Developing world articles within Nature Communications

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  • Article
    | Open Access

    The El Nino Southern Oscillation (ENSO) influences the weather around the world and, therefore, has strong impacts on society. Here, the authors show that ENSO is associated with child nutrition in many countries, with warmer El Niño conditions leading to more child undernutrition in large parts of the developing world.

    • Jesse K. Anttila-Hughes
    • , Amir S. Jina
    •  & Gordon C. McCord

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Household air pollution derived from cooking fuels is a major source of health and environmental problems. Here, the authors provide detailed global, regional and country estimates of cooking fuel usage from 1990 to 2030 and project that 31% of people will still be mainly using polluting fuels in 2030.

    • Oliver Stoner
    • , Jessica Lewis
    •  & Heather Adair-Rohani

  • Article
    | Open Access

    This study combines ethnobotanical and epidemiological data to understand how social networks of seed exchange influence the genetic structure of the African cassava mosaic virus in Gabon. Results reveal contrasted patterns of viral diversity in patrilineal and matrilineal communities, consistent with cultural differences in modes of seed exchange.

    • Marc Delêtre
    • , Jean-Michel Lett
    •  & Charles Spillane

  • Article
    | Open Access

    India’s national school feeding program is the largest of its kind in the world, but the long-term program benefits on nutrition are unknown. Here, the authors show intergenerational program benefits, in that women who received free meals in primary school have children with improved linear growth.

    • Suman Chakrabarti
    • , Samuel P. Scott
    •  & Daniel O. Gilligan

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Adverse climatic conditions are commonly reported to shape asylum migration, but their effect relative to other drivers is unknown. Here the authors compare climatic, economic, and political factors as predictors of future asylum flows to the EU and find that war and repression are the most important factors.

    • Sebastian Schutte
    • , Jonas Vestby
    •  & Halvard Buhaug

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Gymnosperm sapwood is an abundantly available material to construct water filters but the material’s behaviour as a filter is poorly understood and challenges such as short shelf live have not been addressed. Here, the authors develop guidelines for the design and fabrication of xylem filters and demonstrate gravity-operated filters with a shelf life of more than two years for the removal of contaminants from spring, tap and ground water.

    • Krithika Ramchander
    • , Megha Hegde
    •  & Rohit Karnik

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Digital contact tracing is increasingly considered as one of the tools to control infectious disease outbreaks, in particular the COVID-19 epidemic. Here, the authors present a modeling framework informed by empirical high-resolution contact data to analyze the impact of digital contact tracing apps.

    • G. Cencetti
    • , G. Santin
    •  & B. Lepri

  • Article
    | Open Access

    As countries experience economic growth, diversification of economic activities may occur. Here, the authors develop a probabilistic model to examine the diversification of economic activities and how countries may move from small ecosystem products to advanced product clusters over time.

    • Neave O’Clery
    • , Muhammed Ali Yıldırım
    •  & Ricardo Hausmann

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antimicrobial resistance is a major global health threat and its development is promoted by antibiotic misuse. Here, the authors present an offline smartphone application for automated and standardized antibiotic susceptibility testing, to be deployed in resource-limited settings.

    • Marco Pascucci
    • , Guilhem Royer
    •  & Mohammed-Amin Madoui

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Incidence of COVID-19 has been high in parts of South America including Brazil, and information on effective intervention strategies is needed. Here, the authors use mathematical modelling to show that reductions in social distancing should be made gradually to avoid a severe second peak of cases.

    • Osmar Pinto Neto
    • , Deanna M. Kennedy
    •  & Renato Amaro Zângaro

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Urban development has dramatically increased in recent decades. Analyzing 841 large cities throughout the world for the period from 2001 to 2018, the authors disclosed uneven features of global urbanization in terms of urban expansion, population growth, and greening at different economic levels.

    • Liqun Sun
    • , Ji Chen
    •  & Dian Huang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Wheat yield is sensitive to temperature, but there could be substantial variation in this response across cultivars. Here the authors present data on the climatic responses of wheat cultivars in South Africa, highlighting which cultivars might be better able to maintain yield under warming.

    • Aaron M. Shew
    • , Jesse B. Tack
    •  & Petronella Chaminuka

  • Comment
    | Open Access

    Climate science and climate economics are critical sources of expertise in our pursuit of the Sustainable Development Goals. Effective use of this expertise requires a strengthening of its epistemic foundations and a renewed focus on more practical policy problems.

    • David A. Stainforth
    •  & Raphael Calel

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The systemic risk of real-world financial networks is understudied. Here the authors focused on the guarantee network among Chinese firms and found that the global financial crisis during 2007-2008 and economic policies in the aftermath had significant influence on the evolution of guarantee network structure.

    • Yingli Wang
    • , Qingpeng Zhang
    •  & Xiaoguang Yang

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Floods are an important natural disaster on the Indonesian island of Sumatra, but their driving mechanisms are not well understood. Here, the authors utilize data from twitter messages and local newspaper reports to show that convectively coupled Kelvin waves play a key role in promoting floods on Sumatra.

    • Dariusz B. Baranowski
    • , Maria K. Flatau
    •  & Marzuki

  • Perspective
    | Open Access

    The AI for Social Good movement aims to apply AI/ML tools to help in delivering on the United Nations’ sustainable development goals (SDGs). Here, the authors identify the challenges and propose guidelines for designing and implementing successful partnerships between AI researchers and application - domain experts.

    • Nenad Tomašev
    • , Julien Cornebise
    •  & Claudia Clopath

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Evaluating the heat risk among city dwellers is important. Here, the authors assessed the heat risk in Philippine cities using remote sensing data and social-ecological indicators and found that the cities at high or very high risk are found in Metro Manila, where levels of heat hazard and exposure are high.

    • Ronald C. Estoque
    • , Makoto Ooba
    •  & Shogo Nakamura

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Market integration may loosen the dense kinship networks maintaining high fertility among agriculturalists, but data are lacking. Here, Colleran shows that in 22 rural Polish communities, women’s ego networks are less kin-oriented, but not less dense, as market integration increases, potentially enabling low fertility values to spread.

    • Heidi Colleran

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Spread of antimicrobial-resistant (AR) bacteria is a global concern, but contributing factors remain unclear. Here, authors analyze distribution of AR bacteria in households from three ethnic groups in Tanzania and find that livelihood factors are more strongly associated with AR prevalence than antibiotic use.

    • Murugan Subbiah
    • , Mark A. Caudell
    •  & Douglas R. Call

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Diabetic eye disease is a cause of preventable blindness and accurate and timely referral of patients with diabetic macular edema is important to start treatment. Here the authors present a deep learning model that can predict the presence of diabetic macular edema from color fundus photographs with superior specificity and positive predictive value compared to retinal specialists.

    • Avinash V. Varadarajan
    • , Pinal Bavishi
    •  & Dale R. Webster

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Here, Nelson et al. use amplicon next-generation sequencing of two P. falciparum polymorphic gene regions to investigate the genetic similarity of parasite populations across time and space in a pediatric cohort in Kenya. They identify both micro- and macro-scale structuring of malaria parasites in this high-transmission setting, which could inform future intervention strategies.

    • Cody S. Nelson
    • , Kelsey M. Sumner
    •  & Wendy P. O’Meara

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Invasive non-typhoidal Salmonella (iNTS) infections are dominated by antibiotic resistant isolates of the sequence type (ST) 313. Here, the authors identify the ST313 sublineage II.1 in the Democratic Republic of the Congo exhibiting extensive drug resistance and genetic signatures potentially associated with host adaptation.

    • Sandra Van Puyvelde
    • , Derek Pickard
    •  & Stijn Deborggraeve

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Antivenoms, obtained by venom immunization, have narrow species coverage due to low immunogenicity of venom neurotoxins. Here the authors immunize horses with a designed recombinant consensus neurotoxin, and the resulting antisera protect mice from envenomation by a broad spectrum of elapid snakes.

    • Guillermo de la Rosa
    • , Felipe Olvera
    •  & Gerardo Corzo

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Residential solid fuel use constitutes a large amount of air pollution but has been gradually replaced by other cleaner energy during the past three decades. Here the authors investigated the contribution of rural residential sector to ambient PM2.5 pollution and the resulting climate forcing and health impacts, and find that the remaining large quantities of solid fuels used in rural households are still a major contributor to ambient air pollution despite of decrease in its pollutant emissions and relative contribution to PM2.5 due to the clean energy transition.

    • Guofeng Shen
    • , Muye Ru
    •  & Shu Tao

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Type 2 diabetes (T2D) is prevalent in populations worldwide, however, mostly studied in European and mixed-ancestry populations. Here, the authors perform a genome-wide association study for T2D in over 5,000 sub-Saharan Africans and identify a locus, ZRANB3, that is specific for this population.

    • Adebowale A. Adeyemo
    • , Norann A. Zaghloul
    •  & Charles N. Rotimi

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Foreign aid is necessary to control tropical diseases in endemic countries. Here the authors outline the steps taken to control malaria in Africa since 2000 and present an economic model to propose that US$25−30 per capita will be needed to avoid a disease trap.

    • Eric Maskin
    • , Célestin Monga
    •  & Jean-Claude Berthélemy

  • Article
    | Open Access

    There have been growing concerns about the exploitation of workers in the fisheries sectors. Here, Tickler et al. use a country-level metric of slavery to determine the risk of fisheries-level slavery across 20 countries, and find it rises as unreported catch increases and mean value of catch decreases.

    • David Tickler
    • , Jessica J. Meeuwig
    •  & Dirk Zeller

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The decision when to stop an intervention is a critical component of parasite elimination programmes, but reliance on surveillance data alone can be inaccurate. Here, Michael et al. combine parasite transmission model predictions with disease survey data to more reliably determine when interventions can be stopped.

    • Edwin Michael
    • , Morgan E. Smith
    •  & Frank O. Richards

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Degradation—the loss of carbon stored in intact woodland—is very difficult to measure over large areas. Here, the authors show that carbon emissions from degradation in African woodlands greatly exceed those from deforestation, but are happening alongside widespread increases in biomass in remote areas.

    • Iain M. McNicol
    • , Casey M. Ryan
    •  & Edward T. A. Mitchard

  • Article
    | Open Access

    The rapid growth of South–South trade reflects a new phase of globalization. Here the authors show that some energy-intensive production activities, particularly raw materials and intermediate goods, and related CO2 emissions are relocating from China and India to other developing countries.

    • Jing Meng
    • , Zhifu Mi
    •  & Steven J. Davis

  • Article
    | Open Access

    Inundation and erosion could make many atoll islands uninhabitable over the next century. Here the authors present an analysis of change in the atoll nation of Tuvalu that shows a 2.9% increase in land area over the past four decades, with 74% of islands increasing in size, despite rising sea levels.

    • Paul S. Kench
    • , Murray R. Ford
    •  & Susan D. Owen

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