A little of this, a bit of that

Laser pointers and cat variations

Bed bugs and the psychological effects of coping with them.  And ways to get rid of them.

Protecting our drinking water.  Cleaning plastic from our oceans.

Monsanto working hard to discredit scientists.

Mark Ruffalo, a true hulk.  Fear of powerful women.

Dutch sexuality education.

Interesting question and intriguing answers:  What has the internet made obsolete?

The awfulness of the 2000 presidential election revisited.

How can you tell if rocks were tools in prehistoric times?

The dangers of coal to our climate.  Ocean conservationist sounds a warning to Canada.

Eggs, chickens, and turkeys are going to become more expensive.

Wendell Potter explains the machinations of the health insurance companies.

Pesticides killing off the Monarch butterfly.

Ten poverty myths disproved.

New Bush, new lies about the Iraq War.

Preparing for the next pandemic

DemFromCT at Daily Kos has the links to the Flu Wiki and others that plan to use the internet to keep an eye on the bird flu and other deadly viruses, allowing us to figure out how prepare for the inevitable, track the pandemic's path, and how to cope during the actual event.



Not that I'm trying to scare you or anything....

Silent spring

And summer, fall and winter thanks to Avian flu and West Nile virus:

WASHINGTON, May 17 U.S. researchers have determined the West Nile virus has apparently caused the continental-scale decline of seven species of birds across North America.

The finding by Shannon LaDeau and colleagues at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington is said to be a stark example of the potential havoc that can be wreaked by invasive species, and should impact future conservation strategies.

Researchers used 26 years of Breeding Bird Survey data to determine the impact of the West Nile virus on 20 North American potential bird hosts. They found declines in seven species from four families, including the American crow population, which has dropped by 45 percent since the virus emerged.

If you see any dead birds and you feel it might be a disease that killed them, this site, although set up for tracking Avian flu, offers you a way to report it. A suggestion: Do not handle the dead bird without precautions.

The migratory routes of birds which may carry the virus:

Bird flu spreads around the globe

A Nigerian woman has become the first human to die from bird flu in sub-Saharan Africa.

The woman from Lagos was among four Nigerians suspected to have died from the H5N1 strain of bird flu, but tests on the three others proved inconclusive, a senior health official said.

The Lagos woman, who died of flu symptoms, tested positive for the H5N1 strain, Frank Nweke, Nigeria's information minister, said on Tuesday.

The disease was first found in poultry in Nigeria a year ago.

Nweke told a news conference: "Last night our team of 13 scientists were able to conclusively identify the case of avian influenza in a 22-year-old female who died in Lagos."

Abdulsalam Nasidi, a bird flu expert at the health ministry, said the three inconclusive cases were the mother of the confirmed case, a poultry worker in Taraba state and one person in Borno state.

The woman was one of 14 people, three of whom died, from whom samples were taken for tests that were concluded on Tuesday.

Samples are being sent to overseas laboratories for confirmation.

Nigeria is one of three countries regarded by experts as the weakest areas in the global attempt to stem the spread of the virus.

Bird flu has killed at least 164 people since it re-emerged in Asia in 2003, according to the most recent figures from the World Health Organisation. The toll includes 11 in Egypt.

Update 2/2: Bird Flu site tracking all articles.

Update 2/3: Bird flu in England. And the BBC has an excellent map of the spread of the flu.

Update 3/6:

LONDON, March 6 A British pharmaceutical firm says it has developed a bird flu vaccine that can provide protection against variants of the H5N1 avian influenza strain.

Real bird terrorism

for people and the poor birds:

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - South Korean quarantine officials are set to slaughter 273,000 poultry after an outbreak of the deadly H5N1 strain of bird flu, the Agriculture Ministry and health officials said Saturday.

The outbreak occurred at a chicken farm in Cheonan, about 60 miles south of Seoul, earlier this week, the fifth such outbreak since November, said Lee Joo-won, a ministry official.

"We plan to start slaughtering 273,000 poultry within a 500-meter radius of the outbreak site and destroying eggs as early as Saturday evening," Lee said.

The ministry also said it will make a decision whether to kill another 386,000 poultry on Sunday while limiting the movement of about 2.16 million chickens and ducks from 90 farms within a six-mile radius of the outbreak.

And then this:

LONDON (AP) - Mutations in the bird flu virus have been found in two infected people in Egypt, in a form that might be resistant to the medication most commonly used to treat the deadly disease, the World Health Organization said Thursday.

The mutations in the H5N1 virus strain were not drastic enough to make the virus infectious enough to spark a pandemic, WHO officials said. But more such mutations could prompt scientists to rethink current treatment strategies.

Samples taken from two bird flu patients in Egypt - a 16-year-old girl and her 26-year-old uncle - were not as responsive as regular H5N1 viruses to Tamiflu, a drug also know as oseltamivir that is used to treat the disease, the officials said

.

Well.. if it won't be global warming that kills off the wild birds, avian flu and pesticides will....

Remember those 63 dead birds in Austin?

Phila of Bouphonia put together these two articles for an..... interesting conclusion:
"In Austin, Texas - which happens to have been the site of LBL's recent microbe census - there was reportedly a small mishap with a container of genetically engineered avian flu:

Rather than waiting for the aerosolized flu to settle, the centrifuge had been immediately opened. In an invisible puff of air, virus particles wafted out of the machine. Now, the virus was floating around the whole lab, stirred by air movements, then slowing settling on exposed surfaces or being sucked out the exhaust which, hopefully, had effective HEPA filtration (the UT documents are silent on this item).

The recent die-off of Austin's birds is probably just a coincidence, but I'm guessing that people will get plenty of mileage out of that coincidence in the event of a flu pandemic."