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Moderate malnutrition killing millions of children annually

About 90 percent of child deaths worldwide occur in just 42 countries — and about one-fourth of these deaths occur before age 5 in the poorest countries, such as Angola and Niger. Yet, 8 million of the 11 million childhood deaths worldwide each year could easily be prevented, says a Cornell University expert, writing in the authoritative medical journal The Lancet . That’s because almost 60 percent of deaths of children under 5 in the developing world are due to malnutrition and its interactive effects on preventable diseases.

'Selfish routing' slows the Internet

The Tragedy of the Commons , as explained by Garrett Harding in his classic 1968 book, is that self-interest can deplete a common resource. It seems this also applies to the Internet and other computer networks, which are slowed by those who hurry the most. Fortunately, say computer scientists at Cornell University in Ithaca, N.Y. , there is a limit to how bad the slowdown can get. And after developing tools to measure how much the performance of a particular network suffers, they say, the way to get improved performance on the Internet is the same as the way to maintain air and water quality: altruism helps.