The White House held a briefing this afternoon with the Secretary of Homeland
Security, Acting Director of CDC and Nat'l Security adviser to the President
in attendance. If you have been following this you wouldn't have learned
much, but the overall tone was one of serious concern but steady confidence.
It was good security theater, and I say that in a good way. Information was
divulged (judging from some of the press questions there was no danger over
estimating the knowledge of the audience) and a sensible plan described.
There are now officially 20 confirmed cases in the US in five states
(California, Texas, Ohio, New York, Kansas). The Department of Homeland
Security will be the lead agency (the incident command) for this, but the
health end will be taken by the Depa... (more)
In light of the recent assassination, by a member of a right wing Christian
anti-abortion cabal, of a physician who specialized in late term abortions,
it may be worth having a look this medical phenomenon.
Well, my blog colleague Monado contacted me a week ago or so and we discussed
this, and I felt that she should write up what she had, since she had done
some research. I would then hop... (more)
One of the major reasons for concern from presenters and conference
organisers about the notion of conference bloggers is that having unpublished
work discussed online may violate the embargo policies of journals and damage
their chances of publication.
We now have clarification of this issue from one major journal. Nature has an
editorial that continues its recent theme of encouraging sci... (more)
[Originally posted in April 2007]
One "trick" dieters often use is to put their food on a smaller plate. The
idea is to fool yourself into thinking you're eating more food than you
really are. But doesn't our stomach tell us how full we are?
Actually, it doesn't. Brian Wansink has devoted his career to studying how
perception of food intake relates to actual eating behavior. Together with ... (more)
SciAm ponders evidence that fish hatcheries are watering down the trout and
salmon gene pool.
Matt Yglesias looks at one of many lies being told by those opposing
health-care reform — confirming Salon's prediction that the opponents of
reform are not going to play nice. See also The American Prospect on How Big
Pharma Intends to Kill the Public Option. I should add this campaign is
havi... (more)
Swine influenza virus (referred to as SIV) refers to influenza cases that are caused by Orthomyxoviruses that are endemic to pig populations. SIV strains isolated to date have been classified either as Influenzavirus C or one of the various subtypes of the genus Influenzavirus A. The 2009 swine flu outbreak is the spread of a new strain of H1N1 influenza virus that was first detected by public health agencies in March 2009. Local outbreaks of influenza-like illness were detected in three areas in Mexico, but the presence of this new strain was not discovered for a full month. 
Keith Bergelt
Ricardo Aravena
Gaurav Mantri
Aditya Banerjee
John Karamitsos
Kaj van de Loo
Bob Little
Alois Reitbauer
Chris Schin
Richard Gordon
Anil Parambath
