A1A South

BEIJING, March 12 (Xinhua) — Infectious diseases claimed 668 lives in China in February out of more than 300,000 recorded cases, according to the Ministry of Health.    Last month, 261,028 cases of A- and B-Class infectious diseases occurred and claimed 662 lives. Of the 44,590 cases of C-Class infectious diseases recorded, there were six fatalities.

    In February, the top five infectious diseases, accounting for 88.40 percent of the total cases of A and B-Class diseases, were tuberculosis, hepatitis B, measles, syphilis and diarrhea.

    The top five killers, accounting for 88.82 percent of the total lives claimed by A and B-Class diseases, were AIDS which claimed 198 lives, tuberculosis 147 lives, rabies 139 lives, hepatitis B 84 lives and epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis 20 lives.

    Three human cases of bird flu were reported last month leading to three people’s death.

    In January, infectious diseases claimed 571 lives out of nearly 370,000 recorded cases. However, in February last year there were 432 people’s death out of nearly 240,000 recorded cases.

    Infectious diseases in China are classified into three categories by the country’s Law on the Prevention and Treatment of Infectious Diseases.

    Diseases, A-Class infectious diseases include only two diseases, namely plague and cholera, B-Class infectious diseases include 25 diseases such as viral hepatitis and C-Class infectious diseases include ten diseases such as influenza.

Source:  Xinhua

You can learn some interesting things about a country by comparing the death rates for different types of disease.  For example, 139 people died of rabies in February; a disease which has become very rare here.  This could also account for the pogrom on pet dogs and cats.

JAKARTA, March 13 (Xinhua) — Eight people from the same village in Indonesia’s Lampung province were admitted to hospital allegedly for developing bird flu symptoms, local press said Thursday.    The patients, including two babies and two teenagers, all come from Way Laga village where dozens of chickens have died of the avian influenza.

    They were sent to the state-run Abdul Moeloek Hospital in provincial capital Bandarlampung with high fever and respiratory problems after eating the infected chickens, reported the national Antara news agency.

So infants are eating infected chickens now?

    Lampung is located in the southern tip of Sumatra island.

    ”The patients are placed in the isolated rooms and have undergone laboratory tests. But it takes several days before we get the results,” the hospital’s director Dr Wirman was quoted as saying.

    At least 102 people have died from bird flu out of some 125 reported cases in Indonesia since the outbreak was confirmed in 2003.

    Jakarta has been the hardest hit city in the country, with 25 deaths resulting from the 29 cases reported.

Source: Xinhua

Perhaps there is a problem in the translation, because I wouldn’t think that babies would be eating partially cooked chicken.

JACKSONVILLE, FL — Military leaders want to keep the largest air squadron in the US Navy at NAS Jacksonville and add five other squadrons when a fleet of new, modern planes enter service in the next decade, under a draft plan released this week.

The Navy said it would like to base between 30 and 48 new P-8 jet airplanes in a massive new hangar now under construction near the western end of Naval Air Station Jacksonville’s runway.

The proposed changes were announced this week in the first public draft of an Environmental Impact Study designed to plan for the future of the new Navy jets, which are Boeing 737 airliners converted for submarine hunting and other Navy roles.

The aircraft are designed to replace the aging fleet of P-3 Orion propeller-driven planes that often fly low circles over the Westside, Orange Park, and Mandarin. P-8 planes will start entering service in 2012 and completely replace the older P-3s by 2019, under current Navy plans.

In the draft report, the Navy recommends keeping the training team for all P-3 and P-8 crews at NAS Jacksonville. That current unit, VP-30, is the Navy’s largest aircraft squadron.

Five other squadrons of pilots, mechanics, and others would also be based at NAS Jax to fly military missions in the jets. Four squadrons would go to NAS Whidbey Island in Washington, and three would be located at Marine Corps Base Hawaii Kaneohe Bay.

The report is only a draft, and will not be finalized until December, after a series of public hearings around the United States.

The public hearing in Jacksonville is scheduled for Wednesday, April 9, at the Howard Johnson at 150 Park Avenue in Orange Park. It will begin with an open information session that runs from 4:30 p.m. to 6:30 p.m. The official public comment period will run from 7 p.m. to 9 p.m.

Source:  FirstCoastNews

Good.  I love seeing the Navy ships, planes, and personnel.

A new study shows that exposure to a chemical called diacetyl, a component of artificial butter flavoring, can be harmful to the nose and airways of mice. Scientists at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), part of the National Institutes of Health, conducted the study because diacetyl has been implicated in causing obliterative bronchiolitis (OB) in humans. OB is a debilitating but rare lung disease, which has been detected recently in workers who inhale significant concentrations of the flavoring in microwave popcorn packaging plants.

When laboratory mice inhaled diacetyl vapors for three months, they developed lymphocytic bronchiolitis - a potential precursor of OB. None of the mice, however, were diagnosed with OB.

“This is one of the first studies to evaluate the respiratory toxicity of diacetyl at levels relevant to human health. Mice were exposed to diacetyl at concentrations and durations comparable to what may be inhaled at some microwave popcorn packaging plants,” said Daniel L. Morgan, Ph.D., head of the Respiratory Toxicology Group at the NIEHS and co-author on the paper that appears online in the journal, Toxicological Sciences. The study was done in collaboration with Duke University researchers.

The authors conclude that these findings suggest that workplace exposure to diacetyl contributes to the development of OB in humans, but more research is needed.

Although exposure of laboratory animals by inhalation closely duplicates the way humans are exposed to airborne toxicants, the study points out that some anatomical differences between the mice and humans may account for why the nasal cavity of mice is more susceptible to reactive vapors than that of humans. Another reason may be that mice breathe exclusively through their noses.

The researchers also speculate that the extensive reaction of diacetyl vapors in the nose and upper airways of mice may have prevented toxic concentrations from penetrating deeper in the lung to the bronchioles or tiny airways where obstruction occurs in humans.

When the mice were exposed to high concentrations of diacetyl using a method that bypasses the nose, the researchers found lesions partially obstructing the small airways. More studies are under way to determine if these lesions progress to OB in mice.

The National Toxicology Program, headquartered at the NIEHS, plans to do a larger set of studies to provide inhalation toxicity data on artificial butter flavoring and the two major components, diacetyl and another compound called acetoin. The NTP studies will help pinpoint more definitively the toxic components of artificial butter flavoring and potentially help identify biomarkers for early detection. The NTP data will then be shared with public health and regulatory agencies so they can set safe exposure levels for these compounds and develop guidance to protect the health of workers in occupations where these chemicals are used.

Source:  National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences

Save the rodents!  Use real butter.

For the second consecutive year, the population of Cuba decreased in 2007, according to the government’s National Statistics Office, in a trend the experts say is expected to continue until 2025.

The latest report from the statistics office showed that Cuba’s population in 2007 was 11,237,154, nearly 1,900 less than the 11,239,043 that were counted in 2006.

The last year of population growth was 2005, when the island had 11,243,836 people.

Cuba has not experienced a similar drop since the 19th century, when the population shrank as a result of the 1833 cholera epidemic, the Ten Year War of 1868-78 and the final war of independence from 1895-98.

Government estimates predict a decrease of 77,000 people in the next 20 years, or a 0.7 percent drop from current figures.

A recent report by the Cuban government’s Center for Population Studies and Development suggests that some of the factors in the decreasing population are families having fewer children, out migration ”and an increased rate of mortality” affecting both the young and people over 60 years of age.

Birthrates are at their lowest levels of the past 100 years, at 10.1 per thousand inhabitants.

The fertility curve in Cuba quickly descended to 1.44 per thousand during the economic crisis of the 1990s and has remained more or less stable until 2007, when it hit 1.49.

”It seemed that the entrance into the 21st century would be marked by the recovery of this indicator, but up to the present there is no evidence in this respect,” said the report, titled Cuba: Population Projections, 2007-2025.

Ooooh!  Ooooh!  Ask me where they went!  I know!  Ask ME!

The demographic crisis is also a product of emigration.

Some 450,000 Cubans have left the country since 1994, according to the Cuban statistics office.

U.S. estimates are that 191,000 Cubans have arrived in the United States since 2000, 77,000 of them in the past two years alone.

Er, make that 77,0007.

Source:  Miami Herald

Cuba’s loss is Florida’s (and other states) gain.

March 13, 2008 - Without a ripple in the water, alligators dive, surface or roll sideways, even though they lack flippers or fins. University of Utah biologists discovered gators maneuver silently by using their diaphragm, pelvic, abdominal and rib muscles to shift their lungs like internal floatation devices: toward the tail when they dive, toward the head when they surface and sideways when they roll.

“It allows them to navigate a watery environment without creating a lot of disturbance,” says doctoral student T.J. Uriona. “This is probably really important while they are trying to sneak up on an animal but don’t want to create ripples.”

The discovery in American alligators suggests “special muscles that manipulate the position of the lungs - and thus the center of buoyancy - may be an underappreciated but important means for other aquatic animals to maneuver in water without actively swimming,” says C.G. Farmer, an assistant professor of biology.

Those animals include crocodiles, African clawed frogs, some salamanders, turtles and manatees, she adds, noting that the use of muscles to move the lungs may be “incredibly important or you would not see it evolve repeatedly.

The study by Uriona and Farmer will be published in the April 2008 issue of The Journal of Experimental Biology, which is set for online publication Friday, March 14.

The researchers found that alligators are somewhat like pilots using controls to adjust an aircraft’s pitch and roll, except the reptiles’ controls are muscles that help them shift their lungs backward to dive, forward to surface or sideways to roll.

Farmer says the new study asked how gators “manage to maneuver so gracefully without the fins and flippers used by fish, seals and other adept swimmers.”

“The secret to their aquatic agility lies in the use of several muscles, such as the diaphragmatic muscle, to shift the position of their lungs. The gases in the lungs buoy up the animal, but if shifted forward and backward cause the animal to pivot in a seesaw motion. When the animals displace gases to the right or left side of the body, they roll.”

Uriona says that during the Triassic Period, which began 250 million years ago, the crocodilian ancestors of alligators were cat-sized animals that lived only on land.

“Until now, it was believed the diaphragmatic muscle evolved to help them breathe and run at the same time,” he says. “Showing they are actually using it to move around in water gives an alternative explanation for why the muscle evolved.”

It also suggests the muscle didn’t evolve until after crocodilians took to the water during the Cretaceous Period, which began 145 million years ago. During that time alligators’ ancestors also evolved a flattened skull, shorter limbs and a big tail.

Source: University of Utah

Fascinating article. If you are interested in how alligators can shift their lungs to help them swim, click the link and read the rest!

HANOI, March 11 (Reuters) - Bird flu killed four civets in a Vietnamese national park, the second time the rare type of mammal was reported to have died there of the H5N1 virus since 2005, a park official said on Tuesday.

Four endangered Owston’s palm civets died early last month at Cuc Phuong park and tests of their samples found they had the H5N1 virus, the official said.

“Visitors are not allowed to come near the civet’s area now,” the official said by telephone from the park about 90 km (55 miles) south of Hanoi in Ninh Binh province.

In June 2005 three civets, born in captivity and raised in the same cage, died at the park and tests later confirmed they had been infected by bird flu, park officials said. The park has eight of the rare cat-like civets left.

Civets eat pork, worms and fruit, but not poultry.

However, Ninh Binh is one of nine locations where outbreaks have been detected among poultry in the past month, including a farm outside Hanoi, the Animal Health Department said.

It is not the first time that bird flu has killed exotic animals. The H5N1 virus has infected ostriches in South Africa, a clouded leopard and tigers in Thailand.

One of China’s top doctors has said that the H5N1 virus has shown signs of mutation and can kill humans more easily if treatment is not given early enough, newspapers reported on Tuesday [ID:nHKG228879].

The H5N1 virus has infected 368 people around the world since 2003, killing 234 of them, including 51 in Vietnam.

Experts fear it could trigger a pandemic killing millions if it ever transmits efficiently among people. (Reporting by Ho Binh Minh; editing by Grant McCool and Sanjeev Miglani)

Source: Reuters

Cats have also been shown to become infected by H5N1. Perhaps that explains this:

Thousands of pet cats in Beijing are being abandoned by their owners and sent to die in secretive government pounds as China mounts an aggressive drive to clean up the capital in preparation for the Olympic Games.

Hundreds of cats a day are being rounded and crammed into cages so small they cannot even turn around.

Then they are trucked to what animal welfare groups describe as death camps on the edges of the city.

The cull comes in the wake of a government campaign warning of the diseases cats carry and ordering residents to help clear the streets of them.
Cat owners, terrified by the disease warning, are dumping their pets in the streets to be picked up by special collection teams.

Paranoia is so intense that six stray cats -including two pregnant females - were beaten to death with sticks by teachers at a Beijing kindergarten, who feared they might pass illnesses to the children.

China’s leaders are convinced that animals pose a serious urban health risk and may have contributed to the outbreak of SARS - a deadly respiratory virus - in 2003

Source: Daily Mail

Meanwhile, rats will be overrunning Chinese cities.