Crowdsourced backend of the Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential
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Retinitis pigmentosa
Retinitis pigmentosa (RP) is commonly diagnosed during childhood or young adulthood. Night... -
Asthma
Asthma is a disease involving airway inflammation. It is characterised by airway...
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Environmental hazards of nuclear power production
The nuclear fuel cycle consists of the process of mining and milling of uranium, conversion to...
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Fire blight
Fire blight is a bacterial plant disease which attacks apple, pear and quince trees. The bacteria,... -
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is long-term psychological trauma following a life-... -
Fevers
Fever is a natural defense mechanism of the body to certain infections. -
Forgetfulness
Under normal circumstances, a thing is forgotten only by occupying the mind with something else...
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Lack of appreciation of cultural differences
The tendency to gloss over or ignore cultural differences gives rise to inadequate national and...
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Frustration
Generally speaking, frustration may be seen as a limiting case of conflict, with only one goal... -
Irresponsible experts
The conditions under which external experts are hired to give advice are such that usually they...
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Excessive reliance on mineral fertilizers
In developed countries, the consumption of meat and meat products has risen markedly. Animals... -
Emotional strain
Emotional stress is indicated under conditions of anger, fear, frustration, sadness, betrayal and... -
Invasive species
Biological diversity faces many threats throughout the world. One of the major threats to native...
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Underdevelopment of countries
Underdevelopment occurs when some resources are not used to their full socio-economic potential,... -
Health hazards of environmental degradation
Environmental degradation causes stress in individuals and groups, especially through a scarcity...
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Avascular necrosis
Osteonecrosis is defined as cell death in the marrow fat and mineralized tissue of the bone. It... -
Babesiosis
Babesiosis attacks cattle, causing high temperatures, constipation alternating with diarrhoea,... -
Kidnapping
Abducting another person, or having abducted another person continues to hold them is kidnapping.... -
Impropriety
Debates about public (and even private) morality are curiously selective. This is often not...
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Postal censorship
Censorship of mail may be carried out as a means of political control against political suspects or... -
Ovarian cancer
Ovarian cancer is a leading cause of cancer deaths in women women and has the highest mortality of... -
Violent sports fans
Wherever team sports are played, violence among the spectators is increasing, resulting in...
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Bribery
Bribery includes the offering, demanding, giving and receiving of any payments or gifts to a person... -
Traumatic injuries
Trauma is an externally caused injury to the human or animal organism. Depending on the duration...
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Debauchery
People have always craved for intense mental states, which are most easily gratified by induced... -
Bibliomania
The passionate desire to handle, possess and accumulate books. This can lead to the ruination of... -
Environmental hazards of pharmaceutical products
Pharmaceutical drugs given to people and to domestic animals - including antibiotics, hormones,...
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Polygamy
Polygyny is the system under which a man is married to two or more wives at the same time; it... -
Inadequate dietary fibre
People with diets low in amounts of insoluble fibre have a greater risk of colon-rectal cancer.... -
Type C viral hepatitis
Hepatitis C is a dangerous liver infection caused by the hepatitis C virus. It ranges in...
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Hyperlexia
Children with hyperlexia demonstrate an intense fascination with letters, numbers, patterns and... -
Laguna Negra virus
Laguna Negra virus is one of the hantaviruses which cause Hantavirus pulmonary syndrome (HPS)....
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Inadequate road maintenance
Sub-surface water may, by erosion or freezing and melting, cause cracks and breaks in roadways.... -
Bad weather
Bad weather is of considerable economic significance. The construction industry (road building...
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Abandoned elderly
Modern Western society and the nuclear family has "structured-out" the social role of elderly...
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Anorectal atresia
Anorectal atresia consists of absence of an anus ("imperforate anus") or a lack of passage through... -
Proliferation of lawyers
The number of lawyers is increasing in capitalist societies due to the promise of very high incomes... -
Industrial espionage
Industrial espionage aims at the covert gathering of information on rival enterprises'...
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Leprosy
Leprosy is a chronic communicable disease which affects particularly the nerves, the skin and...
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Injurious accidents
Accidents cause tremendous suffering and countless disabilities, are a major cause of death at all... -
Environmental impacts of coal mining
The mining of coal produces disturbance to surface land and its ecosystems (particularly in the... -
Escape from official detention
Escape is a person leaving official detention without authorization whether on his own or with the... -
Leishmaniasis
The leishmaniases are infections involving primarily the skin, mucous membranes, and certain...
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Rationalism
The rationalist believes in the use of reason rather than experience of spiritual revelation and... -
Children of alcoholics
Children of alcoholic parents often display abnormal social behaviour. One in four become...
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Official secrecy
Data of special government interest may be considered unsuitable for public disclosure. The...
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Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome
The features of Klippel-Trenaunay-Weber syndrome are large cutaneous hemangiomata with hypertrophy... -
Inadequate fiscal policies
The growth of expenditures followed by increasing gaps in the availability of resources have... -
Abuse of human growth hormone
In the USA, doctors have been known to prescribe human growth hormone to children in shortest 3% of... -
Vasculitis
Vasculitis is nflammation of a blood vessel or blood vessels
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Business bankruptcy
Adverse economic conditions or various forms of unnatural trade competition may force otherwise...
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Injuries
Wounds are mechanical injuries to organic tissues with disruption of the continuity of such... -
Candidosis
Candida albicans is a yeast that is is part of the normal flora of the vagina, lower...
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Chronic bronchitis
Chronic bronchitis is a chronic or recurrent cough together with expectoration occurring on most... -
Inequitable distribution of wealth
The unequal ownership of wealth – houses, real estate, stocks, bonds and personal possessions – ...
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Irresponsible introduction of exotic species of insects
Man has managed to distribute insects around the world more effectively than with any other...
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Sexual molestation of children
Sexual abuse is the involvement of dependent, developmentally immature children and adolescents in... -
Damage to goods
The retailer, wholesaler, manufacturer and customer lose from having merchandise damaged. Goods can... -
Threatened family farms
Although the vital economic and social importance of family farming is now realized to a greater... -
Unavailability of building materials
The scarcity of building materials affects development plans in other sectors, including... -
Abuse of state immunity
There are two different legal approaches to the state immunity: restrictive, which grants immunity... -
Illicit use of gamma-hydroxybutyrate (GHB)
Gamma hydroxybutyrate is a medicine originally designed as a pre-operative anaesthetic and...
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Censorship
Censorship may involve restrictions on expression, or the public availability of books,...
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Double mindedness
In the disease of double personality two defined selves in turn struggle for the possession of the... -
Solid wastes
Solid wastes include domestic refuse and other discarded solid materials, such as those from... -
Behcet's disease
Behçet's disease is a complex, multisystem, inflammatory disease classically characterized by...
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Melanoma
Melanoma is a skin cancer but can quickly spread to other parts of the body. The cancer is usually... -
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia cannot be precisely defined because of the diversity of manifestations, courses...
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Health hazards of aluminium
While it is a common ingredient in the earth’s crust, aluminium is bound mostly to silica in...
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Mustard gas
Mustard gas (HD) can cause itching and a painful inflammation similar to sunburn, large water-...
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Workers uninterested in production
Often those least interested in participation in production unit decision-making are the workers... -
Common cold
The various viral infections of the respiratory tract referred to as colds, and their...
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Protectionism in agriculture and the food production industries
All industrialized countries continue to protect their agricultural sectors against competitive... -
Dermatosclerosis
This form of scleroderma occurs on the face and hands, where it produces scar tissue that tightens... -
Anaemia
Anaemia, sometimes known as blood deficiency, is defined as a condition in which the concentration... -
Friedreichs ataxia
Friedreichs ataxia is a hereditary disease resembling loco-motor ataxia and due to degenerative... -
Radioactive wastes
Radioactive wastes present special public health problems that are not common to other wastes...
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Environmental impacts of gold mining
Gold mining releases more mercury than all mercury mining and disposal combined. -
Hooliganism
Hooliganism can be defined as wanton destruction of property or injury to persons, sometimes...
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Shipping risk
The risk of cargo not being delivered, not being delivered on time or being delivered damaged is... -
Drug-assisted rape
Drug-assisted rape is pre-mediated rape. It often happens in an informal social setting, such...
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Heart disorders
Many general diseases affect the heart and can be classified according to the part of the heart...
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Parental punishment
Some parents may choose to punish their children by physically hitting them, either with the...
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Dermatomyositis
Dermatomyositis (DM) has its onset any time from childhood to late adulthood. There is weakness of... -
Grave robbery
Graves have been robbed of their valuables for centuries. The practice of burying valuables with... -
Mediterranean fruit fly
The Mediterranean fruit fly or Medfly, as it is commonly known is one of the world's most dreaded... -
Gender abortions
Amniocentesis and sex determination tests have been used to inform parents of the sex of their...
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Stomatitis
Stomatitisis inflammation of the mouth, usually with sores or ulcers. The causes are many. One is... -
Denial of access to people in need
In the case of conflicts within a country, the civilian population and refugees displaced within... -
Hay fever
Rhinitis caused by an allergic reaction. This often has a seasonal component or specific inciting... -
Traumatic amputation
Limb amputation may occur due to accident. Limbs that commonly are amputated accidentally are the... -
Road traffic accidents
The mortality and morbidity rates from road traffic accidents are increasing annually in nearly...
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Indecent art
Indecent art is any depiction of obscene or indecent material, including by not limited to... -
Smoke as a pollutant
A cloud of fine particles suspended in a gas, usually as the result of the incomplete burning of... -
Environmental pollution
Human activities inevitably and increasingly introduce material and energy into the environment...
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Forest decline
Boreal and temperate forests are not necessarily declining in total extent, but they are subject...
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Abusive treatment of the aged
Abuse of an elderly person in many cases remains a silent affliction, as the victim is often kept... -
Unproductive subsistence agriculture
Subsistence agriculture is characterized by extremely limited capital resources, constancy in...
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Demons
Disembodied entities, believed to be malevolent unless appropriately propitiated.
The Encyclopedia of World Problems and Human Potential was initiated in 1972 following a collaboration between two international non-profits, the Union of International Associations (UIA) and Mankind 2000. It is the result of an ambitious effort to collect and present information on the problems humanity is confronted with, as well as the challenges such problems pose to societies' values, development strategies and concept formation.
The online version of the resource is currently undergoing significant transformation, and the publishing model is changing in exciting new ways. The main points are:
- Whilst the above NGOs remain equal copyright holders of the data, it is becoming possible for partners to re-publish any content on presentation sites under a Creative Commons licence (CC BY-SA)
- Content of the database is being made centrally editable at edit.ewphp.org — to allow content changes on this site to propagate to any and all presentation sites
Please feel free to get in touch if you want to know more about the project, the ongoing transformation, or if you aspire to join the volunteer team as a database editor, presentation site developer or any other skill you feel might benefit the project!
News
- March 2016: An initial version of an API that allows retrieval and licensed re-use of the data is ready at demo.ewphp.org. We are currently working with selected developers, and a first public implementation of the API is taking shape as well. News about launch of both will follow soon!
- June 2015: Read the paper and presentation "Loop Mining in the Encyclopedia of World Problems" prepared for the 17th International Futures Conference "Futures Studies Tackling Wicked Problems" in Turku, Finland, 11-12. June 2015 — www.futuresconference.fi/2015