, there are no gender differences in the household’s ability to possess bridging social capital. Third, household spatial proximity to households with social capital improves the probability of the household possessing social capital. Fourth, both bonding and bridging social capital improves household food security. Finally, female headed households are more able to increase food security than those headed by males when they have both bonding and bridging social capital. The study argues that coping strategies should target putting the family at the core of inclusive development agendas such as food and nutrition assistance programmes in order to maximise the likelihood of easing food insecurity within communities.

It is a grand challenge to ensure the food security for a predicted world population of exceeding 9.7 billion by 2050, especially in an era of global climate change, land degradation and biodiversity loss. Current agricultural productions are mainly relying on synthetic chemical fertilisers to boost plant productivity but have undesirable effects on the environment and soil biodiversity. A promising direction in sustainable agriculture is to harness naturally occurring processes of beneficial plant-associated microbiomes to ensure sustained crop production and global food security. Despite the significant progress made in the development of beneficial microbes as inoculants to enhance plant performance, challenges remain with the translation of knowledge of plant and soil microbiomes to successful microbial products in the agricultural sector. Here, we highlight how fertilizer technology should be renovated by harnessing microbiome-based innovations to promote plant productivity and contribute to the end of hunger.