April 2009 - Posts
National Archives |
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Police officers in Seattle wear face masks during the flu epidemic of 1918.
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How bad can a flu epidemic get? The raw numbers indicate that over the past 90 years, far more people have been killed by relatively run-of-the-mill seasonal flu viruses than by the exotic bugs that have grabbed most of the headlines - such as bird flu or the current strain of swine flu.
But to get a more useful perspective on a flu epidemic's potential impact, you have to go back to the mother of all pandemics: the "Spanish flu" of 1918.
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NIAMS |
Surface proteins stick out in this
3-D image of a flu virus.
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How can one bug combine genetic material from pigs, birds and humans to become so dangerous? Think of flu viruses as promiscuous, species-jumping, disguise-wearing contestants in a reality-TV show titled "Evolution Gone Wild." Virus-fighters are scrambling to keep pace, using analytical techniques that work more quickly than ever.
This show is no comedy, as illustrated by today's news about the first U.S. death in the swine-flu epidemic and the escalation of the World Health Organization's pandemic alert status. But knowing how the virus game is played could help you understand issues ranging from the difference between vaccines and antivirals to the reasons why you can't get the flu from a pork chop.
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KING-TV |
Click for video: A global map at Veratect's headquarters highlights infectious-
disease events. Click on the image to watch a video report from Seattle's KING-TV.
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This week's alarms over swine flu may have come as a shock to most people, but not to experts in threat prediction: One company said it began warning public-health agencies about the potential for a pandemic weeks ago. Today, the spread of swine flu is being tracked in real time on interactive maps - and prediction experts have set up a market to forecast the flu outbreak's future.
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AFP - Getty Images |
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A medic injects a volunteer with a flu vaccine in Moscow. A new study
indicates that vaccination against one flu strain could boost immunity
against other strains - suggesting a strategy to fight future pandemics.
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As officials around the world worry about a potential swine flu pandemic, three newly released studies hint at the next generation of flu fighters - including a "pre-pandemic" vaccine that could last for years, a universal vaccine that could battle a wide variety of flu strains, and a painless patch for flu vaccines.
It may be years before these innovations make their appearance in your doctor's office or pharmacy - but the current alarm over swine flu could accelerate the development process, said Robert Liddington, professor and director of the Infectious Disease Program at the Burnham Institute for Medical Research.
"If a serious pandemic did start to arrive, then a lot of these processes would be expedited," he told me today.
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NASA via AFP - Getty Images file |
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The Hubble Space Telescope gets its own photo op after a 2002 servicing session.
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There's plenty to celebrate today as the Hubble Space Telescope turns 19 years old: The billion-dollar orbiting observatory is still in business, even though some people thought it should have failed by now. And after years and months of delay, it looks as if help is finally on the way. The shuttle Atlantis is set to deliver hundreds of millions of dollars' worth of belated birthday gifts next month.
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From left: Intuitive Surgical, iRobot, NASA |
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The latest Robot Hall of Fame inductees include the da Vinci Surgical System, the
Roomba floor-cleaning robot and NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers.
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The Robot Hall of Fame may sound like a science-fiction museum, but the latest inductees actually include more real robots than fictional ones. Among the stars of the show are a couple of contraptions that have surpassed science-fiction expectations: NASA's twin Mars rovers.
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Charlie Riedel / AP file |
Click for video: Smarter grids can save money and the environment. Click on the image above to watch a video from NBC's TODAY show.
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Utilities and energy companies are flocking to roll out pilot projects for a smarter electric grid, taking advantage of billions of dollars in federal stimulus money. The idea is to deliver energy more efficiently and cut back on fossil-fuel use.
Great idea ... but just how smart should a power grid get? That's a question raised when you pair the reports about potential electric-grid investments with reports about potential electric-grid intrusions.
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NASA / ESA / STScI / AURA |
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Galaxies swirl in this 19th-birthday picture from Hubble. Click on the image for bigger versions.
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Earth Day is a great day to celebrate our planet, reflect on new ways to protect it - and widen your planetary perspective as well.
To mark the occasion, you can download the latest goodies from the Hubble Space Telescope, send out personalized postcards of our home planet and catch one of the season's best sky shows.
It turns out that the 40th annual observance of Earth Day on April 22 is just one reason to celebrate: Wednesday also marks the peak of the spring season's best-known meteor shower, the Lyrids. Then, on Friday, Hubble officially turns 19 years old - and that's why so many treats from outer space are being made available this week.
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UW-Madison |
Click for video: University of Wisconsin researcher Adam Wilson composes
a Twitter message using a system that reads his brain waves. Click on the
image to watch a video explaining how the message was sent.
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"GO BADGERS" isn't an unusual message to get from the University of Wisconsin at Madison - particularly when it's a status update from Twitter, the texting service that limits users to 140 characters at a time.
The unusual thing about this message is how it got to Twitter in the first place: via brain waves.
University of Wisconsin doctoral student Adam Wilson's cheer for the hometown team is among the first direct brain-to-Twitter messages ever sent - and it points the way to better communication systems for paralyzed patients who have to cope with the conditions faced by physicist Stephen Hawking and the late Jean-Dominique Bauby, author of "The Diving Bell and the Butterfly."
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Where can you find Stephen Colbert, President Obama, Cleopatra and Leonardo da Vinci all in one place? The Technology & Science section here at msnbc.com, of course. All these celebrities, past and present, were in the news over the past week.
The big question is, why were they in the news? Let's make that 10 big questions. Today, we're rolling out the celebrity edition of msnbc.com's Science and Space Quiz - or the Sci-Q test for short.
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Shawn Allen / NADS / Univ. of Iowa |
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Meiji Zhang tries to use a cell phone in a driving simulator that's designed to work
like a Chevy Malibu. The University of Iowa's National Advanced Driving Simulator
helps researchers safely study a wide variety of driving situations.
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Using gadgets while you're driving can be a very bad thing, but an expert on automotive distractions says using a gadget that watches you while you're driving can be a very good thing.
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P.Slane et al. / SAO / NASA / CXC |
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A rapidly spinning neutron star known as PSR B1509-58 spews out patterns of
energy that look like a blue cosmic hand in this Chandra X-ray image.
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An X-ray probe's picture of a celestial "Hand," 17,000 light-years from Earth, has stirred up spiritual responses on a par with the Hubble Space Telescope's famous Pillars of Creation and the Eye of God - plus a couple of lighthearted laughs.
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Getty Images file |
Are Twitter tweets too
fast-paced to let nobler
emotions sink in?
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Researchers probing the workings of the brain have found that it takes longer for feelings of social compassion and admiration to register on our neural circuits - and they worry that the rapid-fire effect of texting and tweeting could have "potentially negative consequences" for our moral fiber.
The findings serve as fresh fuel for the debate over social networking's effect on the human psyche: Just this month, we've seen how social-network surfers can improve their office productivity, help catch criminals or head off a potential suicide (with an assist from celebrity Demi Moore!). We've also heard about Twitter torments, Facebook failures and social-network stress.
The brain-scan study, conducted by scientists at the University of Southern California and due for publication online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, takes a different perspective.
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Matthew Frank / U.S. Navy Military Sealift Command |
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The U.S. Navy's Maritime Expeditionary Security Group 2 uses a
laser distractor to warn a simulated vessel to keep its distance.
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Right now the best defenses against Somali pirates like the ones involved in the past week's drama on the high seas are fast engines and fire hoses - but the U.S. military is working on some high-tech anti-piracy gizmos that just might end up on commercial vessels as well.
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Kim Olsen / SDSU |
A color-coded computer simulation charts ground
shaking caused by a 9.0 quake in the Pacific
Northwest. Click on the image for more information.
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The magnitude-6.3 earthquake that struck villages in Italy was horrible enough, but can you imagine what would happen to a city like Seattle if it were hit by a magnitude-9 shocker? That's exactly what Caltech's Thomas Heaton and Jing Yang try to do in a new series of simulations - and the picture isn't pretty.
In many of the simulations, high-rise buildings suffered severe damage. In some of the simulations, they collapsed altogether. Do those simulations reflect reality? The bottom line for Heaton and Yang, as for many other researchers looking into the potential effects of megathrust earthquakes, is that we just don't know.
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I'm taking Good Friday through Easter Sunday off for a family reunion - but in the meantime, here are some Web links suitable for the season:
Mike D'Angelo / Rocket Racing League ® |
Click for video: Watch the Armadillo-powered
rocket plane take off for a test flight in Oklahoma.
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The economic downturn has forced the Rocket Racing League and other ventures to scale back their suborbital ambitions - but the league's leader says his plans for a "NASCAR with rockets" are still moving ahead, more than three years after they were unveiled.
That's often the way it goes in the space business: High-flying timetables not only run into fund-raising realities, but also encounter technical setbacks great and small.
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msnbc.com |
Biologist Richard Dawkins sports
a Hawaiian shirt in Arizona.
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Who says scientists aren't party animals? Thousands turned out this week to watch some of the world's best-known scientists let their hair down at Arizona State University's Origins Symposium.
Monday's public party was organized by ASU theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss to inaugurate the university's Origins Initiative, a multidisciplinary program focusing on scientific explanations for the beginnings of life, the universe and everything (including consciousness and culture).
A theme like that can be deadly serious - and deadly dull as well. But Krauss brought in the brightest luminaries of the scientific set to add sparkle to the discussion.
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NASA / JPL / SSI |
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An infrared view from the Cassini orbiter reveals the Saturnian
moon Titan's surface. Could Titan harbor life as we don't know it?
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Is "life as we don't know it" closer than we think? Are microbes behind the world's biggest extinctions? Is most of our morality bound up in hidden "dark morals"? Blow your mind with six flights of scientific fancy from the Origins Symposium, presented by Arizona State University.
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AFP - Getty Images file |
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British physicist Stephen Hawking is to make a "virtual appearance"
at the Origins Symposium, presented by Arizona State University.
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How did the universe begin? How did life arise? How did evolution make us the way we are today? How would you answer these big questions. Oh, and by the way, keep your answers shorter than 140 characters.
That's the kind of experiment I'll be conducting this weekend at the Origins Symposium, presented by Arizona State University's brand-new Origins Initiative.
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Babak Tafreshi / TWAN |
Stargazers will be out in force
during the "100 Hours of
Astronomy" celebration.
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The wonders of outer space get a double dose of worldwide exposure starting today - first with an event called "100 Hours of Astronomy," and then with the annual Yuri's Night celebration.
The clock on the "100 Hours" will tick all the way through Sunday, marking what are arguably the biggest dates on the International Year of Astronomy's calendar. More than 1,500 events have been scheduled in 130 countries, with more than a million people expected to participate.
The point of the exercise is to mark the 400th anniversary of Galileo Galilei's groundbreaking telescopic observations and highlight astronomy's past, present and future. Oh, and to have some fun at the same time.
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Google, Reed Saxon/AP, Kodak |
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A panda-loving AI program ... a Mars research station named after Stephen
Colbert ... a camera for your eye. Which of these could be for real? Answers below.
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High tech and high jinks are simply made to go together. Why else do you think the kids at MIT and Caltech spend so much time pranking each other? And what do you think happens to those kids when they graduate? Sure, they're creating the world of the future - but they're also creating increasingly complex spoofs, as evidenced by this year's crop of April Fools' gizmos.
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