Day: 08/03/2014

Ebola virus disease

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Key facts

  • Ebola virus disease (EVD), formerly known as Ebola haemorrhagic fever, is a severe, often fatal illness in humans.
  • EVD outbreaks have a case fatality rate of up to 90%.
  • EVD outbreaks occur primarily in remote villages in Central and West Africa, near tropical rainforests.
  • The virus is transmitted to people from wild animals and spreads in the human population through human-to-human transmission.
  • Fruit bats of the Pteropodidae family are considered to be the natural host of the Ebola virus.
  • Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. No licensed specific treatment or vaccine is available for use in people or animals.

Ebola first appeared in 1976 in 2 simultaneous outbreaks, in Nzara, Sudan, and in Yambuku, Democratic Republic of Congo. The latter was in a village situated near the Ebola River, from which the disease takes its name.

Genus Ebolavirus is 1 of 3 members of the Filoviridae family (filovirus), along with genus Marburgvirus and genus Cuevavirus. Genus Ebolavirus comprises 5 distinct species:

  • Bundibugyo ebolavirus (BDBV)
  • Zaire ebolavirus (EBOV)
  • Reston ebolavirus (RESTV)
  • Sudan ebolavirus (SUDV)
  • Taï Forest ebolavirus (TAFV).

BDBV, EBOV, and SUDV have been associated with large EVD outbreaks in Africa, whereas RESTV and TAFV have not. The RESTV species, found in Philippines and the People’s Republic of China, can infect humans, but no illness or death in humans from this species has been reported to date.

Transmission

Ebola is introduced into the human population through close contact with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected animals. In Africa, infection has been documented through the handling of infected chimpanzees, gorillas, fruit bats, monkeys, forest antelope and porcupines found ill or dead or in the rainforest.

Ebola then spreads in the community through human-to-human transmission, with infection resulting from direct contact (through broken skin or mucous membranes) with the blood, secretions, organs or other bodily fluids of infected people, and indirect contact with environments contaminated with such fluids. Burial ceremonies in which mourners have direct contact with the body of the deceased person can also play a role in the transmission of Ebola. Men who have recovered from the disease can still transmit the virus through their semen for up to 7 weeks after recovery from illness.

Health-care workers have frequently been infected while treating patients with suspected or confirmed EVD. This has occurred through close contact with patients when infection control precautions are not strictly practiced.

Among workers in contact with monkeys or pigs infected with Reston ebolavirus, several infections have been documented in people who were clinically asymptomatic. Thus, RESTV appears less capable of causing disease in humans than other Ebola species.

However, the only available evidence available comes from healthy adult males. It would be premature to extrapolate the health effects of the virus to all population groups, such as immuno-compromised persons, persons with underlying medical conditions, pregnant women and children. More studies of RESTV are needed before definitive conclusions can be drawn about the pathogenicity and virulence of this virus in humans.

Signs and symptoms

EVD is a severe acute viral illness often characterized by the sudden onset of fever, intense weakness, muscle pain, headache and sore throat. This is followed by vomiting, diarrhoea, rash, impaired kidney and liver function, and in some cases, both internal and external bleeding. Laboratory findings include low white blood cell and platelet counts and elevated liver enzymes.

People are infectious as long as their blood and secretions contain the virus. Ebola virus was isolated from semen 61 days after onset of illness in a man who was infected in a laboratory.

The incubation period, that is, the time interval from infection with the virus to onset of symptoms, is 2 to 21 days.

Diagnosis

Other diseases that should be ruled out before a diagnosis of EVD can be made include: malaria, typhoid fever, shigellosis, cholera, leptospirosis, plague, rickettsiosis, relapsing fever, meningitis, hepatitis and other viral haemorrhagic fevers.

Ebola virus infections can be diagnosed definitively in a laboratory through several types of tests:

  • antibody-capture enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA)
  • antigen detection tests
  • serum neutralization test
  • reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) assay
  • electron microscopy
  • virus isolation by cell culture.

Samples from patients are an extreme biohazard risk; testing should be conducted under maximum biological containment conditions.

Vaccine and treatment

No licensed vaccine for EVD is available. Several vaccines are being tested, but none are available for clinical use.

Severely ill patients require intensive supportive care. Patients are frequently dehydrated and require oral rehydration with solutions containing electrolytes or intravenous fluids.

No specific treatment is available. New drug therapies are being evaluated.

Natural host of Ebola virus

In Africa, fruit bats, particularly species of the genera Hypsignathus monstrosus, Epomops franqueti and Myonycteris torquata, are considered possible natural hosts for Ebola virus. As a result, the geographic distribution of Ebolaviruses may overlap with the range of the fruit bats.

Ebola virus in animals

Although non-human primates have been a source of infection for humans, they are not thought to be the reservoir but rather an accidental host like human beings. Since 1994, Ebola outbreaks from the EBOV and TAFV species have been observed in chimpanzees and gorillas.

RESTV has caused severe EVD outbreaks in macaque monkeys (Macaca fascicularis) farmed in Philippines and detected in monkeys imported into the USA in 1989, 1990 and 1996, and in monkeys imported to Italy from Philippines in 1992.

Since 2008, RESTV viruses have been detected during several outbreaks of a deadly disease in pigs in People’s Republic of China and Philippines. Asymptomatic infection in pigs has been reported and experimental inoculations have shown that RESTV cannot cause disease in pigs.

Prevention and control

Controlling Reston ebolavirus in domestic animals

No animal vaccine against RESTV is available. Routine cleaning and disinfection of pig or monkey farms (with sodium hypochlorite or other detergents) should be effective in inactivating the virus.

If an outbreak is suspected, the premises should be quarantined immediately. Culling of infected animals, with close supervision of burial or incineration of carcasses, may be necessary to reduce the risk of animal-to-human transmission. Restricting or banning the movement of animals from infected farms to other areas can reduce the spread of the disease.

As RESTV outbreaks in pigs and monkeys have preceded human infections, the establishment of an active animal health surveillance system to detect new cases is essential in providing early warning for veterinary and human public health authorities.

Reducing the risk of Ebola infection in people

In the absence of effective treatment and a human vaccine, raising awareness of the risk factors for Ebola infection and the protective measures individuals can take is the only way to reduce human infection and death.

In Africa, during EVD outbreaks, educational public health messages for risk reduction should focus on several factors:

  • Reducing the risk of wildlife-to-human transmission from contact with infected fruit bats or monkeys/apes and the consumption of their raw meat. Animals should be handled with gloves and other appropriate protective clothing. Animal products (blood and meat) should be thoroughly cooked before consumption.
  • Reducing the risk of human-to-human transmission in the community arising from direct or close contact with infected patients, particularly with their bodily fluids. Close physical contact with Ebola patients should be avoided. Gloves and appropriate personal protective equipment should be worn when taking care of ill patients at home. Regular hand washing is required after visiting patients in hospital, as well as after taking care of patients at home.
  • Communities affected by Ebola should inform the population about the nature of the disease and about outbreak containment measures, including burial of the dead. People who have died from Ebola should be promptly and safely buried.

Pig farms in Africa can play a role in the amplification of infection because of the presence of fruit bats on these farms. Appropriate biosecurity measures should be in place to limit transmission. For RESTV, educational public health messages should focus on reducing the risk of pig-to-human transmission as a result of unsafe animal husbandry and slaughtering practices, and unsafe consumption of fresh blood, raw milk or animal tissue. Gloves and other appropriate protective clothing should be worn when handling sick animals or their tissues and when slaughtering animals. In regions where RESTV has been reported in pigs, all animal products (blood, meat and milk) should be thoroughly cooked before eating.

Controlling infection in health-care settings

Human-to-human transmission of the Ebola virus is primarily associated with direct or indirect contact with blood and body fluids. Transmission to health-care workers has been reported when appropriate infection control measures have not been observed.

It is not always possible to identify patients with EBV early because initial symptoms may be non-specific. For this reason, it is important that health-care workers apply standard precautions consistently with all patients – regardless of their diagnosis – in all work practices at all times. These include basic hand hygiene, respiratory hygiene, the use of personal protective equipment (according to the risk of splashes or other contact with infected materials), safe injection practices and safe burial practices.

Health-care workers caring for patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola virus should apply, in addition to standard precautions, other infection control measures to avoid any exposure to the patient’s blood and body fluids and direct unprotected contact with the possibly contaminated environment. When in close contact (within 1 metre) of patients with EBV, health-care workers should wear face protection (a face shield or a medical mask and goggles), a clean, non-sterile long-sleeved gown, and gloves (sterile gloves for some procedures).

Laboratory workers are also at risk. Samples taken from suspected human and animal Ebola cases for diagnosis should be handled by trained staff and processed in suitably equipped laboratories.

WHO response

WHO provides expertise and documentation to support disease investigation and control.

Recommendations for infection control while providing care to patients with suspected or confirmed Ebola haemorrhagic fever are provided in: Interim infection control recommendations for care of patients with suspected or confirmed Filovirus (Ebola, Marburg) haemorrhagic fever, March 2008. This document is currently being updated.

WHO has created an aide–memoire on standard precautions in health care (currently being updated). Standard precautions are meant to reduce the risk of transmission of bloodborne and other pathogens. If universally applied, the precautions would help prevent most transmission through exposure to blood and body fluids.

Standard precautions are recommended in the care and treatment of all patients regardless of their perceived or confirmed infectious status. They include the basic level of infection control—hand hygiene, use of personal protective equipment to avoid direct contact with blood and body fluids, prevention of needle stick and injuries from other sharp instruments, and a set of environmental controls.

Table: Chronology of previous Ebola virus disease outbreaks

 

Year Country Ebolavirus species Cases Deaths Case fatality
2012 Democratic Republic of Congo Bundibugyo 57 29 51%
2012 Uganda Sudan 7 4 57%
2012 Uganda Sudan 24 17 71%
2011 Uganda Sudan 1 1 100%
2008 Democratic Republic of Congo Zaire 32 14 44%
2007 Uganda Bundibugyo 149 37 25%
2007 Democratic Republic of Congo Zaire 264 187 71%
2005 Congo Zaire 12 10 83%
2004 Sudan Sudan 17 7 41%
2003 (Nov-Dec) Congo Zaire 35 29 83%
2003 (Jan-Apr) Congo Zaire 143 128 90%
2001-2002 Congo Zaire 59 44 75%
2001-2002 Gabon Zaire 65 53 82%
2000 Uganda Sudan 425 224 53%
1996 South Africa (ex-Gabon) Zaire 1 1 100%
1996 (Jul-Dec) Gabon Zaire 60 45 75%
1996 (Jan-Apr) Gabon Zaire 31 21 68%
1995 Democratic Republic of Congo Zaire 315 254 81%
1994 Cote d’Ivoire Taï Forest 1 0 0%
1994 Gabon Zaire 52 31 60%
1979 Sudan Sudan 34 22 65%
1977 Democratic Republic of Congo Zaire 1 1 100%
1976 Sudan Sudan 284 151 53%
1976 Democratic Republic of Congo Zaire 318 280 88%

For more information contact:

WHO Media centre
Telephone:  +41 22 791 2222
E-mail: mediainquiries@who.int

Quick video games ‘benefit children’

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Picture of a child playing video games
Three out of four young people said they played video games every day
Playing video games for a short period each day could have a small but positive impact on child development, a study by Oxford University suggests.

Scientists found young people who spent less than an hour a day engaged in video games were better adjusted than those who did not play at all.

But children who used consoles for more than three hours reported lower satisfaction with their lives overall.

The research is published in the journal Pediatrics.

Experimental psychologist Dr Andrew Przybylski analysed British surveys involving 5,000 young people aged 10 to 15 years old.

Social interactions

Some 75% of those questioned said they played video games daily.

Children were asked to quantify how much time they spent gaming on a typical school day – using consoles or computers.

They then rated a number of factors, including:

“Start Quote

Being engaged in video games may give children a common language”

Dr Andrew PrzybylskiUniversity of Oxford

  • Satisfaction with their lives
  • How well they got on with peers
  • How likely they were to help people in difficulty
  • Levels of hyperactivity and inattention

The answers were combined to assess levels of psychological and social adjustment.

When compared with all other groups, including those who played no video games at all, young people reporting under an hour of play each day were most likely to say they were satisfied with their lives and showed the highest levels of positive social interactions.

The group also had fewer problems with emotional issues and lower levels of hyperactivity.

According to the results, people who spent more than three hours playing games were the least well adjusted.

‘Digital world’

Dr Przybylski says there may be numerous reasons behind this.

He told the BBC: “In a research environment that is often polarised between those who believe games have an extremely beneficial role and those who link them to violent acts, this research could provide a new, more nuanced standpoint.

“Being engaged in video games may give children a common language.

“And for someone who is not part of this conversation, this might end up cutting the young person off.”

He argues that policies and guidelines that impose limits on the use of this technology need to take such evidence into account.

Dr Przybylski points out that though the effect of video games on children is statistically significant in this study, factors such as the strength of family relationships play a larger role.

Dr Iroise Dumontheil, of Birkbeck, University of London, who was not involved in the research, said: “Other studies have shown that playing first-person shooter games, but not other types, can lead to increased visuospatial processing and memory abilities.

“Further research would help to determine whether particular types of game help or hinder adolescents as they adjust to the changes they experience during development.”

Birds beat machines in hover test

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When it comes to flight, nature just has the edge on  engineers.

This is according to a study comparing hummingbirds with one of the world’s most advanced micro-helicopters.

Researchers found that – in terms of the power they require to lift their weight – the best hummingbird was over 20% more efficient than the helicopter.

The “average Joe” hummingbird, however, was on par with the helicopter, showing “how far flight engineering has come”.

The findings are published in the Royal Society journal Interface.

Lead researcher Prof David Lentink, from Stanford University in California, explained that the flight performance of a hummingbird – the only bird capable of sustained hovering – was extremely difficult to measure.

“Imagine a 4g bird,” he said. “The forces they generate are tiny.

Flapping and flying

Moth in flight (c) SPL

As birds and insects move through the air, their wings are held at a slight angle, which deflects the air downward.

This deflection means the air flows faster over the wing than underneath, causing air pressure to build up beneath the wings, while the pressure above the wings is reduced. It is this difference in pressure that produces lift.

Flapping creates an additional forward and upward force known as thrust, which counteracts the insect’s weight and the “drag” of air resistance.

The downstroke or the flap is also called the “power stroke”, as it provides the majority of the thrust. During this, the wing is angled downwards even more steeply.

You can imagine this stroke as a very brief downward dive through the air – it momentarily uses the creature’s own weight in order to move forwards. But because the wings continue to generate lift, the creature remains airborne.

In each upstroke, the wing is slightly folded inwards to reduce resistance.

  • “As a result the drag of a hummingbird wing has never been measured accurately.”

Drag is the force opposing the upward force of lift that birds’ wings generate by flapping.

Prof Lentink and his team wanted to understand if feathered hummingbird wings were more efficient – using less power to overcome drag – than the engineered blades of a helicopter of a similarly tiny scale.

He and his colleagues compared the birds’ performance to an advanced micro-drone called the Black Hornet – a 16g helicopter used for surveillance by British troops in Afghanistan.

To make the laboratory measurements, they used wings from hummingbird specimens kept in museums.

By putting these detached wings into an apparatus called a wing spinner, the team was able to measure exactly how much flapping power was required to lift the bird’s weight.

Prof Lentink’s colleagues at the University of British Columbia in Canada also made recordings of wild hummingbirds in flight, to measure the exact movement of their wings – which beat up to 80 times per second.

“By combining the wings’ motion with the drag [that we measured in the lab], we were able to calculate the aerodynamic power hummingbird muscles need to provide to sustain hover,” explained Prof Lentink.

One species – the Anna’s hummingbird – was champion hoverer, performing much more efficiently than the helicopter.

But on average, the birds hovering performance was “on par with the helicopter”.

“This shows that if we design the wings well, we can build drones that hover as efficiently, if not more efficiently, as hummingbirds,” said Prof Lentink.

“Clearly we are not even close to hummingbirds in many other design metrics, such as wind gust tolerance, visual flight control through clutter, to name a few.

Dr Mirko Kovac from Imperial College explains how drones whose design is inspired by nature are set to become part of our everyday lives

“But if we focus on aerodynamic efficiency, we are closer than we perhaps ever imagined possible.”

Dr Mirko Kovac from the aerial robotics lab at Imperial College London said the study was a great example of research at the interface of biology and engineering.

“Studying hummingbird wing shapes can not only give insights into the biomechanics of animals,” he told BBC News, “but the gained insights can also be used to build the next generation of flying micro robots.”

Tablet screens to correct sight loss

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computer glasses
The new development might mean the end of glasses at a computer

Engineers have developed a prototype tablet display that compensates for an individuals’ vision problems.

The system uses software to alter the light from each individual pixel on the screen, based on the person’s glasses prescription.

The researchers also added a thin plastic pin hole filter to enhance the sharpness of the image.

The team say the technology could help millions who need corrective lenses to use their digital devices.

Around one person in three in the UK suffers from short-sightedness or myopia. In the US, around 40% while in Asia it is more than half the population.

“Start Quote

Instead of relying on optics to correct your vision, we use computation”

Fu-Chung Huang,University of California

In recent years there have been a number of projects that have attempted to use computing screens to correct vision problems.

The authors of this latest study say their prototype offers “significantly higher contrast and resolution compared to previous solutions”.

Follow the light

The team from the University of California, Berkeley, working with colleagues at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), developed an algorithm that adjusts the intensity of each direction of light that emanates from a single pixel in an image, based on the user’s specific visual impairment.

Their prototype used an iPod, with a printed pinhole mask attached to the screen. To check the images, the researchers used a digital single-lens reflex (DSLR) camera which was set up to simulate a person who was farsighted.

blur
On the right is a computer simulation of the best picture quality possible using the new prototype display

The altered images from the iPod appeared sharp and clear to the camera, showing that the prototype was effective in correcting this sight issue.

“The significance of this project is that, instead of relying on optics to correct your vision, we use computation,” said lead author Fu-Chung Huang. “This is a very different class of correction, and it is non-intrusive.”

The research team believe that their idea, when refined further, could be of benefit to people who suffer from more difficult-to-treat vision issues.

“We now live in a world where displays are ubiquitous, and being able to interact with displays is taken for granted,” said Prof Brian Barsky, from UC Berkeley, the project leader.

“People with higher order aberrations often have irregularities in the shape of the cornea, and this irregular shape makes it very difficult to have a contact lens that will fit.

“In some cases, this can be a barrier to holding certain jobs because many workers need to look at a screen as part of their work. This research could transform their lives.”

Battery question

It should be stressed that while the research is at a very early stage, the engineers behind it the approach believe it has great potential, in the field of visual correction and beyond.

They envisage displays that users with different visual problems can view at the same time and see a sharp image.

“In the long run we believe that flexible display architectures will allow for multiple different modes, such as glass free 3D image display, vision corrected 2D image display and combinations of vision corrected and 3D image displays,” the authors write.

No consideration has been given, at this stage, to the impact such a system might have on the battery life of digital devices. This could also be an important factor going forward.

Minister wants end to animal testing

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Norman Baker

The minister in charge of regulating animal experiments in the UK has said he wants to see an end to all testing.

Lib Dem MP Norman Baker – a longstanding anti-vivisection campaigner – said a ban on animal testing “would not happen tomorrow”.

But he claimed the government was moving in the right direction.

The coalition is committed to reducing the number of live animal experiments – but animal rights campaigners say they have broken that promise.

Mr Baker, who as crime prevention minister at the Home Office has responsibility for regulating the use of animals in science, said he was trying to persuade the industry to accept the economic case for ending tests.

“I am firmly of the belief it is not simply a moral issue but that we as a nation can get a strategic advantage from this – something that will be good for the economy,” Mr Baker told BBC News.

“I have been encouraging the industry to come up with alternatives to animal testing.”

‘Privacy clause’

The scientific community says research on live animals is vital to understanding disease and has resulted in new vaccines and also treatments for cancer, Parkinson’s disease, asthma and HIV – but opponents say it is cruel and pointless, as alternative research methods are available.

Mr Baker has also promised legislation before the next election to increase transparency – potentially giving the public the chance to obtain details about what happens to animals in laboratories.

At the moment, the Home Office blocks requests for data on research contracts and the justification for using live animals as the issue is exempt from the Freedom of Information Act.

Laboratory mice

Researchers are protected by a “privacy clause” in Section 24 of the Animals (Scientific Procedures) Act 1986.

Mr Baker has carried out a review of the Section 24 following a high profile campaign by the National Anti-Vivisection Society and celebrities including Joanna Lumley and Eddie Izzard.

In a statement, Mr Baker said: “The coalition government is committed to enhancing openness and transparency about the use of animals in scientific research to improve public understanding of this work. It is also a personal priority of mine.

“The consultation on Section 24 of the Animals in Science Act has now concluded and we are currently analysing responses in preparation for pursuing potential legislative change.”

The number of experiments on animals in the UK increased by 52% between 1995 and 2013, according to official statistics.

Latest figure show show 4.12 million procedures were carried out with animals in 2013, a rise of 0.3% on the previous year.

‘Suffer and die’

There was a 6% increase in breeding genetically modified animals and a 5% decrease in other procedures.

Mice, fish and rats were the most commonly used species in 2013, with 3.08 million procedures carried out on them.

Animal stats
The rise in the total number of procedures was 0.03% between 2012 and 2013

There was an increase in testing of guinea pigs (+13,602); sheep (+2,919); rabbits (+1,233); pigs (+350); gerbils (+279); monkeys (+216) and reptiles (+183).

But there was a fall in experiments on birds (-13,259); amphibians (-3,338); cattle (-1,167); goats (-969) and hamsters (-354).

British Union for the Abolition of Vivisection chief executive Michelle Thew said: ‘We continue to be disappointed that the government has failed to deliver on its 2010 pledge to reduce animal experiments and to end the use of animals to test household products.

“Millions of animals continue to suffer and die in our laboratories.

“The UK should be leading the way in reducing animal testing, yet we remain one of the world’s largest users of animals in experiments and the numbers continue to rise.

“We have, however, been encouraged by recent statements from Home Office Minister, Norman Baker, that increased transparency regarding animal experiments will be dealt with within this Parliament.”

But Chris Magee, of the Understanding Animal Research campaign, expressed reservations about Mr Baker’s call for an end to testing.

He said: “I think we all agree that alternatives should be developed and used wherever possible, and it should be noted that more than 15,000 fewer animals were used in 2013 than 2012. It is already against the law to use an animal for research if there’s an alternative method available.

“We should also be clear that it is illegal to test cosmetics or their ingredients on animals. Experiments are for medical, scientific, veterinary and environmental research, and over half of experiments are the breeding of genetically altered animals, mainly mice.

“We have long argued for increased funding for developing alternatives and reform of Section 24, however a hurdle to the minister’s vision may be that a great deal of research is about discovering how biological systems work in the first place. You cannot simulate the unknown.”

Nasa rover to make oxygen on Mars

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Nasa rover
Instruments on the new rover will sample the planet’s geology and atmosphere as well as making 3D movies

Nasa’s next Martian rover will attempt to make oxygen on the surface of the red planet when it lands there in 2021.

The rover will carry seven scientific projects, aimed at paving the way for future manned missions, seeking evidence of life and storing samples to be brought back in the future.

Among them is a device for turning the CO2 that dominates the thin Martian air into oxygen.

This could support human life or make rocket fuel for return missions.

The rover will also carry two cameras and an experimental weather station among its 88lb (40kg) of instruments.

“This is a really exciting day for us,” said astronaut and Nasa administrator John Grunsfeld, announcing the Mars 2020 scientific payload in Washington DC.

Mars 2020 rover

Curiosity rover
  • Planned launch in July/August 2020
  • Expected to land in 2021 after eight to nine month cruise
  • Total weight approximately 2,094lb (950kg)
  • Payload of seven scientific instruments weighing 88lb (40kg), worth $130m
  • Closely modelled on Curiosity (illustrated above)

The one-tonne, $1.9bn (£1.12bn) vehicle will be closely modelled on Curiosity, the rover that touched down on the red planet in August 2012.

Its suite of instruments is downsized compared to Curiosity, which is carrying 165lb (75kg) of scientific kit. Some of that space will be used to package up cylindrical rock samples drilled from the planet’s surface.

Nasa hopes these can be shipped home by future return flights.

Being able to produce oxygen could help with that ambition, since transporting fuel is heavy and expensive. Other Nasa spacecraft can already produce oxygen from CO2 but the new “MOXIE” device will test this capability in the Martian atmosphere, for the first time.

An oxygen supply would also be essential if people were to land on the planet.

Immersive images

This change in focus was described as a “shift in gears” by Prof Tom Pike from Imperial College, London, the co-investigator of the “MOXIE” instrument.

“It is very much about the old Star Trek ‘boldly going’, the real focus of this payload is exploration rather than science,” he told BBC News.

“There are not very many places that humans can go after the Moon. I would say it’s practically a list of one and Mars is it!”

Mars base artwork
Could Mars support human life?

Also on board the 2020 rover will be a ground-penetrating radar for analysing the planet’s geology, two arm-mounted gadgets for analysing the chemistry and structure of soil and rocks, and two cameras.

In another first, the cameras are designed so that in a particular configuration they will be able to record 3D movies.

“You’re going to feel like you’re on Mars,” said Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of the human exploration directorate at Nasa.

The announcement comes in the same week that Nasa’s earlier Mars rover, Opportunity, clocked up a record-breaking total of 20 miles (40km) of extra-terrestrial driving since its landing in 2004.

The French spy who wrote Planet of the Apes

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Before the newly released Dawn of the Planet of the Apes film, there was a long franchise going back to the first Apes movie – the 1968 classic with Charlton Heston. But before that there was the book.

Pierre Boulle

Today few people have heard of Pierre Boulle. He was the French author who first had the brilliant idea of humans travelling in time and stumbling on ape civilisation. It was in his 1963 novel La Planete des Singes (Planet of the Apes).

But there’s more. It turns out that Pierre Boulle was also the man behind another cinema great – none other than The Bridge on the River Kwai. A book on the face of it so quintessentially British – about a British colonel and his conception of duty and honour. How on earth could it have been written by a Frenchman? And how did that same Frenchman then move from wartime adventure to the world of science fiction for his second Hollywood triumph?

Pierre Boulle died in Paris in 1994, after a writing career that spanned more than 40 years and resulted in some 30 novels and collections of short stories.

But it was his life before taking up the pen that shaped his literary outlook. From the mid-1930s he was a rubber planter for a British company in Malaysia. And in World War Two he served as an undercover agent for the Special Operations Executive (SOE).

For The Bridge on the River Kwai he was writing of a world he knew well.

Image from the film Bridge on the River Kwai

“Pierre Boulle was profoundly Anglophile,” says Jean Loriot, who heads the Association of Friends of Pierre Boulle.

“In the Far East he worked alongside English people. He was impregnated by English culture. He admired the English greatly. And when he came to write he made many of his heroes English.”

The Bridge on the River Kwai was Boulle’s third novel. The first two – William Conrad, and The Malay Spell – were named in deliberate homage to his two literary inspirations: Joseph Conrad and Somerset Maugham.

For this third book, Boulle wanted to explore the psychology of the ultra-correct Col Nicholson (played by Alec Guinness in the film), but also to raise questions about the relative value systems of the Japanese and British minds.

The opening words are: “Maybe the unbridgeable gulf that some see separating the western and the oriental souls are nothing more than a mirage?… Maybe the need to ‘save face’ was, in this war, as vital, as imperative, for the British as it was for the Japanese.”

Much later, Boulle wrote a short autobiography called The Sources of the River Kwai in which he described his own experience in the war.

In Singapore in 1941 he signed up to the Free French, and was seconded to what became known as Force 136. This was the British SOE operation in South East Asia.

Singapore in 1941At the time, Singapore was the major British base in South East Asia

At a place called The Convent, he was put through a training course in which “serious gentlemen taught us the art of blowing up a bridge, attaching explosives to the side of a ship, derailing a train, as well as that of despatching to the next world – as silently as possible – a night-time guard”.

After various missions in Burma and China, Boulle – now with the English covername Peter John Rule – was told to make his way by river to Hanoi, in Vichy-controlled Indochina.

With help from villagers he built a raft from bamboo and floated downstream. At a place called Laichau he was spotted and brought to the local French commander. Deciding on the spur of the moment to come clean, he told the commander he was from the Free French with instructions to make contact with sympathetic Vichy officials.

Unfortunately the commander was not one of them. Boulle was sentenced to forced labour for life. He spent the next two years in jail in Hanoi before escaping near the end of the war.

“The experience was seminal for Boulle,” says Loriot. “When he came to Indochina he thought he was on the good side. But then a Frenchman arrested him and said, “No you are not.”

“It drove home a point about the relativity of good and evil, which is the theme of all his works. What is good is good only in a certain context. Not necessarily universally.”

The Bridge on the River Kwai is also noteworthy for having a different ending from the film. In the book, the bridge is not blown up. It survives as a monument to Col Nicholson’s doggedness. It was the Americans in Hollywood who insisted on a more dramatic – and uplifting – end.

Boulle did not make much of a fuss over the change to his book. He was a youngish writer, happy to get the royalties. Several years later it happened again with The Planet of the Apes.

Charlton Heston in Planet of the Apes

In Boulle’s original book the story is told by two honeymooners holidaying in space, who find a bottle containing a manuscript. It is by a French journalist who tells of his adventures on a planet run by monkeys, where the humans are the dumb animals.

At the end of the account, the journalist arrives back at Orly airport in Paris where he finds the staff… are apes. And there is a kicker when we discover the two honeymooners are themselves chimpanzees.

The one moment the book does not contain is possibly the most memorable point of the film – the discovery at the end of the half-buried Statue of Liberty.

In the film, this communicates the astounding fact that the travellers have fast-forwarded in time, and that they are back on Earth – an Earth devastated by nuclear war, in which the apes have emerged as the new dominant species.

In Boulle’s book, the events take place not on Earth but on a distant planet. (In fact the 2001 film remake by Tim Burton was closer to the book’s plot.)

“It is a big difference. In the film there is this sense of human responsibility. It is man that has led to the destruction of the planet,” says Clement Pieyre, who catalogued Boulle’s manuscripts at the French National Library.

“But the book is more a reflection on how all civilisations are doomed to die. There has been no human fault. It is just that the return to savagery will come about anyway. Everything perishes,” he says.

Boulle’s work divides pretty neatly into two genres – the wartime stories and the science fiction.

“I think the link between the two types is that in each of them Boulle puts his heroes in situations of discomfort and sees how they cope. He pushes them to extremes,” says Pieyre.

Pierre Boulle

Boulle writes in simple French, and his books are made easier to read by a strong narrative flow (generally not a strength among modern French writers).

He was a scientist by training. According to Loriot, there is a “remorseless logic to his stories. In fact he wrote the concluding page first and then worked backwards to construct the way to that conclusion.”

After the war, Boulle had an “epiphany”, according to Loriot, and dedicated the rest of his life to writing. He came to Paris, where he lived with his beloved sister and niece. Loriot is the widowed husband of Boulle’s niece.

When Boulle died, Loriot and his wife took possession of a trunk full of Boulle’s manuscripts. Among these is a document whose existence was revealed only this week – the original French version of Boulle’s screenplay for a follow-up to the 1968 film.

Such was the success of the Charlton Heston film, that Twentieth Century Fox immediately asked for a sequel.

Boulle set to the task (incorporating the Statue of Liberty ending of the first film, ironically), but his script proved unusable.

“By general admission Boulle was an amazingly imaginative writer, but he did not understand cinema,” says Pieyre.

Today Boulle is almost forgotten, even in his native France. In his lifetime he was a retiring figure, shunning the literary world. He never married.

“I think part of the problem is that the French don’t know how to categorise him. Some people think he’s too ‘Hollywood’ because of the two films. But no. He was rooted in France,” says Pieyre.

Loriot has dedicated the last 20 years of his life perpetuating the memory of a man he loved.

“On his deathbed, his last words to me and my wife were: ‘I hope they will not forget me,'” Loriot says.

The man behind two of the greatest films of all time – plus so much else – certainly deserves better.

Wearables tracked with Raspberry Pi

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People who use wearable gadgets to monitor their health or activity can be tracked with only $70 (£40) of hardware, research suggests.

The work, carried out by security firm Symantec, used a Raspberry Pi computer to grab data broadcast by the gadgets.

Woman jogging

The snooping Pi was taken to parks and sporting events where it was able to pick out individuals in the crowds.

Symantec said makers of wearables need to do a better job of protecting privacy and handling data they gather.

‘Serious breach’

The research team used a barebones Raspberry Pi computer to which they added a Bluetooth radio module to help sniff for signals. At no time did the device try to connect to any wearable. Rather, it just scooped up data being broadcast from gadgets close by.

Symantec said the eavesdropping was possible because most wearables were very simple devices that communicated with a smartphone or a laptop when passing on data they have collected.

The researchers, Mario Barcena, Candid Wueest and Hon Lau, took their Pi to busy public places in Switzerland and Ireland, including sporting events, to see what data they could grab.

“All the devices we encountered can be easily tracked using the unique hardware address they transmit,” the team wrote in a blogpost.

Some of the devices picked up were also susceptible to being probed remotely to make them reveal serial numbers or other identifying information. It would be “trivial”, said the researchers, for anyone with a modicum of computer and electronics knowledge to gather this information.

Trick databases

In addition, the research team looked at the apps associated with some activity monitors or which use a smartphone to gather data. About 20% of the apps Symantec looked at did nothing to obfuscate data being sent across the net even though it contained important ID information, such as name, passwords and birthdate.

“The lack of basic security at this level is a serious omission and raises serious questions about how these services handle information stored on their servers,” said the Symantec team.

Further investigation revealed that many apps did not do enough to secure the passage of data from users back to central servers. In some cases it was possible to manipulate data to read information about other users or trick databases into executing commands sent by external agents.

“These are serious security lapses that could lead to a major breach of the user database,” said the team.

Hospital Admissions for Hypoglycemia Now Exceed Those for Hyperglycemia in Medicare Beneficiaries.

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We were pleased to read the recent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report1 that myocardial infarction, stroke, and hyperglycemia rates have been reduced for patients with diabetes mellitus. However, Lipska et al2 inform us that during the same time period, from 1999 to 2011, the opposite trend is occurring for hypoglycemia, and rates of hospital admissions for hypoglycemia have risen by 11.7% in US Medicare beneficiaries. In fact, there were 40% more admissions for hypoglycemia than for hyperglycemia over the 12-year period. The 1-year mortality rate after a hypoglycemia admission was higher (22.6%) than the rate after a hyperglycemia admission (17.6%) in 2010. Our patients are now more likely to experience adverse events related to overtreatment of diabetes mellitus. Striving for too low a hemoglobin A1c target level puts patients at risk for this dangerous adverse effect.

 

http://archinte.jamanetwork.com/Mobile/article.aspx?articleID=1871565&utm_source=dlvr.it&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=feed_posts

From the desk of Zedie.

Why does the CDC own a patent on Ebola ‘invention?’

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The U.S. Centers for Disease Control owns a patent on a particular strain of Ebola known as “EboBun.” It’s patent No. CA2741523A1 and it was awarded in 2010. You can view it here. (Thanks to Natural News readers who found this and brought it to our attention.)

Patent applicants are clearly described on the patent as including:

The Government Of The United States Of America As Represented By The Secretary, Department Of Health & Human Services, Center For Disease Control.

The patent summary says, “The invention provides the isolated human Ebola (hEbola) viruses denoted as Bundibugyo (EboBun) deposited with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (“CDC”; Atlanta, Georgia, United States of America) on November 26, 2007 and accorded an accession number 200706291.”

It goes on to state, “The present invention is based upon the isolation and identification of a new human Ebola virus species, EboBun. EboBun was isolated from the patients suffering from hemorrhagic fever in a recent outbreak in Uganda.”

It’s worth noting, by the way, that EboBun is not the same variant currently believed to be circulating in West Africa. Clearly, the CDC needs to expand its patent portfolio to include more strains, and that may very well be why American Ebola victims have been brought to the United States in the first place. Read more below and decide for yourself…

Harvesting Ebola from victims to file patents

From the patent description on the EboBun virus, we know that the U.S. government:

1) Extracts Ebola viruses from patients.

2) Claims to have “invented” that virus.

3) Files for monopoly patent protection on the virus.

To understand why this is happening, you have to first understand what a patent really is and why it exists. A patent is a government-enforced monopoly that is exclusively granted to persons or organizations. It allows that person or organization to exclusively profit from the “invention” or deny others the ability to exploit the invention for their own profit.

It brings up the obvious question here: Why would the U.S. government claim to have “invented” Ebola and then claim an exclusively monopoly over its ownership?

U.S. Government claims exclusive ownership over its “invention” of Ebola

The “SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION” section of the patent document also clearly claims that the U.S. government is claiming “ownership” over all Ebola viruses that share as little as 70% similarity with the Ebola it “invented”:

…invention relates to the isolated EboBun virus that morphologically and phylogenetically relates to known members filoviridae… In another aspect, the invention provides an isolated hEbola EboBun virus comprising a nucleic acid molecule comprising a nucleotide sequence selected from the group consisting of: a) a nucleotide sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO: 1; b) a nucleotide sequence that hybridizes to the sequence set forth in SEQ ID NO: 1 under stringent conditions; and c) a nucleotide sequence that has at least 70%, 75%, 80%, 85%, 90%, 95%, 96%, 97%, 98%, or 99% identity to the SEQ ID NO:

1. In another aspect, the invention provides the complete genomic sequence of the hEbola virus EboBun.

Ebola vaccines and propagation

The CDC patent goes on to explain it specifically claims patent protection on a method for propagating the Ebola virus in host cells as well as treating infected hosts with vaccines:

In another aspect, the invention provides a method for propagating the hEbola virus in host cells comprising infecting the host cells with the inventive isolated hEbola virus described above, culturing the host cells to allow the virus to multiply, and harvesting the resulting virions.

In another aspect, the invention provides vaccine preparations, comprising the inventive hEbola virus, including recombinant and chimeric forms of the virus, nucleic acid molecules comprised by the virus, or protein subunits of the virus. The invention also provides a vaccine formulation comprising a therapeutically or prophylactically effective amount of the inventive hEbola virus described above, and a pharmaceutically acceptable carrier.

No medical reason to bring Ebola to the United States

This patent may help explain why Ebola victims are being transported to the United States and put under the medical authority of the CDC. These patients are carrying valuable intellectual property assets in the form of Ebola variants, and the Centers for Disease Control clearly desires to expand its patent portfolio by harvesting, studying and potentially patenting new strains or variants.

Dr. Bob Arnot, an infectious disease specialist who spent time on the ground in developing nations saving lives, recently told Judge Jeanine, “There is no medical reason to bring them here, especially when you see how well Dr. Bradley was.” (2)

There is, however, an entirely different reason to bring Ebola patients to America: so they can be exploited for medical experiments, military bioweapons harvesting or intellectual property claims.

Surely, medical authorities at Emory University and the CDC are working hard to save the lives of the two patients who have been transported to the U.S. But they are also pursuing something else at the same time: an agenda of isolating, identifying and patenting infectious disease agents for reasons that we can only imagine.

Only hoping to save lives?

On one hand, it’s worth pointing out that the CDC’s patent on Ebola is at least partially focused on methods for screening for Ebola and treating Ebola victims with drugs or vaccines. This seems like a worthwhile precaution against an infectious disease that clearly threatens lives.

On the other hand, why the patent? Patenting Ebola seems as odd as trying to patent cancer or diabetes. Why would a government organization claim to have “invented” this infectious disease and then claim a monopoly over its exploitation for commercial use?

Does the CDC hope to collect a royalty on Ebola vaccines? Is it looking to “invent” more variants and patent those too?

Make no mistake that billions of dollars in profits are at stake in all this. Shares of Tekmira surged over 11% last Friday as pressure was placed on the FDA to fast-track Ebola vaccine trials the company has set up. “Health campaigners have started a petition which has already been signed by approximately 15,500 people on change.org pressurizing FDA to approve the drug in the minimum possible time frame,” reports BidnessEtc.com. (3)

Carefully scripted medical theater

With this, we start to see the structure of the elaborate medical theater coming together: A global pandemic panic, a government patent, the importation of Ebola into a major U.S. city, an experimental vaccine, the rise of a little-known pharmaceutical company and a public outcry for the FDA to fast-track the vaccine.

If Act II stays on course, this medical theater might someday involve a “laboratory accident” in a U.S. lab, the “escape” of Ebola into the population, and a mandatory nationwide Ebola vaccination campaign that enriches Tekmira and its investors while positioning the CDC with its virus patents as the “savior of the American people.”

Yes, we’ve heard this music before, but the last time around it was called Swine Flu.

The formula is always the same: create alarm, bring a vaccine to market, then scare governments into buying billions of dollars worth of vaccines they don’t need.

Sources for this article include:

(1) http://www.google.com/patents/CA2741523A1?cl…

(2) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SHAK6oX-JN4&feature=…

(3) http://www.bidnessetc.com/23519-tekmera-shar…