B Boron

Pox Swap: 30 Years After the End of Smallpox, Monkeypox Cases Are on the Rise

Scientific American Topic - Vaccines — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

The ancient scourge smallpox was relegated to biowaste bin of history more than 30 years ago, the result of the world's first and only successful disease eradication programs. Since then, however, cases of monkeypox--a serious, although less severe smallpoxlike illness--have substantially increased in central Africa, according to a study published August 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The authors stress that better surveillance and a thorough assessment of the public health threat posed by this once-rare viral infection are needed.

"I'm concerned about monkeypox," says Don Burke director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the study. "It isn't going to emerge as pandemic tomorrow, but could at any time start to increase its transmission. It's worrisome. This is the type of warning siren we need to take very seriously."

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Africa - University of Pittsburgh - Smallpox - Central Africa - Public health

Pox Swap: 30 Years After the End of Small Pox, Monkey Pox Cases Are on the Rise

Scientific American Topic - Vaccines — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

The ancient scourge small pox was relegated to biowaste bin of history more than 30 years ago, the result of the world's first and only successful disease eradication programs. Since then, however, cases of monkey pox--a serious, although less severe small pox–like illness--have substantially increased in central Africa, according to a study published August 30 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences . The authors stress that better surveillance and a thorough assessment of the public health threat posed by this once-rare viral infection are needed.

"I'm concerned about monkey pox," says Don Burke director of the Center for Vaccine Research at the University of Pittsburgh, who wasn't involved in the study. "It isn't going to emerge as pandemic tomorrow, but could at any time start to increase its transmission. It's worrisome. This is the type of warning siren we need to take very seriously."

[More]

Africa - University of Pittsburgh - Smallpox - Central Africa - Public health

Cubicle, Sweet Cubicle: The Best Ways to Make Office Spaces Not So Bad (preview)

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Once upon a time the factory, with its dirty, noisy machinery, was the standard workplace of industrialized nations; today it’s the office. Hundreds of millions of people--at least 15 percent of the population in developed countries--work at a desk, with or without a partition that separates them from the desks of their co-workers. That’s an awful lot of swivel chairs.

But a cubicle is more than a mere physical workspace. In recent years social and organizational psychologists have begun to amass evidence that the character of people’s personal work environments affects their performance in profound and surprising ways. The size of our desks, our proximity to natural light, the quality of the air we breathe and our privacy (or lack thereof)--all are major predictors of our comfort, our contentment and our productivity.

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Cubicle - Furniture - Business - Office Products - Shopping

Best Defenses against Cyber Bullies

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Imagine being twelve years old. Imagine coming home after school and finding your big sister’s lifeless body hanging from a rafter in your home’s stairwell. Phoebe Prince’s little sister did not have to imagine this scenario, because she lived it. She arrived home after school in South Hadley, Mass., last January 14 and discovered that her sister had committed suicide by hanging herself, a result of enduring extreme and relentless bullying at the hands of her peers. [More]

Bullying - Suicide - South Hadley Massachusetts - South Hadley High School - South Hadley

Best Defenses Against Cyber Bullies

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 17:00:00 +0000

Imagine being twelve years old. Imagine coming home after school and finding your big sister’s lifeless body hanging from a rafter in your home’s stairwell. Phoebe Prince’s little sister did not have to imagine this scenario, because she lived it. She arrived home after school in South Hadley, Massachusetts, last January 14 and discovered that her sister had committed suicide by hanging herself, a result of enduring extreme and relentless bullying at the hands of her peers. [More]

Bullying - Suicide - South Hadley Massachusetts - South Hadley High School - South Hadley

Reefs at risk: Roundup at the not-so-OK coral corral

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Tue, 24 Aug 2010 12:00:00 +0000

Coral, the reef-building organisms responsible for some of the oceans' most vital ecosystems, are in trouble around the world because of climate change, ocean acidification and human interference. But lots of people are also trying to save coral reefs before it's too late. Here's a roundup of some of the latest research into this important class of organism.

Some of the worst news comes out of Indonesia, where the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) found that rising surface water temperatures have created a large-scale bleaching event in the local coral. Bleaching occurs when environmental factors stress the living organisms residing within coral reefs, causing them to either leave their reef structures or die. As a result, reefs turn white. WCS marine biologists found that at least 60 percent of the area's coral reefs, and 80 percent of some coral species in the region, have bleached and died following a 4-degree Celsius rise in water temperatures. Bleached coral reefs cannot support the variety of marine life that depend on coral for their survival. That, in turn, affects the ability of people to fish for their livelihoods around those reefs.

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Coral reef - Wildlife Conservation Society - Climate change - Coral bleaching - Indonesia

No Easy Pieces: Sloan Telescope Builders Battled Moths, Balky Software and Broken Mirrors

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 16:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: The following is an excerpt from A Grand and Bold Thing: An Extraordinary New Map of the Universe Ushering In a New Era of Discovery by Ann Finkbeiner (on sale August 17 from Free Press). The book chronicles the development of the Sloan Digital Sky Survey, an influential astronomical survey that has charted the position of hundreds of thousands of galaxies and turned up large numbers of distant quasars. The excerpt below details some of the problems encountered by Princeton University astronomer Jim Gunn, the project's leader, and "French" Leger, an engineer at the University of Washington in Seattle (UW), in preparing the telescope at Apache Point Observatory in New Mexico for the survey . [More]

Sloan Digital Sky Survey - Astronomy - New Mexico - Princeton University - Apache Point Observatory

Psychedelic Drugs Show Promise as Antidepressants

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:01:00 +0000

Ketamine --a powerful anesthetic for humans and animals that lists hallucinations among its side effects and therefore is often abused under the name Special K--delivers rapid relief to chronically depressed patients, and researchers may now have discovered why. In fact, the latest evidence reinforces the idea that the psychedelic drug could be the first new drug in decades to lift the fog of depression. [More]

Mental health - Major depressive disorder - Psychedelic drug - Health - Disorders

Psychedelic Drugs Show Promise as Anti-Depressants

Scientific American Topic - Stress — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 20:01:00 +0000

Good Riddance to Polio: A Conquered Disease Still Clings to Life

Scientific American Topic - Vaccines — Wed, 18 Aug 2010 14:00:00 +0000

Editor's note: This story is part of a series of online exclusives about natural phenomena and human endeavors we'd like to see come to an end. They are connected with the September 2010 special issue of Scientific American called " The End ". [More]

Poliomyelitis - Infectious disease - Health - Conditions and Diseases - Viral