Hot off the press: ebola structure and sick pigs
Iremember as I struggled through my PhD in the 1980s wondering what the lab next door was up to as I never saw anyone there in a lab-coat. No-one there struggled with vast cell cultures to get a few ug of material as I did or God forbid had to proactively source chicken hearts from…
Millennium development goals: the LIDC conference
Measles deaths are sharply down according to the recently released Millennium Development Goals Report 2008. But are they? At a recent conference at the London International Development Centre (LIDC): No goals at half time: what next for the millennium development goals, Professor Kim Mulholland of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine took issue…
Save the Guinea worm?
Earlier in December I came across this blog entry about the Guinea worm, a parasite you really don't want to be infected with. For more information about it, follow the link in the previous sentence, or this one about efforts by the Carter Center (founded by former US President Jimmy Carter) to eradicate it. The…
Unforseen effect of the credit crunch?
I didn't expect this one but it makes sense. West Nile virus infections are up in California. The (possible) reason: unmaintained swimming pools, according to a paper in Emerging Infectious Diseases.
People still eat sugar in a recession
Last week I went for my annual trip to the London Docklands for the International Sugar Organization seminar about the economics of the sugar industry. Despite the world’s economic problems, the sugar industry doesn’t seem too gloomy. Although Michael Whitehead of Rabobank said that the capital-intensive nature of the sugar industry would cause problems —…
Neglected diseases at the APHA conference
Professor Peter Hotez told some shocking truths in his talk about neglected tropical diseases at the APHA conference in San Diego this week. Some of these diseases are taking hold in the southern USA.
The next Green Revolution
A few months ago, in the ‘silly season’ of summer, we were fretting about the future of food – how we were ever going to produce enough to feed and fuel the world, whether we were all going to be subsisting on fermented barley sludge and have to give up milk. Since then, I’ve been…
A new deadly virus
As the world’s attention has been focussed on the global financial crisis, little notice has been taken of the emergence of a new deadly disease in southern Africa. In September a woman tourist guide living near Lusaka, Zambia was evacuated to South Africa in a critical state. Her symptoms included fever myalgia, vomiting, diarrhoea, followed…
World Food Day – What’s the Point?
Today, October the 16th, is World Food Day. As it was last year. As it will be next year. But, does having a day dedicated to the world’s food security problems do any good? I ask myself.
Pedal Power Purification
[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-U-mvfjyiao&color1=0xb1b1b1&color2=0xcfcfcf&hl=en&fs=1] I saw this over on Slashdot – a prototype solution to the developing world problems of transporting water from the source to the home, and purification to drinkable standards. The Aquaduct concept bike was developed for the Innovate or Die contest.