DARPA is investigating handheld UV laser devices to help soldiers detect biological and chemical weapons from a safe distance. But when they master that technology, it won’t just be used on the battlefield; it could also help public health workers detect and track outbreaks of communicable diseases. Fighting flu with lasers? This really is the future.
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For years, Sabra Klein has been trying to start a conversation about sex. The Johns Hopkins immunologist studies why women have stronger immune systems than men—a phenomenon that underlies the fact that women are three times more likely to develop autoimmune diseases—but are also better protected by vaccines. The latter, however, has gotten very little attention from vaccine makers or doctors.
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It’s that time again — that time when dozens of spurious articles pop up all over the web touting all the dangers of the flu vaccine. Articles on unreliable, alarmist, misinformative sites like Natural News, Mercola, chiropractic blogs and other such sites rail against the “toxins” in the vaccine, or claim the flu vaccine doesn’t work, or that it causes this or that horrible disease, or that the flu itself just really isn’t all that bad. (I’m not going to link to any of them. They get too much attention as it is.)
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At the end of World War I, tens of millions of people died in just a few short years. But these deaths had nothing to do with the bullets and bayonets that had taken so many lives in battle. It was, instead, the Spanish Flu, which killed off about 5% of the world’s population from 1918 until 1920. Were a similar pandemic to hit today, one of the things we’d need to rethink is how we use our phones.
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Google Science Fair 2013 came to a close yesterday, as 15 young scientists aged between 13 and 18 demonstrated their projects in front of Google’s expert panel. With over a thousand submissions worldwide, only four entrants were able to take home prizes, but it was 17-year-old Eric Chen who walked away with the biggest prize. By combining computer modeling and biological studies, Chen’s research focused on leads for a “new type of anti-flu medicine” to help fight the spread of the influenza virus. Australian Viney Kumar and Canadian Ann Makosinski took home awards for an early warning app for oncoming emergency vehicles and a flashlight that operates without batteries or moving parts, respectively. This year, voters got the chance to affect the outcome, awarding a new prize to Elif Bilgin, from Istanbul, who showed it was possible to create plastic from banana peel. Each winner took home a trophy built from Lego, as well as prizes from National Geographic and Scientific American. Chen, however, walked away with a $50,000 scholarship, a trip to the Galapagos Islands and his school gets both $10,000 and a Hangout with the boffins at CERN. Well deserved, we’d say.
Source: Official Google Blog
A team of British scientists just took a major stride forward in the quest to develop a universal flu vaccine. Using data gathered after the 2009 swine flu outbreak, the team from the Imperial College London have a game plan to develop a vaccine that stands to save as many as half a million lives every year.
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The internet is often awash with news of new types of flu—spread from pigs, birds and all kinds of other creatures—but it’s not easy to tell which ones you should really be worried about. Fortunately, this visualization explains exactly which strains you can pick up, and just how dangerous they are. More »
There’s a lot of nasty, virulent bugs going around this year. Colds and flus are putting people out of commission for weeks on end. This means that by now one of your friends has told you to drink some whiskey because that’ll knock the cold right out. More »
In January 2012 scientists around the world halted research on engineered avian flu viruses over concerns that the work was too dangerous. Now, those scientists are taking to labs once more to continue their work. More »
In case you hadn’t heard, pretty much everyone in America has the Flu right now. It’s bad for economic productivity—unless you work in the food delivery business, in which case, the listless and miserable are a boon for business. The online food ordering service Seamless reports huge month-over-month increases in some classic sick people cuisine. More »
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